Steam’s trading cards look like away to make Steam money and get free games but is this really a sound or stable method of getting free stuff or does it actually costs you more money.

I’ll demonstrate the costs off participating in Steam trading cards and if it’s really worth it to you the consumer.

Note although, you don’t have to buy a game to collect cards and craft badges, the figures in this article focuses on purchasing games.

How Trading Cards Work

You buy a game, you unlock cards as you play. The amount of cards you can unlock for free is determine by the total amount of cards a game has (3/5, 5/10) about 50 percent. After you collect the badge, you may continue to collect additional cards to max out badge level. The maximum badge level is 5.

The more cards a game has or the more popular the game is, the cheaper the cards. The cost of a card is between 5 and 20 cents. When a Steam user sells a card, a percentage of the transaction goes to the game maker and Steam, the lowest amount taken is 1 cent so about 2 cents is taken from each transaction.

Steam users collect cards and craft badges when all cards for a game is collected, the badge gives the user experience points to gain user profile levels. The higher a user’s level the higher the chance the user will be rewarded with a free booster pack of 3 cards each week, if you are really lucky you can be rewarded with a foil booster pack, these cards are considered rare and can be solid for 30 cents to 1 dollar per card.

The Cost of Cards

Games cost money, often we can purchase games at sale prices of 90 percent off, but what happens when we factor in trading cards.

Prices in Canadian Dollars, gathered on 2014-11-06.

Game	Retail	Sale	Cards	Card $	Badge $
Anomaly Warzone Earth	9.99	2.50	3/6	0.11	0.33

If we purchase the game at 75 percent off ($2.5) and purchased the cards for the first level badge, the cost of the game is $2.8.

If we collect all 5 badges the costs of cards is estimated to be $2.97. The total cost of the game will now be $5.47.

Some people maybe thinking a $2.97 expense is not much since you still paid below the list price of the game, however, when we remember the reason to collect cards is to gain user profile levels to gain free cards to sell so we can buy games for free, we now have to factor the cost of leveling up.

The Cost of Leveling Up

Our goal is to get free cards to sell so we can buy games for free. But how expensive is this investment.

We want to be at-least level 50 to be almost guaranteed a booster pack every week (not really), due to the amount of Steam users the possibility of winning a random draw is still low. A level 50 user is like having 2 tickets in a draw.

Experience Points

Level 10: +20% increase in your drop rate (1,000 XP)
Level 20: +40% increase in your drop rate (2,000 XP)
Level 30: +60% increase in your drop rate (3,000 XP)
Level 40: +80% increase in your drop rate (4,000 XP)
Level 50: +100% increase in your drop rate (5,000 XP)

Total: 15,000 XP

One badge proves 100 experience points, if we were to reach level 50, we would need 150 badges; about 30 games.

Best case scenario for the cost per game. If we assume that each game is purchased at $2.5 and each game has 6 cards at 11 cents per card, the cost of 150 badges would be $164.10.

Cost of Games: 30 x 2.5 = $75.00
Cost of Badges: 30 x 2.97 = $89.10

Estimated Cost: $164.10

What Steam is to make on Trading Cards

If you were to level up to level 50 based on the figures above, 150 badges times 6 cards per badge is about 900 cards, assuming Steam makes 1 cent per card that’s about $9.00.

Estimated: $9.00

The Time to Collect Badges

Free Cards unlock at random, however, it appears to happen every hour the game is active.

If we were to collect 3 free cards per game, it would take about 3 hours per game, if we did this for 30 games to attempt raising your profile level to level 50 it would take 90 hours then factor in buying the additional cards.

Profiting from Cards

Assuming the buying price is 11 cents per card then 1 cent goes to Steam and 1 cent to the game maker which means the seller receives 9 cents.

Booster Card Market Table

The answer to the question “Can I buy booster packs for cheap?”. The answer is yes and no, it depends on the market, however, if you plan to resell the cards there is no money to gain. If you plan to buy booster packs instead of individual cards that you need, this is a bad idea as boosters are random and often the same.

This table demonstrates the costs of buying booster packs and reselling the cards. Numbers gathered 2014-07-21.

Game	Card Price	Booster	Booster Card	Profit
Anomaly Warzone Earth	0.11	0.23	0.0767	+0.03
Bastion	0.21	0.54	0.1800	+0.03
Beat Hazard	0.12	0.28	0.0933	+0.03
Blackwell Convergence	0.09	0.36	0.1200	-0.03
Defense Grid	0.09	0.27	0.0900	0.00
Endless Space	0.12	0.37	0.1233	0.00
McPixel	0.07	0.24	0.0800	-0.01
Post Apocalyptic Mayhem	0.10	0.29	0.0967	0.00
Revenge of the Titans	0.15	0.43	0.1433	+0.01
Rocksmith 2014	0.19	0.63	0.2100	-0.02
Shadowgrounds	0.11	0.29	0.0967	+0.01
Sparkle 2 Evo	0.14	0.40	0.1333	+0.01
SPAZ	0.12	0.29	0.0967	+0.02
Super Meat Boy	0.16	0.47	0.1567	0.00
Super Sanctum TD	0.15	0.37	0.1233	+0.03
Terraria	0.08	0.29	0.0967	-0.02
To the Moon	0.19	0.50	0.1667	+0.02
Tropico 4	0.09	0.25	0.0833	+0.01
Wanderlust	0.15	0.30	0.1000	+0.05
Wizorb	0.14	0.37	0.1233	+0.02

*Card Price – The average card price based on a sample of cards
*Booster – The lowest average market price of a booster pack
*Booster Card – The estimated price per card from the booster pack
*Profit – The price difference between the card price and the booster card

Factor in the transaction fees, the game maker and Steam both take a penny, a two cent lost means there is no profit to be made by buying booster packs and reselling the cards.

How Many Cards to Sell

Assuming the buyer pays 11 cents per card and 2 cents are lost then the seller makes 9 cents per card.

At about 9 cents we would have to sell about 28 cards to make about 2.50 dollars.

If 28 cards make $2.5 then it would take about 10 weeks of free booster packs.

Conclusion

Not practical, it is very possible to invest a few dollars this and there to get free stuff, however, due to the large number of Steam users and those with high level profiles ranging the 300rds, you will have to raise you own profile level to at-least 100 to have a better chance at winning free booster packs, your real hope to make some big money is if you’re really lucky to receive foil booster packs which can be worth up to 1 dollar per card.

It’s just not practical to rely on selling cards in the Steam market to buy games for free. A $2.5 game could take 10 weeks of free booster packs at a profit of 9 cents per card, although, the market prices change all the time, I used a safe number to measure the possibility and the price is different for every card so it could take 5 weeks or it could take 16 weeks.

The investment costs of buying cards could be more than the cost of the game. In the end you’re probably better off not participating in trading cards. At the cost of leveling your user profile to level 50, you could double your game library instead.

 

 

 

Be the first to write a comment.

---