Current State of Trading

If you are up for an international trade in the spring, I’d be interested. I need a Puerto Rico tick!

 

That would be lovely, I'll definitely be in touch.

 

I have greatly reduced my full fledged trading geographical area. I used to trade for everything on the West Coast, but the shipping was eating hard at my wallet. Don't even get me started on the East Coast, I don't want to admit what I gave up on multiple instances just to try the core stuff from Tree House. I have had the opportunity to establish some very great IL connections and the shipping there only costs a 4th of what CA shipping was costing me

I have found myself pretty entrenched in the BIF realm as of late. All experiences have been great!!...still trying to unbury myself after this last round. If you want to hang with people who seem to give zero F's about secondary, and just purely enjoy shipping and receiving some great stuff from around the country then I highly suggest you join, or at least lurk a bit..... I have been able to try many great brews that were never on my radar before. I think that is the most fun part is getting a box completely blind and being blown away by others generosity....

 

I tried setting up a few trades on FB, both replying to ISO’s and posting them myself. It was the absolute worst. More like an auction than trading.

 

It seems like a common thread between all of these comments is that the quality of your trading experience is very dependent on the quality of the people that you deal with. I feel that I’ve gotten lucky in that regard and made some good connections with nice people who are never looking to “win” trades and just want to trade good beer for other good beer. Sucks that not everyone has had the same experience

 

common practice in BIF's is to put a store brand mac and cheese box or 1 dollar boxed hard candies for noise reduction

 

I had a noisemaker made out of a small water bottle with nuts and washers in it - but had it arranged so it was standing up when the box was label-up. That, along with the containers not standing up led to more sloshing than rattling. When I repacked it, I stood the containers up, laid the rattler down, and double boxed. Huge, but silent other than faint rattling. Good tip on the rattlers as I am out of small water bottles.

 

Soapbox time: Noisemakers are easily one of the worst trends in beer trading. They’re often just junk that I don’t want to hold onto with my packing materials, and various USPS and private carrier employees have indicated that they do nothing to make the package more convert; in fact, the effect is often the opposite and employees have been directed to open and inspect packages that sound like they have a million loose noodles bouncing around in them. I’d place them right behind packing peanuts in the “Please, Please Don’t” category.

It’s a relic of older beer-trading trends that doesn’t have any practical use, and should be left in the past.

 

Are packing peanuts really that big of a no-no?

 

In my view? Definitely. I've heard the same opinion from others as well.

But I'm half-kidding here. They're minor annoyances, but bottom line is I'll be more than happy to receive anything that's packed securely and safely. I'd much rather receive a package of intact bottles, peanuts, and noisemakers than I would a box of broken bottles.

 

I debated putting this in the other thread, but I think that was more about the quality/process of trading. If it fits better there, I'll gladly move it.

It seems that there has been a significant decline in the volume of trades/trade posts. I've found it harder to make trades than I did in the past, but maybe that's just me. So, I looked at some data.

Trade Posts on BA, Random Day, December 5th:

2019: 53 (includes $4$, Local, and Limited for all dates)
2018: 113
2017: 129

The forums don't go back that far, but based on recollection 2016 and before were even higher (and I think significantly higher). Perhaps my memory is off on that, but I'm reasonably confident its true.

Some other commentary before the dicussion:

- This isn't a specific date thing. Other days show similar declines.

- This is not a BA thing. Trading is down across the board on FB and other platforms as well, with the exception of maybe more trading being done on IG.

- This is not an online thing. IP trading is also way down (maybe even more down).

- IMO, this is not a quality thing. The quality of beer has only been getting better. Your mileage may vary.

- This is not an industry thing. The industry continues to grow and certainly isn't shrinking.

So, what is it? Possible theories, in my not scientific estimation in order of decreasing liklihood:

1) Availability of great craft beer has continued to spike, decreasing the need to trade for great beers. Think IPA traders being happy with more NEIPA availability, Bottle Logic releases hitting distro more and more, more breweries doing heavily fruited beers, higher limits on releases, more breweries, more onsite drinking availability (brewpub type focus instead of just to-go beer), etc.

