My Splinterlands Gold Card Rental Flywheel Has Kicked Off
With Rebellion and Land here, my plan to rent gold foil cards "against the grain" has been working well.
Here's a snapshot of my first weekend day where I had most of my gold deck available for rent. Note that there are still 4 hours left to run on this tournament day, so this could rise a bit.
That's 79% DEC fulfillment. Not too shabby, and a good indicator that I'm on the right path relative to my goals. If you rent from me, thank you for your business.
UPDATE: 85% DEC fulfillment within a few hours!
While many rentals are currently for more than the minimum of 2 days, this will be a solid weekend of earnings. The proceeds will be rolled over into more Untamed and Chaos Legion golds. I will gradually ease into Rebellion once my checklist of other cards is complete, or I may sit it out for longer to let the supply build. If I'm not going to play much for a while, Rebellion assets aren't vital right now.
As planned for and expected, rental markets for many rarer max cards seem paper thin. Demand has also remained on track during weekend tournament/end of season, perhaps getting even strong as SPS starts to recover. Normal weekday returns have also been solid in the 16K-20K DEC range so far. This may improve as I manually tune prices and monitor the landscape. Where others rely on automated rental services for a fee, I love managing the rentals manually.
Assuming 100K per weekend and 90K per over 5 weekdays, that computes to 190K per week, and 760K DEC per month. Add or subtract 15% and I'm still in good shape, especially if DEC stays near peg.
It takes extra patience to sit on sidelines while Rebellion cards are available on the market, mainly since I want to learn how they perform, but I don't feel the pull. As with my UT and CL card acquisition strategy -- packs aren't for me, so I'll scoop up the deals with the rental DEC and SPS from my Liquidity Pool as they become available. Now's not the time though.
The key for me is making moves when excitement has subsided, when there's more supply, and more people turn from buyers into sellers. I think I'm done spending off-chain assets, so I want to maximize my purchasing power. I spent enough and need to replenish those funds.
On the land side, I do have a few plots with the building in a box on standby. Given the info above, the concept of staking high PP cards + DEC for SPS, grain, or research doesn't appeal right now. If I didn't have a strong DEC factory, it'd be a different story. I understand that research can't be bought, but I'm confident that rental income will help me catch up on what I missed. I'll also have many more rare gold cards for the long haul before eventually switching to a land focus. It's not always about the card price for the rarer ones, but a matter of enough supply to max them out. A deeper arsenal will also allow me to spare more high PP copies without worrying about too much lost rental income.
For example, it doesn't make sense to lock up 50K DEC and 100K of PP on a plot just to make a few bucks in a month, when I can make a few bucks in a day with the same units. Perhaps I'm shortsighted to some for passing on land, but I paid the price to buy plenty of cards with external assets when others were dumping over a full year to get to this position. Coupled with plenty of impermanent loss from this and the liquidity pool I've been churning away in, that's plenty of long term vision in crypto land in my view.
Obviously, renting everything is at the great sacrifice of game play, tournaments, and rewards chests, but I don't mind. I didn't have too much luck with chest rewards I earned across Diamond and Champion, so not much to miss there. I also played more games (manually) than almost anyone else every season, and it was exhausting. With the alternative to passively earn DEC, and the passion to manually adjust prices as needed, it's a no-brainer. It also keeps me flexible, liquid, and constantly involved in a fun part of the economy. I can buy the rewards cards later when they're no longer soulbound.
Also, long term, as SPS rises, rental costs should rise... In turn the DEC returns should grow substantially if rental markets remain as thin as they are for the upper tier of UT/CL gold cards. Long-term planning lined up for a probable bull run and thousands of new players who will want and need access to the cards I've accumulated. Supply and demand crunch ahead!!
That's it for now. Thanks for reading.
Those numbers are crazy good. How much time do you spend on recalibrating the rental fees?
Thanks. Just getting off the ground with it, but I mainly monitor the unrented cards to see who else is on the market, and at what levels. The demand surges most on Friday night into Saturday on non-end-of-season days, so I usually let it fly and then mop up what doesn't move by checking each card manually. I'm not too concerned about the weekday activity, as enough floats on its own, and I don't want to get too lost in adjusting it when I want to make sure the cards are renting at full potential come Friday night.
Impressive stuff. I am now playing land hard. I basically went all in. Ask me in two years how it went. 😅
I have a friend who did the same and I hope it all works out. I'll ease into land over time, but want be in a semi-liquid card/DEC/SPS state for potential bull run mania times. If I stock up on land and activate, I know that I'll have a very hard time turning plots off to sell key cards at the right time. You and others who dove in will be in a select few of legends if the land vision comes to fruition. Best of luck!!
I also have almost all max cards, so that gives me good leverage. The only non-max cards I have are usually Untamed gold legendaries I've decided that I don't want or need beyond level 3. All in all, maybe 10-20 mins a day -- but mostly for studying the trends, competition, and for entertainment.
Dude! That's amazing! You're making like $50 a day just from renting out digital assets!
If you're not inclined, I definitely wouldn't be buying Rebellion cards just at the minute... the individual cards are way more expensive than the packs because everyone is preparing for the Rebellion Battle Wagon airdrop conflicts. With your strategy it might even be worth waiting 9 months (until the airdrops are done) and then pick up Rebellion cards as everyone suddenly sheds their excess cards.
I definitely expected the rental market to be strong now as heaps of people (myself included) pulled all their cards off the market... so good work taking advantage of that! Way to go against the grain!
Now the game begins for 100% utilization. I legitimately feel like I have clients. In a rental market full of low BCX, some max golds stand out like a sore thumb to command a solid return. I'm glad that they seem to be appreciated by serious players who may notice that I'm giving up the playing side for now. Win-win.
You're totally right on the airdrop timing. Aside from snagging any bargain bin prices along the way, I feel like that's the right move. If I ever decide to cut myself off from UT and CL cards (eye roll at myself), I'll be able to buy from a position of leverage then.
What are your recent or upcoming strategies?
I'm not super sure people are observant enough to notice that you're not playing while they rent your Gold foil cards... I imagine they'd be mostly worried about their ROI on that investment (tournaments and ranked play) and just be so happy your cards are available to them.
Personally I've gone heavy with Rebellion because I didn't participate in Chaos Legion and have been struggling to win many games since. Rebellion has given me a boost in wins already, and I had some spare cards which I'm selling to buy the more powerful Chaos Legion and Riftwatcher cards. I'm really just aiming to be competitive and make the game more fun for myself... it hasn't been all that fun losing ground each season.
I've only got the 7 plots of land, and so they're all producing stuff, but I'm still not sure if the resources generated are better than the rental DEC I could be getting... I guess we'll see how much valuable that Research ends up being.