I took a look at your trades, because there are often overlooked things which turn people way. What I noticed is you have 2 trades for "collector level" items, which most people don't care about. There are a handful of people looking for those levels, but a lot more selling than buying, so if you want to squeeze anything beyond the regular price out of them you'll be waiting a long time. In one of your trades, you insist that you're only selling as a set, further turning away an already scarce demographic who might offer in the first place.

Now if it were me, I'd immediately stop reading and skip over any trade that (a) hypes up a level or craft number, or (b) says anything about selling as a set because I don't expect to get anywhere without paying at least 1.5 times what it's worth. If I were looking for a collection of levels, unless I get some kind of bulk discount from someone who doesn't require items to be sold as a set, I'd buy each item individually. I also usually skip over offers without "buyout" prices because they usually leave you waiting for 2+ months before you ultimately hide your own offer, but that's another matter.

The way I get offers is I set a (fair) price, which I will only honor in keys/metal, and leave the door open for "item overpay". If someone is short of the keys/metal, for an already reasonably-priced item, they're going to try and offer items and probably overpay in return for accommodating them. Metal/key offers only really work with new/unpriced items, or items that are rare for whatever reason (like a special craft number or themed, unpriced unusual). If you're dealing with fairly common items that already have an established price, people will ignore you when you ask for offers, and maybe someone will come along and cheekily lowball for it.

Your other trade, the chemistry set, is something that's new, and from what I can tell saturating the market. Can't say I've bought/sold any yet, but I've already seen some people selling the strangifier itself for a key, so I'd venture and guess people looking to buy will not wait around very long.

The OP posted this almost a full year ago, and has since been marked on steamrep. I don't think this thread is relevant anymore...

If your friend was not paying attention to notice the gift text, or he didn't realize gift text devalued unusuals, then it's entirely his own responsibility. Unless there is some manner of manipulation or deceit, unbalanced trades or trades involving gifted unusuals do not generally qualify as scams or sharks.

I could not authoritatively tell you how much less a gifted unusual is worth, especially because I tend to avoid them myself, but I've heard the value of affected hats is often underestimated because of lowballers. What I would normally do is look at other sales/offers for the hat, and undercut them by about 10% or so; eventually someone who wants that particular hat will come to you because it's the cheapest, and not particularly care about the gift text. I would just undercut the lowest price by about a couple keys if you're trying to get rid of it; eventually someone will come to you because yours is the cheapest, and they won't really care about gift text.

They're not doing it "because the market is down" because those trades have existed long before the DOTA market was disabled. Also, DOTA keys were consistently worth a small amount more a few months ago (then TF2 keys were more for a short time), and consistently so. The people with those trades are probably no different from the rest of the highballers on outpost.

Seeing that you can reopen trades now, you could probably just reopen the trade you want to copy, copy the code, close the trade again, then paste it into a new trade.

To clarify, you would not be copying HTML, but BBCode[en.wikipedia.org]. Outpost (and steamcommunity) filters HTML for non-admins for security reasons, and if it's really HTML you're looking for, you can view the page source or use a web developer tool to copy it. What you're entering in trade notes is BBCode.

Originally posted by Terminus:

Sharking or not - At the end of it all, it's nearly impossible and contradictory to be an fair and wealthy trader - whether in TF2 or in life in general.

Not true. Most of my profit is made from (a) reselling items; (b) capitalizing on timing with new or hyped items I expect to change in price; (c) over the past few months, reselling giftable games bought during Steam sales for less than their regular retail value, but more than I paid during the sale; and (d) accepting item overpayment in place of keys/metal when selling things, often repeatedly accepting item offers by the same rules. When reselling or asking for item overpayment, I'm also always transparent and fairly flexible about it, and emphasize that buyers should not feel pressured to make a trade they may regret; in a few cases, I turned them away because they were essentially offering their entire backpack and I didn't feel comfortable causing them a hardship.

Early on, when keys were less than 4 refined metal, I made an extra 0.66-2 refined metal from raffles and games on a few trade servers in addition to ~0.66 in item drops. I mostly resold the weapons via scrapbanking and then bought keys as soon as I could afford them, which I used for more reselling. Is it easy to make honest, ethical profit? No, and as key prices soar it becomes harder and harder, but I maintain that it can be done and in some cases I've helped people get off the ground over the past 9-ish months. I've seen people come out ahead after I helped them out, some even ending up with unusuals.

Originally posted by Terminus:

Making a lot of money means that you need to exploit someone, somewhere down the line. A poor person may voluntarily offer their services / goods for very god value - technically it should be a fair trade, however it is really exploitation.

The claim there is "no such thing as a free lunch," which is widely true and accepted, only applies in a zero sum game[en.wikipedia.org]. While TF2 trading usually is, you have to realize the prices are mostly arbitrary, and different people want different things. Some trades are clearly advantageous from your profit-only perspective, but to someone looking for a high five taunt (which you bought from someone who needed a key right now that 1.5 keys in metal is not as meaningful. Perhaps the simplest to understand would be scrapbanking, where you accept any craftable weapons at 1/2 scrap, then charge the extra 1/2 scrap for the convenience of having whatever weapon your buyer happens to be looking for.

Originally posted by Terminus:

It's increasingly becoming the trend that users are not sharp enough and pretty relaxed as they know that they can just get back the item by reporting it as a ''scam'', or reporting the trader as a ''scammer'' and bringing the other traders name into disrepute. Maybe users ought to take at least some of the responsibility.