2) Razzle groups growing and people focusing on that instead of trading.

3) Trading can be cumbersome and costly at times (due to shipping). See the other thread. I think this has always been the case, but do think it is a bit more difficult than in the past.

4) Less 'hardcore' fans that like to trade. Sure, the casual types are way more into as you progress up the bell curve, but they aren't the trading types. Not sure I buy that; some new people will trade even if its a lower %, and where did all the trader types go? Bourbon? Stop drinking?

5) People have their traders and just don't need to post as much anymore. Less new traders per #4, so the public posts go down even though the trading industry is thriving in private.

Anyway, that's all hypothesis. Are there any thoughts on the root cause here? Other theories or thoughts on the above? I think we'd all agree more trading availabiity is better for everyone. What can be done to increase the availabiltiy of trades? Curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

 

I’ve stayed noticeably absent in this thread - mostly because I haven’t had the time to spend 20+ minutes a day writing detailed posts to a thread that I have a lot of opinions about, for a hobby that I care about. That said, I think that I have 2 things to add right this moment:

1) I think distributor/brewery footprints growing is the #1 reason trades have decreased. If you could go back in time and count the number of breweries on a shelf, I have no doubt that the numbers would be even more unbalanced than your data showing the # of trades.

As an anecdotal piece of evidence, consider just one brewery: Revolution (out of Chicago), which releases a large number of BA offerings from Oct - Jan each year. When they really improved their quality a few years back, everyone wanted to try them. Unfortunately, their distribution was not quite as good, nor was there as much made as there is today. People all over were trading for them, but often times even people in adjacent states, or adjacent-adjacent states. Their distribution foot print is so large now, that I suspect many people in 2 states from IL can get most of their releases. Some people even out in the NE get some of them. That is a HUGE decrease (especially for December). The same is arguably true (in this time period) with the # of variants/quantity of variants of BCBS (which is a big trade item around 5 December).

2) The second largest contributor, in my opinion, is the fascination that Gen Z has with conspicuous consumption. It’s not new for people to spend beyond their means, but there have been a lot of reports showing (data) that show that this generation is heavily influenced by social media, increases their spending as a result, and is taking on vast amounts Of debt to do it. You add this to the proliferation of secondary sites, an obsession with secondary pricing, and the growing dichotomy/binomial curve consumption of “extreme top end” and “low/mid end local” offerings, and you get a huge surge in the consumption/seeking of the most limited/best rated/Most IG worthy bottles out there. One way to get them is to just buy them. This EXACT same thing has been happening for whiskey (bourbon specifically) for some time, it seems, from reading on some bourbon forums (following posts from 2011ish to today).

If you combine #1 and #2, what you get is fewer people online, looking to trade for mid level beer because it can be found local. -And, an uptick in the number of people looking for the best of the best, which can only be had by standing in line/traveling/raffle/lottery/buying secondary/Trading other bottles of similar caliber.

 

great point. I'm in the same point, deleting old threads

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that scalping/reselling has hurt trading as well. So many bottles are getting purchased with 0 intent to drink or trade them.

 

One giant thumbs down to bbtkds post and one giant thumbs up to Williams post. If you think you need noise markers so much just pack bottles upright and you won't have slooshing. Honestly all the time you put in trying to counter the sloshing could be remedied by packing upright.

 

If we as users delete our old threads does that have an effect on beer karma and secondly, could we dock traders beer karma for reposting the same asinine trades repeatedly day after day thinking their incessant top posting is going to suddenly land them their desired trade?

 

I believe it does. I created a trade post that got a few likes and then I deleted it after a day when I got no hits on it. I lost those "likes" and my karma dropped slightly after I deleted the thread.

 

Thumbs down for giving me a "giant thumbs down", then saying to stand them up like I did. Who cares about the noisemaker? I may not have needed it, but so what?