I know this is not the most popular opinion, but hear me out. I'm still relatively new to the app - started around Christmas time last year. However, I've spent at least an hour every day for the last 8 months trading cards or playing the events. Started out strictly f2p - the omnibus event made it easy to save and splurge. Recently, as I've become more involved with the app, I've been spending more on diamond packs, especially for anything Wolverine, Psylocke or X-23 related.

I started off very badly in terms of trading. I didn't understand the value of certain characters or how to properly trade across rarities with equal value. So at first, my trades were always denied, occasionally with accompanied rude comments. I got really turned off to trading for a while until I learned the trade market a bit better.

As I got better at offering "fair" trades, I became overly concerned making sure that every trade I made was fair value. Even if I really wanted a card, if I thought the scales were tilted against me even the slightest, I would decline or revise. This worked out well for a while, but I was investing a lot of time trading and making counter offers. Eventually I would get the cards that I wanted, but it was frankly quite a bit of work, and becoming more tedious than enjoyable. And after all, if I'm spending a large amount of time in this app, let alone spending real money on it occasionally, I definitely don't want it to feel like a chore!

After a string of bad luck with trades one day, I just decided that I wanted a certain card badly enough that I was just going to offer whatever it took to get it, regardless if the trade seemed fair to me or not. So I put together a trade I thought was fair, and then dropped a rarity down on the browse and threw in a couple of related cards they needed as a tip. And it worked quickly. Almost instant accept.

I decided to change my entire approach to trading, and honestly it made the app a lot more enjoyable for me. I'll spend my coins, or occasionally, diamonds, on a set that I want to collect, and try to swap dupes 1:1 to collect the rest of the set. The earlier, the better, because most of the good trading happens in the minutes or hours after the drop. As soon as trading dupes stops becoming "easy" and I'm not getting a lot of trade action, I'll start tipping and/or overpaying to finish the set. For an SR, I'll throw in a couple rare cards as a tip. Or maybe 2 SRs they need for the one I want, if I'm feeling generous. It just makes the transactions go so much smoother and I get the last few cards I need more quickly. Leaving sets I started unfinished and missing out on the award is becoming less of a frequent issue for me.

I'm sure I could spend more time in the app making trades more diligently and I'm sure I'm leaving value on the table by trading this way. But I've come to appreciate the power of tipping as a sort of trading lubricant.

And it works both ways. I certainly appreciate a good, solid, fair trade. But still, I usually put some thought on whether I really want to part with the card(s) in question. Whenever I get a trade offer where the other person is very obviously leaving a generous tip and/or overpaying, it makes the decision much easier & quicker for me. There have been times where someone has offered me a generous 2:1 trade, and then I've turned around and traded 1 of the cards they traded me for the same card I traded away!

Tldr: Tipping makes trading more fun, speeds up the entire process, results in more trade offers being accepted, and spreads a bit of joy at the same time. Highly recommended.