Hypothetical: F2P Windfall of $150K PP. What do you do with it?
 

You just pull a big card worth $150K PP (net) from a pack. You sell it without hesitation (perhaps a mistake but it's done) and are sitting on those PP, wondering what to do with it to best improve your (middle-of-the-pack Gold level) team.

So what do YOU do with it? Buy a stud like Ruth who often goes under $150K PP and maybe have a little left over? Spread it out across 3-5 great but not necessarily ultimate-tier players? Try to complete a bunch of the best missions? Spend it all on packs hoping for another great find? Some combination of the above?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Personally, I take at least a good chunk of that money and buy a player who I like who I usually wouldn't be able to have. So like, Ruth, Maddux, Pedro, Johnson, etc.. pick your favorite player, and enjoy having them around.

With the rest, depends what kind of player you are. I love ripping packs, so I'd probably rip a bunch and hope to grab another lucky break. But if you're close on a few missions, it can definitely be worth it to finish them off too.

And with the top player above, even if you can't get the to top version of them, most have a very playable version that's cheaper. So while perfect Ruth might be 120-150, you can get the 94 Ruth for like 50-60. Perfect Pedro is also huge, but the 97oa version comes in at a much better rate. I've been lucky to have a couple windfall draws, and with one grabbed Ruth, the other opted for a Maddux. Neither is the top version of their card, but still way better than who I was running before.

Not sure who you sold, but one player doesn’t make a team. Depending on how you are building your team ( hitting,defense, speed or pitching) I would get 4 to 5 players you need to fill certain weaknesses.


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Agreed, that's why you sell the one card to improve your team at multiple spots.

Personally, I think I'd get 2-3 upgrade players for $50-60K PP or so (total) immediately, and hang onto $90-100K PP to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. This might include certain missions that net significant positive PPs or usable players you wouldn't be able to afford otherwise.

do the braves or white sox collections

buy live trout if you dont have him. best value card in the game

I would wake up from my dream and realize it was actually just another Locke St. John that I pulled.



If I did have that kind of PP I would probably try to get one top position player and pitcher and save a fair amount for when some opportunity comes along like another player at a great value or missions that I can get some diamond packs or player to make more PP.

I had the exact same situation with my Southpaws at the beginning of the summer. At the time, they were languishing in Gold while my other two FTP teams were both in Perfect. I drew 99 Willie Mays in a challenge card pack, sold him for 158k (netting 142k) and went to work upgrading my team. I found some good deals on Vaughan (97) to solidify my infield, and Seymour in my OF. I also upgraded the low perfect cards I had in my rotation to find good deals in starting pitching, getting Newhouser (97) and Sabathia (94).

Yeah, Mays (99) would have been a great center fielder, but making my upgrades allowed my team, who went 77-85 in Gold the year before getting the windfall, to go 105-57 in 2031, then 109-53 in Diamond in 2032, 109-53 again in 2033 in Diamond, winning the Diamond Series.

That team, in Perfect, has been in nine playoffs in nine years.

Without crunching the numbers I would estimate that the marginal return on PP cost tanks after the 40-50k level, so if you're min-maxing I'd go with 3-5 great players over one elite.

But in all honesty I'd probably just spend all of it trying to complete that perfect John Smoltz mission.

I agree with this assessment for the most part. This seems to be especially true for position players that do not have elite level defense. This community will make sure you pay for elite defense and starters.

I've never had the windfall of 150k, but I did get about 95k worth of value out of 30k worth of packs. I could have kept the cards (3 of them being worth a total of 85k) but I took the money and ran. Used it to upgrade my rotation bringing in 96 Clemens, 96 Saberhagen and then completing a few missions. Have completed SE Lefty Gomez (for about 14k) nearly complete with a couple others. Those upgrades have been massive for my team.

I'd say I'd do a similar thing if I got a windfall of 150k. The amount of upgrades that could produce would be more than any 1 player could do to my team. As the saying goes, you're only as strong as your weakest link. I try to upgrade across the board when I can, and then splurge on a couple pitchers like Clemens and Saberhagen. Saberhagen coincidently brought back over 5k PP this season and led the league with a 2.26 ERA and 19 wins.

I just had this happen. Pulled a 100 George Brett, Sold it for 200K, Bought a top tier starter, Christy Mathewson for 80K. Upgraded my Eckersley from the 89 to the 99 for about 50k. Got within 1 card of completing a couple collections which will net 2 cards that I can sell for about 22K each. Sitting on 65K, maybe going to add some IF pop.

