Splinterlands | 150$ Cards Investment Birthday Gift!

about 1 year ago

I'm regularly buying some Crypto for my Nieces with an eye to getting them started with investing and possibly have it add up to a nice sum 10 years from now. This week I created a new Splinterlands account with 150$ worth of cards as a Birthday Gift, these are the cards that I picked up...

I've been wanting to do this for a long time and right now seemed to be an ok moment to pull the trigger as cards on the market generally are a lot lower than where they used to be. With the upcoming land, and the reward cards going out of print, there should also be somewhat of a supply shock incoming sooner than later. All this while the cards can be put to work on the rental market for some potential passive earnings to add to the returns.

Creating a New Hive Account

So I created a new account which was actually easy to do if you own a Hive Account with some Hive Power. Just go to Peakd.com and enter your wallet clicking the drop-down menu on delegate first selecting Claim Account Creation Token and afterward selecting Create Account With Token

Send over or delegate some Hive for Resource Credits and you are good to go! The Account @hasie (the first part of their names combined) was born.

Buying Splinterlands Cards as an Investment

I initially wanted to send over 150 HBD and turn that into 150$ worth of credits but that can't be done unless you also buy the spellbook. So I used some hive on Hive-Engine to buy DEC directly sending that to the account in the game. Once in there, it's easy to buy cards on Monstermarket.io which will give you some DEC Cashback in your hive-engine account which can be used to buy extra cards.

Card Purchases

I have no clue what cards will do best going forward so I spread the 150$ around between different options so the average should do ok in case prices end up higher over time. I didn't put all too much thought in it and these are the cards I bought and why...

Legendary Reward Cards
Especially the newer ones should be good as they fully went out of print making it so that there will be far less in circulation compared to the Chaos Legion Legendary Cards. I generally like the prices of Legendary cards at the moment as they are quite hard to catch and you would pretty much sign for a pack that includes one even though packs from the store are more expensive.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
2x	Legendary Countess Sinash	3.867$	10834.967 DEC
1x	Legendary Jared Scar	3.644$	5105.071 DEC
1x	Legendary Djinn Oshannus	2.360$	3306.248 DEC
1x	Legendary Harklaw	0.799$	1119.361 DEC
1x	Legendary Djinn Biljika	0.798$	1116.708 DEC
2x	Legendary Djinn Oshannus	2.400$	6675.01 DEC
1x	Legendary Countess Sinash	3.988$	5545.821 DEC
2x	Legendary Countess Sinash	3.65$	10112.202 DEC
5x	Legendary Djinn Oshannus	2.438$	16864.535 DEC
4x	Legendary Harklaw	0.840$	4649.232 DEC
4x	Legendary Djinn Biljka	0.798$	4414.003 DEC
3x	Legendary Jared Scar	3.602$	14937.793 DEC
2x	Legendary Djinn Oshannus	2.438$	6720.882 DEC

Bulk Rare Reward Cards
When land comes out, there won't be a difference between good or bad cards or from what I understand the overall supply. This should make it so that these cards are the most cost-effective to be picked up while at the same time, I'm actually using these regularly so new players are going to want them. The main downside is that they can't be put on the rental market but it's nice to have them as diversification.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
100x	Naga Assassin	0.021$	2914.468 DEC
50x	Venari Wavesmith	0.029$	2011.941 DEC
50x	Venari Crystalsmith	0.032$	2207.505 DEC

Epic Reward Cards
These cards are still trading below the DEC burn value at peg so it should be hard to get crushed on them. They on top are able to get picked up on the rental market.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
10x	Epic Lava Launcher	0.096$	1342.009 DEC
10x	Epic Djinn Renova	0.097$	1356.003 DEC
10x	Djinn Chwala	0.100$	1397.984 DEC

Golden Cards

Gold Cards give extra Reward Points so I like to diversify in them, especially rare ones are quite affordable now and the Mycelic Morphoid is one of those must-have Cards that is solid at lower a level.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
5x	Gold Mycelic Morphoid	0.396$	2765.511 DEC
1x	Gold Myselic Slipspawn	3.444$	4812.744 DEC
1x	Gold Pelacto Arbalest	2.208$	3082.937 DEC
1x	Gold Tenyii Striker	3.360$	4691.426 DEC
1x	Gold Technowizologist	3.969$	5469.955 DEC
1x	Gold Diemonshark	4.374$	6038.1 DEC

Solid Beta & Dice Cards

I like these cards because they either are really strong in the Wild League or extremely rare in the case of the Lensmaster where there are only 1228 copies of.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
1x	Legendary Lensmaster	16.603$	23117.516 DEC
1x	Fire Demon	4.286$	5960.228 DEC
1x	Air Elemental	5.087$	7074.12 DEC

Summoner Cards

Summoners so far have always been a good investment so Included some of them.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
4x	General Sloan	1.230$	6860.967 DEC
1x	Tarsa 1.500$	2091.758 DEC
3x	Obsidian	2.504$	10474.131 DEC
2x	Kelya	3.100$	8645.935 DEC
2x	Sthispa	2.500$	6972.528 DEC

Chaos Legion Epic & Legendary Cards

These tend to be rather rare to get from packs while useful in the modern league. I still like the fiends as a card pretty much every player needs.

Amount	Card	Buy Price	Total DEC Price
1x	Nerissa Tridawn	1.447$	1995.311 DEC
1x	Grund	1.497$	2064.258 DEC
1x	Tusk The Wide	0.969$	1337.658 DEC
1x	Legendary Torrent Fiend	4.290$	5928.689 DEC

Total Collection + Rental Potential

That's pretty much it what 150$ worth of cards gets you right now in Splinterlands which is way more than what it used to be during the peak of the previous adoption cycle. I put all cards on the rental market at the end of the season at just above the average rental prices which resulted in a +17% Yearly return expectation. It however looks like season-end prices are higher than what they go for at the start of the season so many went back unrented and I likely will lower the prices a bit.

The value right now is a tiny bit lower compared to what I paid for it.

Conclusion

It's fairly easy to invest in Splinterlands cards getting some passive returns with price increase potential which I'm expecting especially during the period between when Chaos Legion is sold out and when Rebellion is released. Land should also act as a supply shock and in case there is a new crypto bull market more players should naturally get in as interest in Play2Earn games will peak again. I will make a follow-up post in 5 months or so to see how it all played out. At some point, I also will sell all cards again and potentially take a profit (or a loss)