How exactly is this supposed to be used? When I tried loading the game with this patch it just crashed.

The usual way for diff(1) output – “patch -p1” or “git apply”. Or do it manually.

Don't know much about coding so I'm not sure what any of that means.

https://www.drupal.org/node/534548 will help – it mentions ‘--git’ and ‘index’, which aren't relevant here, but the rest of the text between “your choice of 'text editor'” and “pre-patching” should help. (There may be better or worse help out there; that's just what came up first.)

I'd recommend installing and using patch, though (particularly if you're using a Linux-based OS).

Two bugs:

• _metadata does not declare a dependency on CustomCollectionsUI. You need
  "requires": [ "CustomCollectionsUI" ]
• interface/scripted/collections/collectionsgui.config.patch is adding a list when it should be adding a string. You need
  "value": "tradingcards"

Added the dependency and changed it from "value": ["tradingcards"] to "value": "tradingcards" but now its not showing up in the UI as it was before.

It shouldn't have been showing up at all before due to SB expecting a string but getting a list (okay, table, as it's Lua at this point) – CCUI doesn't care and just assumes that it's getting strings.

Anyway, I've done some testing and have concluded that any remaining problems are not in CCUI or TC, but in another mod (which shall remain nameless for the moment). There's now a fix in place; I expect that the version available via the Workshop will be updated within a day or so.