Auction House Speculators

[<Pion>]

I never realize the extent to which prices in the AH were driven up by speculators and not necessarily managers who no longer wanted a player or were fed up with a player.

First let me say that I've never before been in a game where players are put up for auction like this, so it's been a bit of a learning curve. Last night was the first time I tracked a player being re-sold multiple times by owners with (most likely) no intent on playing him. In this example, a player caught my eye with a Buy Now price or 15K. I looked at other players first to make sure I wanted him and that something else wasn't more attractive. By the time I got back to him (5 minutes later), the time remaining on the player had changed from under 10 hours to 48 hours and the BIN price was 18K instead of 15K. My first thought was that it was a different version of the same player, but looking at purchase history, the highest price paid (which was zero the first time I looked) now matched the previous BIN of 15K. This morning, the same player now has a BIN of 30K with time remaining of less than 12 hours and the avg purchase price is the same as the two BINs I saw before divided by two. So it definitely looks like the same player was bought and re-sold twice with the BIN going from 15K to 18K to 30K.

The people who do this are certainly within their rights and not violating any rules (that I know of), so not making a judgement here. Only saying that I didn't realize how much speculating there could be going on like it was some kind of stock or gold market. And even though they aren't people, I felt a twinge of sadness for the player being bounced around and not getting a chance to play (yet), though hopefully a price will be settled on some day and someone will give him some PT.

[Whoofe]

I refuse to massively overpay, after a few harsh lessons from the beta

there are a few players I want on the AH, but I keep seeing them get snapped up at higher and higher prices.

if I suffer short term by not having those players, so be it, my PPs will be building up where I can get a better value later on

I know at some point the market will crash on these guys, and ppl will want to unload them because they 10 copies of the same player

or maybe i'll just get them from a pack opening some day

[Maddox]

The market should stabilize soon as everyone willing to overpay for their most wanted cards will have them. There are a lot of expensive cards going with no bids already.

It is not my thing but there are players who enjoy trying to play the market to make a profit as much as they enjoy the actual game

What I never want to see happen though is for this to become like MLB: The Show, where flipping cards on the market is almost a requirement if you are not a top tier player and are not willing to pony up real money. You earn very little in that game for actually playing the game.

[Orcin]

This is week 1 of league play. There's no rush to get players. In 4-5 weeks, the speculators will get tired of their all-diamond rosters and go to another game. Then the prices on desirable cards will normalize and the real players can have months of fun.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by Orcin

This is week 1 of league play. There's no rush to get players. In 4-5 weeks, the speculators will get tired of their all-diamond rosters and go to another game. Then the prices on desirable cards will normalize and the real players can have months of fun.

Unfortunately, they'll all still be "playing" even when not logging in. But that's a different topic. I started two other teams and opened their packs and set the lineups just to try to collect PP for them. I'm not going to check them for 3 months to see what happens.

[Zorro]

Originally Posted by Orcin

This is week 1 of league play. There's no rush to get players. In 4-5 weeks, the speculators will get tired of their all-diamond rosters and go to another game. Then the prices on desirable cards will normalize and the real players can have months of fun.

Orcin is right. In fact I see it happening to a extent right now. Not players leaving but I do notice a lot of Gold cards coming way down. When we first started over again after the beta the prices for even gold cards were way up there. Now a lot of them are way down or affordable to all.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by Zorro

Orcin is right. In fact I see it happening to a extent right now. Not players leaving but I do notice a lot of Gold cards coming way down. When we first started over again after the beta the prices for even gold cards were way up there. Now a lot of them are way down or affordable to all.

I just bought a Harper for 1600.

[stl jason]

Originally Posted by Zorro

Orcin is right. In fact I see it happening to a extent right now. Not players leaving but I do notice a lot of Gold cards coming way down. When we first started over again after the beta the prices for even gold cards were way up there. Now a lot of them are way down or affordable to all.

yeah, just have to be patient and watch for the good deals... on one of my teams, I sold my gold card from the starter pack and turned him into 3 gold starters from the proceeds (and a quality silver SS to boot)

[<Pion>]

Yes, I do expect them to come down which is why for the most part I've put off bigger purchases. But I was also surprised during the Beta that certain players (mostly Perfect or historical diamond) never really came down much at all. Maybe it wasn't enough time elapsed. Plus in beta I think players (at least I was) were paying more for a player they wanted to try out than they would had their points not been getting reset (might as well used them since you'll lose them). Don't think I'll ever get that Koufax for my all Dodger team

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by <Pion>

I never realize the extent to which prices in the AH were driven up by speculators and not necessarily managers who no longer wanted a player or were fed up with a player.

First let me say that I've never before been in a game where players are put up for auction like this, so it's been a bit of a learning curve. Last night was the first time I tracked a player being re-sold multiple times by owners with (most likely) no intent on playing him. In this example, a player caught my eye with a Buy Now price or 15K. I looked at other players first to make sure I wanted him and that something else wasn't more attractive. By the time I got back to him (5 minutes later), the time remaining on the player had changed from under 10 hours to 48 hours and the BIN price was 18K instead of 15K. My first thought was that it was a different version of the same player, but looking at purchase history, the highest price paid (which was zero the first time I looked) now matched the previous BIN of 15K. This morning, the same player now has a BIN of 30K with time remaining of less than 12 hours and the avg purchase price is the same as the two BINs I saw before divided by two. So it definitely looks like the same player was bought and re-sold twice with the BIN going from 15K to 18K to 30K.

The people who do this are certainly within their rights and not violating any rules (that I know of), so not making a judgement here. Only saying that I didn't realize how much speculating there could be going on like it was some kind of stock or gold market. And even though they aren't people, I felt a twinge of sadness for the player being bounced around and not getting a chance to play (yet), though hopefully a price will be settled on some day and someone will give him some PT.

