As expected Huddle has gone pretty quiet. The quiet before the storm that is the final wild week of the football season, SUPER BOWL WEEK!
All Marathons are now complete but to keep us occupied Topps has dropped a last mini marathon comprised of Legends entries of 7 different Marathon One-Offs for an as yet unrevealed signature award. It remains to be seen where this award will come in as many points players are holding onto every coin they can scrape together for the inevitable Super Bowl GO Boosts. They also dropped another series of Allen and Ginter and the Original series is now into it’s 5th drop. After the first two I dropped out, so expensive and the trading on them, especially the sigs is almost non-existent beyond the first day. Allen and Ginter offered a free pack to all fans that was plagued with problems, many were unable to claim it and those that were found the black variant freebie that was supposed to be 1:4 were actually 1:1 resulting in a pretty flat response overall. I’ve managed to claw my way into #35 in the Postseason contests which is not bad for a first year contest player! The top spot is being VERY hotly contested with only 100k separating 1st and 2nd place. The well known Bishop Eli is currently in second but I’d expect them to be pulling out ALL the stops for the big game in hopes of taking the crown and the best awards. This years Playoff challenge features PHYSICAL prize packages including autographed Helmets and crazy stuff like that so the heat is on! Guys like me will get trinkets (hopefully!) but these top players are going for some pretty valuable stuff! Over in Slam another Pay Per View event approaches and as usual they have rolled out a HUGE set with all the trimmings. Lots of dual sigs etc.. They seem to be trading hotly. Star Wars has been a hot mess as usual. After infuriating fans over the last three weeks with non marathon variants in lieu of actual new card drops they dropped all three of the remaining Evolution marathon cards in one drop at the usual odds for ALL THREE of the missing cards to finish out the set. So if you pulled one you got them all. Kind of stupid to have gotten so far behind but an okay way to resolve it. Topps seems to be trying to finally take on the mountain of unresolved awards but then made a bit of a stumble on a few newer sets. Shadow Portraits, Location Stats, and Artistic Atmospheres - Landscapes all had shelf awards appear prematurely, which caused the corresponding checklists to disappear. Well guess what happened when the award was actually issued a week later? If you guessed the people who already had shelf awards didn’t get their awards you win a cupie doll! It does seem they are moving quickly to issue the wave three and overall marathon awards with Droids and Prime already slated and the awards already showing in all cards. The overall for Prime is pretty cool! Skate has lost it’s damn mind. They issue nice sets like Finest with ten cards to track down, relatively easy odds and guaranteed packs then screw it up by making the cards untradeable till after the award. So stupid. Between that and the omnipresent pay wall fans of this new app are pretty grumbly. What once was the gold standard for Crosstrade value has really fallen off. The free All Star cards make for nice crosstrade fodder as it’s a big set and you can usually get a low level insert on one of the other apps for them. Walking Dead seems to be rebuilding slightly after also taking a big plunge in popularity after the high of the season premiere wore off and the show returned to its usual infuriating slog. With Marathons now ended in SWCT I am cutting WAY back. I’ve decided to challenge myself and not pull anything after this wave of Mystery cards drop. Not buying bundles, not opening any packs not starting any new sets. Just open the app, collect my credits and shut it down for 40 days. Why 40 days? 40 days saved credits is north of 1 million credits saved. It’s actually a little over that due to weekly bonus but I feel like it’s something I have to try. Continuing to spend money in an app that treats it’s users this poorly is rewarding bad behavior. They might not deserve my few sheckles in 40 days either but who knows? If a bunch of people finally said “Enough” it might get their attention. There is no better time to try with the stretch to the next movie waaaaay down the road. I have no illusions that this is going to start some big movement. I’m doing it for me. There is only one person in the world whose mind I can truly change. That person is me!
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In Huddle the final Playoff games will be played this Sunday and we’ll finally know who will face off in the Super Bowl. For many fans their season is now over and in Huddle true fans really sign out for the season at that point if their team is still not in the race. It’s like if most of the audience got up and left the theater as soon as Dak Ralter dies in Empire Strikes Back. Kinda weird.
