I am merely clueless as to what these are, what they are good for…
Anyone clue me in?
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What cards? Where?
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I see them floating around in the Marketplace:
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they are merely the summer sale event cards “pre -released”. They usually don’t do anything until the event is actually active/launched
for some reason steam enters them ahead of time every single sale/event, no clue why, since most of the times you can’t even assemble the badge before they get “transformed”/activated into their real card part closer around the sale/event start date
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Okay… So I have been hoarding a bunch of card sets since realizing that crafting the badges at the sale yields extra cards, so these are them then?
Any difference I would expect to see to craft my badges now instead of after the sale has started?
Steam Meta Non-Game money wasting is apparently a big hobby of mine.
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depends “how” active the release is
since if you wait until crafting during the sale, you get those bonuses there, like event specific stuff, besides the cards
the cards merely change into their “real” face values/pics, and can then be assembled,
the only possible upside to crafting now, would be market price for event cards might be higher leading up until the event, than after it has started? 
since i’m never about selling the event cards i usually hold off with my spare crafting for during the event, to make sure i get “all”, incase there is any such bonuses, like extra stuff tied into it during the event, you never know
-rarely do you lose out by holding off until the actual event start/card reveal
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Good to know, thank you. 
Being the Steam newbie I am, I am glad I got you watching my back.
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Yeah, once the new cards go live, these will start showing up with the actual artwork and names instead of the placeholder art. You’ll end up getting these as bonuses for crafting the sets during the sale.
In the badges themselves? No. The badges for the games you already own don’t change during the sale. The badge for the “mysterious” cards likely isn’t live yet, so buying them now won’t let you craft it. Quite honestly I doubt the prices for them are going to skyrocket during the sale - usually they tend to stabilize right around where they are now, between 5 and 10 cents per card. Just wait for the sale to start, pick up your freebies for doing whatever tasks they give us, craft your other sets to get the sale cards built up, and then head over to the market and start picking up what you’re short on.
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Thanks @techparadox, that’s helpful to know as well… From now on, I will only be buying cards and crafting badges from the games I truly like (after the sale event)… I was doing this to try to maximize my random booster drops, but I really have wasted enough money amassing silly cards up to this point.
I think it’s the syndrome of joining Steam late and trying to catch up with everyone else…
I am just going to craft badges if I happen to get boosters etc and enough, or just games I really want to do it for…
I think that would be the right reasons… I internally struggle to think about how much money I wasted on Steam for these nonsensical things already…
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Still waiting for the damn box to do something
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Is this usually an RNG box for everyone? Or does everyone get the same thing? I am guessing the box opens next week at the start of the Summer sale?
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wouldn’t it be sooo hilarious, -if it unlocks into whatever "tf2 scrap"variant is for their new Artifact game, but first in the 2019 spring sale ? 
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I’ve never seen a “Mystery Item” for any of Steam sales so this should be good 
(I also have one and am waiting for it to open)
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I usually allow myself $5 per Steam sale towards the crafting of sets. I typically card-farm the games in my listing using an idler (which is why so many of my games show ~4 hours played with zero achievements), and then when the sale rolls around I buy the remaining cards in a set to finish out the badge to level 1. If it’s a game I really enjoyed or I really want the higher tier badge for, I’ll buy more cards for it after the fact.
Which reminds me, I have about six months worth of bundle games I haven’t farmed. Time to fire up the idler again. My apologies to anyone on my friends listing that sees me hopping between games in the next week or so.
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Ditto!
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My IdleMaster kicked the bucket. Anything out there trustworthy to farm multiple games at the same time?
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I’ve never used a idler. Is it really ok to do that? Steam won’t freak out and punish me somehow?
Also really curious about the mystery box… after this much time of anticipation, it had better be something good!
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Use Idle Daddy, super easy, I have an old phone running it 24/7, when I am not playing, recently. (app is on mobile, updated regularly, works great.)
Go to the settings, change the time to multiple-game idle to 0, and you will only be idling one at a time.
Don’t idle multiple games at the same time, and you will be fine. Don’t idle any games that has VAC bans set up…
With Idle Daddy, you can turn it on invisible idling, so nobody sees you idling. I have not had any issues.
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a few good “rule of thumbs” are,
don’t idle while connected to VAC secure servers
don’t idle “too many” at a time
don’t idle games you don’t own or that don’t drop cards
and don’t “spam open/close” idle, especially not combining it with the “too many” games at a time
otherwise idling should be fine, usually only people that have really messed up or abused it got in trouble, “regular joes” are usually in the clear, -with the above in mind
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I think this is a big one…
I have my idler running, one game at a time, it just goes down in alphabetical order of games that I have card drops of, it runs until all of the cards for that game drops, then it moves onto the next game.
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