Cards 🤮 puked again.
After a year and a half of card prices steadily falling, we had multiple whales bail all at once. And as soon as it started stabilizing, SPS staking sent people running to sell everything in order to be able to buy more SPS.
Needless to say, cards have gotten smashed. And it makes sense since cards are an infinitely inflationary asset. They don't need to be but for right now, they still are.
That said, there are some really good cards that are currently hundreds of dollars less than they've been in years. And I've been buying some of them.
Here's a few of the cards I've been fortunate enough to add to my deck.
1. Maxed Kelp Initiate
This support card is a beast when maxed. For just 2 mana you get 9 health, triage to heal the back line and cleanse to protect the front line. And he's super fast which means you get that heal and cleanse off quickly and he racks up those misses. A few months ago this card cost almost $400 to max out. I got this dude for $105 and its already worth $138.
2. Maxed Furious Chicken
I've been going on and on about the Furious Chicken since the bull run. And I have been wrong. This card has 26,800 copies and it used to be the most played card in the game. When we got above 27k players for the first time in 2021, I thought this would skyrocket since everyone would need one. And from 27k all the way to 500k players, this card went no where becaues it was all bots using ghost cards.
Well, I've continued to buy them anyway. I now have almost 200 of these as 1 bcx cards but I didn't have a maxed copy. That's changed now. At the peak a 1 BCX chicken was $40. I got this maxed copy (115BCX) for $100. Interesting note, these were sitting at $2 for single BCX with a few hundred on the market between $2 and $3. Someone just swept the floor. Lowest price now is $3.35. It's been a while since someone swept the chicken floor.
3. Maxed Serpent of Eld
Another absolute beast of a tank from Untamed. If you don't think magic is coming, this card will frustrate your opponent to no end as it rackes up the misses. The 5 speed with dodge is is a fantastic combo. Played with Kelya, that becomes a 6 speed. Then if an archer manages to hit him, the return fire makes them wish they missed. The poison you get at max is just icing for a card with pretty strong stats. I love this card.
For $75, it was a steal.
4. Maxed Silvershield Assassin
@Aftersound often attributes this card as the reason he doesn't play wild. It really needs no introduction or explanation. This card from the Beta rewards set is a monster and its always been way out of reach to buy maxed. This card is fast. It has 3 attack with double strike. It has sneak so it can attack the back line from anywhere. With 6 health and 2 shield, its not easy to kill him and since he attacks twice each turn, he has 2 chances to hit the poison each round.
When put on a life team that has all sorts of way to buff this dude with heals and extra melee damage, it becomes a little silly. I picked this card up for $80. I was renting it at a level 5 a few month ago even though I was playing in Diamond/champ just because it was too expensive to rent a maxed copy. Now its cheaper to rent maxed because everything is but when the rental market goes back up, I won't have to worry about it.
5. Maxed Demented Shark
This was $200 to max this card a few months ago. Today I bought a maxed copy for $59. There's currently another on the market for $64. Lowest rental price as I write this for a maxed is 100 DEC. That's a 61% APR if I intended to rent this guy out. But I don't.
Chaos Legion turned the water team from a magic powerhouse to a melee powerhouse. THis dude adds one melee damage to everyone on the team including himself. Unfortunately he can't attack from anywhere in most rulesets and since you don't want him to die early, he's bad as a tank, but he's a great damage absorber in your mid line and when he gets to the front he hits for 4.
In rulesets he can attack from anywhere or melee only rulesets, this dude can take a kelya team to the next level. And those thorns don't hurt. Its incredible that this guy and kelp initiate were water reward cards at the same time
6. Maxed Gold Diemon Shark and others
Anyone who plays now knows this card well. To buy this card maxed regular foil was $60 a few months ago. You can get this card right now in gold for $38, which is what I bought mine for when I saw it. I've also picked up 11 more of these maxed in regular foil for under $20 each. Some as low as $15.
Most of those are going to be rentals. Currently there is no market because so many people who maxed cards out for land have just dumped them all on the rental market while they wait for land to be here. My theory is that a few of these vital cards like diemonshark, xenith monk, and cursed windeku will come back once land comes in. I honestly believe many other cards won't. THere are just too many out there right now and the rental market has take too much of a hit.
But at these prices and with how important these cards are, I think the market will come back to give them at least a 50% APR based on the price I bought them at and that will send them higher again too.
Final thoughts on cards
Honestly, I don't know if I made the right call on these. I was buying cards all the way up and I've been buying them all the way down. Every now and then they take a big step down that makes them seem way too cheap. Usually a few months later they are even cheaper. In the last few days, I have seen a few floors being swept and I've seen my card values as a whole going back up again. While I don't believe land is going to immediately have a huge impact, it will help stabilize prices to some degree. Unfortunately, I can already see Aggy's wheels turning as crypto starts to look up some. He's making comments like "there won't be enough vouchers for everything". That means, we are going to flood the market with cards as soon as things tick up. He's also talking about doubling the size of the team again as soon as they can. That's all going to take money. My hope it that they are also looking for ways to make it so cards are being burned as fast as new ones are being minted. I''ll be writing another post soon about my card graveyard idea which would accomplish just that. If they can work the economy just right, cards can be a great investment again. But it's up to the team and this community to want to do it. Or if you believe Splex
PS: sorry about the text block. Leo's front end decided to ignore line breaks at the end.