Steam Gems Auction - what did you win?

I bought Spectraball for 1,100 gems just because it was cheap, it has trading cards and I really wanted the Auction Winner achievement... :P I might actually play it too someday... it dosen't look too bad comparing to most other cheap auctions.

I won They Breathe for 1,600 gems :) Got all the gems from recycling old emotes and backgrounds that I had :)

Gems valued at $0.83 per 1,000. Total savings come out around 84%.

I was unsure of the auction at first, but all of these savings are far better than what even the upcoming sale can offer. Glad I took part in it, especially since they were all things from my wishlist. The wallet funds that I used were also from a $50 gift card deal that only cost $40, too.

Monochroma ($19.99) 2,324 Gems = $1.93 (90%)

Schein ($8.99) 1,114 Gems = $0.92 (90%)

So Many Me ($14.99) 2,700 Gems = $2.24 (85%)

Flockers ($19.99) 3,900 Gems = $3.24 (84%)

Mega Coin Squad ($14.99) 2,000 Gems = $1.66 (88%)

Platformines ($9.99) 1,700 Gems = $1.41 (85%)

Time Rifters ($9.99) 2,500 Gems = $2.01 (80%)

Devil's Dare ($12.99) 3,200 Gems = $2.66 (80%)

The Masterplan ($14.99) 4,600 Gems = $3.81 (75%)

Life Goes On ($12.99) 3,202 Gems = $2.66 (80%)

NEStalgia ($14.99) 3,675 Gems = $3.05 (80%)

Void Destroyer ($14.99) 2,545 Gems = $2.11 (85%)

Bik - A Space Adventure ($6.99) 940 Gems = $0.78 (89%)

Tango Fiesta ($12.99) 1,600 Gems = $1.33 (90%)

The Dungeoning ($8.99) 1,600 Gems = $1.33 (85%)

Iron Fisticle ($8.99) 2,300 Gems = $1.90 (79%)

Voyage: Journey to the Moon

Just for the badge xd

Cubemen 2 (which was actually Cubemen 1 & 2 bundle) for 1050 gems. Already had the first game so that went to waste but I wanted the badge and that was the cheapest game I was vaguely interested in.

Got Darkest Hour with just 1500gem, very satisfy with this outcome

I won three games: two copies of Go Home Dinosaurs and one copy of Poof The Cursed Kitty. Total expenditure US$3 with a handful of gems left over.
I actually wasn't too keen on playing the Auctions initially, but after my region (SEA) locked cross-region trading, I realized that the only way I would still be able to give my friends Steam games for Christmas was to pick them up from the Auction house and then send them as gifts. I was waiting for the 'middle auction period' because near the beginning prices were overinflated by people who weren't sure what was going on / had too many cheap gems, and near the end it will inflate up too because people realize that the only alternative use for gems is making booster packs, which aren't worth the current gem sack prices. So they will try to convert their gems into games instead of boosters.

My strategy was to snipe. I tracked these two games over a couple of auction rounds, watching to see what the 'average' winning bid was (1000 for Poof and 1100 for Go Home Dinosaurs). Then I made sure that I was willing to pay these prices, which were about 80-85% off store prices. Then (yes, silly me) ended up buying three sacks off the market for them (spent about $3USD). The more important aspect of tracking though was to synchronize my clock to the auction timing, to the final second. This was so that when it said "less than one minute remaining" I knew exactly how many seconds I had to do my snipe.

So with that in mind, I entered each auction in separate rounds. If the highest bid at the 30 minute mark was 900, I locked in a bid of 800 and then upped it to 890, each time seeing which position in queue it put me. This gave me a good gauge of how many people were going to be ready to snipe, or would make last minute changes. I also noted every few minutes whether anyone outbid the highest bid, and who it was by (if a price war happens between more than three people, I wouldn't feel very confident in my odds).

30s before the auction would end, I would hit F5 twice to see if there were any changes. Knowing my internet speed and giving slight buffer for possible lag, I would enter my snipe at 10s remaining (because there's also a confirmation click after entering bid). For Go Home Dinosaurs, two people also tried to snipe the highest bidder at the time, but because I knew to the second when I would need to enter my bid, I was able to see their bids and then move up on them. One good trick for sniping is to see the increment from the previous bid. If the increment is 100, it probably means that the bidder had entered a higher number but Steam is 'auto-updating' the bid to be the current highest. If the increment is smaller than 100, it means that that is the final number that the bidder had entered and is unlikely to change it.

• So for my first Go Home Dinosaurs, the highest bid at the 20s-remaining mark was 1060, so I put in 1101 and got the game over another sniper who put 1100. I was confident of this one because all along the previous highest bid had been 1000, so as in above analysis, the 1060 sniper was over his bid by 60 (not 100, which means that he had not input a higher number for Steam to auto-increment over my snipe).
• For Poof, the highest bid at the 20s-remaining mark was 980 so I locked in 1002.
• And for my second Go Home Dinosaurs, the highest bid at the 20s-remaining mark was 900 but I wanted to play it safe on the people sniping 901/911 bids, so I put in 951 because I was out of gem funds and real money funds at that point.

Thanks for reading :) I hope it helps you guys out with the Auctions, especially those who are trying to figure out what to do for Christmas gifting from region-locked countries.

I won Two Worlds Collection last night. Currently have have Two Worlds 2 downloading, just to see if I'll fall victim to the third party DRM in it.

