You can level your steam account, which allows for more friends on your friends list, profile customizations, and other benefits.
Comment has been collapsed.
Additionally, you can farm the cards and simply sell them on the steam market - they are CHEAP, but if you are willing to put time into it, you can make a little money in your steam wallet to get a game over time or whatnot.
Comment has been collapsed.
Obviously, badges increase your level which in turn increases the number of friends you can have and the chances of getting free booster packs. Eventually, you get to a point where you just want to sell the cards for more cash in your Steam Wallet.
Comment has been collapsed.
- pump up numbers so you are more important on steam and sg
- add more fake friends to your account
- get showcases so you can use the same template in your account as other 5 million users do on steam (so original!)
- make 10 cents of profit on each account you idle bundle trash
so much nice and fun stuff!
Comment has been collapsed.
So it really sounds like a social game really. I guess unless there was real good money to be made, I wouldnt do it. Sounds like you would have to a part time job to have the free time to play. Let alone the time to spend trading, etc
Comment has been collapsed.
it's ok if you just idle while you are working/doing something else on your pc. it's a way to recover some money you "invested" in your steam account. you can get like ~6-20 cents for each idled game easily.
the moment you start to dedicate time to idle by leaving your pc on on purpose, it's pointless. or buying games exclusively to +1 your library and idling cards, or wasting time looking for bundle deals to get a marginal profit by idling those games...
or spending money to complete card sets, craft badges and increase your steam level.
that's just my opinion anyway. ┐(´ー｀)┌
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah, I guess it comes down to preference.
Thanks for all the info. Not my type of thing to do
Comment has been collapsed.
I used to use it as means to grant a little bonus-money to developers I really liked when I got their games dirt-cheap. Then SGMA hit.
Also +100 dollar on Nekopara 2 cards 0_o (Then SGMA hit :/) Where would I get all my insane free bonus money when part 3 hits now :(
Comment has been collapsed.
If you commit enough there is good-ish money to be made, tbh. And "commit enough" is not that much of a trouble. Just use an idler (like Idle Master), let it idle for a couple of days, sell fast with Steam Inventory Helper... you spend like half an hour a day or less (EDIT: actually its way less, no more than 10 minutes in my experience, I don't know where I came with half an hour) to sell everything you idle.
I probably made already something like $400 or probably even more from cards, made $15 the last couple of days and still have 341 games to idle (thats 1026 cards, which will give me at least $30** considering an average of value).
Now if you're patient and have a little more time to spend, you can research for the market behaviour on each card (for which value it sells the highest or the average best value to sell that will not take too long and won't risk the card dropping too much in value so there is no risk that you forget about yours listed and leave it rotting in the market). I used to do this in the beginning when I had less cards to sell, but its plain dumb if you have to waste more than 30 minutes to do it.
Full disclosure tho, this for me is really a way of getting something back from what I spend on games/bundles, considering when I buy a bundle I activate 1/3 or half of the games and the rest I trade/give away. Only profit from cards comes from games that are given for free.
But its still a good way of having some extra bucks in your Steam wallet to spend on sale games. I don't remember the last time I've used my bank account or cc to buy something on Steam. And to buy bundles I use beer money I get from other revenue sources I have that goes to my PayPal.
Comment has been collapsed.
I guess I could look into getting an idler. Over the past 7 years, I spent a lot on steam. Enough to use as a down payment on a house.
Comment has been collapsed.
Just don't use it when playing on VAC secure servers, its unlikely but you can get a VAC ban. Its not against Steam ToS and Steam is not against its use, but because of how it behaves it can trigger a VAC. I've heard of people in the past that managed to lift a VAC ban caused by Idle Master when it was proved it was the software that triggered, but since they added it to the unsecure/incompatible software list I find it hard to happen again, they probably just don't want to deal with it. But its still fine to use it.
Comment has been collapsed.
I was pretty bored last summer so I decided to sell my cards and also learn a bit about excel formulas, so I have some data I can trust after 1800 cards sold.
10 minutes to sell everything you idle
During a summer/holiday sale? Because usually it is much more time than 10 minutes... Or you are selling below price market, in which case the money you earn is lower. Let's suppose it is the last one, something that a lot of people do and implemented in inventory helper.
That's 1026 cards, which will give me at least $100 considering an average of value
Average value I calculated was 6,4€cents/card. I feel like lately that number is even lower. Remember that valve/devs get a minimum of 2 cents for every card, so you get around 4,4€cents/card. And as you are selling all your cards in minutes, that means you are selling below market price, so 1 less cent/card -> 3,4€cents/card. 1026*3.4=34.88€. Much less than the $100 initial estimation.
I probably made already something like $400 or probably even more from cards
"Probably" is not a very trustworthy source.... You have 1426 games, let's suppose around 60% of those games have cards (it is my own data, but I'm afraid this number can widely change from one person to another). That makes 856 games with cards. You still have 341 games to idle, so that makes 515 games. Each game has an average of 3,72 cards for me. According to what I posted above, 1916 cards*3.4€cents=65.15€. Pretty different from $400 you mentioned.
