Player to player trading

Hello. Fairly new to the game. Had 4 keys left from the PoF/HoT deluxe package so bought 4 Black Lion Chest (I never seem to be able to loot chest, sigh) and got the Endless Extractor. Cool item. Of course I don't have the gold to list it for sell but what I really wish is we had a way to trade/barter player to player. I am wanting the Permanent Hair Style kit for my account and my husband's. Seems the Extractor kits is very disired by players where as someone may have 2 of the hair kits they would want to trade but with no safe way to accomplish this, it forces you to be at the mercy the TP and getting taxed to death ( I do understand and the taxes as a deterrent).

Would be nice if they took the fees/taxes out when the sell completed though.

There are a lot of reasons why all player-to-player trade is mediated through the trading post (and if you want to learn about them, there are several threads up that go over that in detail).

As an alternative, the r/GW2Exchange subreddit exists to facilitate exactly this sort of thing. With the following caveats:

• P2P trades are inherently risky; there is no guarantee you'll get what you paid for.
• If something goes wrong, ANet will not help you recover your items. (At best, they might punish the scammer, but you'll still be out your goods or coin.)
• If something goes wrong, the moderators of the subreddit cannot help either (at best, they might put the person on a "do not trade list")

To reduce the risk, several moderators (as well as others) will escrow the trade (and they charge a nominal fee for it): you send your coin to the middleman, the seller sends the item to the same person; when buyer & trader have fulfilled their obligation, the middleman will complete the trade. (If one or the other fails to live up to their end, the middleman returns everything to the original senders.)

A number of traders have long, positive histories. Since I'm a long time lurker there, I can help anyone help navigate researching that sort of thing, should one choose to take the risk of P2P trading.

There is an associated Discord community that works on a similar level. I don't participate there, so I don't have any insight into whether it's better or worse or even whether you find buyers|sellers more quickly.

It just isn't ever going to happen. The TP is integral to the game at this point and it will never change to a different system. GW1 used player to player, but Anet obviously felt it wasn't the right way forward for all sorts of reasons (ease of use, trade chat spams, scamming and so forth) and implemented a system which to be honest is vastly superior to any other I've used in other mmo's and also doubles up as an easy to use platform for in game purchases and currency exchange. The taxes are not designed as a deterrent though, they are a gold sink in exchange for secure trading. I imagine some of the highest value goods might even be priced taking deductions into account (guessing here).

Yes some people will prefer the old way and technically you could risk a player to player via mail, 3rd person or guild bank, but it's a risk unsupported by Anet if it goes wrong since the TP is set up to avoid it.

Anet have addressed the player to player system many times over 6 years and have outright said it isn't a system they will be changing.

Thank you for the knowledge. I certainly understand ANets position.