Tf2 traders have no interest for cards most of the time so they're sticking to the same old quicksell price.
Very few people are ready to pay the 2:1 card-ref ratio. If you want to make profit out of the tf2 steam economy market, the best thing to do is to buy cards for dirt cheap and resell at market price.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm just trying to stockpile a little ref for on-the-side trading. If cards aren't traded much by TF2 players, what would be the next-best items to trade in (besides TF2 items, obviously)? Should I look at picking up a handful of CS:GO items, or should I just convert some cards into a key and the key into ref?
Comment has been collapsed.
i think, as of now gems are the better currency. ref price can change drastically at any time. gems seem to be more or less stable. and they are sellable on the market. some people will trade for keys, ToD's and gems, but not for ref, since they cannot sell it.
Comment has been collapsed.
I do have some gems stockpiled (not as much as before, due to buying games I really didn't need >.> ), but I just wanted to get a dozen or so ref to throw around for flexibility sake. Has the ref market really been fluctuating that much since the big crash? I know it's currently floating around $0.12-0.13 (~16 ref / key). Does it often move out of that price range?
Comment has been collapsed.
well, some weeks ago it was more like 19-20/key. i am actually surprised that it is at 16 now. and there was a time when it constantly lost value. i just lost my trust in this currency. ;)
but of course it can't hurt to have a few ref in your inventory.
i usually change ref for keys as soon as i have enough for at least one. just to prevent losing too much value in case the price suddenly changes by a lot.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sorry for all the questions, feel free to tap out any time :D
Is the ref / key exchange rate pretty standard? I know there's multiple sites that trade in TF2 items - is there just one that's trusted as the standard-bearer, or are there a couple large sites with competing rates? I only ask because it's been hovering at ~16 ref for a little over a week now, and I'm wondering if I'm just checking a different site. It's shocking to me that it was 19-20 ref a couple weeks ago O_O
Comment has been collapsed.
well, i check (and exchange) at scrap.tf. and of course there is backpack.tf. both seem to have the same price more or less every time i check. but i am not an expert tf2 trader. i use this stuff only for game trading. so maybe i am not the most qualified person to answer questions regarding this. ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
I stopped dealing in ref a long time ago for that very reason. Only use it when I absolutely have to. Check the price history graphs at backpack.tf.
For prices I check a couple of places. The most up-to-date would be the backpack.tf sell orders (disregarding quicksells) since that's what people are presently selling for. Then you can check the bot rates at your favorite places, like scrap.tf, tf2vendor, tf2depot, etc.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you monitor the bot rates and community market carefully, with some effort you can turn a small profit. There are fewer bots now than there used to be, so any bot that offers prime rates usually exhausts its ref supply quickly.
Back when I had a fair stockpile of keys, if the moon and stars aligned, I could make a half key at a time by exchanging 40 or so keys to ref and back again to keys (earning anywhere between 1-3 scrap per key depending on the scenario).
As far as making actual profit it's too much work. I mean, compared to a minimum wage job it's absolutely nothing, but it can be a bit of fun. I mostly did it to justify spending a couple of keys on a game by making two keys before buying it.
Comment has been collapsed.
It is odd how we rationalize doing this sort of thing, isn't it? :D I'm sure I've spent more in electricity than I ever have earned trading. "But I'm not spending any /real/ money," I tell myself. Not to mention all the time researching, tracking prices, advertising and haggling. There's something oddly satisfying about trading and making a small profit though
Comment has been collapsed.
If you have any questions regarding the market fluctuations in the tf2 market, all I can say on the matter is that the economy is not as volatile as it looks. There's just a ton of competition& traffic, which explains how fast changes in the market values can occur.
Ref/ key exchange rate is monitored on pretty much all of the trading websites. Key value in refs always drops before vacations. Easy to profit from and very predictable. It increases the rest of the time because of all of the farmed metal that is not spent on crafting.
If you want to buy cards, use refs. If want to sell cards, ALWAYS go for the keys (eg : 3-4 sets for a key, XX cards for a key). ToDs are borderline ok (something about it being a complicated form of currency between refs and keys).
If you have any questions, go for em.
Comment has been collapsed.
As someone who deals in card trades (not for ref), they can be fairly volatile (in both good and bad ways for either party). Couple that with the volatility of ref itself and you have a huge fustercluck when trying to trade on the basis of value. It's honestly not worth the effort at all.
The whole scrap/card thing was common back when keys were sub 8-ref, and you'd mostly be getting cards that were worth 3 pennies each. Why anyone would do that now, I do not know.
The only people I've done card trades with in the past for keys/ref, which admittedly very few, were people who wanted to get their badge level up and would flat rate 4-5 cards per ref (back when keys were ~8-9 ref) on anything they didn't have the badge maxed for. But everyone I traded with eventually stopped doing that, again I think it was simply too much of a chore when you'd be the person offering the best rate on the market and getting hundreds of overlapping trade offers every time a new bundle came out. For those people now, I think it's simply easier to buy complete sets at a fixed rate of x per key, which benefits both parties in that they don't have to individually buy or sell each item.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think having primarily done card trading up to this point, I'm used to dealing with the volatility in the market value. Of course, the trick is learning how volatile the market really is >_>
This is a really interesting insight into trading in general, though. Thanks again for the info, these are definitely things I'll keep in mind moving forward.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, I've been poking around there a little bit over the last couple hours. Still haven't fully figured out the pricing algorithm, but it's good to know that a card-ref exchange service exists. The whole site seems pretty neat, in fact.
(btw, that's one of my very favorite albums :3 )
Comment has been collapsed.
2 Comments - Last post 7 minutes ago by ZoOmEr4402
15,438 Comments - Last post 13 minutes ago by Shanti
33 Comments - Last post 21 minutes ago by kpax83
34 Comments - Last post 42 minutes ago by pb1
28 Comments - Last post 56 minutes ago by icaio
453 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by InSpec
234 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by sensualshakti
64 Comments - Last post 1 minute ago by 76561198082881386
74 Comments - Last post 3 minutes ago by Navaro
8,988 Comments - Last post 15 minutes ago by CurryKingWurst
78 Comments - Last post 18 minutes ago by dmunozan
15,187 Comments - Last post 35 minutes ago by CommissarCiaphasCain
79 Comments - Last post 40 minutes ago by Lachdanan
110 Comments - Last post 50 minutes ago by OneNonLy
I do mostly card trading and have only recently started exploring some of the other Steam economy markets. I realize that you have to go through a lot to craft ref, but its value is so incredibly low now, and people continue to treat it like it's as valuable as before the crash. I'll often see people trying to trade 1 or 2 scrap for cards, and even when I've cut them a small discount (a couple cents) no one seems to be interested. Am I just talking to the wrong people, or have others ran into similar issues? Is ref really so valuable that even with its deflated market price, people still won't trade it cheap?
Comment has been collapsed.