I am not saying you are lying, it is just that those data don't fit each other. It can mean you use alt accounts to farm freebies, something that most people who farm keys do, but you didn't mention it in your post.
EDIT1: I forgot my data was in €, not in $. Edited in the post.
EDIT2: I checked your profile with steam.tools and it gave me this data:
- 958 STC games (67% of your games, 100 more than in my estimation).
- 6371 cards (these are the sum of all cards of every game, not the farmed cards, which are the half, or the half+1 if the number of cards is odd. 3600 cards seems a fair estimation (3185 cards+415 games with odd number of cards)
- Worth ~$227.73 (this is selling cards for their market price, and still pretty far from $400+$100=$500 you said)
227.73/3600 cards=6.3cents/card. Resting 1 cent for selling each card under market price=5.3cents/card. I calculated 3.4€cents/card=3,62cents/card (dollars), so apparently your card games are much more expensive than mine (less % of freebies?).
tl;dr: 227.73 dollars is the "official" number, that becomes $191.73 selling below market price. (with current prices, they could be higher when you sold them tho). 100€ (my number) < $191.73 < $500 (your number)
Comment has been collapsed.
During a summer/holiday sale? Because usually it is much more time than 10 minutes... Or you are selling below price market, in which case the money you earn is lower. Let's suppose it is the last one, something that a lot of people do and implemented in inventory helper.
In a casual day yes. Like today for example. I use Steam Inventory Helper, depending on my mood I just click "Sell quickly for...", and I can do 3-4 pages of cards in 10 minutes like I did today and edited my post just after I did it and realized it was much faster. But I've mentioned that I use it even before editing it. Sometimes I take a bit more to sell some cards for a bit higher value expecting to sell in the long run. Nowdays I'm not doing it that much tho as I have many cards left to sell and I'm just not feeling like it.
Average value I calculated was 6,4 cents/card. I feel like lately that number is even lower. Remember that valve/devs get a minimum of 2 cents for every card, so you get around 4,4 cents/card. And as you are selling all your cards in minutes, that means you are selling below market price, so 1 less cent/card -> 3,4 cents/card. 1026*3.4=$34.88. Much less than the $100 initial estimation.
Its very low value lately for the most of the games, but that started around january/february this year. From my experience last year the cards usually to value a lot more. At least for me that used to let them wait in the market instead of selling quickly as I'm doing more today. The average was easily around 7,3 cents per card, or R$0,25 (not considering Valve's cut). At least that is the average value I used to get by not selling for the lowest.
"Probably" is not a very trustworthy source.... You have 1426 games, let's suppose around 60% of those games have cards (it is my own data, but I'm afraid this number can widely change from one person to another). That makes 856 games with cards. You still have 341 games to idle, so that makes 515 games. Each game has an average of 3,72 cards for me. According to what I posted above, 1916 cards*3.4 cents=$65.15. Pretty different from $400 you mentioned.
You're not considering foil cards, booster packs (its not the same but still, I get 1-2 per week, some weeks none and some weeks more), games that drops more than 3 cards (this usually didn't made a difference in the past, but its doing now), and I said that last year when I had time I used to research for the average value and I used to let the cards waiting in market instead of selling quickly as I'm doing with most of the cards now, so for most of the cards I used to get more than the average value.
I also bought a good amount of AAA games or hyped indie games around launch, that gave me way more valuable cards. One single card I can remember, was not around launch tho, was a foil Witcher 3 card that I sold for $3 or something like that.
Also way more than 60% of my games have cards. You just made a wrong estimation*.
You can trust me or not, but I wouldn't lie about something that anyone can test for themselves. I'm just providing my personal experience. I can have forgotten about something that had an impact on the amounts I've mentioned, but especially the value I've got in the last 2-3 days is 100% accurate, I started to idle 3 days ago having R$1.322,00 (U$372) on wallet and now I'm sitting at R$1,371,73 (around U$391), and that is because there is still 12 pages of cards in the market waiting to be sold.
You are just undervaluating and not considering a lot of things that can add up to that value.
And for what I have left, 1026 cards being equal $100, that was considering the average of cards I've sold in the past 2-3 days and considering that games with more valuable cards would increase the average value, and they can. The average in which I'm selling cards right now is $0,03, multiply that by 3 (because games don't drop 1 card) and you get ~$92... don't forget a lot of games with more valuable cards, foils, games with more than 3... games that I'm whilling to let sitting in the market in a bit and sell for more than the average...
A lot of things can considerably increase the average value.
One thing I give you tho, is that the relation time spent x value from cards has a big impact that I didn't mentioned. You can spend 10 minutes/day selling cards but that will have an effect on your earnings.
EDIT: I also have 2 accounts in which I farmed cards from freebies, one with 176 games (probably 99% have cards) and another with something around 80. That has some impact, not that much but still.
Comment has been collapsed.
Paragraph 1: So it was not just me, prices are getting lower lately! :O
Paragraph 2: Yes, effectively your average cents per card was higher than I thought. And curiously your estimation is exactly the same than in my (edited) post (well, after 1 hour I spent editing it xd). 5,3cents/card after taxes, or 7,3cents/card before taxes.
