Gotta Catch 'em All. People buy to compare themselves with their peers. It's just as when people buy Steam instead of DRM-free, because they can then earn Steam achievements and gain the ability to compare themselves with their peers. E-peen, essentially. To a lesser extent, XBox Live users tend to favor GFWL games over non-GFWL games for the same reason.
Nothing is worth more than what people are willing to pay for them.
The inverse is also true.
Everything is worth as much as you can convince someone to buy it for.
I suggest buying up all the cheap cards you can. The more people get into collecting these cards, the fewer possible complete sets there are per user who wants to complete these sets.
Except for when people spend money on in-app purchases, the total number of possible card sets is equal to half the number of owners of that game.
Competition is good for the consumer when supplies are plentiful, and bad for the consumer when supplies are scarce. Since the majority of card owners will be card collectors, there will -NEVER- be a greater supply of these cards than there is demand for them. It is designed this way.
This means it will always be a seller's market. We can put whatever markup on these cards we wish to on payday and holidays, and they -WILL- pay, up to a certain point. I suggest witholding supplies before payday to create an artificial scarcity, which will slowly increase prices as buyers see the lower priced cards bought up. Payday in the United States tends to be the 4th and 18th of every month, or near there, so wait until then.
It is a predatory practice, but this is what capitalism and investing in the free market is all about: maximizing profit while minimizing risk to investment.
If Steam sold cards, there would be reduced profit potential in the resale of cards. In a passive way, they already are selling these cards. Make a second Steam account, buy a game for cheap that has cards to offer, earn the cards, then trade the cards to your main account for no cost other than the game purchase. I would wait to see which games this will be profitable in.
Steam fully allows you to own multiple accounts, and allows for them to interact. You may still not give your accounts away, for any reason. People have been doing this in Team Fortress 2 for years.
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Prices can never rise too much higher than the sale price of a game divided by the number of cards given out by the game. We already see TF2, Dota 2, and Cubeman 2 card prices relatively constant - this is because it's easy to make a new account and buy a TF2 key for $2.49, sell of the cards for $2, then sell back the key for $2, earning a net profit. In the case of Cubemen 2, you can buy a 2 pack for $2.49, activate it on two accounts, and sell the cards for ~$4.
Since the majority of card owners will be card collectors, there will -NEVER- be a greater supply of these cards than there is demand for them. It is designed this way.
Are you sure about this? This is a small sample size, but I would estimate that not more than 1/5 of my friends on steam (208 right now) collect cards. I don't know how many are actually in the beta, but I'd say that there are more sellers than buyers right now.
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A lot of people don't even know there's a beta right now, or that there ever was since the official launch of Steam. Such is the nature of younger and/or less experienced PC gamers. Betas tend to be of interest to those who prefer to learn new things and use those new things to their advantage. We'll have more sellers in the beta than buyers.
Any time there is a prestige item, the younger or richer you are, the more likely you are to purchase these items needlessly. This is my primary reason for believing that the demand for these cards will be far in excess of the supply. Virtual items that provide nothing more than a gold star next to your name, and as many of us realize, they are worthless as themselves. Their worth comes from what people think they are worth.
A fool and his money are soon parted, and there are a lot of young fools. There are also rich fools who can afford to buy poorly and keep coming back for more, feeling justified/entitled each time. The rich are the whales we sellers/resellers love them for being. Economies work the same in the world and in most virtual worlds. A feeling of ownership is just as good as real ownership for most people.
If you enter into these kinds of investments without experience, do not expect to make your money back at first try. Study your chosen market and any similar markets you can find.
My above post, and this post, are my opinions which have been informed by experience in similar virtual markets, whether tied to real money directly or indirectly, or to ingame virtual currency alone.
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I think you're contradicting yourself a bit in the first two paragraphs. You say that most younger players don't even know about the beta, but the younger (or richer) players are the ones that are most likely purchasing the cards.
