Rareness Ratio

Also, a lot of people who do have it will not add it to "gots" so that they aren't bothered with trade offers, so this formula might not be excellent

 

Exactly.

 

Yeah, not to rain on your parade, but a lot of people look at Wants:Gots when considering a trade, and have been doing so for quite some time. I believe in Urbancaver's Top This BIF it was actually one of the three criteria that one had to top when sending a box (along with $ amount and bottle count).

Glad to see newer members figuring it out for themselves though! Definitely a good tip for others moving forward.

 

love that shit like this is already sullying the new forum.

there is no determining the "rareness" or "value" of beers, unless you have a reasonably transparent market where you can see what's gone for what (and even then, the major factors behind value determination are going to be wishful thinking and strategic exploitation).

ask for what you want, offer what you'll part with. if you've been around and know what people have traded X, Y, and Z for in the past and what factors influence traders that deal with such beers, *you know "the value" already*. if you don't know the value, you're asking for trouble trying to determine it some easy way (say, asking people what it is).

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there seems to be a critical truth here that a lot of you don't understand... when 2 people are negotiating, and 1 is like, "well this was brewery only," and another is like, "well this only has 100 bottles," they are not trying to determine some objective truth regarding value. they are also not trying to access some truth that exists outside of the 2 of them.

rather, they are negotiating. they're feeling out what will influence the other person. maybe they respect each other and are trying to determine what would be fair (for them). maybe they're trying to trick each other. etc.

this is inherently ad hoc. even the "objective value" stuff that seems to be implied by "if you've been around, you already know," is just a guideline for 2 people coming to an agreement.

please, try to understand this if you don't already. it's embarrassing to see all the foolish attempts to quantify this stuff, or to protect against exploitation / mistakes in ways that only make exploitation more likely.

edit: p.s. note also how easy this stuff actually is. the vast majority of the time, when your trading partner sends you some hot shot extra, you know the generosity when you see it. if you're paying attention, you can tell when someone isn't interested in your offer. there's no need for guides.

 

This is actually quite commonly done by many traders. For the reasons that others have mentioned, it's a bit of a flawed system, but there is some definite directional value to it. Just don't try to take it as anything close to gospel.

For example, Kate had something like a 2500:100 wants:gots ratio. But good luck trading some random small batch 100:5 release for it.

 

Correct... you might have 300-400 bottles of Kate that are in trade circulation. That makes it easier to get a trade going just because there are enough bottles out there that you are sure to find a partner if you make a good offer. If you have a beer that is a 100 bottle count then maybe only 5-10 of those bottles are going on the trade market, which makes it much harder to find a trade because you have to have a beer that matches a want from one of those 5-10 that has the 100 bottle count brew.

 

There's no good way to easily figure a "value". The two parties involved will decide the value and they will take it from there, or maybe they won't. But that's all part of negotiating for the beer you really want. Most importantly, have fun with it. I personally love reading the posts in the trading forums.

 

For all those who have beer and want to trade it for other beer and it doesn't get done, well, you could always just drink the beer you have and stop worrying about what your beer is worth. Just an idea.

 

The trade value of a bottle, is whatever an individual is willing to trade for that bottle. And please don't take ebay into account, those people (mostly) are in it for the $.

 

Rareness and desirability are two things that are difficult to quantitate and in the beer world where so much is determined by taste, things are very subjective. Wants:Gots ratios are good starting points to figure out relative rarity, but you forget about price, taste, distribution, etc.

Just to be clear, the Top This BIF involves 3 bottles. The trader has to send a bottle that bests another bottle in the box he/she received based on 1 of 3 categories: rAvg (higher), Bottle Count (lower), Wants:Gots Ratio (higher). All three criteria did not have to be met with each beer, i.e. If you received A, B, and C beers, you need to send X, Y, Z beers where bottle A had a higher score than X, B was lower bottle count than Y, and C had a higher ration of W:G than Z.

 

That's right. It's been a while since I looked at it cuz I ended up dropping out. Didn't mean to imply that Wants:Gots is the end all, be all. Obviously more to it than just that.

 

Wants and gots means almost absolutely nothing. Most big beers get removed from wants because there are a ton of messages that get sent out, offering very low ball items for most the big name beers. Most people have removed any big name beers from their gots, and wants doesn't really matter because the only thing its actually used for (usually) is a reference for extras. Its like looking - oh wow he wants an M, let me get on that and offer it to him...

 

wants/gots are terribly flawed numbers- they are ballpark #s but nothing more. You can't base your math off of bad data. Or rather, you shouldn't.

 

Yeah, I've literally run two Beer It Forwards based on want:got ratios

 

If people worried more about making both parties happy, and less on "getting the best value" things would go a lot easier.

 

Ultimately I think that is what most people do, but how you get to "making both parties happy" is inherently complex. Even if not overtly discussed, people generally trade similar rarity for similar rarity much more often than not. Stuff like wants/gots helps fill in knowledge for those that aren't on top of "market value" for their beers.