I’ve just recently been hit by a realisation, or perhaps a quandary…why bother with Steam levels? I used to sell all my cards, then I decided get to level 40 to increase booster drop rate and then sell any surplus cards. But last night I looked at my gaming funds, my steam balance and the drop odds and thought…am I doing this wrong?
Loads of people only aim to craft badges for games they like (I can’t see the point in this…either all in or all out…profile accoutrements are somewhat hollow). Many people sell their cards for free money (save the pennies and boom new game time!) and lots level up their accounts. Considering Booster drop rates, their increasing drop percentages and the rate I get them, coupled with a bit of a card stockpile, I’ve suddenly wondered…shall I just drop out of the journey to 40 and cash in? I insta sell all foils that I get (yesterday got a foil Salien - BOO! - sold for the price of two standard cards within an hour - YAY!) but perhaps I’m doing it wrong.
What are your general philosophies on cards, the marketplace, Booster packs and Steam levels? Do you crave a large number on your Steam account or pennies in your wallet?
It’s up to the person whether or not they want more for their steam profile, more showcases, higher friends cap etc.
Theres some guy on Youtube that does giveaways but only to level20+ steam users so I’m trying to reach that. Afterwards I probably won’t bother with levels anymore as the incentives are very low.
The starter cap is 250…that’s already a sizable chunk for most people and I’m not even halfway there (although I must admit I feel a little buzz of pride when I get accepted by some of the more unique Steam denizens so I’m happy it’s that high and increases or I’d never get accepted.).
I have crafted a stupidly large number of badges during this sale, mainly to increase my drop rates of booster packs. But I have spent about $50 on cards when I added it up in the last 6 months. So I thought, I am done.
My plan is to just leave the cards I get in my inventory, wait for boosters from this point onwards and to craft badges as they come into “readiness” and craft as they arrive. No more buying random cards for me just to complete them. But I also don’t plan to sell the cards, they can just sit there in my inventory for now. (I will sell foils and the like, waiting for those to drop is like waiting for a perfectly cooked steak to fall out of the sky, I think. And maybe I will see cards if their values are high, I don’t usually check though until I try to complete/craft my badge, I am too lazy to sell them I think…
here’s the thing about cards, “imo”
unless you live in a country, where the cards provide a decent amount of funds due to the unified price/conversion +“cheap” local games, then in the “west” ($/€/£) it’s almost “never”/rarely worth manually selling your cards hassle/“effort”/time/price
as an example:
^(disclaimer: the above was done using “gnome mafs”, potential room for error)
since, usually the vast majority of cards (depending on games) net you the lower end of the “payout” spectrum, unless you are dealing with foils (mind you a ton of foils are also low priced these days), -then you are in the “not worth bending over to pick up a penny” scenario “most” of the time
as such it’s why i personally don’t bother selling them/except foils/some 6cents+ items, nor do i bother much effort checking prices beyond the immediate “hover over” for some
-and i don’t really mind “wasting” the cents on consuming as a badge to deck out my profile anyway (really hoping valve allow duplicate showcases “someday”)
if having many cards, and don’t care to use, -it might then be worth looking into a script/“bot” to put items up for sale to make it worth the “effort”/time instead (with whatever caveats/“risks” using a script/bot on the market place incurs)
Wow…didn’t realise that you’d boosted your Steam level so much. Congrats! But there’s no way in a million years I’d spend my limited “gaming” resources on cards. Not. A. Chance. Reinvesting cards I’ve sold for alternative cards is one thing (a simple exchange) but I can’t see the inherent value in the transaction of real money for badges. Sorry Valve…you lose this time. What made you decide to get on the Steam level hamster wheel and spend on cards and badges?
Pennies add up though…my initial flurry of selling all my Steam cards netted me about $3 (yes I know, it’s a pittance but just you wait until I see an awesome $3 game!) and these days if I see a badge has more than 7 cards in a set I’ll just sell them. Especially those 14 card sets…too much hassle to accumulate. And as I mentioned Foils are really not worth hanging on to. The days of big payouts are gone, but I’m content to play the long game if I really decide to go that way.
yea i think i calculated last time when i had X00 cards that it would net me just under 10€, to/when i had sold them all
but then i decided it was not worth the time/effort for so little
-having to deal with the valve form of over 200 sales, (potential taxation even if unlikely too depending how sensitive my local agency is),
+then going through the selection of scripts/bots to find something that worked “safely” & without the “risks”(should be 0 risk supposedly for regular users/"low volume"trades tho), -and then the bother to “install”
…and then the “wait-time” ofc to see those 0.02-0.04cents “trickling” in over the months and months, just to get a “measly” <10€… naa, too much hassle/vs reward for a lazy sod like me lol, so i cba… and in the (very) long run netted me some free profile xp anyway, so still got something out of it, even if still minimal
Impulsiveness, weakness, and gluttony for useless things, numbers, and other time/money wasters, apparently.
I didn’t realize how much I wasted, 10-20 cents here and there to complete level 1 badges after the initial drops. I thought I was being economical… Hah! Imagine my surprise when I looked my expenditures and all of my market transactions. I realize that I threw so much money into a void that I could have purchased a lot of other games that I really wanted.
By the way, I finally buckled and purchased that Not a Metroidvania bundle on Steam, I had Guacamelee and the other 3 are at or matches their lowest ever with the bundle 20% additional discount. I am sure I will not regret this decision. So in the future, games only, no more cards!
Sadly you never had the opportunity to Moo me, because I never had comments allowed. BUT…I’m going to open them up when I get home later so you can Moo me (for the first time!) and then close them off again…think that will work in allowing a single comment only?
I’ve never really cared about the cards, steam levels, badges, trading and the like. I complete badges if I end up getting one but I’ve never seen the point really. I do go a little out of my way for the sales ones, mainly because I hate the notion of wasting things. Letting 9 dupes of 3 cards sit while I’m missing 2 for 2 full levels just grates at me so I am compelled to attempt to trade to a certain extent. Last sale I tried out the steam trades thing after @gnuffi and @xist(?) spent a week convincing me it was legitimate, which made everything a lot easier.
Yep, the Steam Trade Matcher makes the whole thing a lot less of a headache. Until I started using that thing I essentially crafted no badges at all. I’ve even signed up to that site so that I feature on the available trade list for searches (unless you opt in your profile is not included in searches).
you don’t have to have it public for anything other than the duration of of the trade, and mind you, most are automated accept 1:1 scripts, so it’s not like they be browsing up your “steam skirt” anyway
you could also just set your inventory to “friends only”, that way it remains private, but still allows you to make the trades “manually” as long as you are the one that initiates it/clicks the trade “open window” thingy
-fairly handy way to “game the system” being able to trade yet keeping inventory private if not wanting people to see all the lewd anime (knickers?) emotes/customization items one has stashed
u do cuz the first thing it tells u is to make yr inventory public cuz it needs to be able to scan it in order to see what u need and have spares of and whatever
lol, and nothing lewd in there, just don’t want ppl to compete with me on the market for the exact items i buy/sell cuz 1 person with the means could easily destroy my system if that was their intention; i “compete” with the market of course but no one is intentionally competing “against” me, and it would be too ez to cause the prices of my items to plummet, making them basically worthless, and then bye bye steam wallet forever…
(with whatever caveats/“risks” using a script/bot on the market place incurs)
naa, too much hassle/vs reward for a lazy sod like me lol, so i cba… and in the (very) long run netted me some free profile xp anyway, so still got something out of it, even if still minimal 