Many sets are either wrapping up or staggering along. Topps has dropped a number of bundles and even credit packs to try and blow out some of the unsold inserts from the season and there have been exciting pulls of rare cards for those willing to take a shot. Marathons final week is happening right now and Saturday’s Signature drop will be the last Marathon drop of 20 weeks and then we wait, hopefully not too long to see what it was all for. Wave 3 awards were solid so one would hope that wave 4 awards and more importantly, Overall awards are REALLY nice. Gypsy Queen waves 1 and 2 will come out today in the form of Jumbo Patch cards. Trading on this set is far from frenzied as most who were going to complete did so weeks ago. Original continues into now it’s 4th wave of 5 classic cards to collect and despite the small size of the set these are very hard to complete and the award counts have reflected that. The Gold frame sig awards have been 1-2 cc and the Sig awards have been 16-20 cc range. Interest definitely took a jump when folks saw the Award count for the first wave and the following Ben Rothlisberger Award took a nice hop but that wave was followed by another then another leaving most fans too exhausted (in coins if not will) to continue. Trading for them is always a slog as there seems to be one classic player many homers siphon out of the tank for those hoping to complete for award. It’s been rough and I’m sure many are hoping the set is now complete. Topps’ annual arms race has reached its crescendo as the Playoff Boost cards have continued to filter out for those looking for advantage in contests. One would expect Game Only boosts with BIG point multipliers for the Sunday Games then we head into the final push towards the Super Bowl where the multipliers go straight to plaid. Should be a wild weekend with the Packers/Falcons Game expected to be really exciting after Aaron Rodgers’ last minute heroics to take down the Cowboys broke a million hearts. And many are counting out the Steelers who will take on the Patriots on their home field. They probably shouldn’t as nobody saw the outcome of the Packers/Cowboys game. These teams are all the best of the best and one play can change it all. Ask Aaron Rodgers. This week saw my final farewell to a journey I took into the weird side of Kitten Cards starting roughly a year ago. Many folks I’m sure will remember me as the “Kitten Card guy”, or “that idiot who gave me good cards for a bunch of commons in Kitten Cards” or “that a-hole who ate all the deviled eggs”. Or just “Fart guy”.
To me the most fascinating thing about the "game" of card trading is various psychologies inherent in the dance that is negotiation between actual human beings over a digital object of desire.
Understanding what drives the other person across the table from you has always been the key and trying to figure out that other player is in my book what makes these games so fun. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it can be maddening. It all starts with the ad. You learn some things in the best cases that can speed you along to your destination. “Have X for trade-Looking for Y.” These are the easiest trades to make and for most folks they are the bread and butter type of trades they look for and tend to ignore the other less tangible ads. Most real players that are working it hard to make every lucky pull worth even more are playing a game that hinges on uncertainly. You’ve seen it on hot drops, a flat statement that only tells you one side of the story and leaves it to you to fill in the blanks on your side. “Trading this” is all it takes to send you over to send an offer that in many cases crashes on the stony cliffs of the other’s sometimes unrealistic hopes. Now obviously the vague “Trading this….” Is a come on and in most cases it’s laid in hopes of landing a nice overpay, especially in the first hour frenzy of a drop. So it’s up to you really. If you got lucky over the weekend and landed two of the new WV in 3 packs should you get super precious about the perceived value of it based on odds really? Why not spend your luck and slap it down for what is still basically beating the odds on a 1:10? Some traders are just insane and frankly quite a few are straight up assholes. You know the dimwit that posts “Trading this for Reflections!” on Star Wars or “Trading this for Brady needs!” on Huddle. For everything. There seems to be an army of these doofuses (doofi?) for one simple reason. Once in a 100 times this actually works. Those are the fringe cases, the dude looking for the moderate overpay and the a-hole hoping you’ll make him a scratch-off hillbilly millionaire. Neither one is particularly fun but it is what it is, takes all kinds etc… In the happy middle are folks who don’t really know what they want but they are hoping for an offer that will make them hit accept. As a smart trader, if you have a lot of different things to offer there’s an opportunity to get that hot new thing you need and make them happy too. Before you send an offer, take a few minutes and look at their collection. Are they an obvious Boba Fett freak? On Huddle, look at their profile and see what their favorite team is. Do you have anything in that category of stuff, similar count or odds that they need? It might have been some random tossed