Forever Buying Splinterlands Cards

Is the bottom in on cards? I have the most confidence I've had in two years that it is. And I've been buying again. And card prices have been moving. But barely. Let's talk about where I think cards are going, what I'm buying, and why any of this matters.

Cards Are Infinitely Inflationary (Until They Aren't)

The cards are going to keep coming and we know that. So why have I continued to buy this infinitely inflationary asset? Because although there was no proof, I always felt like eventually the team would figure out that they needed to change the system and bring cards under control.

In the last few months under Aggy, I stopped buying because it was becoming clear that I was wrong. Aggy does not understand scarcity but I could see that Matt was finally starting to get it and my hope was that one day, he'd convince Aggy. Fast forward to today 😍 with CEO Matt.

The Flywheel Is as Much About Cards as It Is About DEC

Matt gets it. The Rebellion is the anti CL release. But it's not enough to just put the CL catastrophe in the past, it needs to be fixed. Matt has expressed that he understands that. The burn event is an acknowledgment of that and he's also said many times now that he doesn't see the flywheel working until all the excess assets, including card oversupply, is burned out of the system.

The Community Is Finally Coming Around

Just as the DAO starts gaining power, much of the community is getting on board with burning these cards. It looks like theres a good chance for instance that we might finally burn the 500k packs from the failed NFTy experiment. When asked if players wanted to burn them or send them to the DAO, the informal Discord DAO poll overwhelmingly went in favor of burning them.

And When I put up the proposal to burn CL cards for RW packs, I had a lot of support. Had the company not imploded while that was being voted on, it might have passed. But in talking to people about that, I found my card grave yard idea was gaining traction. I still need to write a post detailing my exact vision for the card grave yard. This could potentially burn 10s of millions of cards over time. Mainly all Chaos Legion and earlier.

Oh, and land will make a dent at some point. And it's highly unlikely we'll ever see cards from Rebellion and later end up on land due to halving the production power.

So at some point in 2024, I expect to see multiple burning events, reward cards remaining soul bound, potentially the new miniset as a card burner, and various other creative ways to burn cards. We might even see ghost cards further marginalized. This could all be enough to make cards a deflationary asset.

Now if we could just solve the problem of cards losing value as they are relegated to wild. And land is not going to be enough. We really need to rework how modern/wild work to give older cards playing value instead of just staking value.

So, I've Been Buying Again

After the latest bloodbath that came after the company shakeup and the announcement of Rebellion, the market seemed to have bottomed out recently. My account that was once worth almost $300k, and then stagnated around $35k for a while, hit a new low of $22k about a month ago. With Matt in charge, the crypto economy picking up, and the fact that the Rebellion bloodbath was slowing, I dipped another toe in. Over the last 30 days I've spent another $1000 on cards and my account has increased from $22k to $26k according to Peakmonsters.

So What Have I Been Buying?

A little of everything except for Rebellion packs. I picked up and opened about 400 Chaos Legion packs between 69 and 85 cents each. I got a GFL in my first batch so I'm up a bit on those.

But I've also just been buying an assortment of cards from alphas to CL cards. Some I bought for their value on land, some I bought because I wanted to play with them, and some I bought because they are just too cheap and might rent well again soon.

In particular I've been buying Alpha Epic cards for under $5 each. In the lat bull run I was buying those at around $20-25 each and they got up to close to $100. I tend to buy them when they drop to around $5 now just because there aren't that many of them.

I've also been buying beta common and epic cards in gold and regular foils. I bought everything on the market for beta common GF under $4. That's floor has held for a few days now with some cards I bought at $3 now up to $8 or $9. I also bought all common regular foil betas under .15 cents. Also holding well.

I picked up a ton of cheap CL border legendary cards about 65 cents. The floor on those is now bouncing around .90 to $1.

I maxed out a bunch of key untamed cards I didn't have like sandworm. Some cards I've wanted for years but were hundreds of dollars recently hit the market for under $30.

And finally, I bought a ton of Chaos Legion cards or all rarities. I picked up several GFLs for $32 (now $45). I bought duplicates of many maxed legendaries I had and then tons of other maxed cards that were 5x the price just a couple months ago. Maxed rare cards like cursed windeku hitting the market for $8 and others as low as $4, I had to grab a bunch for potential rental value when the oversupply (hopefully) gets put on land. But even if they dont, these are firesale prices with many key cards just above burn value. I'll hold them as land comes and the burn events and we'll see if they can come back stronger. Its hard for them to get much lower unless the project goes to zero at this point anyway.

I'll leave you with some screenshots of recent buys.