How to Run a Safer Buy/Sell/Trade Channel on Discord

Most PC building and retro collecting Discord servers end up with a buy/sell/trade channel. It starts with a member offering a spare GPU to friends. A few months later it's a busy marketplace full of strangers, and the moderators are spending their evenings settling price arguments and deciding whether a deal that went wrong was a scam.

Discord gives you no buyer protection, no feedback system and no price history. Everything that makes a trading channel safe has to come from the channel's rules, and from how quickly members can check a claim before they pay. This guide covers both.

Rules worth pinning

Every server makes its own rules, but the busiest trading communities have settled on a fairly standard set. They work because they make the common scams awkward to pull off:

• A price in every post. "Make an offer" posts invite lowballing and argument. A stated price also gives everyone something to check against.
• Timestamped photos. A photo of the actual item with a handwritten note showing the seller's username and the date. That proves the seller has the item in hand, not a picture copied from an old listing.
• Say the exact model and condition. "RTX 3080 10GB, used, original box" or "EarthBound, loose cart, label has a small tear". In GPUs and retro games, the details that change the price are the details sellers leave out.
• Payment with buyer protection. Many communities require a payment method with buyer protection (for example PayPal Goods and Services rather than Friends and Family) and treat a seller who refuses as a red flag. Decide what your server accepts and write it down.
• Deals stay in public until agreed. Scammers like to move a buyer into DMs early, where nobody else sees the conversation. Keeping negotiation in the channel, or in a thread, means other members can spot a problem.
• One post per item, limited bumping. Keeps the channel readable.
• A place to report. A clear way to flag a bad trade, so moderators hear about it before the same person tries again.

Then pin it, and repeat it in the channel description. People skim.

Settling "is this a fair price?"

Price arguments take up more moderator time than scams. A seller asks $450 for a used card, three members say that's too high, the seller disagrees, and the thread goes in circles.

You can turn that into a slash command. The free CresvaMent Discord bot answers price questions from the same data as our deal pages:

• /price rtx 3080 shows the median asking price on eBay for each condition (Used, Refurbished and New for a graphics card; Loose, CIB and Sealed for a retro game), the 25th to 75th percentile band around it, and how many listings the figures are based on.
• /history shows whether that price has been rising or falling over the last 30, 90 or 180 days.
• /compare puts two items side by side, which settles "5800X3D or 7800X3D for the money?" and "is the gold cart worth it?".

A seller asking below the 25th percentile is cheaper than most of eBay. That's either a good deal or something to ask about. A seller well above the 75th percentile can be pointed at the numbers instead of argued with.

Two limits are worth knowing, and worth putting in your rules if you use the bot this way:

• These are asking prices, not sold prices. They're what eBay sellers are listing the item for right now, which usually runs a bit above what things actually sell for. Use them as a reference point, not a ruling.
• The bot covers a set list of items. It tracks around 60 items (graphics cards, CPUs, SSDs, server RAM and retro games), not everything on eBay. /browse lists them all. If an item isn't there, the bot has nothing to say about it.

Checking a pasted eBay link

Trading channels also fill up with eBay links: "is this one legit?", "found this for $300, too good to be true?".

/check takes an eBay listing URL or item number and runs it through the same rules as the web eBay listing checker. The reply lists the price, condition, seller feedback and item location, followed by any red flags and what triggered each one:

• for-parts or untested wording, or eBay's "For parts or not working" condition
• box-only, packaging-only and reproduction listings
• laptop GPUs listed under a desktop card's name, display-less mining cards and modified boards
• sellers with very few feedback ratings or a low positive percentage
• items not located in the US
• stock photos, and descriptions that say something is missing or broken

The reply is public, so everyone in the thread sees the same result. Each person can run one check every 30 seconds.

A clean result isn't a guarantee. The checker reads the listing's words and the seller's numbers. It can't see a damaged card in a photo or a seller who's lying in the description. What it does well is catch the listings that admit the problem in small print, and those are the ones a fast buyer skims past.

/check only works on eBay listings. It can't vet a member of your server or a sale posted directly in your channel. Your rules have to do that job.

Why moderators can approve it without worrying

The first thing a careful server owner asks about any bot is what it can see and do. This one:

• asks for no permissions when you add it to a server
• doesn't use Discord's message content access, so it can't read your channels
• never posts on its own and never DMs anyone; it only replies to the command someone typed
• sends every reply with mentions disabled, so a listing title can never ping your members
• reads only public price data, the same numbers anyone can see on the website

It's also not a marketplace or a middleman. It doesn't take part in trades, doesn't hold money and doesn't vouch for anyone.

For members: use it without an admin

You don't need to run the server to use the bot. Add it to your own Discord account instead of a server, and the commands follow you into any server you're in, group DMs and your DMs with the bot. Nobody has to approve it, and the server doesn't need to change anything.

One thing to know: some servers don't allow members to use apps they've added themselves. There, Discord still runs the command but shows the reply only to you. That's still useful for checking a price or a link before you reply to a post, but nobody else in the channel will see it. To share a result in a server like that, ask a moderator to add the bot to the server.

Account install is also the easy way to try the bot before you suggest it to your server's moderators.

Setting it up

1. Open the Discord bot page.
2. Pick Add to a server (you need the Manage Server permission on that server) or Add to your account (no admin needed).
3. Confirm. There are no permissions to review.
4. Type / in a channel and pick a CresvaMent command. The first time, Discord can take a while (occasionally up to an hour) to show a new app's commands.

If you run the server, it's worth adding a line to your pinned rules: "Use /price before arguing about price, and /check on any eBay link before you buy."

Want deals posted in your server?

The bot only answers commands. If you'd like a channel that posts new eBay listings for a specific search, like a card under a certain price, that's a different tool: a CresvaMent search profile with Discord webhook notifications. See how to get Discord notifications for new eBay listings.

Related

• How to check eBay prices from Discord: every command in detail, and how to read the numbers
• GPU price bot for hardware-swap servers
• Retro game price bot for collecting servers
• Questions or an item you want tracked? Ask in #support on the CresvaMent Discord server.