However you do say that the demand "will be" far in excess of the supply. I was referring to the present - I do believe that in the future, demand will be higher than supply. But once again, I say that prices can't rise too high, otherwise it would be cheaper just to buy another copy of the game and gamble for the cards.
In addition, there is another force you aren't considering - Steam itself. There is always the chance that they decide to implement the same drop system as TF2 - have resets every time period. Another reasonable method would be to implement something like the Mann Co store and sell cards directly. In that manner, Steam can essentially set the price of the cards.
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The beta doesn't last forever. When the beta ends and cards are enabled in the new Steam client, everyone will have cards. Not just the beta users. Even the younger players. There is no contradiction there, only a lack of clarification. I will try to remember to be clearer next time.
You are correct to state something to the effect that cards will have a soft cap on price. I had outlined earlier the possibility of 'buying' cards by creating multiple Steam accounts. I had called it Valve's indirect way of selling cards, but the meaning is the same. This will cause cards to devalue some, but we shall see what effect this will have. For all we know Valve may respond by stating that moving cards between alt accounts is against the rules, but this is defeated by a group of non-local friends trading in a circle, much the same way one CV farming scam worked here on SG.
You are also correct that I am not considering Steam changing the rules. I cannot consider things that do not yet exist, that may begin to exist at a later unknown date. This is something that cannot be counted on in either direction. Until they announce a change, we are all working under the current information Valve has given us. I value the American dollar, but I cannot guarantee its value ten years from now. Valve may shut its doors tomorrow, deleting the entire Steam Marketplace. Those investments would be lost.
For now, I believe Steam Trading Cards appear to be a good investment. But as with any investment, risk is involved when you bet on future outcomes that no one can know. We can use Valve's treatment of the TF2 marketplace as a guideline, but Valve may treat cards differently someday as you have suggested. We don't know if Valve will change their minds about anything at all.
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I believe Steam Trading Cards appear to be a good investment
Fair enough. One thing you will want to keep in mind is that you are only allowed 200 market transactions a year (if I recall correctly) before you have to file tax records with Steam. I don't think the profit you will make will be extensive as you may hope with the limitations.
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What most of you seem to miss is the fact that you don't really sell a card but the time wasted to get it, don't get me wrong i too waste my time playing games but what i want to say is if you get any job you would get more for the time wasted on getting the card.
Ps. Sorry for my english
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Time wasted? All you do is spend 30 seconds opening the game and then let it idle in the background while you do other things.
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Given you get limited card drops and they're entirely random, no, you kind of are selling the card. Also, you get them through play, so your argument falls on its stupid face there too.
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Technically, you get them through running the game. I watched CSI Las Vegas while I 'earned' my TF2 cards.
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Sorry, but it's hilarious how you compare playing a game with a job. We are on a gamer forum, assuming we're all enjoy playing games. Normally we PAY for games, not earning money from them. In my eyes, getting free cards by playing games that we enjoy and selling them on the market is not wasted time at all. The only exception could be that someone don't like/hate the trading card games, but still play it for 2 hours to get the cards. But for now, I think neither of these games are THAT bad, and it's a great opportunity to try out your "less interesting" indie games that you'd never play without these cards. I even bought 2 games for the cards and didn't regret playing them for 1,5-2 hours each.
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Time is money, friend.
Sell those cards, and you have just made money from a leisure activity. Leisure time is not wasted time unless you are not having fun, but whose fault would that be?
Nobody gets a job to do during their leisure time.
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OT: What happened to your Amazon thread?
Will you open a new one?
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Oh crap, I accidentally clicked close instead of edit this morning, totally forgot to make another thread.
Will remake now
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I tried buying one cheap to sell it high. Made a very costly error by pricing it 10c more than I should have, as the one that was cheaper by 5c was bought, and then suddenly all these cheap foils started flooding in...guess what I thought was cheap wasn't really that cheap after all...learnt my lesson, not gonna buy foil cards anymore unless they're less than a buck.
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I can't believe people actually are willing to buy these cards for $60. Well, good for me, I guess, since it turns out that buying Go Home Dinosaurs was a really good investment.
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