Steam Holiday Auction

[Red Storm]

If you are selling cards for gems, you are doing it wrong. Imo, if you are bidding on games you are doing it wrong also.

Cards are only worth a paltry sum of gems (around 5), while even the most common emoticon is worth 80 gems.

So if you sell that card you would have gotten 5 gems for, for even the lowest amount of all cards ($.06), you could buy three emoticons ($.02 - if any left) and turn those into 240+ gems.

Doing it right - sell three cards, buy cheap emoticons and backgrounds and turn them into gems, buy booster packs for gems (should have 600-750) then sell the booster for $.50. Now buy 25 emoticons, turn into gems...repeat.

Got bored doing this, but tripled my booster pack amount for the upcoming winter sale. Since you get items/emoticons/etc for crafting badges and an extra sale card, I'll open all my boosters once the sale starts and make badges, selling the winter sale cards for $.50 early on before they drop to $.10 in a few days like they always do.

That sounds like way too much effort for so little in return. I'd rather just pay ~$5 for a game on sale and be done with it. Time is money.

 

[Nebor]

That sounds like way too much effort for so little in return. I'd rather just pay ~$5 for a game on sale and be done with it. Time is money.

Yeah it sounds like people are trading a bunch of time messing with cards and gems in exchange for a little money.

 

[rivethead]

Yeah it sounds like people are trading a bunch of time messing with cards and gems in exchange for a little money.

There has always been an quasi-arbitrage opportunity in the Steam Markets. In the early days of the market, it was very easy to make money with very little effort involved because people had no idea what cards were or their worth.

Times are much different now as the Steam Market has matured. Too much effort required now, IMHO.

 

[Nebor]

There has always been an quasi-arbitrage opportunity in the Steam Markets. In the early days of the market, it was very easy to make money with very little effort involved because people had no idea what cards were or their worth.

Times are much different now as the Steam Market has matured. Too much effort required now, IMHO.

I still have no idea what cards are or what they're worth.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I dont' get too involved, I just sell what I get. I've made probably $30 off cards. Makes for cheap/free games.

 

[Subyman]

I've stopped giving a crap about Steam's meta-games they do every time there's a major sale. The holiday auction is just another way of sucking money out of you. Nobody wins, except for Valve.



15-year-olds who can't spend real money because they can't borrow their mom's credit card.

Haha, yup. Sitting around for 8 hours to collect gems so you can save $20 on an old game? No thanks. They should auction off a permanent discount modifier for your account. I'd like to see the hacks rolling in trying to win that.

 

[Subyman]

Yeah it sounds like people are trading a bunch of time messing with cards and gems in exchange for a little money.

All the while Valve takes a cut of every transaction. They are making a killing.

 

[Feneant2]

ah... I hope you guys didn't spent so much time complaining that you forgot to bid! I won the new King's Bounty game (Dark Side) for about 7300 gems! I'm only steam level 37 so not competing against the big guns but I figured some of the 'smaller' known games could go on the cheaper side and turns out I was right

 

[StrangerGuy]

I've stopped giving a crap about Steam's meta-games they do every time there's a major sale. The holiday auction is just another way of sucking money out of you. Nobody wins, except for Valve.



15-year-olds who can't spend real money because they can't borrow their mom's credit card.

This, preorder baiting and Star Citizen proves how irrational some people can get when it comes to spending money on games. Valve fully knows this.

 

[Nebor]

ah... I hope you guys didn't spent so much time complaining that you forgot to bid! I won the new King's Bounty game (Dark Side) for about 7300 gems! I'm only steam level 37 so not competing against the big guns but I figured some of the 'smaller' known games could go on the cheaper side and turns out I was right

I have been mining in Skyrim for a few days now. I have a pretty good assortment of amethysts, garnets and rubies. How do I trade them for games on Steam?