So then, once again, the price is comparable to a minimum wage part-time job. One that will almost always involve less stress and overall effort than part-time trading would designate. It just seems a bit backward to work harder for "roughly the same amount" or less, simply so you may "earn" in your underwear.

A lot of people, including me, will first check a persons' inventory to see if they have a copy of a game available before they ever post on their trade offer, or add them to discuss anything. When I'm looking for a certain game, I first weed out the cheapest offers, then check them one by one (highest rep, / most legit looking people first) to see if they still have the game I want available for me to buy immediately. If not, I move on to the next guy, etc, 'till I find someone that has a copy available. 95% of the time this results in an instant successful trade, the remaining 5% consisting of asking someone to buy a non-region locked RU copy of a game for me, which only happens with lesser-known / less hyped games.

Hence, having stock available is usually much preferred, meaning that as doctorofjournalism says, you have to invest cash into stock you're not sure of when it'll sell.

Yes, I had read your thoughtless comments about eBay. Which were already quite successfully blown out of the water. No one trades Steam games on eBay, for the reasons jatan11 posted. Aside from specific reasons to not use eBay (or other similar sites), there's already enough valid options offered for trading steam games online, which people use. If there were some magical other place online where traders could magically get far larger profits than on the various sites on offer and already being extensively used out there, people would already be flocking to it. However, that would make no sense, as buyers would also be paying more there. Now why would they do that, when they can go to the aforementioned well established trading sites and get a game for far less?

You say I'm the problem here, and that I am a stressful guy. Let's see what's going on here. You keep posting half-assed, non-informed asinine comments with no facts, numbers, or even basic logic to back them up, based on your misconceptions about trading in general, as well as specific features of trading sites. Then, actual well established traders and people who buy games all the time (who are far more knowledgeable than you) reply to you, prove you wrong, back what they say up with cogent arguments and facts, and you still keep trying to worm your way out of just saying "oh shit guys, you were right, hadn't thought of that!" by trying to propose more and more options for trading that will still somehow magically give you the kind of profit margins you keep (wrongfully) insisting are possible through trading, that bear no water, such as eBay.

People like you are fucking nuisances. You quite apparently aren't "in the know" concerning trading (which is no problem), and flat-out refuse to just see this conversation with people as a learning experience you can use to inform yourself better (which is a problem), rather trying to turn it into an argument you're trying to "win". That's why I'm being belligerent and harsh from the get-go. You're annoying, and acting like a moron, when surely you can do a lot better with the brain you've got (semi-compliment in there, if you bother to try and see it).

Also, you're basically commenting on things you have 0 experience with. Have you ever spent an entire day looking at your browser window, filled with 30+ tabs, refreshing them all the time to see if people are online, check pricing trends on games you have on offer, checking around the web if games you're selling might be on some ludicrous sale somewhere (hence possibly making you want to temporarily remove the game from your trade offer so as to keep it appealing to buyers, as having prices far higher than current sales makes you look like someone selling games too expensively), continuously updating your trade thread, etc? I don't think so. Yet you comment on it as if you have any knowledge on what active trading is like.

Look, sure you can put up a trade offer here and there, and go to work, return home, maybe sell one or two games, but that kind of more "passive" trading won't net you more than (averaged out over time) mere pennies a day, at most. If you want to actually make a reasonable (or even significant compared to the effort put in) amount of profit, you have to actively be trading, lowering prices as the market value drops, staying up to date on sales all over the web, advertising your services all over, haggling with other traders to maybe buy games off them for cheap so you can resell em, etc. Oh almost forgetting the potential annoyance / stress of having to deal with checking rep / trustworthiness of buyers, potential language barriers, and the like. It really does take a bunch of effort man, and can cause a lot of stress, I promise.

we told you that you were wrong about ST, we told you that you were wrong about ebay - and now you come up with this? selling COD games to kids at school? come on... ^^

i think you are simply running out of arguments now. that's why you come up with such a crazy idea. instead you should just admit that you were wrong. nothing wrong in being wrong, except if you keep going and going... xD

and btw, i am a little disappointed, that you didn't answer my question:

but let me ask you another question: what exactly is wrong about this whole thing? if someone would normally pay 60$, and then he sees someone on ebay, selling for 50$. he buys the game, saves some money in comparison to what he would have done normally, and the seller makes some money. as long as the game has no regional restrictions, i don't really see your point here. it's a win-win situation. everybody's happy. what exactly is your problem?

