Do You Waste Your Time?

The last few weeks have been really tough for me when it comes to trading.

I will initiate a trade, ask what they collect, find trade bait, make my majestic offer just to be turned down or be countered for something less than what I wanted. In the end, the trade goes nowhere and I am left with a stack of cards to be put away.

What a waste of time!!!

Yeah, I like going back and looking through stuff occasionally to see if I have any hidden treasures, but when I am having to do it time and time again over and over in a few week span, then the fun is taken away. It then becomes an annoying job that I could have spent time doing something else more important.

Here are some examples over the last few weeks of failed trades.

• One guy collects NBA Panini Prizm rookie cards. So I spent over an hour and a half going through binders by team of basketball rookie cards searching for all of my Prizm ones. I dug out everyone of them, close to 50 or more, took pictures and sent them. He replies, sorry, nothing here really intersts me. This includes guys like Anthony Davis, K.Leonard, Draymond Green, etc. It wasn't a group of misfits. Now it will take me as long to put them away as it was to dig them out.
• Another guy wanted any and all of my soccer cards. What a relief! I was going to score a James Earl Jones autograph in a deal among many other non sport cards. I dug them out, we made a deal and then it went kaploop. Guy unfollowed me and never contacted me again. Ugh! Now I am still stuck with those and now stuck putting them away.
• Another guy wanted to take a look at my overall trading items, so I spent time spreading them out and taking pictures to only once again get a "nah." Despite covering most of what he wanted for his PC.
• And finally, there was a big Eagles and Phillies fan. I dug through boxes pulled out every hit I had of those teams. Went through binders and found all of my top inserts and numbered cards. Made my compelling offer on a top notch auto, he responded we can do this by tomorrow if it doesn't go and boom, he counters me with a patch card. Don't get me wrong the patch card looked nice, but it wasn't what I was trying to deal for. I responded to him with a simple "nice" and never heard back again. Usually most will respond with a "you interested?" at least. But, I got a nothing.

So now I am left with all of these cards to be put away once again. It will most likely take me most of  a weekend to do so. That is time I could have spent doing other things to my collection like putting away cards I had already planned to and fixing PC numbers or at the very least get a few rough drafts going on here since I now do these posts as I go instead of a month in advance like old times.

Am I done with trading because of this? No, probably not. But, I will probably take a long break for now from initiating any bigger trades. I don't want to have to put anything else away til I get my other stuff taken care of. I do have plenty of blogger trades to do and those I set aside ahead of time so maybe I will focus on sending out some PWE's to a few of you I normally send stuff to instead.

So how about you? How many of you "waste" your time working out trades like this and get stuck with a pile of stuff to put away? I know I am not alone so let me hear your best and worst stories in comments!