How Zwaptz works
Photograph something, find out what it is worth, and swap it for something you would rather have. Here is what happens underneath, including the parts that are not finished.
- Where does the valuation come from?
Three steps. A model looks at your photograph and works out what the thing is — brand, model, edition, the details visible in the picture. A search stage looks for what comparable ones have actually sold for. A third model turns that into a range.
The middle step is not connected at the moment. Nothing is looked up, so every valuation is produced from what the model already knows about that market rather than from sales it checked. Each one says so, shows no comparables, and is capped at low confidence — which is what every real appraisal on the site reads today. It is a considered estimate, not a market appraisal, and the difference is real.
- What does the confidence figure mean?
How much the valuation should be trusted, on the evidence behind it. A wide range with low confidence is the honest answer to a thing whose price depends on condition and timing. It is never a sales figure dressed up — when nothing was verified, confidence is held down deliberately, whatever the model thought of its own work.
- It has identified my item as the wrong thing.
Tell it. Every valuation you get offers “That is not what it is”, and your vault offers “Not right?” — name the item yourself and it is valued again from your answer, without looking at the photograph a second time. A model reading one picture gets this wrong in ways you will spot instantly: the wrong edition, the wrong colour, sometimes the case rather than what is inside it.
- Can I save something without offering for it?
Yes. Every item somebody else holds carries “Keep an eye on this” beside the swap button. It saves the item to a list at the bottom of your vault, and that is all it does — it reserves nothing, joins no queue, and tells the owner nothing about you.
What the owner sees is a number: “3 people are keeping an eye on this”. Never who, and never when. It exists so that an item nobody has offered for yet does not look identical to an item nobody wants — which is the difference between leaving something listed and taking it down.
- Can I message somebody before they accept?
No. Messages open when a swap is accepted, and not before. Until then the offer is the whole conversation: what is on each side, and what it is worth.
If an offer is not right, send a different one rather than asking about it — you can add or remove items on either side, and the other person answers once for the whole thing. A decline can also say what was wrong, chosen from a short list, so you know whether you were close.
This is deliberate, and it costs something. An open message box on an offer nobody agreed to is the cheapest way to reach a stranger who never asked to be reached, and the first thing it usually carries is a phone number — after which the swap happens somewhere else, nobody confirms a handover, and there is nothing for an administrator to read if it goes wrong.
- Who can see the things I appraise?
Nobody, until you put one on Explore. Appraising saves an item to your vault and publishes nothing — not to the site, not to search engines, not to people nearby. An item you have not listed is visible only to you and to anyone you are already swapping with.
- What do other people learn about where I am?
A rounded distance and nothing else — “about 4 miles away”. Never your postcode, never an address, never a map. Your postcode is used to work out who is near you and is not shown to anyone. Leave it blank and you simply do not appear in, or see, nearby results.
- How does a swap actually finish?
You agree it here, then meet and hand the items over. Both of you confirm that the handover happened, and only then does it count as completed — neither person can claim a completed swap alone. What you received lands in your vault, off Explore until you list it again. Meeting safely covers the part that happens away from the screen.
- What if we agree a swap and then it does not happen?
Either of you can call it off, as long as neither has said the handover happened. The items go straight back to the people who put them up and return to Explore, exactly as they were before the offer was accepted.
Agreeing moves the items into each other’s vaults immediately, which is why this exists: a swap nobody can undo would leave you both holding a record of something neither of you received. Nothing is deleted, and neither of you is marked as having completed anything.
Once one of you has confirmed the handover, the button goes. At that point somebody is saying the exchange physically happened, and unpicking that is a disagreement between two people rather than something a button should settle — use Report on the swap and an administrator can read it.
- Can I delete my account?
Yes, from your account page, and it is immediate. Your email address, password, postcode and items go, along with their photographs. Swaps you already completed stay on the other person’s trades page, shown as being with a deleted account — that record belongs to both of you, so it is not ours to remove on one side’s word.
- Are the items on Explore real?
Some are seeded. Zwaptz is new, and an empty marketplace tells a visitor nothing, so a set of example items was created to populate it. Every one is marked example value on its card and says plainly on its page that nobody appraised it. Anything without that mark was valued for real.
- Something is wrong and I need a person.
Use Report at the bottom of any item, any profile or any swap — it reaches an administrator, who can read the conversation and suspend an account. There is no support email yet, which is a real gap rather than a policy: if your problem is not about a specific item or person, there is currently no route, and saying otherwise would waste your time.