There are very few cases of people getting back items that were scammed or sharked. Just because apparently some moderators tried to enforce it in this one case doesn't mean users should expect it to happen, and even Valve will not return their items. Maybe some people expect that, but they almost invariably end up sorely disappointed, and if you need examples then look no further than the steamrep forums for the people asking when they will get their unusuals back.

Originally posted by ♫ Woifi ♫:

While you are at it to implement the term sharking in the rules, you could also add the definition of the word scammer there.

Isn't that defined by steamrep?

The definition of sharking never seemed that controversial to me. Sure there are always cases that are difficult to determine who (if anyone) is in the wrong, but sharking always seemed like a really simple concept to me. By my definition, sharking involves at least one of the following:

• Lying about prices, value, or worth of either party's hat; lying about circumstances surrounding certain items (e.g. saying Valve has confirmed a Halloween spell will not disappear from a Bill's Hat); or otherwise deliberately misleading another trader with a vested self interest in that trader's lack of knowledge.
  
• Specifically seeking out new users or users who most of their backpack value is in one or a couple items.

In addition to meeting one of these criteria, the trade must also not otherwise classified as scamming (e.g. misrepresenting items with name tags) and the shark must know the deal is one-sided. The person shorted in a sharking trade being happy does not absolve the shark from responsibility, unless the other person informed them, in which case they are clearly not deceiving or preying on an inexperienced trader. The trade must also not otherwise be classified as scamming (e.g. misrepresenting items with name tags).

What a lot of people seem to disagree on is whether "getting a good deal" counts as sharking, and whether the person being happy at the time of the trade justifies the unfair trade. So consider the following scenarios:

Trader1 has this old promo from several years ago, and thinks they might be worth something, but admits (s)he does not know exactly what they're worth. (S)He reaches out, asking for some good games to trade for them. Trader2 senses that Trader1 is probably going to get ripped off, and privately notifies Trader1, giving sound advice on what they're worth. Trader1 appreciates the warning, but says (s)he does not care about their value. Trader1 then offers earbuds for Trader2's Portal 2 bundle (~4-5 keys). Trader2 has done their due diligence in this trade, and is not considered a shark.

Alternatively Trader3 approaches Trader1 from above (Trader2 is not in the picture), offering Portal 2 bundle for the Earbuds saying to look at how much Portal 2 costs in the Steam store. Trader1 is amazed at getting this well-known $25 game pack for free because (s)he signed into TF2 from a Mac several years ago; what a steal! Trader1 may or may not find out (s)he was ripped off badly, but Trader1 was clearly taken advantage of no matter happy (s)he was at the time of the trade.

Following the same circumstances as the 2 above scenarios (Trader2 or 3 not in the picture), Trader1 notices Trader4, has a giftable Portal 2 bundle. Trader1 approaches Trader4, offering the earbuds for the Portal 2 bundle. This is probably the most difficult scenario to evaluate, but if Trader4 didn't intentionally do anything to attract Trader1's attention (second bullet point), and didn't make the offer (first bullet point), then (s)he is in the clear because it's not Trader4's responsibility to educate Trader1 about prices (although I personally would). The catch is many sharks count on inexperienced traders doing this and ask people to post offers (instead of listing prices) for that very reason. Waiting for inexperienced traders to offer, or offering absurd deals like that is predatory, and falls under point 2 (in the first case, you could also argue the items are not actually for sale when reporting the trade). Personally, I am always transparent about my prices, and if something like that happens (usually more than 50% higher than the value) I let them know they're getting a bad deal, but if they insist I continue. I wouldn't expect other people to do this though, and usually instead let Trader1 know if they look like they're going to end up making that kind of offer with someone.

Originally posted by LiddoJunior:

Sharking is one of those hard to define things.
Because it is really hard (basically impossible) to see evidence within steam(trade) chats.

That doesn't make it harder to define, just harder to prove.

Originally posted by LiddoJunior:

However, if i user goes around outpost and finds a trade for a god/high tier hat with an extremely low buyout. That shouldn't be in the category of sharking, as a seller posting a trade and asking for a price, you should expect that every seller on outpost has access to price guides and resources to find item values. ( Category should be: "quickselling" )

Putting aside the fact you're referring to an unusual, for which the price is very arbitrary, if someone posts an unusual on Outpost for a low price, it should be assumed they did their research. The person searching did nothing to deceive or manipulate them, and did not make the offer. The seller could very well be uneducated, but it's not the buyer's responsibility to fix that. The owner of an unusual is free to set whatever price they want, and trying to regulate or enforce that tends toward price manipulation. Regardless of knowledge, the seller intended to sell the unusual, possibly at a deviant price, and the buyer met that demand. If the buyer were to say "Oh hey, I'll trade this rainblower for that purple-text hat in your backpack" and the hat wasn't listed, that would be manipulating.

Originally posted by LiddoJunior:

Same can be said about when a god/high tier hat gets offered on a low(-er) tier hat, and you just accepted it.

Again, you didn't make the offer. The person offering that hat fully intended to get rid of it, and I'd probably accept it if I were selling any of my unusuals.

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

maybe CF just likes me ;)

Maybe you still have something cached that's broken.

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

Try a hard refresh and/or cleaning the cache. This did the trick for me.

I tried launching a different web browser that I've never accessed outpost from before. Still broken.