in kicker you got two months ago that suddenly is the key to both parties feeling great about the deal they got! Maybe they have a several of a set you gave up on and throwing a bunch of those not only helps them along but erases the stank of ever starting with it out of your stack. Stack Stank. The struggle is real. I have a pile of the Droids marathon cards in my SWCT I’d happily trade 9 of for just one decent card just to be rid of them. Creatures too. Huddle is lousy with people still trying to cull out all those Bowman cards they wish they hadn’t dumped all their offseason credits on. One man’s garbage might be another’s gold. Well, not Bowman. This comes back around (circuitously I admit) to crosstrading which has exploded in popularity and recently commented in an interview that it was more popular than Jesus Christ much to the consternation of Middle America. A lot of people have gotten really strict about the "cost of daily credits between apps" argument on value and it is a point to consider but shouldn’t be the end all be all. Thing is, even within apps people are always looking for an advantage. Take 1 leave two on big hurry up sets or leave one more than you take 3:4-8:9 are pretty standard stuff. So I'd say considering relative daily value is fine as a starting point but if you say that you're only going to trade in exact 1:1 situations then you are likely to not have as easy a time as you might. X trading is tough enough without placing a hidebound stricture on yourself that others might be less willing to go along with. Free credits and lucky pulls are tools to aid your collection in the app you care most about. Getting all precious about those cards is to my mind kind of silly. It's like the old vagrant they find dead with thousands of dollars in their pockets unspent. They could have lived in comfort if they'd spent the money instead of using it to line their coat. On a related note, Rest in Peace uncle Charlie. You old Vagrant. Thanks for the coat. Things are looking up! In the face of mounting problems it seems like somebody at Topps Digital (Jer? Is that you buddy?) said “We gotta fix this” and then did that right there.
What followed was a massive wonderful wave of awards for all the wave 3 marathons and boy howdy, those were some really nice awards! Things kicked off with Splash featuring New Orleans QB Drew Brees (dude’s clutch). Limited followed up with a BIG hit with Tom Brady. Next the dreaded Relic Marathon that had long ago promised Andy Dalton, but then had Andy Dalton in that wave already arrived and it was….Not Andy Dalton! The crowd goes wild! It could have been just about anyone (well maybe not you, Jay Cutler. Or you Tony Romo) but Mark Ingram was a solid choice and so unexpectedly not Andy Dalton that people were quite pleased with it. Andy Dalton could not be reached for comment. Archives award was another big hit with Ben Roethlisberger. Rising Stars recognized Seattle’s Tyler Locket as a star who is in fact rising and the Marathons finished on another high note with the Steeler’s Antonio Brown. It was a pretty great lineup of awards. A bunch of other awards for sets like Valor and Vapor also came out and a lot of loose ends were tied up with a neat little bow. Hey, was the a segue? Yes! Speaking of neat little bows, the grand unwrapping of the mysterious ticket redemption presents came with some fun stuff inside. First let me gush, one of my favorites was a rather humble 5.0x boost of Matthew Stafford. I love the 5.0x Team Color design and after the season is over I plan to only keep the 5.0x and try to track down any other 5.0x boosts I might have missed. They look fantastic even if the arms race has kicked into high gear now that we are into the playoffs. I just like the look of them. Some recent sets got another blast for collectors to run down including the bee suit Topps Finest Fibers Antonio Brown relic, a Topps Finest Signature for Von Miller, Inception sigs for Terrell Davis and Dak Prescott. The two super mysterious Gold Bows at 5 and 10 tickets respectively got mixed reviews. I think a lot of people were banking on something more current and maybe scoring but we got what I though two very cool rookie cards. One for Drew Brees who just looks weird in a Chargers uniform and my favorite which was Mike Ditka’s rookie card signed in blue. It looks old and cheesy and garish and hilarious and I love it. It’s also only the second Mike Ditka card in the app as far as I can see. Things have been a bit smoother moving into the new year. A lot of true fans whose seasons have ended will be finishing off their few loose ends and looking sullenly at the playoffs in spite of themselves and we all look forward to the candy colored fireworks shooting train wreck of another Super Bowl. It’s been a fun season and I’ve learned a lot. Though it feels a lot less busy that the Star Wars app that was my entry into the world of Digital Cards I actually appreciate that about it. I’ll be turning my attention back to SWCT more in the offseason. I look at the mess they have over there and am less excited about that than I should be. Here’s hoping they too have heard the criticisms and have owned them and pledged to do better in the coming year. Yeah I am an optimist! |
Gregg Keefer
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