"Stop living in yourself"? What does that even mean?

Anyway, I fail to see you discussing any other topic than trading, here. Go ahead, point me to where you're posting about anything else than trading. Not that it matters, really, as that's an irrelevant cop-out to try and worm your way, again, out of just going "you were right, I was wrong, I learned something, let's shake hands and be civil adults / friends". Even if you and your conversational partners (or whoever "we" is supposed to refer to) are discussing something else somewhere else, this comment chain is about trading, and our conversation is about trading. My place is in this conversation. And once more - you keep weaseling your way out of actually posting a valid reply to anything I say, rather trying to flat-out change the subject in the middle of a comment chain. Pathetic showing. Come the fuck on man, I'm sure you can do much better than this. Admit you were wrong, enjoy the free knowledge you've gleaned from others (and maybe use it to inform future trading-related decisions), stop acting like an annoying teenager trying to avoid losing face by ignoring others' points, so we can all get back to being cool to each other..

i only talked about steamtrades (and you were clearly wrong on that ^^), i cannot say too much about ebay. but my experience with ebay is, that i rarely see any private sellers selling steam codes or even gifts there (except for nvidia/amd promos). so it doesn't seem to happen, for whatever reason (as i said, i can't tell much about ebay and if there are maybe restrictions i don't know about).

but let me ask you another question: what exactly is wrong about this whole thing? if someone would normally pay 60$, and then he sees someone on ebay, selling for 50$. he buys the game, saves some money in comparison to what he would have done normally, and the seller makes some money. as long as the game has no regional restrictions, i don't really see your point here. it's a win-win situation. everybody's happy. what exactly is your problem?

A large part of the reason prices are higher on Ebay is because of higher sell fees. You sell for $60 BIN, you lose $6 of that automatically to fees. Then because you aren't sending a physical product, you forfeit seller protection, and there is a good chance that the buyer disputes the payment on paypal and there's nothing you can do about it.

So you get $54 for a product that will cost you $50 to buy. Plus the added risk of paypal dispute. I don't see how $4 profit is "an easy $25-30 made"

No, he's making entirely cogent and valid counter-points to your nonsense.

Like KillingArts said, people weren't selling CoD: Ghosts for 25 fucking TF2 keys. I bought a copy for a giveaway for 17 keys, and there were others selling it for as low as 16. What you're suggesting - getting more than that paltry amount of profits (even as high as your suggested $15) would only be possible if you indeed bought some stock of a game, then lucked out on it becoming region locked, hence enabling you to sell higher than before it was region locked. And the only way to actually turn a decent amount of these profits would be to stock up with a few copies of the game in advance.

It's all very simple to understand, but you simply refuse to admit your initial misconceptions and nonsense statements were entirely erroneous, and capitulate. You were wrong, guy, give it up.

I don't know why I'm bothering to reply. While you didn't say multiple copies, you also never said "the complete opposite." In trading or selling cases, it makes complete sense that you would be thinking of doing it in bulk or at least using more than one copy. If you could point out a post where you specified only single copies, I would appreciate it because I certainly can't find it.

I'm earning cash right now, and all I'm doing is bicker with you. No "spare time" required, I am full-on making salaried pay derping around on SG while at work (a LOT). During my "spare time" I get stoned and play/create videogames, because I have no need to supplement my income.

If you actually enjoy it, then all the more power to you (but why not just fill out surveys full-time?). But if it's only for the money, you have quite the skewed definition of "spare time." GG on working harder for less, though (enjoy the spyware/spam)