You are judging btw. But nevertheless, what you are describing is in no way indicating that the same card is being sold multiple times. The market prices given for player cards are for all iterations of this card pooled together, not that one particular card.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by Westheim

You are judging btw. But nevertheless, what you are describing is in no way indicating that the same card is being sold multiple times. The market prices given for player cards are for all iterations of this card pooled together, not that one particular card.

Sometimes it may be a case of "hey, I just saw this card I have sell for 15k. I wonder if my copy could fetch a bit more?"

If it is the same player being bought and resold, then that's just a lesson for those auctioning players to set a better Buy Now price

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by Westheim

You are judging btw. But nevertheless, what you are describing is in no way indicating that the same card is being sold multiple times. The market prices given for player cards are for all iterations of this card pooled together, not that one particular card.

Judging that it is the same card? Yes, but not judging if speculating is a bad thing which is why I said I wasn't judging (in reference to good/bad). Could be different, but it was the timing of the whole thing. A player I've only seen once since the beta started disappears and reappears in a 5 minute time span? Odds are good it was the same. The one in the morning also appears to be the same because a) the 48 hour time limit player was gone (may have been a BIN by someone else) and b) the same rare player is back up again with a new time limit. There are other explanations than speculating by multiple buyers... the owner may have had seller's remorse and pulled him back and put him back up with different amounts. But the disparity in time remaining chosen made it appear to be someone else, but there are no certainties either way. Just leaning towards what I thought to be the most likely inference based on the evidence. There may be other possibilities I did not consider...

[Janks]

Prices are definitely coming down. I sold my Jimmy Rollins for a BIN of 5,000 because I hadn't seen one in the AH. Now there are two with a BIN of 1,750.

I know I overpaid for a few cards that I wanted or needed. Now I'm being picky and looking at the auction stats. When I see a player with a starting bid higher than the highest bid price, I'll just wait for it to come down.

[Orcin]

There is no doubt that there are speculators playing the market. I suspect they play a certain card or cards that are in demand. They may be a group of people (roommates for example) buying and selling the same cards among themselves to drive the average price up before they dump their inventory at a profit and move on to another card.

[One Post Wonder]

I'll play the heel here. I do it. That's the primary reason I log on TBH, because everything else about the game is pretty static and I'd have no reason to log on more than once every 2 or 3 days otherwise.

It's a perfectly fine way to earn income if you're not wanting to pay real money, count on the somewhat random achievement payouts, or take your chances opening packs where you might get pretty much anything (or nothing). Since we can't trade directly, playing the AH is the most 'General Manager' thing about PT IMO.

It's only really worth the time for the first couple of weeks of play, when people buy pp, want a team quick, and they're willing to pay way more than a card is worth.

Speculating exists because there is such a big difference between poor teams and rich teams at the beginning, so there's huge variations between what people expect for a card and what people will pay.

I've thought about suggesting that, like the beta, the ability to buy pp should turn on only after the first week, so that this gap would not be so big. But I can just imagine how such a thread would end up, so I'll leave such suggestions to someone else.

At this point, the profit margins are getting too small to make speculating worthwhile unless you're willing to spend countless hours on it. It's strictly an early game strategy.

[One Post Wonder]

Originally Posted by Orcin

There is no doubt that there are speculators playing the market. I suspect they play a certain card or cards that are in demand. They may be a group of people (roommates for example) buying and selling the same cards among themselves to drive the average price up before they dump their inventory at a profit and move on to another card.

You couldn't do that, because unlike the beta cards are going for what they're actually worth now instead of for a price based on their OVR value.

It doesn't matter if I buy every Kris Bryant and set an artificial price of 10,000 pp for him. No-one is going to pay 10,000 pp for Kris Bryant. I believe the AH prices are 99% genuine unless someone is funneling.

Wait... did you just say that roommates, friends, and family members might co-operate and cheat? Are you questioning people's integrity, sir?

[Weaseltail]

If things work out like the beta -- and so far they are -- prices of live cards will ultimately head to their auto-sell price. You can already get most low-gold ones for 1,000 to 1,200 in the AH. Even the good high gold cards (live, not historical) are generally going for 2,000 -2,500 and will keep dropping (although probably never to the auto-buy price).

Low diamond 3B are already near the auto-buy price (this is where it started in beta as well, since there are a lot of lousy, low-diamond 3B). SP will be next (some are now trading for 5,000).

The historical cards won't drop like this and will probably always garner a premium. Beta didn't last long enough to know what happens down the road, though.

What's really missing in the AH right now are mid-tier silver cards. Not sure why, but it's really hard to find a decent silver card at a reasonable price. That didn't really happen in the beta, so who knows.

[Weaseltail]

Originally Posted by One Post Wonder

At this point, the profit margins are getting too small to make speculating worthwhile unless you're willing to spend countless hours on it. It's strictly an early game strategy.

While I generally agree, you can still make decent PP scalping and speculating in the AH. I've been able to make around 1,200 PP today doing this, but you do have to be able to monitor the AH (which isn't an option unless you're already stuck at a computer). Given how lousy the in-game PP awards are -- at least for me -- it's still a good way to save up for cards you want if you aren't buying PP.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by One Post Wonder

I'll play the heel here.

Nobody seems to be arguing that this is an evil or a bad thing to do. Right?

Or am I really misreading some posts incorrectly?

[One Post Wonder]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

Nobody seems to be arguing that this is an evil or a bad thing to do.

You're right. But no-one had come out and said that they do it. It was looking a bit like those old 'whale' threads where people would talk about other people buying pp, but no-one would admit to buying it themselves.

I should have used the term 'different POV', but 'heel' sounds so much more... I don't know... gangsta?