If you've read anything I've written, you probably know that the rental market is working out pretty well for me.
(Today's Numbers-ignore that $140k. One of my cards is horribly mis-priced.)
I'd like to think its because I set myself up for success right up front by buying a bunch of cards I thought would rent well. I was fortunately enough to grab a Zaku at $50 and a Llama at $35. I passed on Kron at $17 though because I thought that was just unreasonable 🤦♂. Good thing I corrected that mistake at $150 and again at $350.
While I've been pretty fortunate in most of my predictions coming true and profiting handsomely on them, I wanted to look at some ideas that I got terribly wrong.
#1. The rental market would push more people into higher leagues meaning all those lvl 10 cards selling for huge /bcx discounts would become more valuable finally. I thought that would take lower level cards off the market because ore people would be combining them.
This didn't really happen. Instead it seems a lot of new players came in and ran as fast as they could to silver for higher rewards, lost a lot, and went back down to bronze to start deck building. If spent on low level cards and combined them, at this point, you're probably kicking yourself for the value lost.
#2. The most valuable cards on the rental market would be high level summoners.
This is similar to the one above. I thought people would run to the higher leagues and the one thing you absolutely need when your up there is a high level summoner or three.
#3. I didn't see the price appreciation coming.
Don't get me wrong. I knew prices were going to go up a bit. But the emphasis there was on a bit. Somehow I modeled it in my head that cards would come off the sellers market and go to the rental market and that would just be the new way of things. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that taking cards off the sales market would push prices way, way up. I also didn't factor in the waves of new players who found Splinterlands after Axie Infinity made people overnight millionaires. The genie is out of the bottle though and it doesn't seem like its going back in any time soon.
So those are the three things that I missed. In reality, though, because I played the other side of the bet and decided combining cards together would make lvl 1 cards more scarce, I didn't get hurt in the first two, and well, I bought a bunch of cards for rentals and they went up further and faster than I'd expected so, I'm not complaining there either.
What about you? Has anything surprised you about this rental market so far?