Today a great article by a writer for StarCityGames published a piece on the pro’s and cons of trading Magic the Gathering cards online. PucaTrade was proud to be one of the featured trading sites in his article. Chas writes:
“Puca Trade is an interesting site, and it’s trying to do something really unique. Basically, you mail your cards away to anyone on their site who needs them in exchange for ‘PucaPoints’ which are each worth about one US cent. Then you post a want list, also priced in PucaPoints, and other people mail you cards. In exchange, PucaPoints are deducted from your account and added to theirs. The values are updated twice daily, and they are also based on median TCGplayer prices.
In theory, I love this. No longer do you have to match up your wants with someone else’s haves. As someone who buys a lot of collections, this seems like a great way to ditch a lot of slow-moving stock and trade up.
Until it gets going, Puca Trade is going to be more useful for people looking to fill out collections and Commander decks than for people who just need 8-10 cards to finish their latest Standard brew. It also seems like a good place to pick up a ton of random common/uncommons for something like a pauper cube. The site is currently in beta, and it doesn’t support conditions lower than NM or foils yet. There is also some risk to your PucaPoints if the whole site goes under or people prove unwilling to send out anything more valuable than a
Lightning Bolt.
I will tell you that the site’s owner/webmaster was more than happy to have a lengthy email conversation with me to discuss many of the issues I had with the site. (How much is a point worth? Where do the values come from? How often are they updated?) He clearly has a vision that he’s committed to making work, and I like the direction things are heading. While I’m not going to start mailing out dual lands, I’m certainly going to give Puca Trade a shot with some of my lower value haves and wants.”
Again, thanks so much to Chas for the positive review! Glad to see that we made a good first impression.
Since there seems to be a preconceived notion floating around that PucaTrade is just for low-level commons and uncommons, we’ve decided to start a weekly post listing some of the more high-profile trades that have been completed:
For the week ending 7/22/2012, 218 #mtg trades were completed on #PucaTrade. Among these were 2 Goldess Shrines, Steam Vents, Stifle, Avacyn, Time Spiral, Exploraton, Hallowed Fountain, Glimpse of Nature, Temple Gardens, and Entreat the Angels.
We’ll be posting these updates on our Facebook page, on Twitter, and here on Tumblr. For those of us who have been trading on the site for awhile now, let’s just point people to any of these places when you hear them say that PucaTrade is only for commons and uncommons.
Happy Trading!
Drive a Tranquil Bargain.
