But the lack of early player movement that's typical of Trade Week belies the flurry of behind-the-scenes activity between the clubs as they scramble to pull together deals.
Often, the bigger the player involved in the negotiations, the more complex the deals the clubs are trying to pull together.
A great example was this week's aborted five-club trade that, among other things, would have sent Mitch Clark to Fremantle, Jack Gunston to Hawthorn and boom 17-year-olds Jaeger O'Meara and Brad Crouch to GWS and Adelaide, along with a flurry of swapped draft picks, 17-year-old mini-draft selections and pre-listed GWS players.
But when such a 'super' trade comes together it often pans out well for the clubs involved.
The 2000 trade that centred around star midfielder Peter Bell's move from North Melbourne to Fremantle was one such instance.
Collingwood joined the Kangaroos and Freo as a key player in that trade, but by the time Bell joined Fremantle six clubs, seven players and six draft picks had all been involved in making that happen.
This chain of trade deals started simply enough when another elite on-baller, Collingwood vice-captain Paul Williams, sought a trade to the Sydney Swans.
Williams' form at Collingwood was still good - he had just recorded his fourth top-three best-and-fairest finish in six years - but he told this year's Grand Final AFL Record his frustrations with the club's on-field struggles and its over-reliance on individuals had sparked his desire to find a new home.
Williams' passage north was relatively smooth, the Swans agreeing to forward picks No. 8 and 39 in that year's AFL National Draft to the Magpies.
However, that deal was merely the first domino to fall in 2000's entry for trade of the decade.
The trade's seeds had been sown weeks before Williams became a Swan. At the end of the 2000 season, Freo had convinced Bell to return home to Western Australia, and to the club that delisted him after he played just two games in its inaugural season, 1995.
Fremantle's football manager at the time, Gerard McNeill, told afl.com.au Freo had had to work overtime to convince Bell to: (a) rejoin a club that, at that stage, had never finished higher than 12th; and (b) leave a club where he had enjoyed considerable team and individual success - he played in North's 1996 and 1999 premierships (and in the latter must have come close to winning the Norm Smith Medal, having racked up 31 possessions and kicked four goals against Carlton), was All-Australian in 1999, finished third in North's 1997 best and fairest and was about to be crowned the Roos' 2000 Syd Barker medallist.
But Freo was determined to land an elite player who could spearhead a climb up the ladder to on-field respectability and, ultimately, sold Bell on their vision.
However, it was never going to be easy for Fremantle to broker a trade with North.
Because of its on-field success during the 1990s and its focus on trading during that era, North had not had a national draft pick inside No. 14 since 1992 (when it selected Robert Pyman with pick No. 6), but Bell's decision to move home gave it the opportunity to rectify that.
Then-North chief executive Greg Miller told afl.com.au the club had been determined to ensure it was properly compensated for losing a player of Bell's calibre.
"We stuck out for two first-round draft choices and a player because we got wind of just how much they were paying him - it was a massive amount - and he was our best and fairest winner and going there as a leader," Miller said.
Having finished 12th in 2000, Freo had pick No. 6 in that year's draft, but North was not going to be satisfied with a package of that and Freo's next pick, No. 22.
This is where Collingwood came into the picture. With the No. 8 pick it had acquired in the Williams trade, the Magpies were attractive trade partners for Freo and, fortunately for Fremantle, Collingwood was just as willing to talk swaps.
Then-Collingwood recruiting manager Noel Judkins told afl.com.au the Magpies' focus at the time was on bolstering their young list with ready-made players.
"We didn't have any players. We had only 'Bucks' (captain Nathan Buckley) and probably 'Burnsy' (Scott Burns) who were valued by any other club," Judkins said.
"We had started to pick up players that could be in our best team, so when this trade came along it was a chance to get two or three players in at once."
Judkins and his recruiting team had also been interested in Fremantle's James Clement for some time. Judkins said the Magpies had unsuccessfully tried to broker a trade for Clement the year before, so again signalled their interest in the defender who had played 84 games in five seasons at Freo but just eight games in 2000.
But given the No. 8 pick's currency, Collingwood sought to add another readymade player to the deal. Judkins said the Pies raised on-baller Jess Sinclair and small forward Brodie Holland with Fremantle.
It eventually became apparent Sinclair was looming as a key plank of Freo's deal with North, so the Magpies were content to claim Holland. Holland had played 36 games in his three seasons at Freo, but Judkins knew him from his previous role as Essendon recruiting manager. Holland had stayed with Essendon as a member of the Tasmanian Institute of Sport and had impressed as "a good kid".
So the Magpies agreed to deliver pick No. 8 and the other pick it received in the Williams trade, No. 39, to Freo for Clement and Holland, with Fremantle also throwing in pick No. 22 as a sweetener.
The Magpies soon made use of pick No. 22, forwarding it and Mal Michael to the Brisbane Lions in exchange for Jarrod Molloy and pick No. 44.
