Old Card values - Lessons learned from Gods Unchained

Hello Everyone,

Some of you may know this from our conversations on the discord but I am also a frequent player of Gods Unchained which is another NFT based crypto game that is more traditional in its playstyle. Think of it like a clone of Hearthstone for those of you that have played that.

The reason we are talking about Gods Unchained in a Splinterlands community is because Gods Unchained just released their new card set 'Divine Order' and I was curious how it would impact the market of older, previously popular cards. Many of us in Splinterlands are in the same position given Chaos Legions is around the corner and we don't really know what the future brings for the value of our older cards.

There are a few key differences between the way the release was handled in Gods Unchained and how Splinterlands is handling their release. These are important to consider when looking at the market as a whole.

1. Gods Unchained cards are significantly more scarce. Common cards in the GU realm have total supply of generally 25k on the high end compared to an average around 35k for the SL Untamed set.
2. Gods Unchained did a full release. There were no vouchers or other gimmicks required to buy the cards on the release date.
3. Splinterlands runs on the Hive network and Gods Unchained runs on the ETH network.
4. Gods Unchained had a $6M "pre-sale" period at which point packs would be 20% off with the discount slowly dropping to 0% as more and more packs were sold.
5. Divine Order released 9/27/2021. Chaos Legion to be released Mid-October 2021

With these things in mind it is clear that Splinterlands is trying to avoid a market crash that would result from millions of cards all being dumped on the market at once whereas Gods Unchained decided to just let the market do its thing.

The current market in Splinterlands is rough. Lets be honest... Card prices are stagnant or dropping and generally people are not able to sell. This is due to a lot of reasons but most evidently the following:

1. Raw DEC provides more airdrop points than holding cards at this point
2. Players are actively saving for CL packs
3. Current prices of older cards are widely out of reach for new players.
4. With the release of new cards, many players are hoping to be able to open packs to build out fuller decks.
5. The voucher system being implemented encourages players to lock their assets in SPS instead of cards.
6. Gods Unchained does not currently 'retire' any card sets.

Most of these are temporary issues however #3 is a focus point for me. Given how scarce old cards are the prices have risen to a point where the utility of playing the cards is generally not worth the amount of money it takes to buy them so the people buying them are primarily investors.

The below metric chart from PeakMonsters shows that in general the volume in $ of cards sold is trending down while card transactions themselves are slightly improving. This indicates that cards are still moving just at lower price points.

This is important because it infers that the value of cards is going down. Of course this is a simple interpretation and there is absolutely more to it than that but it is concerning regardless.

What is more interesting to me is that the Gods Unchained market behaved in a similar manner yet did not have most of the pressure put on players to stop holding cards ie vouchers or increasing DEC value.

For example, Iron-tooth Goblin, a key anti-relic card from the old GU meta dropped in price steadily leading up to release.

Most other key cards played out similarly dropping slightly over about a month and then heavily about 1.5 weeks before release.

This can be seen in most cards which were previously meta-critical including: Underbrush boar, Demogorgon, Jaguar Staff, Scythes of the Harvest, and more.

For Splinterlands we also have another metric that is interesting to look at: Chaos Legion reward cards. As these were released early we get to see how the higher supply limit cards could potentially hit the market. What we have seen so far is that botmasters have flooded the market with these cards and prices have tumbled for these cards but also more importantly, cards that are similar to them.

In the example above looking at Pelacor Bandit and Sabre Shark, these cards fill a similar role and as such new players will more likely go after Pelacor Bandit over Sabre Shark due to the pricing. As a result we can see that Sarbre dropped from a 7 day average price of .855/BCX to currently being listed at .70/BCX which is an 18% drop. This would indicate that any currently existing card that has a similar care in the Chaos Legion set is likely to go down significantly.

The current market in Gods Unchained is flourishing in volume right now but ultimately the average card price has dropped significantly. This is absolutely a result of the market being flooded with new cards. The desire to try out new mechanics and figure out which of the new cards will be meta is driving hysteria. I personally think cards will begin to return to a normal eventually but right now it is a free for all and just about any card on the market is attainable. Like the Chaos Legion rewards many of the common cards released as a part of Divine Order have already dropped to sub .10 prices. It is a buyers market and it is happening before Gods Unchained pushes for a higher playerbase. For those of you that have been a part of Splinterlands before August of 2021, you are quite aware of what happens with a population boom so in my opinion Gods Unchained is ripe for the taking both old and new.

Given that Splinterlands is limiting the volume of new cards released, I suspect that a similar phenomenon will occur but at a much slower pace. There will be much less market shock and ultimately that might save the price of older cards for the time. That said, I personally would not recommend holding older cards if your objective is profit driven. They are simply overpriced and the market will reduce them. Get out while you can, earn your SPS airdrops via the DEC you will get from selling them. Ultimately, the full supply of Chaos Legion WILL hit within a year and unless the population booms again, with real players (not bots), we are going to enter a season of rock bottom prices again.

Good luck out there!

For today's post 'pet tax' we have both Atlas AND Nobu. They have an afternoon WrestleMania session each day and I wanted to share its initiation with you all.

Divine Order and Chaos Legion images owned by Immutable X and Splinterlands respectively. All other images and content owned by me unless otherwise stated.

Helpful Details

Monster Curator
For those of you that blog, consider delegating your SPT to @monster-curator for daily SPT payouts. For more information checkout their how-to post here.

Hive Basic Income (HBI)
HBI is effectively an automated curation tool which will upvote your HIVE posts forever. It is an amazing way to ensure you get some income from all of the time you spend teaching others via posting your strategies, analysis, and thoughts. You can read more about HBI in their FAQ.

Support

If you are new to the Crypto space and wish to support Atlas, Nobu, and myself, please utilize the following referral links. You can also support me via Tip directly through Hive or including my name in a HBI purchase.

Exchanges
Coinbase - $10 signup bonus
Bittrex
NFT Games
Splinterlands
Gods Unchained
Exode - 2 free alpha booster packs
Rising Star