This all stems from the site owner, Arbok, saying that he wouldn't be comfortable with users potentially getting ripped off on the forums, which is a perfectly reasonable perspective.
I'm a member of a few other forums and every single one has some sort of forum to buy and sell merchandise. It's pretty much a standard on Transformer sites and even Monster Zero has one. Every one has a disclaimer on their B/S/T forum that the staff are not responsible for any transactions that occur between members, which is true and something that can be implemented here.
For many collectors, the only ways to get rid of merchandise that they no longer need is to either post it on eBay or in a Facebook group. The former is a hindrance as eBay takes a chunk of your listing's sell price for themselves and the latter alienates anyone who isn't already in one of those groups or is not on the site itself.
TK is probably the biggest place for Godzilla discussion out there and the inclusion of a selling forum would give kaiju collectors a place to find things they're looking for that they might not find anywhere else or to sell things that would get zero hits on eBay or rot on Facebook for months.
But the biggest issue is how to keep users safe, which I have a few ideas on how to go about that.
The first is user groups. These were implemented with the Fantasy Matches subforum in order to keep clutter down and to easily manage users who don't understand how that place works. I feel like this could be used for a buy/sell/trade forum as well. You could have one usergroup for everyone to post in, or you could group users based on their status (Such as "Verified Seller", "Verified Buyer" etc.).
Another requirement could be having some sort of feedback for new users, whether it be eBay or other fan sites, or implementing a post limit before joining the subforum like the current 50 posts requirement to post pictures.
Finally, payments should be required to be made with PayPal's Goods and Services option. This option allows the buyer to file a claim if the seller does not send the item within a certain time limit and could definitely help out in case of scammers.
To summarize in organized and easily digestible bullet point form why a B/S/T subforum is a good idea:
- Would benefit the Godzilla collector community by giving them an easier outlet to buy and sell rarer things than forcing them to use social media websites or pay part of their profit to eBay.
- Make it a usergroup that requires a significant number of posts to join (maybe 150-200)
- Require new users to provide some sort of feedback from other sites
- Require payments to be made with PayPal Goods and Services in order to protect against scammers
