The Silver Lining Trade

This story is from January 25, 2014. When this happened to me, it made me understand what a special community I had found in board gaming. This is the post I wrote on BoardGameGeek almost 2 years ago.........






Fellow Gamers.

I have only been part of this community since the summer, and all experiences I have had on here growing my collection and knowledge of games has been amazing, but now I wish to tell you a horrible story with a great ending.

I had a trade set up with a user named Brent (krackelman on BGG). I send out a ton of trade offers, and my son wanted Tumblin-Dice Jr. He is 8, and as we have looked at various games this seemed like one he would really like. Brent agreed to a trade for various games and T.D. jr., and also put another free game in on top of that, and we both sent our games. On the day the package was supposed to arrive, I received a phone call from a local baseball card store, and was told that... an empty box was there..? I went and picked it up, and it was the games from Brent. Someone had stolen it from my front porch, taken all the games from it, and tossed the box. First, I had to have a heart-to-heart with my "glass-half-full" kid, and explain to him that sometimes people do bad things.

My next move was to inform my trade partner what had happened, and then go to the post office to make sure they hold all my packages from now on. When I told Brent what had happened, he asked me to call him. I did, and we talked games for a little bit and how my friend at the post office said this is the first time in almost 10 years this has happened on any route, let alone mine. Brent then did the unexpected, he told me that he wanted to make my bad experience a great experience, gave me a list of rare and OOP games, and told me to talk to my son and pick one and he would send that game. I said it was not his fault and he held his end of the bargain but he insisted. what he sent was a complete and partially-unpunched copy of Star Wars: Epic Duels. Truly amazing. I look forward to having my son go to the dark side.