Post by jefmajor on Apr 13, 2012 11:58:53 GMT -5
Well, first, duh, buy low sell high. Not QUITE that simple, though, because we're dealing with a different kind of market than the one that intended to describe.
There are a ton of ways you can earn credits in this market, some sleazy, some not, some that require a lot of work, some that are easy, et cetera. I'll be covering three: Buy Low Sell High (collectors market), Booster Pack Lottery, and Offers.
Warning: All of them require an investment of credits and none of them are guaranteed.
This market we're dealing with is a "collectors" market. It is also a
cutters market. This has some implications I'll get to in a minute.
Buy Low Sell High
For the Buy Low Sell High system to work you have to be brave and knowledgeable. Stay in the buy menu and set it to rare and go back and forth over the current rares on sale. Observe the prices.
First step: Discern the "True Value" of a card. Here is a good example of a set of cards that are selling for the same price but one is more valuable than the other:
Strategic Assault: 1495$
Target Practice: 1500$
Which one is more valuable? Strategic Assault, actually, because of something not indicated by the current high sale price. The reason Strategic Assault has a higher "True value" is because of how MANY of them are for sale. There are 16 Target Practice's for sale and only 5 Strategic Assaults. That means that if you buy a Target Practice on the cheap, no matter how cheap, there are 16 people willing to jump you in the price and bump it down. The price will invariably plummet, where, Strategic Assault's price may lower or raise but it will remain fairly set.
So once you've figured out if a cards value is a high or low value, when you see one for a good price, buy it. Say for example we saw a Strategic Assault for sale while looking at this for 1100$. That would NOT be a good buy. For the buy low sell high ideology to work you have to keep yourself to a system of halves or near halves. If the card came up for 700, yes, good, take it.
The reason for that is the collectors marketplace. What you have to understand is that there are two types of buyers. Buyers like us, having fun making credits, and then there are collectors. The price listed in the buy menu for cards is the "collectors" price. The price for buyers should always be HALF that.
SO, say we bought a card for about half of the collectors price, how much do we sell it for? Do we under-cut the lowest price by 1$ and wait? NO. Hell no. Remember: We're not playing that game. We're flipping that bitch ASAP. Take the current value of the card listed in the market and sell it for 3/4 of that price. A big jump. In this example the Strategic is going for 1400 collector price, we got it for 700, sell it for 1000-1100. You want someone to snap it up the way you snapped up the 700. The less time it sits in the market the less time people have to under cut it.
You may think "oh I should just put it up for 100 less than the current price", but, you have to realize, this is incredibly dangerous because of the sale offer system in the market. Here is what will likely happen. Our example again, Strategic 1400, you buy for 700, and put up for 1300. The collectors price will LIKELY drop due to your bid. If you aren't careful you will literally devalue your own purchase by trying to get too much out of it. Someone will put one down for 1299. Then 1250. Then 1200. Then 1100. Etc.
So yes, buy low, sell high, but educate yourself, discern the true value, ensure a profit, and make it QUICK!
Booster Pack Lottery
Believe it or not you CAN make money off buying booster packs and selling the contents on the marketplace. The only problem with that is that it is essentially like winning the lottery.
The primary number you want to look at in this scenario is "pack cost". 100$ for a Templar and 900$ for an Assassin. Those will always be the representative value of a "rare" card as you get one rare per pack.
So why is it like winning the lottery? Because of this:
The number of Assassin Rares currently selling for MORE than the pack cost (900$): 17
The number of Templar Rares currently selling for MORE than the pack cost (900$): 21
I did the same test last night and it was 26 Assassin Rares, and 20 Templar Rares. What we can learn by this is that, PROBABLY, the number of Assassin Rares selling for more than the pack-price will continue to drop. Templar rares may stay close but will probably fluctuate around that number.
Remember: Do your OWN COUNT as these numbers fluctuate. If you see that for some reason, at the time of YOUR count, there are 30 assassin rares going for over 900, THAT is when you should jump on an assassin pack. Ditto for templar. Use your own discretion.
So which one do you buy? Assassin. Why? Margin. There is only ONE templar card currently selling at a good margin (Cesare, 900) whereas there are a number of Assassin Cards selling for double or nearly double the pack cost. It isn't a HIGH percentage, but, hey, that's the lottery.
Finally, the last way I know of:
Offers
Go into the "Sell" menu and look at the current "offers" posted by players for cards. You will find that some extremely valuable cards have very low offers. Why is that? Because the "extreme value" of the card is FALSE. Rosa In Fiore was selling for 2800 last night. That is a FALSE price. That is 3 Assassin Packs. Rosa is worth maybe 1200-1300 at most, 900 if market is saturated.
So how can you take advantage of that? Let's use that ROsa In Fiore situation as an example. Say there is a current offer for 300 for it. You can take advantage of that buy offering 600. Never more than what you think is HALF of the true value of a card. In this case we feel the true value is 1200 (you may disagree, that's just my feeling), so 600 is in line with that.
Leave it. Go have a coffee. Go buy low and sell high. Buy a booster pack. Someone, somewhere, somehow will accept your price, because THEY know that 2800 is insane. They may need the credits for something else, or, maybe they just had a good match against you.
Once you've got that card for 600, the rest is easy, put it up for anywhere between 1200 and 2000, assuming that crazy price is still in place. Get twice your investment and make sure to at LEAST cut under the current price by so much that simply undercutting you would be unacceptable.
I hope this is helpful to someone. I seriously earned around 2000 credits while typing this out by following my own advice.