Id suggest sorting the lowest bids, then browse pages 4-5 and see whats what for 800-850 gems. Time the last minute, have multiple pages open to bid in your browser for different games, one in steam for another one and just place your bid in the last 20 seconds, if you miss with one, youre bound to win the second or third if you move fast. The game i won was 801 gems til i placed my bid to secure it, so it wont be that expensive either (it cost me 1019). Good luck.

Cube & Star arbitrary something-or-other, Cosmochoria and Shattered Planet. I actually managed to spend slightly less than I expected on Cosmochoria, ended up having 900 gems left over so I crafted a La Tale booster pack.

I've still got 300 gems I can't do anything with but La Tale is about the most expensive pack I have access to. (And I shouldn't, because I've never gotten a card drop from that game...)

So far I've only played Cube & Star, and Cosmochoria JUST finished downloading. I'm not going to try for any more, it's too stressful.

I won Overruled and Megabyte Punch, and I bid on them because I have friends and siblings. I had lost about 3000 gems, though I spent about one dollar (which I already had from leftover money from my Steam Wallet). Megabyte Punch + Overruled = $28. $28 - $1 spent = $27. Pretty good deal, won't you say?

My tactic was to wait until there was one minute left. Then I put one gem higher than what the top amount was. This was to make sure no one would change theirs.

after a hard battle i finally won : Adventure Time: Finn and Jake's Epic Quest

oooohhh

lol Won a cheap Gearcrack Arena for the sake of getting the badge

Finally, here's all the games I bought from the auctions (it's cheaper than buying them IF they are in sale :P) Paid less than 2000 gems for each ones except for In Verbis Virtus, Amphora, Son of Nor and So Many Me. Will not buy a lot of things from Winter Sale I guess :)

• Polarity
• See No Evil
• So Many Me
• Amphora
• Darkness Within 1 In Pursuit of Noah Nolder
• Darkness Within 2 The Dark Lineage
• Magrunner Dark Pulse
• Hero of Many
• Qbeh-1 The Atlas Cube
• Magnetic By Nature
• In Verbis Virtus
• Son of Nor
• Alice in Wonderland
• Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink
• Midnight Mysteries Witches of Abraham Collector Edition
• House of 1000 doors family secret
• Alex Hunter lord of the mind platinum edition
• Haunted House Cryptic Grave
• Nearwood Collector Edition
• Brink of Consciousness DOrian Grey Syndrome COllector Edition

Updated list:

Proxy Blade Zero - 1200 gems
Defense Technica - 1101 gems
Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar - 3603 gems
Magnetic By Nature - Soundtrack Bundle - 1202 gems
Cloudbuilt - 2461 gems
DARK - 3701 gems
Cosmochoria - 2100 gems
Super Toy Cars - 2291 gems
Drunken Robot Pornography - 3300 gems
Meridian: New World Contributor Pack - 3101 Gems
Sneaky Sneaky Special Edition - 2548 Gems
Onikira - Demon Killer - Contributor's Pack - 4600 Gems
Tail Drift New - 855 Gems

Zero € out of pocked/steam wallet - that's pretty good. Got also rid of most crappy backgrounds and emoticons

Okay, so now that I'm done with this and spent all my gems, here's my final haul and about what they all cost:

• Bionic Heart 2 - 1950 gems ($2.34) (lowest $7.99)
• Pivvot+Soundtrack - 1006 gems ($1.21) (lowest $5.09)
• Fading Hearts - 5434 gems ($6.52) (lowest $11.24)
• Shadows on the Vatican Act 1: Greed - 801 gems ($0.96) (lowest $1.50)
• Meadowland - 797 gems ($0.96) (lowest $2.29)
• Always Sometimes Monsters - 3100 gems ($3.72) (lowest $7.49)
• The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief - 4068 gems ($4.88) (lowest $7.49)
• Roommates - 7800 gems ($9.36) (lowest $19.49)
• Poltergeist: A Pixelated Horror - 1315 gems ($1.57) (lowest $7.19)

Games are all worth $108.92 lowest prices would put them at $69.77 and I paid roughly $30.56 in gems, which is likely a high estimate since I was going off the rate of $1.20 per thousand and I got many sacks for less and some of the gems came from cards in my inventory. Not a bad haul in my opinion.

:D => http://steamcommunity.com/auction/item/46-Space-Siege

added both wanderlust rebirth(1500 gems) and aveyond gates of night(1076 gems) to my wins

down to 100 gems remaining.. i wonder if I can get bad rats or something

Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 11400 Gems. With 1k gems worth 0,94 Euros (at least right now) it gives a price of 10,71 Euros - but the best I could get from selling those gems is 0,84 Euros/pack (Steam commission) So I could get at most 9,24 Euros for gems. That's about 50% discount, for a game from Top 1 on my wishlist.

Indie Game: The Movie Special Edition - 1900 Gems.

I did get 2 Pinball fx2 packs, the Avengers one and the Vengeance and Virtue pack. I only used my gems and the auction price was lower that the lowest price those 2 ever had on steam.

Most of the games that are on my wishlist and also part of the auction are definitely not worth bidding for, I would lose money.

is there anybody, who won more than one bid?

I won some gems, I feel like a little princess now

Well I figured I'll grab something just to get that badge, not sure why but I kind of wanted the badge and maybe just maybe they will give out a bonus or something to people with level 3 badge. I typically do not care about items or badges, just sell everything for profit.

I got Sledgehammer / Gear Grinder for 1003 gems. Probably could of paid less like 801-900 but I didn't want to take any chances. Basically was like $1.35. Bonus is it has trading cards.

I noticed it's not tradable, and I'm guessing these games never become tradable?

Got Nation red last night :D ...