From what i understand, in tradecraft the amount of a stock you have "in" a particular chest is stored as an abstract quantity, not actual object in a chest. Every time you open the chest, it's empty. The plugin keeps track of what has been traded as numbers, not actual objects, and essentially destroys/spawns items as needed for transactions.

NOW I get it.

I was confused because the explanation for the tradcraft system had a picture of a chest with a stack of cobble in it. Your explanation cleared things up. Thank you.

I have a followup question. What happens if you break the chest before taking everything out?

you cant break

The only way to break it is to destroy the sign, but I don't believe the sign can be destroyed when there are items stored in tradecraft. I believe you have to withdraw the items into the chest before destroying the sign, then you'd be able to destroy the chest.

EDIT: Just be sure to /cprivate all chests (or /cpublic if it is going to serve as an actual shop).

Just be careful when storing everything this way, if there was ever a plugin failure....

Yeah as Danny says, should there be a plugin issue and your chest turns into an 'infinite shop'...it'll be deleted...including every single item inside the chest.

But has there been any instance where people actually lost everythign in their chests?

As far as I know- no. In fact, tradecraft saved me about 6 stacks of pinewood during a rollback.

I have had my shops turn to infinit shops, lots a tone of netherwart, pumpkins, melons, snow and other stuff got no refund...I strongly advise against the use of this method outside a vault as a vault doesn't get rolled back (I don't think) which is when it changes, just make a bigger storage area