What are Packs in Splinterlands, and what has been their historical price in the game?

Best regards Splinterlovers 💚

Packs in Splinterlands have been around since the game’s inception. It began with the “Alpha” edition packs in 2018, which sold incredibly well, followed by the “Beta” packs in 2019. After that came “Untamed,” then “Chaos Legion,” “Rebellion,” and “Conclave Arcana”—though there have been other releases in between that I’ll also discuss later. however, the important thing to note is that these assets—or Packs—represent a fundamental pillar of the economy, not only for the game but also as one of the main sources of revenue for the company and the team, which allows them to continue their work.

But that’s not all—these “Packs” are also a financial asset, since they’re not just packages you open to get cards; but these packs are tokenizable, meaning they can be converted into a token traded on the open market—both within the game and on more established exchanges like “Hive Engine” and “Tribaldex.” This opens the door to speculation, and that’s precisely the point—because perhaps not many people are aware of the investment potential and rewards these packs offer, and I’d like to share some background information about them.

So, if you want to know how the Packs work, how they're tokenized, and everything else, stick around until the end of this post:

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The Concept of Pack Tokenization in Splinterlands

Splinterlands is very different from traditional games and even from other types of games in the same niche on Web3, where packs in those games are just that—packages you buy or receive as gifts, which you open to get a reward that may or may not have value, but that’s how it works. However, in Splinterlands, it works very differently—an incredible twist that turns these packs into a finite, deflationary investment vehicle, everything a good asset should have.

This means that packs in Splinterlands not only function as “Boost Packs” that you can open to obtain cards with real in-game value, but you also have the option to mint and tokenize them to turn them into a “token” for the purpose of speculating on their price, where their value and demand stem directly from two fundamental aspects:

What drives its value?

• Supply: We could say this is the most important factor of all, since depending on how many packs are created, we can determine whether that edition—in the future, when only “tokenized” packs remain—might have a good market value relative to its launch price; in short, the price at which the pack was originally sold.

• The utility of the SET: Next is the utility of the cards on the battlefield—those cards that would be part of the META. This also drives demand for these packs, as it creates what we might call a “FOMO” effect, prompting players to want to buy them to get a specific card, or simply to try their luck and see if they get a legendary or a golden legendary.

• Staking and Airdrops: Here we enter the realm of “Conflicts,” where we must stake our packs to collect as many points as possible and obtain cards from the airdrop—cards that are, for the most part, if not all, very powerful and in high demand. For example, in the recent Escalation conflicts, we’ve seen nothing but “Archons,” which are essential cards in the game.

Analysis of Prices, Profitability, and Declines by Issue

It would be great to do a simple analysis of each of the game’s editions—in this case, all 8—looking at their launch price, peak price (roughly the highest they reached), and current price. Of course, nothing too complicated—just something simple but functional so you can appreciate the value of the “Packs” and see why they’re one of the best assets the game has ever had:

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Analysis of the Packs:

• Alpha: It had a launch price of $2 with a supply of 300,000 packs; its peak price was around $140 per pack, which would represent a rise of about 6,900%. Although right now it’s priced at $13.99, which is 7 times its launch price, or a 599.50% increase.

• Beta: It also had a launch price of $2 and a much higher supply of 900,000, with an all-time high of around $45—representing a 2,150% increase from its lows—though it is currently priced at $5.99, which is 3x its launch price or a 199.50% increase.

• Untamed: It also had a launch price of $2, but the player base had already grown significantly by then, so it had a supply of 1,000,000. With this, it reached a peak price of around $25, representing a 1,150% increase, although right now it’s priced at $2.88—very close to its current price—with a 44% increase from its lows.

• Chaos Legion: It had a launch price of $4. Essentially, ever since its release and tokenization, its price has not performed well, primarily because its supply was excessively high—about 15,000,000 packs—during the bull market boom in 2022. These tokenized packs peaked at $1.10, a staggering drop of -65.45%, although they are currently priced at $0.38, representing a decline of -72.50% from their launch prices.

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Conclusion

This concludes our analysis of the older packs, where we can see that all of them are still profitable today—at least for those who bought them during presales, at launch, or over time while the set was still active. However, we can’t say the same for “Chaos Legion” due to the massive supply error—a lesson the team learned, and one that hasn’t been repeated in the most recent sets. But I’ll save those for another post, so stay tuned.