Trade Marketplace History & Handshakes

Overview

The Trading Marketplace connects RocketVault collectors across the United States. Choose which cards from your vault are visible, search other traders' inventory, save structured wants, and propose cards, cash, or both.

Marketplace transactions are handshake deals. RocketVault records the agreement, reserves accepted cards, requires shipment tracking, and preserves receipt confirmations and evidence. RocketVault does not process payment, authenticate the physical card, guarantee shipment, or decide disputes in this release.

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Set Up Your Trading Profile

You can browse every public listing before setting up a profile. When you list a card or make an offer, add a U.S. shipping address, shipping name, email, and phone number. RocketVault checks the address for deliverability and encrypts the private values at rest.

Other marketplace users see your display name, state, public wants, public listings, active-trade count, completed-trade count, and feedback summary. Your full shipping and contact details are disclosed to the other participant only after a trade is accepted. Accepting a trade means both participants receive each other's contact information.

Publish Trade Inventory

Choose List cards to use the guided listing workflow. Search and filter your vault, select eligible cards across pages, then publish them as separate listings or one named lot of up to 25 cards. The picker applies trade eligibility before paging, so cards you just listed never leave the first page looking empty.

Individual selections of 25 cards or fewer publish immediately. When background listing capacity is available, a larger individual selection starts a durable individual-listing job instead of making you repeat small batches. It reserves eligible cards immediately, works through the queue in the background, and keeps progress visible after a refresh. If background capacity is temporarily unavailable, RocketVault keeps the rest of your Cards-page selection intact and guides you through a verified 25-card run. You can cancel remaining job work at any time; listings already created stay live, while unprocessed cards are released. The job shows how many cards were listed, skipped because their eligibility changed, or need attention after a processing error.

Under My Listings → Collection defaults, you can make every eligible card in a collection tradeable by default. New cards added to that collection inherit the setting automatically. Individual cards can be excluded, and collection-generated listings can use shared offer-type, visibility, sale/trade, and desired-return defaults.

Each listing includes:

• Current card photos and optional condition notes.
• An optional trade value, with RocketVault Pricing shown as a reference.
• An optional public cash asking price.
• A show prices choice. Turn it off to show Prices on request instead; your trade value, cash ask, and RocketVault Pricing reference remain visible only to you.
• An optional description of what you want in return.
• Trade only, cash offers only, or either.
• Public, followers only, or direct link only visibility.

Sale and trade availability are independent. You decide whether a card can be offered in both workflows. Pending offers do not reserve a card; the first accepted offer locks it transactionally and closes conflicting offers.

Need to hold a card during an outside negotiation? Mark the listing Trade Pending and choose an expiration. The card disappears from discovery until the hold expires, then automatically returns to its prior marketplace state.

Need to change an existing listing? Open it from My Trade Cards and choose Edit listing / reprice, or select Edit directly in the workbench. You can update its title, offer type, visibility, public price display, trade value, cash ask, fulfillment preference, condition notes, and return preferences. Clearing either value removes it from the listing. Listings already reserved by an accepted trade stay locked so the agreed terms cannot change.

Keep the workbench clean

My Trade Cards opens on live inventory. Use the Paused and Reserved scopes when you need to manage held listings, and use Archive when you are done offering a card; it removes the listing from the default workbench without deleting its history. Archiving a listing cancels its dependent open offers, and restoring it does not reopen them. The Archive view keeps seller-archived, completed, and collection-managed listings available for reference. You can restore a listing you archived yourself after RocketVault confirms its card and current photo are still eligible.

Completed, declined, and canceled marketplace offers and handshake trades also stay out of the default Deals work queue. Open the deal to archive it privately; restoring it puts it back in history without changing what the other participant sees.

Build a Searchable Want List

Want-list entries are structured saved searches, not just notes. The guided workflow starts with a name, then progressively offers player, year, card-set, attribute, value, and grading criteria. Every matching field is optional except the want name, and player, sport, year, brand, and set selectors support custom values when the catalog does not contain the choice. Use as many or as few criteria as needed:

• Sport, league, team, and player.
• Exact year or year range.
• Manufacturer, set, insert, card number, and parallel.
• Rookie, autograph, and memorabilia attributes.
• Raw or graded preference, grader, and grade range.
• Condition, value range, quantity, and keywords.

Public wants appear on your trading profile so other collectors can propose a fit. Private wants remain hidden but still power RocketVault match suggestions. Enable in-app and email alerts to hear when a matching listing appears.

