What's in your trade kit--and the May Contest Winner

The May Contest led to some good comments about the items a card trader needs in his/her trade kit.

We had 38 entries and the answers broke down like this:

Team bags-7 guesses. Team bags are a very helpful component to keep the cards together.

Cards-6 guesses. Absolutely a must for any good trade.

Bubble mailers-5 guesses. Definitely the most common method of trade packaging.

Penny sleeves-4 guesses. A commonly used form of protection. For the cards...the cards I say!

Tape-4 guesses. Tape is important and blue painter's tape is the best. If you're not using it, you should be. It will free your soul, and your top loaders, from sticky residue. Not to mention it will garner you much respect and admiration from your fellow trade partners.

Toploaders-4 guesses. Serious protection for serious, and not so serious, cards.

9 pocket pages-2 guesses. I've never sent cards in them, but I've received them in a trade package on one occasion.

Binders-1 guess. An important part of any collection, but not something that is in my trade kit.

Writing instruments-1 guess. Pens and Sharpie markers are a must for your trade kit.

Thank you note-1 guess. Highly under-rated and I think another important part of any trade.

Address labels-1 guess. Anything that makes sending trade packages easier is a plus in my book.

Dummy cards-1 guess. Excellent packing material. I also use them to write notes on sometimes.

Address book-1 guess. A great tool...I need to get one so I can stop asking everyone for their address all the time. Or waste important time looking through old emails.

There you have it. Some great answers and a little food for thought.

I have a trade kit, which is really one drawer on one of those large rolling storage units. My trade kit has the following items in it:

1) Pens/Sharpies
2) Penny Sleeves
3) Top Loaders (many recycled, some with sticky residue from Scotch tape)
4) Team bags
5) New and used bubble mailers. I tape a sheet a paper over the old ones and tape them up to send a lot of my packages this way. It saves me money and it's good for the environment. And it saves me money. Did I mention it saves me money?
6) Dummy cards I pull from packs or receive in trades packages
7) Post-It notes
8) Blue painters tape--I've been guilty of using Scotch tape and it's horrible when it leaves that sticky residue all over the top loaders or ruins a good team bag. I'm going to try to keep a supply of the painter's tape at all times.
9) One thing I'm trying to use is a small note pad to keep up with trades in progress or cards I've claimed. I'm completely disorganized and I know I've claimed cards before that I've forgotten about.
10) Cards-I don't keep them in my trade kit, but they're everywhere and I try to put claimed cards in the box so I don't lose them. Ask Beardy who waited probably 8-10 months for me to find an Adam Jones card he claimed. I don't want to make people wait nearly that long if I can help it.

Now, for the 4 items in the May Contest box. The disclaimer is that I pulled these images from the Interwebnet so they aren't the actual items your going to get.

The first item in the box is the bubble mailer. The winner will be getting a new package of 5 of these beauties.

We had 5 people guess bubble mailers. Captain Canuck, cubsfan731, AdamE, The Diamond King and Tunguska.

The next item in the box is...the top loader. These aren't new, but they aren't the residue covered ones either.

Four people guessed top loaders and they were: Spiegel83, Greg Zakwin, Dhoff and Michael.

The third item to go in the box was a new roll of painter's tape. I don't know which brand or size it was, but it's new and amazing and leaves no residue.

The four people who guessed tape were Dan, Spankee, Night Owl and Darkship.

Last, but certainly not least, is cards. Two unopened pack of retail Heritage. You can't have a trade package without cards.


We had 6 people who guessed cards. Those intuitive people were BA Benny, I Don't Know...3rd Base, -d., Don, longlivethewho and Derek.

The other items named were great guesses, but just weren't in the prize box.

The randomization video is here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MumdVgAxO1Q

I couldn't get it to load on the page.

Congrats go out to The Diamond King who was the winner of the May Contest!

Thanks again, as always, to everyone for participating.