Buy Packs - Open Packs
Let us talk about gaming a bit. We all know the last Splinterlands Untamed packs sold out last week. I never was much of a pack buyer. I bought most of my deck from the open market as cards. Until the very end, I think I only bought about 444 untamed packs. Till date, I do not have a full untamed deck, where as, I do have a near complete beta deck and a complete Dice deck. I was never into pack opening that much. Or may be I was, I just didn't know it.
Towards the end, I bought 9311 packs! For me, that is quite a lot. But I didn't want to get this event run away from me and having to buy cards from the market at a very high price. People who play Splinterlands knows by now that card prices are near all time high, and I didn't have to regret that I don't have a particular untamed card.
So once you buy them, you have choices. They are as follows:
- hold it, and sell at a higher price than you bought
- open it and sell the cards individually, either on the internal Hive-Engine market or at WAX marketplace
- open it and enjoy/play
I am never much of a serious seller or merchant of the cards. I mostly enjoy playing when I feel like it. However, there is a whole business and financial aspects of this, and on this post, I like to talk about it briefly.
Financial Elements of Card/Pack Markets
Selling
I decided to do all three of the potential things I listed above. As the Untamed packs were sold out, in theory, there will never be any Untamed pack produced and bought from the primary in-game market. Lately there has been lots of new players are joining the game and therefore, there is high demand for the cards. The next set of cards, The Chaos Legion, is more than two months away. So it was no brainer to buy the Untamed packs at official prices, which is $2/pack. However, if you buy in bulk, from the official Splinderlands website you get 75 packs free for 500 each.
So the true price/pack = $1000/575 = $1.74/pack.
This is the current market at Tribaldex for the Untamed Packs (which is the secondary market at Hive-Engine)
Last few trades were 9.49 hive/pack. Hive is down with crypto market today and currently prices at $0.22. So right now, each pack is selling for $2.08. Right there a (2.08-1.74) = $0.34/pack profit can be made. It's not much yet, but chances are that price will rally some more.
Opening
I opened over 1000 packs so far over the last few days. Monstermarket.io has a nice tool to analyze opening. This I use often and there is my results.
It is not a steller opening as a whole, other than that Gold Foil Zaku! But, I needed the cards, especially regular Zakus, I was exactly 7 Zaku short to Max one. I am glad I can to do that.
Here is the difference in opening the packs though. If I sell all my packs for a current 0.34 cent/pack profit, for a 1000 packs I get $340 while investing $1740. That is about 19.5% return on investment. However, similar amount when added with potions, ($1740+$241+$193) = $2174 invested is giving me a current sale value return of $1253 (approx) or about 57%. Much higher than 19% I am getting right now just by selling.
Variables
Card and pack markets are volatile. These are only current prices. There is no certainty the prices will be here or higher, or you will be able to sell all or any cards/packs at the prices shown by the time you will be in the market. Please consider this as hypothetical scenario. However, currently the Splinterlands card/pack market is the strongest that I have personally seen, so from my point of view, my 9300 pack investment will pay off nicely I think.
The third point is the most important. I enjoy playing, so I will be enjoying my maxed Zaku and my gold foil Zaku as a collectible NFT. Prices of these cards will only go up I think. Below is a nice place to check historical prices of cards! See you out there on the battlefield!