Find Cards and Traders

Use the Trading Marketplace to browse newly published inventory or search by card fields, value, offer type, and trader state. Follow traders you trust to see follower-only listings and receive new-listing alerts. Blocking a trader removes mutual visibility, cancels pending offers between you, and prevents future offers; it does not erase an already accepted shipment record.

When a public listing matches an active want, RocketVault includes the match in your Daily Briefing and sends the normal want-match alert. If the seller chose to show prices and the listing has a cash ask at or below the maximum value on your want, the alert calls that out explicitly. Briefing matches only compare a requested trade value with RocketVault Pricing, or suggest a balanced bundle, when the seller chose to show prices; offers are never submitted automatically.

Make and Negotiate an Offer

An offer can contain:

• Up to 25 opted-in cards from each participant.
• Cards plus a cash adjustment.
• Cash only.
• A private note.
• An expiration chosen by the sender, up to 30 days.

When the other side has a usable RocketVault or manually declared value, choose Suggest cards to trade in the card picker. RocketVault searches the currently eligible inventory for the card or bundle closest to that target, using cent-accurate values and a 25-card maximum. Missing-value and ineligible cards are ignored. If no exact match exists, the closest under- or over-value bundle is selected.

Suggestions only edit the draft. You can remove a suggested card, add another, clear the bundle, add cash, or abandon the offer before sending. The same value-matching action is available when building a Scan for a Deal trade comparison and when revising in-person or marketplace counters.

Cash is paid directly between participants outside RocketVault. Each participant normally pays to ship their own cards; use the recorded cash adjustment if you agree on different terms.

The recipient can accept, decline, or counter. A counter can change either side's cards, the cash amount, the note, and the expiration. RocketVault keeps every version so the accepted terms remain clear.

Acceptance, Shipping, and Meetups

Each listing can support shipping, an in-person meetup, or either. If a listing supports both, the person making the offer chooses the fulfillment method. Acceptance reserves every card in the offer and reveals both participants' verified shipping and contact profiles. Either participant may cancel before shipment or meetup confirmation begins, with a reason recorded for the other party.

Each participant who owes cards must enter a supported carrier and tracking number before marking their side shipped. RocketVault stores tracking as evidence; carrier-status automation is planned for a later release.

When your package arrives, mark the other participant's shipment received. A trade remains open until every required shipment has been confirmed. After both sides confirm receipt:

• Traded-away cards move to TRADED history.
• Received cards enter the new owner's vault with identification, images, pricing, and negotiated cost basis intact.
• Marketplace listings move to Archive.
• Any active eBay listing on a departing card enters RocketVault's established end-listing/retry flow.
• Both participants can leave one-to-five-star feedback.

Cash-only offers have no buyer-side card shipment; only the card owner adds tracking, and the buyer confirms receipt. For an in-person marketplace deal, each participant marks the exchange received after the meetup. Ownership moves only after both people confirm.

Problems and Evidence

Use Add issue evidence after acceptance for a missing package, wrong card, condition mismatch, damage, or another problem. The evidence and note stay attached to the immutable trade history. Participants communicate and resolve the issue directly; RocketVault does not mediate V1 trades.

Handshake and External Trades

The original show-floor workflow remains available from Deals → Start or enter a handshake:

• Propose by RocketVault email or an eight-character QR/share code.
• Counter across the table and accept immediately.
• Record an external trade when the counterparty does not use RocketVault.

Those direct handshake deals transfer immediately on acceptance. In-person marketplace offers use two-sided receipt confirmation so both participants agree that the exchange happened before ownership moves.

Common Questions

Does RocketVault guarantee that the other person ships? No. Address verification, required tracking, immutable trade history, blocking, and completion-based reputation create accountability, but V1 is still a peer-to-peer handshake marketplace.

Can I buy a card with cash only? Yes, when the listing accepts cash. RocketVault records the offer and shipping confirmations, but payment happens directly between the participants.

Can I list a card for sale and trade simultaneously? Yes. You control sale and trade availability. An accepted trade must obtain the card lock before it can proceed, preventing two accepted RocketVault transactions from owning the same card.

When does ownership move between vaults? For shipped marketplace trades, only after all required packages are marked received. In-person trades continue to transfer immediately on acceptance.

What comes next? The next trust upgrades are carrier-status integration and RocketVault-generated shipping labels. Managed payments and optional protection for higher-value trades require a later operational and compliance release.