I may post an advanced sellers tactics tutorial later, but, for now, I just hope that you can have some fun and earn some credits this way!
There are a ton of ways you can earn credits in this market, some sleazy, some not, some that require a lot of work, some that are easy, et cetera. I'll be covering three: Buy Low Sell High (collectors market), Booster Pack Lottery, and Offers.
Warning: All of them require an investment of credits and none of them are guaranteed.
This market we're dealing with is a "collectors" market. It is also a
cutters market. This has some implications I'll get to in a minute.
Buy Low Sell High
For the Buy Low Sell High system to work you have to be brave and knowledgeable. Stay in the buy menu and set it to rare and go back and forth over the current rares on sale. Observe the prices.
First step: Discern the "True Value" of a card. Here is a good example of a set of cards that are selling for the same price but one is more valuable than the other:
Strategic Assault: 1495$
Target Practice: 1500$
Which one is more valuable? Strategic Assault, actually, because of something not indicated by the current high sale price. The reason Strategic Assault has a higher "True value" is because of how MANY of them are for sale. There are 16 Target Practice's for sale and only 5 Strategic Assaults. That means that if you buy a Target Practice on the cheap, no matter how cheap, there are 16 people willing to jump you in the price and bump it down. The price will invariably plummet, where, Strategic Assault's price may lower or raise but it will remain fairly set.
So once you've figured out if a cards value is a high or low value, when you see one for a good price, buy it. Say for example we saw a Strategic Assault for sale while looking at this for 1100$. That would NOT be a good buy. For the buy low sell high ideology to work you have to keep yourself to a system of halves or near halves. If the card came up for 700, yes, good, take it.
The reason for that is the collectors marketplace. What you have to understand is that there are two types of buyers. Buyers like us, having fun making credits, and then there are collectors. The price listed in the buy menu for cards is the "collectors" price. The price for buyers should always be HALF that.
SO, say we bought a card for about half of the collectors price, how much do we sell it for? Do we under-cut the lowest price by 1$ and wait? NO. Hell no. Remember: We're not playing that game. We're flipping that bitch ASAP. Take the current value of the card listed in the market and sell it for 3/4 of that price. A big jump. In this example the Strategic is going for 1400 collector price, we got it for 700, sell it for 1000-1100. You want someone to snap it up the way you snapped up the 700. The less time it sits in the market the less time people have to under cut it.
You may think "oh I should just put it up for 100 less than the current price", but, you have to realize, this is incredibly dangerous because of the sale offer system in the market. Here is what will likely happen. Our example again, Strategic 1400, you buy for 700, and put up for 1300. The collectors price will LIKELY drop due to your bid. If you aren't careful you will literally devalue your own purchase by trying to get too much out of it. Someone will put one down for 1299. Then 1250. Then 1200. Then 1100. Etc.
So yes, buy low, sell high, but educate yourself, discern the true value, ensure a profit, and make it QUICK!
Booster Pack Lottery
Believe it or not you CAN make money off buying booster packs and selling the contents on the marketplace. The only problem with that is that it is essentially like winning the lottery.
The primary number you want to look at in this scenario is "pack cost". 100$ for a Templar and 900$ for an Assassin. Those will always be the representative value of a "rare" card as you get one rare per pack.
So why is it like winning the lottery? Because of this:
The number of Assassin Rares currently selling for MORE than the pack cost (900$): 17
The number of Templar Rares currently selling for MORE than the pack cost (900$): 21
I did the same test last night and it was 26 Assassin Rares, and 20 Templar Rares. What we can learn by this is that, PROBABLY, the number of Assassin Rares selling for more than the pack-price will continue to drop. Templar rares may stay close but will probably fluctuate around that number.
Remember: Do your OWN COUNT as these numbers fluctuate. If you see that for some reason, at the time of YOUR count, there are 30 assassin rares going for over 900, THAT is when you should jump on an assassin pack. Ditto for templar. Use your own discretion.
So which one do you buy? Assassin. Why? Margin. There is only ONE templar card currently selling at a good margin (Cesare, 900) whereas there are a number of Assassin Cards selling for double or nearly double the pack cost. It isn't a HIGH percentage, but, hey, that's the lottery.
Finally, the last way I know of:
Offers
Go into the "Sell" menu and look at the current "offers" posted by players for cards. You will find that some extremely valuable cards have very low offers. Why is that? Because the "extreme value" of the card is FALSE. Rosa In Fiore was selling for 2800 last night. That is a FALSE price. That is 3 Assassin Packs. Rosa is worth maybe 1200-1300 at most, 900 if market is saturated.
So how can you take advantage of that? Let's use that ROsa In Fiore situation as an example. Say there is a current offer for 300 for it. You can take advantage of that buy offering 600. Never more than what you think is HALF of the true value of a card. In this case we feel the true value is 1200 (you may disagree, that's just my feeling), so 600 is in line with that.
Leave it. Go have a coffee. Go buy low and sell high. Buy a booster pack. Someone, somewhere, somehow will accept your price, because THEY know that 2800 is insane. They may need the credits for something else, or, maybe they just had a good match against you.
Once you've got that card for 600, the rest is easy, put it up for anywhere between 1200 and 2000, assuming that crazy price is still in place. Get twice your investment and make sure to at LEAST cut under the current price by so much that simply undercutting you would be unacceptable.
I hope this is helpful to someone. I seriously earned around 2000 credits while typing this out by following my own advice.
I may post an advanced sellers tactics tutorial later, but, for now, I just hope that you can have some fun and earn some credits this way!