What about color coding the mark. IE True Western is a red W, shared western a black W, shared eastern a black E and true eastern a blue E?

Also thinking of not going red, as it get messed up on the non-tradable calamities. In such casse, one chould use black W, blue W, blue E, black E.

Yet another option is to mark only shared calamities, as native calamities realy doesn't nead any marking.

Works for me... Black being shared, I would presume. Maybe Blue & Green? Maybe you could also put a white outline on the letter, where readability is a problem.

Shared calamities? Huh? Aren't all calamaities true E & W? Or did you mean non-tradable?

With a non-tradable, it is possible to determine which stack it came from, yes (east non-tradable can only go and come from an east player), but it takes less time to figure out on turn in if the card is marked.

So, currently my idea would be to mark all calamities with a blue E or a blue W.
Then I'd mark shared commodities with blue E or W.
Then, I'm thinking of, but not decided yet, if we should perhaps mark true East and West commodities with a black E and black W.

Hope this clears up all misunderstandings and give the rest of you a concrete suggestion to comment.

1) I see from some previous discussion threads that East vs. West markings on the card-backs have caused some problems in trading, so a suggestion has been made to put the E/W marking on the card-fronts. However, unless I am missing something important, I am not sure of the need for any E/W markings on the Commodity cards at all. If you are playing with enough people, some cards will only go in the West stacks, and some will only go in the East stacks; all you have to do is look at the type of Commodity to determine which stack it goes into, or if you will get bonus points for exotic Commodities (i.e., the cards are from the opposite side of the map to your civilization). Is it really so hard to remember which Commodities are East vs. West that the cards need to be marked? Seems to me that all the Commodity cards can have the same backing, and that there is no real need to have any marking on the front to designate East vs. West either.

2) [This is more of a Calamity question, but related to above.] I guess the Calamity cards need to be marked East vs. West on the front, so that you don't accidentally double up on Calamities on one side, and leave the other side of the map Calamity-deficient: Right?
And as long as I am asking a question about the Calamities, here's another: Have the red-backs for Calamity cards been eliminated? It looks like it. This would make card-counting a bit more important.

3) What about the Shared Commodities? At the beginning of the game, they are split between the East and West stacks. But what happens during the game when they are turned in to purchase Civ cards? Do they get split again? And if so, what about sets with an odd-number of cards? [I would suggest that the extra card go to the side of the map of the player turning in those cards.] Or are the Shared Commodity cards specifically marked to be returned to either the East or West stacks?

Yes it does make card-counting useful, but the effect is neglible, and there is house rules to avoid it altogether (ie last3: To shuffle the non-tradable calamity together with the bottommost two cards, or stoic: To treat non-tradable calamities just like tradable ones).

Personally, I have never been a fan of the card-counting aspect of the game. I've often fantasized about using the stoic rules (everything is tradeable), but I fear the card-counting crowd would linch me.

I suppose I never really understood WHY some are non-tradeable?