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So, I continue to have relatively easy opportunities to buy low and sell high on given cards, mostly rated 87. First, I do a smart search, designed to yield fewer than 100 players… That is the key to seeing the entire universe. I sort by the most recent posted. What I am looking for our sniping opportunities, and they should go quickly… Most of the cards I am buying are within the first minute or two of being posted.
Typical situation looks like this: an 87 rated player, just posted, the list price is 85K. At this point, I have a pretty good intuition about what players are expensive, relatively speaking, and what players are not. 85K is a low price for one of those premium parts, it is a pretty average price for the rest. But, there are definitely swings that last a few hours, a day or two, or whatever… And short term an ordinary card can become scarce, and more highly priced.
So, I take a look at the market for that exact card… This is very easy in the companion app, more so than on the console. The number of that card available, and the asking prices, basically set the decision whether it’s worth buying at 85K.
The no brainer bull’s-eye is when this card is a card I already know it’s going to be scarce or highly priced… And there are also non-or a few copies available. That is an easy case of by at 85, immediately relist the same card for 125K, let it sit for 24 hours, and it will probably sell for a nice tidy profit.
Other situation’s are more trick. If there are 12 copies of this card available, with prices ranging from 88 to 110 K… This is probably not a buy. Things might break well, and over the course of the next day I might be able to sell at 105 or 110, or whatever. But, I should have better opportunities than that… That is probably a pass.
Then there are the tricky cases, what if there are three or four copies, only one other copy in the 80s, one at 105, and two at 125? There, my instinct is probably to buy the 85, buy the other one at 88 or whatever, and list them both at 1:19 for 24 hours… And cross my fingers that this relatively thin market will dry up and mine will eventually become the cheapest copies available.
It doesn’t really with stand reason that there’s this much variability in the price is being asked and paid for the precise same card over such a short term… But I attribute this market in efficiency to things as simple as variable knowledge of how the auction house window and sorting works. I know I’ve said this 100 times in this thread, but it is a really big deal… Some people know how the system works, others simply do not, and there’s a massive leak of coins attributable to that differential information.
Anyway, I’m watching my son at soccer practice, and idly clicking around on the Madden app on my phone. I think by making moves just like I’m describing in this post, over the last 10 days or so, I have probably made 1 million coins… I will probably buy eight cards over this next hour, post them all and tidy profit, and expect to pocket 20 K on each of those transactions. Is this a good use of my time in the global sense? I don’t know. Does this entertain me more than most of the time waster style games available on the phone and iPad? Yes, it definitely does.
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