Today I wanted to take some time and go through the Steem Monster market and provide some history on what has been going on as well as take a look at some predictions I made a few months ago.

The first item I'd like to take a look at is the expected value of Alpha and Beta packs and their current market prices.

Alpha

The current estimated value of an Alpha Pack with a Gold Lighting Dragon is $4.47 and $3.96 without. It's currently listed on Steem Engine for sale around $5.80 with bids around $4.40.

If the price of Alpha's ever hit around $4 again and I have some extra SBD laying around I will probably purchase a few packs. $4.40 is a reasonable price if you're looking to hold as the value of Alpha's continue to rise and about a 10% premium is reasonable for unopened packs (I think $4ish is a good EV for Alpha Packs right now).

Rarity	Foil	Normal
Common	$4.83	$0.28
Rare	$13.60	$0.92
Epic	$40.03	$1.73
Legendary	$947.89	$11.66

Beta

The current estimated value for Beta Packs is around $1.83 with bids on Steem Engine around $1.75 and packs for sale around $1.90. I think most of that is from the increase in the price of Steem recently as they were selling around $1.80 a few days ago.

I expect the packs and price of cards to stay around here or go a little lower and I'll explain why below.

Rarity	Foil	Normal
Common	$1.79	$0.11
Rare	$5.41	$0.39
Epic	$18.62	$1.05
Legendary	$159.53	$9.28

According to the Splinterlands Site there are 15% of the Beta Packs left for sale. Until those are sold out I don't expect much movement on the price when you can buy 500 packs for $1000 and get 75 Bonus packs free driving the price down to $2 not counting if you have an Affiliate account under your account that you own.

Ignore the sudden jump as it's been a few months since I've updated my spreadsheet (was doing it about once a week) so it looks a little confusing.

What I do find interesting is that the number of Beta cards for sale is decreasing as the supply increases. I think this will keep the Beta card price suppressed for a while and even the Beta Pack pricing. It would be nice if the Steem Monsters folks allowed a month or two for some of the Beta cards to be bought up and combined until the number of cards in existence is reduced by a few hundred thousand.

Market Predictions

On March 29th I made some predictions on cards I thought would steadily go up in value and provide a good ROI. If you want to see the original predictions for yourself you can head here.

Alpha Summoners

Every Alpha Summoner with the exception of Zintar Mortalis has gone up by at least 3x. I always thought the Death cards were good at least in the lower levels of ranked, but maybe they're not as good as I thought or since it's mainly good in the lower levels people don't need to buy as many.

Lord Arianthus

Damn, it feels good to get something right sometimes and when you're right you're right. This card has pretty much gone up 6x since my prediction and not sure if it's going to slow down anytime soon.

The only thing that concerns me is the number of cards in existence is steadily going up. This can have some downward pressure on the price once people decide to start selling more of these, but with a maxed-out card renting for about 5 cents per day, this gives some buying incentive as well.

I almost put mine up for sale for $60, but couldn't as the card was rented out just about 16 hours ago. I was a little disappointed, but glad to start getting some passive income from the cards I own.

Alpha Packs

I predicted $5 by the end of the year and am going to say this was a great prediction. The packs haven't 2x yet, so it's not as good as some of my other predictions, but I think calling $5 by the end of the year was a pretty good prediction. We still have 4 months left so it could go even higher, but we'll just have to wait and see.

The Not so Good Calls

Beta Dragons have done pretty much nothing. The price has stayed flat and as of now, this was a bust call. If I have a chance to modify my suggestion I would start buying Beta Gold Dragons. As you can see in the chart below the Alpha Gold Dragon price has begun to take off and have to assume, at this time, that the Betas will do the same thing.

The Angel of Light Beta and the Beta packs were also not very good calls . . . . yet. The same with the Beta Dragons as well. I suggested these cards because they were cheaper than Alphas and I thought they'd go up in price. I stand by they will eventually, but not until at least the Beta Packs sell out and have been sold out for at least 3 - 4 months.

A Healthy Market

I think that Steem Monsters has a pretty healthy market currently. Some of the less used less popular cards prices are sitting pretty stagnant. It will be interesting to see how the less popular common and legendary cards perform over the long term if the price slowly grows 8 - 10% a year or they stay stagnant for the most part.

I know most people in crypto scoff at the idea of 8 - 10% gains per year, but in the rest of the investment world, those are pretty decent returns.

I look forward to the Android App that will hopefully be released one day soon as well as the future booster pack and features that that team decides to release. A dapp that can do this well in a bear market is bound to do much better in a bull market.