pragmatic trading

Established traders already have a system, but I wanted to offer some information for newbies that may help them find what works and what doesn't. That way the new trader can develop their own system as they gain experience. There are a few givens:

the trades will be CD for CD (ie, 5 CDs for 5 CDs)
the media will be CD-R rather than CD-RW
the filesystem will probably be Joliet rather than ISO-9660, although if one trader needs the latter it is easy enough to do.

preparing for trades

The first thing to do is to get organized. This will help you understand what is in your collection, and to help you make a more compelling offer to a Trading Partner (TP hereafter). Notice all this is to be done before soliciting trades. Disorganized, random discs are not terribly appealing to your TP, unless there is some rare file on the disc the TP needs. Even if he does take the tradebait, the recipient of a disorganized disc will have to do a good bit of work on it (reburning) before adding it to the collection.

organize your discs. If you have series scattered across unrelated CDs, sacrifice a few discs and reburn them to get some coherent relationship between the disc and its contents. This isn't as hard as it seems, and is actually quite simple. Remember you don't have to burn a disc all at once; you can add more in a later session if you remembered to start the CD as a multisession CD.
Some kind of rational filenaming scheme will help you understand what you've got so you can eliminate duplicates and ID which files you lack. A tool like otter may be helpful, or you can write your own tool.
name and label your discs in such a way that both you and the TP can tell which discs you are talking about.
document your collection in some cross-platform way. A list of your CDs and their contents is perhaps best distributed on a webpage (and linked from your email/news signature file) , but a .txt or .html file can also be emailed easily and effectively.
The idea is to push your list (trade bait) out to everyone who wants to see it; the web version takes much less work than emailing the list to people. My own web version is a bit of overkill; the data is stored in a relational database, and the actual lists are generated from the database every night. But it illustrates the concept that a little work up front can scale well and take near-zero maintenance later on.
I encourage you to avoid proprietary formats like .doc (word) and .pdf (acrobat).

negotiating a trade

If you find someone's list that looks interesting, let them know you are interested and let them see your list.

If both parties can agree on the terms ("my x, y and z for your a, b, and c") then the work has just begun.

doing the work

Burn the discs, labeling as you go so there is no confusion. Either use a CD-safe marker, label, or some other method. Ballpoint pen and pencil are both potentially damaging to the media.

mailing the discs

Package up the discs in such a way that they will be safe in transit, and mail them off within the agreed time. You don't have to spend a lot of money; recycle materials from previous trades when possible.

Remember that CD media can be sent media mail, so if you're trading more than a half pound of discs at a time you can save a good deal of $$$ by Using Media Mail. It is slightly slower, but you can compensate by burning and shipping ASAP.

follow up

Let the TP know when you get his/her CDs, and let them know if there are any problems. this will help them repair the discs before their next trade.

Update your list with the new materials.

$Id: trading.orb,v 1.6 2002/09/16 17:33:21 mouse Exp $

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