Has trading slowed down?

I know you have nothing but good intentions here, but if I am going through the cost, effort, and time to do a trade I prefer not to do a blind trade. Trading is something different to each person. For me, I am looking for highly rated saisons, stouts, and barleywines that I cannot find in St.Louis. I already have a cellar of 200 beers so if I am going to do a trade I want it to be for something that excites me. That's why I like to go into each trade with full knowledge of what I am getting.

For what I am looking for in trading I believe the trade forums are slumping, as others here have chimed in about as well. If you are all about local swaps or blind trades I don't think there will ever be difficulty connecting with someone to do a trade.

A final note: I read through your trade offers and most are offering whiskey for beer, so I don't doubt you have had great success trading for beer. I have noticed a lot of the beer trading forums turning into whiskey trading forums. Similarly the beer trade value thread has turned into the whiskey trade value thread. It didn't always use to be like this, but whiskey is taking over this site.

 

I’m a Transient member and Beer comes first! I trade double barrel Stouts in all of my blind trades so far. I’m down the street from where Hop Butcher is made. WhiskeyHill is down the street that won best Stout at Fobab. My beer collection is all from 2020-2021 and fresh. I have about 60 BA Transient Beers.

I hear ya, but I trade Bourbons for Beer and my Beers are awesome so I can do awesome trades with my Beer ppl. Beer ppl come first. I used to have maybe 100 bourbons and am happy to have more Beer than Bourbons now. Most of my trades offers did involve Bourbons. However, just did a 5 box beer trade to a 3 box beer trade.

To some up my Rambling, I’m a good person to trade with if you like Stouts or Sours, that’s my jam. I don’t send bad beer in blind trades, because I don’t have any. You get the best of what I have access to just fyi.

I’m doing a trade with someone in your area, blind trade. You should connect with him and try out what I’m sending him. You won’t be disappointed! Not2Quick is his user name I believe.

Affinity, we will trade! I want you to be impressed with the beers I / we get. Let me wrap up these 5 pending trades and we’ll trade my friend!

Cheers!

 

@BourbonForBeer I think you represent everything that is good about BA. I wish I still lived in Chicago; you sound like a great guy to get a beer with.

 

We’re trading! You’re the next person I’m trading with! I’ll give you a shout next week / the weekend when those 5 pending trades wrap up. Let’s say $100 and $4$ trade of local awesome brews. Start planning it!!!

(I also homebrew) I’ll see if I have my friends Blueberry Saison still kicking around too.

I’ll send trade request Saturday or Sunday and I’ll send out on Monday for you.

Sound good!?!

 

you’re still rambling

 

I’m a rambling man that likes beer

 

Reading your back and forth here, to me it sounds like you should get involved in some BIFs. Right up your alley

 

Bi Sexual Female? Bird in Flight? Before I forget? Haha idk what that means

 

Beer It Forward

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/forums/beer-it-forward.26/

 

I'm telling more ppl about joining this site and hopefully they'll review enough beers to be apart of. Hopefully other traders on here will do the same and get more ppl into it. We could always use more of us!

 

I felt the urge to resurrect this thread.

Trading has slow down because BA's do not post trade offers anymore (as stated earlier in this thread). Are people afraid of being laughed at or mocked? Do BA's think they have nothing good to trade? I miss the days of people trading just to try new things.

 

Trust me, with the number of awful trade posts that done daily, people are not shy/afraid. If anything, that’s probably contributed to why trading has slowed down. It’s one thing to wanna try new stuff, but it’s exhausting to see the number of stupid “ISO: whale beer/bourbon, FT: Med-Large quantities of shelf and/or average garbage that no one wants but hey, it matches up $4$, so it must be a good offer, right?” posts

 

If bourbon were banned, there might only be three posts per day.

 

I think it’s totally slowed down from my eyes being on here quite often, but maybe the numbers tell another story. Speaking about the Limited forum, I’ve seen days when several hours have gone by without a post. That didn’t happen even a few years ago. It was active and there would be pages? within a day. I’d like to see Todd share the numbers, monthly/quarterly. I know he dropped the karma restriction without notice after making a thread about how new traders should be handled, which led me to believe it had slowed. Not necessarily because of the restriction, but just in general and eliminating it to boost it.

Maybe I’m getting old, my life situation has evolved, but I don’t chase the hot thing, which can be a weekly brewery release nowadays with so many beers being put out by so many breweries. Too much to keep track of for me-not a Facebook user and only follow a handful of breweries on Instagram that I care about. I get 99% of my beer from my local craft beer store. I’ll snag and pay for extras from friends who don’t want the full 4-pack, bottles, that make brewery trips.

I’ve had some spot trades here and there in the last 6 months - sending off extra bourbon I don’t need and grabbing some liquor I can grab locally for a bottle of beer really wanted to try.

Plus, I made a concerted effort over the last couple of years to eliminate my cellar and to no longer acquire anything that doesn’t get drank within a week or two. I have one bottle of Cantillon classic gueuze I’m holding onto for no reason whatsoever.

So, without a cellar and not taking regular trips to breweries people want out my way - Tree House, Trillium, Hill Farmstead - I’m no longer a desired FT/ISO’er nor a big trader in general anymore, but it’s still fun to see how things are going and hopefully providing helpful input regarding breweries I’m familiar with to those still getting after it.

 

It's definitely slowed down. When I first started trading back in 2019, my posts on the Limited section would go to "Page 2" within 24 hours. Not the case anymore.

Honestly, I think most people just trade on Facebook or buy/sell beer now. It's honestly just easier to grab what you're looking for that way. You lose those intimate trade connections, but it's just how you land a bottle you want nowadays. You can either put a bunch of Bottle Logic FT and get no hits, or you can just sell it and then just buy the bottle that you want. Hate to say it, but it's the route I've gone at times since no one wants to trade down nowadays.

 

Agree with the FB trading/selling points, which is a bummer, since I’ve met some cool peeps on BA. I think the other underlying issue is just how craft beer & bourbon have exploded on secondary markets, so whereas before for most it was a fun hobby, now that directly competes with the shady secondary business side. Additionally, the issue of supply & demand also has affected the trading market, as most posts I see are littered with California breweries that, let’s face it, were once thought of as the gold standard, but have since fallen into average/mediocre status. Perceived values of such beers by Cali peeps do not match the values of other individuals from across the country, so it makes for a much more difficult avenue to trade (versus selling & buying). After the new trading rules were put into place, I don’t think anyone was surprised when the whole karma point requirement changed since trading frequency plummeted (despite whatever metric tracking them said otherwise)

 

Well said, I agree. Honestly, I gave no interest in dealing with CA.

 

No dealings with CA because it has no value or it’s not good anymore? It’s a pretty big state and I’ve never had any problems making trades. Yes it doesn’t have the luster it once had but people still seek out CA beers often. For me it opens the doors to trade for other stuff and to try things I haven’t had before.

 

Maybe I missed but has anyone mentioned choice? The amount of choices people have these days can be a contribution to trades slowing down. Distribution as well has been as good as its ever been.