But back to the North-Fremantle negotiations over Bell.
Fremantle was now armed with the two first-round picks (No. 6 and 8) the Kangaroos had been seeking. But settling on the player North was also after took some time to sort out.
As we've noted above, the Kangaroos were interested in Sinclair, who had played 50 games in four seasons at Freo but just 10 in 2000. Miller said the Roos also inquired about 21-year-old half-back/midfielder Heath Black.
For Fremantle, it was not an easy decision, just as it had not been easy for them to part with Clement and Holland.
"There was a difference of opinion around the table about who we should lose," McNeill said of the club's internal deliberations.
Ultimately, though, Fremantle added Sinclair and pick No. 37 to picks No. 6 and 8 and Bell was a Freo player.
It was the result Freo had worked so long and so hard for but, for McNeill, it came with a sense of relief rather than elation.
"Some people used to say a week was too long because (trades) would take all week," McNeill said.
"As a club, you'd end up bunkering down in a hotel room and everyone would have an opinion about what should and shouldn't happen. You'd offer something. People would counter-offer. It used to be a long, drawn-out, very tiresome affair.
"At the time it's stressful because you're dealing with people's lives. That makes it important not just to those people trying to do the deal, but more particularly to the players."
For Miller, it may have been an extraordinary trade but it was exceedingly ordinary in one respect.
"I don't think there's ever been a deal that's been done early and quickly. They all take to the last minute," he said.
But 11 years later it's fair to say all three clubs did well from the trade.
Bell won Fremantle's best and fairest in three of this first four seasons back in Perth, and added three second-place finishes in the eight seasons he played in his second stint at the club. Freo also took Adam McPhee with the pick No. 39 it received from Collingwood, the utility playing 25 games in two seasons before leaving for a seven-season stint at Essendon and then returning at the start of last season.
Miller rightly said North's bounty from the trade initially looked "quite a fruitful result". However, the players it took with the two top-10 draft picks it received from Freo were ultimately disappointments.
Midfielder Dylan Smith (taken at No. 6) played just 11 games in three seasons at the Kangaroos, before, ironically, extending his AFL career by two seasons and 10 games at Fremantle.
Forward Daniel Motlop (No. 8) was a disappointment for different reasons. Although few doubted his talent over his injury-plagued five-season stint at North, he left, at 23, to join Port Adelaide just when the Kangaroos were expecting to reap the rewards of the extensive development work they had put into him.
However, Sinclair played 142 games over eight seasons with North, establishing himself as the Kangaroos' primary playmaker off half-back for most of that time.
North on-traded the pick No. 37 it received from Fremantle to Collingwood for Ricky Olarenshaw. But the Essendon premiership on-baller played just one game for North, severely tearing his hamstring early in that match.
But it was the Magpies who extracted perhaps the best value from the trade.
Clement won the club's best and fairest in 2004-05, made the All-Australian team in both of those years, and was vice-captain in his latter years at the club and the general of the Magpies' back six.
Holland reinvented himself as an uncompromising tagger at the Magpies, playing in the 2003 Grand Final and finishing second in the 2005 best and fairest. Molloy finished second in the Pies' 2001 best and fairest and played in the 2002 Grand Final. And the player they drafted with the pick they received in the Olarenshaw trade, Guy Richards, was a handy back-up ruckman over four seasons and 39 games.
Judkins summed up the Pies' 2000 trade haul as follows: "Losing Paul (Williams) wasn't very good but getting two players (Clement and Holland) in the one deal made it a little bit better. They were really good players but they also gave us numbers. Adding that sort of depth to our list helped us get into those two Grand Finals (2002 and 2003), which of course we lost, but it kick-started us as a club a little bit."
For the Swans, Williams won the best and fairest in his first two seasons in Sydney, 2001 and 2002, was named in the All-Australian team the following year and played in the Swans' 2005 premiership team.
Of the deal's peripheral players, the Lions picked up a full-back in Michael who was the defensive bookend of their 2001-03 premiership team, and used pick 22 to select tough midfielder Richard Hadley, who spent an injury-plagued seven seasons at the Lions but played in the 2003 premiership.
Geelong became an incidental player late in this trade chain, trading Carl Steinfort, after 65 games in five seasons, to Collingwood for the pick (No. 44) the Magpies acquired from the Lions in the Michael-Molloy trade.
Steinfort played 27 games for Collingwood in two years, while the Cats used that pick to select Josh Hunt. And, as we all know, that selection is still paying dividends for Geelong. The defender with the thumping left foot has been a key member of the Cats' current dynasty, playing in the 2007 and 2011 premierships and the 2008 Grand Final. Hunt missed the Cats' 2009 flag after rupturing an anterior cruciate ligament.
So if this year's trade period seems to be dragging at any time, remember a big deal could be just around the corner. Rest assured, the clubs will be working flat out until Monday's 2pm deadline to try and negotiate the sort of trade 'wins' Fremantle, Collingwood and North did in 2000.
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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
