Why bother with Steam trading cards?

What Valve could've done is allow each player to get a duplicate of a trading card once, so that he/she had 2 units of each of the card drops, then it would've been only a matter of trading with other players thus actually staying true to the name "trading cards".

For example, player gets 6 card drops from Borderlands 2:-

2 x Salvador

2 x AXTON

2 x Handsome Jack

With that he/she could trade the duplicates to get the missing cards. Having the cards in the market is rather stupid and an evil move by Valve.

OR

If that's too much to do by Valve, they could've done it in a pokedex style, once you get a card into your inventory it remains in your "badge progression" regardless of whether you trade it away, that way you can trade cards with friends and unknowns and complete your badges. This could be a restriction for level 1 badges only, beyond that it could be what it is right now.

AND

Finally what others suggested about the rest of the drops being achievement driven, imagine if you could only get Foil cards by doing 100% of a game's achievements OR getting the most difficult achievement etc.

got exp, got level, then got foild and sell it in market...actually i profit from this

Someone just sent me a vision from the future:

Preorder Next-AAA from steam and get this limited edition card and some TF2 items.

well I earned 8 Euro by selling them ;)

I'm leveling up to be lvl 10 and get Foil drop, already made a lot of money selling cards :D

It's kind of fun collecting the cards. No idea what higher levels unlock so it's kind of exciting to level up.

Because you can sell them for money on the market, of course.

What cards do you speak of on steam? O_o?

I have gotten over 20 dollars by selling cards in the market (my brother gave me all the cards he found) so I'm extremely happy with their addition :D
The only reason I can be interested in crafting the badges is because I want to be level 10 to have a chance of getting foiled cards that can be sold for qutie a lot :P
...wait, I was reading the comments before posting this and found out you don't have to be level 10 anymore to get foiled cards, so forget that last part. I'm going to sell all the cards I have left ^^

Because they are trading cards

I was already lvl9 the first time I noticed the cards bs one week ago. So I did community badge (no cards required) to reach lvl 10.
I sell all my cards and almost made €10.

Why bother with anything?

Money Money Moneeeeey. MONEEEY

because ican

you know...i sold a shitload of cards when i first joined the beta...got me 4 games added to my library that i didnt have before hand......but i now regret it....i actually kind of enjoy the card collecting/trading/crafting...

at first i was like "LULZ!!!! YEW GUYS ER STEWPIT!!!! TRADE MOAR CARDS FAGS!!! LOLERCYCLE!!!!"...
but...its actually mildly amusing collecting/trading the cards and crafting the badges...its also not even worth it to me to sell them at this point with how cheap they go for...

back when i sold my first batch of cards i was getting anywhere from between $.50 - $1.25 for them....which, i would surely do if that was still the case....but now??? the most expensive ones are like 30 cents on the market(excluding foils)...and most are between 7-15 cents....not even worth my time....ill just craft them...

Why bother with background and emoticons, which are just a tiny cosmetic features?

I only mess with them in order to sell them. If there were some sort of incentive (other that emoticons, backgrounds, etc.) then I would actually be interested. As it stands, with the summer sale going on, I've actually been able to buy several games I'd been wanting thanks to selling these things. It's weird.

I think you will find that cards have given me levels have given me Ika Musume .gif on profile.
Arguing against this is fruitless, de geso~.

Aaaaargh fuck peer pressure, I am not taking this shit!

i bother with them because i heard a rumor that sometimes you get free games or coupons for doing something with them

Level Up!!!!

I would delete them if I could.
Cannot sell them as I have steam guard disabled...not that I would anyhow...then I would be participating in something I hate.

If you enjoy them, good for you...but I should have the option to not receive any in my inventory.

Oh, and I AM bothered by badges (and steam levels).