So what did you get?

I had it happen twice on the same team. My Tahiti drew a Ozzie Smith 90 which at the time was selling for 200+. Sold it for 250, which I bought Ruth 99 and a few other cheaper diamonds, then I bought 120 packs. The results were not great. I should have kept the points and bought better players. I eventually sold that Ruth for 150 when the missions hit though.

About two weeks later, I draw another Ozzie Smith. The market has cooled on him at this point and it takes me about a week to sell him for 150. This time I spent maybe 10-20k before using the rest on packs which were even worse than the first time.

I don't really regret it, because I don't spend real money and I think it's more fun opening packs and getting a great card than it is winning. And you might get a lot more luck than me with packs. I drew almost 250 packs and I only got a few historical diamonds and one live perfect.

You are not sure of selling any card so play them for a season (1 week). They don't lock to your team. If they don't do what you want, sell. You may find you like the card more than the PP.:D

If you can get Ruth, do that. Can't go wrong with the best player ever.

I would buy a lot of standard packs.

I got exactly that such windfall when I realized that my 91 OVR Hank Aaron was worth a lot. He sold for... I think 175k and I netted 158k for the transaction. And at the time my team had a pretty small PP balance - around 10k. So that was my starting point.

I was initially going to buy two really high-end players I have desired for a while. But then I looked at the collections and realized that with PP you can make a lot more PP by completing missions. So here's what I have done so far:

- Completed the Charlie O A's mission: cost 85k. Sold Vida Blue for 175.5k
- Competed the St Louis Brown's mission: cost 24.7k, Sold Sisler for 45k
- Completed the Chicago White Sox collection: cost 170k. Still trying to sell the 99 Appling and the 100 Walsh but unless their prices crater I will make approximately 280k profit.

All done over the course of about 4 weeks, so it takes time and patience.

I mostly saved my PP for the missions so I would be sure to have enough to complete them. But my team also earned around 44k over the past 4 weeks so that contributed to my working capital.

I've also gotten at least 3 players I'm using from completing those missions: the 94 OVR Rollie Fingers, the 92 OVR Gary Peters and the 91(?) OVR Dick Allen. The team that's doing this is a theme team so I can't use players unless they're between 1959 and 1987, so that limited the utility of many of the players collected in the missions.

- Purchased 100 OVR Dwight Gooden (70k)
- Purchased 97 OVR Wade Boggs (33k)
- Purchased 87 OVR Rod Carew (11.5k)
- Purchased 92 OVR Tim McCarver (33.5k)
- Purchased 92 OVR Cisco Carlos (29k) (I did not have the PP to purchase him when I was completing the mission he's in!)

Team balance is around 11k now, so after I sell the two cards I have up on the AH I will have between 350-400k. Which I will spend on some pitchers and at least two to three position player upgrades. So starting with approximately 170k (windfall+prior balance) I have ended up with around 520k in cards and PP.

So my conclusion is: if you have a lot of PP, completing missions is the way to go.

I think everyone is starting to realize that and as a result missions are getting much more difficult to complete.

I was browsing yesterday and the Mariners had just a single historical silver on the auction house. The Browns have none. The bottleneck diamonds (91 Aaron, 90 Cordero, any white sox) are nigh impossible to find close to the normal selling price. You will spend most of your PP getting 95% of the way there then sit there for weeks waiting for that last piece to show up.

I've been one card away from the Royals missions since about a week after they launched. Now sitting 2 cards away from the White Sox missions - couldn't pull the trigger on spending 50k+ for one of the diamonds, hopefully next time he's up on the block he comes cheaper.

It was Ted Lyons, wasn't it?

More and more people *do* see the value of the collection cards, but I still think patience can serve you well if you're trying to be frugal. At one point though you just gotta bite the bullet.

I needed Lyons or Appling as the last card for the White Sox mission for a while (i guess Rigney too but I never saw one). Refused to bid on the Lyons that was priced at 49999 with a buyout of 69999, but someone did buy it. Got involved in the Lyons that started really low (10k I think) with no buyout - I ended up bidding just over 50k for that but did not win. Then less than an hour later someone listed a Lyons for 30k with a buyout of 40k and I snatched it up as fast as I could. So there's definitely some luck involved in getting those chase cards.