Craft or Hoard?

Some people tend to buy hundreds of hundle bundles, win the coal and trade the coal back in their main account, so i guess it's better crafting :D

If you're not cheating the system to get hundreds of coal, I'd suggest crafting it since your odds of getting something useful from crafting seem to be astronomically greater than your odds of ever winning the grand prize. I personally like to make sure that I always have at least 1 coal stored though, just in case some miracle happens when the winner is chosen.

I would say try to trade it for games since that is the best chance of getting anything out this event, you can get cheap games £1-3 for about seven-eight coal. another thing is that some games come with two copies when bought (frozen synapse to name one) and some people will trade an extra copy for very few coal or a good coupon. I traded a 50% off L.A Noire (was never going to use it) for frozen synapse, and traded seven coal each for dungeons of dredmor and spacechem.

I haven't bought anything in the sale (no money for it even at those prices D:), just completed objectives for games I already own and I have gotten three games for nothing. the only downside is that you have to be glued to the trading forums all day because it moves so fast, but besides that its not been a bad week imo.

if you cant find anyone to trade with by the final day I would say craft it and keep one coal for the prize draw. there are millions of steam accounts out there, so the chances of being the one lucky winner are so low even the people who have several hundred coal have something like 0.0000000000000001% chance of winning. better to craft it and have a better chance of getting something like skyrim or DoTa2.

so far I have 3 coupons that I most likely wont use. Most are on sale now at 50% price anyways....
50% off Valve, Total war shogun2 and Universe Sandbox.

coupons aren't worth anything now but once the prices go back to normal I expect the value to jump quite quickly. there are plenty of people who don't have the money to buy anything right now, and with a £30+ game like skyrim you can make a safe bet that someone would pay a couple of quid for a %50 coupon in January, thats the reason there are people on the trading forums buying up all the coupons.

of course that all depends on what valve do after the sale ends, if they make it easy to get more coupons then the value will probably not change, but if they are difficult to get hold of I expect to hear stories of people earning hundreds of pounds from trading.

edit: if I wasn't clear what I am saying is that if all you have gotten is coupons there is still a small chance you might get something out of it in the end, you just have to wait and see what happens in the new year.

Craft all, keep one. If you're lucky, you'll win something even with one coal.

Trade.

Traded a couple times already. Got Boarderlands, Amnesia, Overlord, and Greedcorp for 14 coal total, search the steam forums, some people are nuts there, its either people wanting to much coal or to little, gotta get lucky Imo. Just saw someone snatch Just Cause 2 for 5 coal there...I was to late haha.

I am keeping 1 for the contest though.

you have better odds of winning the lotto then winning this steam thing, craft/trade em

If you're willing to trade, then trade them for games you want. This is the best bet to get what you want.
If you want to test your chance, craft them. I got Mafia & Amnesia for my crafting. Getting a coupon is more likely, but it's fun to craft coals (at least it's fun to have great expectations only to have them smashed by a measly 10% coupon).

I'll take option three. TRADE :D 7 coal for cheap games that you want. I learnt my lesson after crafting 21 coal into 3 coupons.