Samlav,
I'm frugal too! Some swaps are about getting an equal return. This one is more about sharing, but in a slightly controlled way. You put in what you have and can get as much as you get tickets for, but there is a kind of reward for having a lot of seeds offered.
The swap will open for trading on the same day at the same time for everyone. When it opens, most of us (not all because a few people will always have a scheduling conflict) will be sitting with our wish lists open because that is the easiest page to work from. At precisely 8:00 pm eastern a treasure chest will appear for every seed offered. That treasure chest is where you click to try to buy that seed, first come first served until that person is out of that offering. Each person will get 4 tickets at the same time and will scramble to get "dibs" on the things they want. That's why having an ordered wish list is important. You can go straight down the list in order of preference. You likely will not get all of your top four, but you should get some of them. The next night the number of tickets will be 8, the next 12, the next 16 and so on. That's 114 tickets, I think. Many people don't spend them all but they are spaced out so each day you have more tickets while the catalog is getting smaller.
People earn extra tickets that they can use as soon as they earn them. The first night people will receive an extra ticket every time two of their items are sold. The next night it takes about 3 sold items to earn an extra ticket and decreases every night. In effect, people who have and are willing to put up a lot of popular seeds get rewarded with extra tickets, but that does not diminish the number of great seeds you can get even with a few entries. At opening each night every person starts out with the same chance of landing their favorites. The competition makes it kind of fun, and if you miss out on something and put it on your wishlist sometimes people will scrape up a seed or two of that item to gift you with when the swap is over.
All of that ticketing and treasure-chesting and rewarding is fully automated. It's magic and Dave is the magician. Dave set it up to be ultra easy once the trading starts and you will be able to see everything you have "purchased" in your swap dashboard.
I buy seeds, I save and trade for seeds, and I am always looking for something specific. Saved or purchased does not matter. I know what I want and I'll happily take it either way. I've purchased commercial seeds every year that are incorrectly labeled in some way, so there is no assurance either way. Gardeners make the occasional packaging mistake but so do the big guys.
In other words, you're fine. It all works out.
