Trading Safety and Thresholds

Why we built tiers

EchoMTG isn't a marketplace. It isn't a custodian. It isn't your bank. We don't move money or hold cards. What we are is a tracking platform: every trade between two real users gets logged, every shipment gets confirmed, and every counterparty builds a reputation you can see before you swap a card with them.

That setup works great when both sides are honest. The problem is the small minority who aren't. A new account with no history can sign up, propose a $500 trade, accept fast, and ghost the shipment. Without rules, that risk falls entirely on the counterparty.

So we built a ladder. Small trades are easy and open. Medium trades require some history. Big trades require a track record and a paid account. The result: scammers can't skip the queue, real traders earn access by trading well.

The three tiers

Every trade is sized by total dollar value (sum of cards on both sides at TCGPlayer market price). The tier sets the rules.

New Trader — $0 to $25

Anyone can run trades in this range. No track record needed, no paid plan, no fuss. Sleeve the card, drop it in an envelope, mark shipped, mark received when it arrives. This is your on-ramp.

One catch: while you're under 5 completed trades, you're capped at two open trades at a time. The cap exists for two reasons. First, learning the flow on one or two trades is easier than juggling five. Second, it prevents a fresh account from spawning a dozen pending trades and ghosting all of them — if the cap weren't there, that's the easy abuse path.

Goal: complete five trades. Get rated by the people you traded with. Once you have 5 completed trades and a clean rating record, the next tier unlocks.

Standard — $25 to $50

To run a trade in this range, you need:

• 5+ completed trades on either side
• 4★ average across the three rating sub-axes (communication, speed, accuracy)
• 90%+ positive sentiment

This is where the reputation gate bites. If you completed 5 trades but half came back with negative feedback or low stars, you don't graduate. You stay in New Trader until you fix whatever you're doing — usually slow shipping, undisclosed condition issues, or ghosting communication after acceptance.

The flip side: the reputation gate is the hardest moat for bad actors. You can't fake five completed trades because each one needs a real counterparty to mark received. You can't fake five positive ratings because they have to come from five different real users. Building rep takes effort. It's supposed to.

Subscriber+ — $50 and up

Standard tier requirements, plus an active EchoMTG paid plan (anything that isn't the free 'common' tier). At $50+ we're talking real money — if a trade goes wrong, the loss is meaningful. The subscriber requirement does two things:

• Adds a small financial commitment that scammers won't bother with for a one-shot grift.
• Funds the platform that's tracking the trade. EchoMTG's not a charity for shipping logistics; the people running real-money trades should be supporting the rails.

For the highest-value trades, additional safety habits are recommended (not enforced, but the safety guide on every proposal page reminds you):

• $200+: photo evidence before/after shipping
• $500+: consider PSA Vault, eBay Vault, or another custodial service that holds cards while the trade settles

Trader Ratings — the trust signal

After a trade completes (both sides marked received), either party can leave feedback. The shape is intentionally familiar:

• Sentiment: positive, neutral, or negative. Drives the public trust badge.
• Three stars: communication, speed, accuracy — each rated 1 to 5.
• Optional comment: say something useful in your own words.

Ratings are public, attached to the trade they came from, and locked once submitted. There's no editing. No takebacks. No deadline either — as long as the trade is in 'completed' status, you can rate. Some people rate the day the cards arrive, some wait a week, some never get around to it. All fine.

Why we picked this shape

We considered three options:

• Binary thumbs (Reddit-style): simple, but loses nuance. A bad communicator who eventually delivered great cards is a different signal than a quick shipper who sent the wrong condition.
• 5-star only: quantified, but means a 4★ trade has to mentally average across all the dimensions. People rate inconsistently.
• eBay-style sentiment + sub-axes (what we picked): sentiment gives the headline trust signal, sub-axes let you express specifics, free-text fills gaps. Best fit for a community-trust system, matches what MTG traders are already used to from TCGPlayer Direct + eBay.

The honest-rating compact

• You can only rate the other party, not yourself.
• Pending or cancelled trades don't count. Status must be 'completed' (both received).
• One rating per trade per side. No double-dipping, no retaliation chains.
• Once submitted, the rating is part of the public record. Build your reputation on real history.

If a rating is genuinely wrong — factually incorrect or retaliatory after an honest violation report — email support and an admin will review.

Why we save the IP and ToS version

Every time you start or accept a trade, you check a box agreeing to the trade terms. We save the timestamp, your IP address, and which version of the rules you agreed to. Three reasons:

1. Evidence. If a real dispute escalates, we have a clear record that both parties accepted the rules they're now arguing about.
2. Versioning. Rules change. Your trade is pinned to the version you agreed to, not whatever's current.
3. Anti-fraud. An IP that's accepting trade terms from a half-dozen accounts in a few minutes is a signal we'd want to investigate.

We don't share your IP with the other trader. It's an evidence breadcrumb, not a public field.

What happens when something goes wrong

Two paths:

• Dispute — "Something is off." Cards came damaged, condition disagreement, etc. The trade is paused, the other side is notified, an admin can step in. Inventory remains reserved until the dispute resolves.
• Report a violation — The other side actively didn't hold up their end (failed to ship, sent wrong cards, lied about condition). You name them, pick a category, explain what happened. Admin reviews. Real violations result in account suspensions and rating penalties.

Reported users aren't penalized on the spot. We look at evidence first — ship logs, tracking numbers, the trade events timeline, photos if any. Frivolous reports don't move the needle. Real ones do.

Why the gates are forgiving on day one

One question we get: "What if I'm new but I know what I'm doing? I've been trading on TCGPlayer for years."

The honest answer: we can't tell who you are from your sign-up form. So everyone starts at New Trader. The good news is the gate is short. Five completed trades + clean ratings unlocks you. If you're a serious trader, that's a weekend's worth of activity at most.

The two gate is on subscriber tier (paid plan for $50+). That one's not really about earning trust — it's about supporting the platform that's hosting your high-value trade. The free tier is for collecting; the paid tiers are for trading at scale.

Want lists and matchmaking

Building reputation only matters if there are trades to do. EchoMTG runs a passive matchmaking layer underneath the trade system:

• Add cards to your want list. Foil-aware (regular vs. foil vs. either). When someone tradable lists a card on your want list, you get a heads-up — the card, who has it, link straight to their trade page.
• Cards you have, wanted now. The reverse direction. Other traders are hunting cards on your tradable list — you're surfaced to them automatically.

The Trade Discovery hero on your dashboard shows both directions at a glance. No more browsing random profiles hoping to spot a match.

The bigger picture

Trading on a platform like ours sits in a weird middle. eBay-style escrow is too heavy for a $5 swap of basic lands. Random Discord trading is too risky for a $500 dual land. EchoMTG's pitch is: match the friction to the size of the trade. Quick swaps stay quick. Big swaps slow down enough to keep both sides protected.

The tiers don't punish anyone — they're a structured on-ramp. Start small, build a record, unlock more. The ratings system is the trust signal that makes the on-ramp meaningful. Together they let strangers transact card-for-card without escrow, without lawyers, and without (for most trades) anyone losing sleep.

Trade well. Build your rep. The scoreboard's public.

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Trade safely. Ratings are public. Tiers unlock with real activity. Read the trades disclaimer for the full legal shape of who's on the hook for what.