Paragraph 3: Yep, I totally forgot foil cards and booster pack drops. I took in account games dropping more than 3 cards tho (my average was 3.72 drops per game. After checking steamtools, I calculate an average of 3.76 drops per game for you, 3600/958, so that number seems accurate). With respect to your number of games with cards, I estimated a 60%, and it was a 67%, I would say it was not "very" wrong, but still wrong and that 7% makes a difference of 100 games (I mentioned this in my edited post, but of course you were already writing your answer).
Of course, as I said I am not saying you are lying lol You have no reason to do it. I am bored and wanted to think a little bit about it. As you have said, there are a lot of factors that raise the total sum you can get from cards.
I indeed undervalued your cards, but in my defense I have to say that my games have cheaper cards :P
And for what I have left, 1026 cards being equal $100, that was considering the average of cards I've sold in the past 2-3 days and considering that games with more valuable cards would increase the average value, and they can. The average in which I'm selling cards right now is $0,03, multiply that by 3 (because games don't drop 1 card) and you get ~$92... don't forget a lot of games with more valuable cards, foils, games with more than 3... games that I'm whilling to let sitting in the market in a bit and sell for more than the average...
1026 cards * your average of $0.03 = $30.78, why do you multiply by 3 the number of cards? You should multiply the number of games*3, not the number of cards...
Comment has been collapsed.
Don't worry. I should've been more accurate and detailing better my personal experience when talking about things like this that can get expectations for other people. You were right in bringing up the topic and at least made me talk about it.
And yeah, in the print I posted below for example, a Gal-X-E card was sold for R$0,39, nowdays they're about R$0,10...
It dropped a LOT and I have no idea why.
1026 cards your average of $0.03 = $30.78, why do you multiply by 3 the number of cards? You should multiply the number of games3, not the number of cards...
You're right. I was multiplying the number of cards instead of the number of games. US$30 for the cards left is correct. That was plain dumb of me.
EDIT: This last example was bad math and me being stupid, didn't had bad intentions. :P In total I would say $430, more or less for everything is a good estimative for my personal experience.
Comment has been collapsed.
This is going back to 2016, (the price started to go down december 2016). Divide everything by 3,1, the value of the dollar in Brazil.
http://i.imgur.com/tLCEnna.png
The other pages in-between have few card sales to display and a lot of "Listing created" entries.
That was the average value in 2016/2015 for me, in which I waited a lot to sell a card.
And there is also examples that are way off the curve (more than US$0,40 for a single card): http://i.imgur.com/GvMUWIN.png
More examples of the average price in which I used to sell cards (that demanded research and waiting): http://i.imgur.com/5dJxY3z.png
I had to skip a lot of pages with CS:GO cases, CS:GO skins, CS:GO stickers from majors (I used to buy them and resell too) and pages with "Listing created/Listing cancelled", and in a lot, lot of pages there is just a few cards sold, plus a lot of listings created or other things bought.
So I cherry picked a bit but it was just to show the best examples.
PS: Around mid 2016* the dollar was higher around here, something around 3,4/3,5 irrc.
In conclusion, perhaps it might have been below US$400, but I still stand on the fact that it was a good estimative. You see cards listed in april just being sold in september, you see foils, you see high value cards that are valuable by itself. Of course there are tons of pages with R$0,20 cards, but that was around the average lowest I used to sell cards last year and in 2015, and anyone that used the market with the same patience as I did can agree with that. The exception** were cards from freebies and CS:GO-like cards, that were usually around R$0,14, that was the absolute lowest possible. R$0,25/R$0,30 (US$0,08 in average) was the acceptable for me and I managed to reach that value in most of the cases.
Editted for grammar, it still sucks but its better :P
Comment has been collapsed.
Foil cards, booster pack drops, research before selling cards, csgo drops, better prices in the past, alt accounts for farming, selling summer/holiday cards... A lot of factors that indeed raise the total revenues. I think my more expensive card sold was a foil for 1€, but well I don't buy recent AAA games, which have the higher value per card (along with anime games)
Comment has been collapsed.
Some showcases are the only way to actually see your own data though. Achievement number and percentage is not shown anywhere else, nor are number of item trades made. The only one that can be easily seen elsewhere is the amount of cards from the badge showcase, but I like that one's randomiser (I don't know why can't the achievement showcase have a randomiser as well).
Comment has been collapsed.
Two possible things:
- Sell them for profitz
- Craft badges for Steam e-peen
And that's pretty much it.
Comment has been collapsed.
- Sell for protiz to buy weeb things
And that's the ONLY thing you should do.
Comment has been collapsed.
Why weeb things? Aren't weeb things very expensive?
Comment has been collapsed.
I was gonna post some image to contradict your statement, so I Google Image searched "brutal anime"... but then I saw some very disturbing things that would probably get me banned so yeah... nevermind... I think I'll stick to posting images I found when searching "creepy anime" instead...
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, seems like everyone else covered everything. Thanks for the gib!
Comment has been collapsed.
You already got the helpful answer.
You already got the cynical answer.
What's left? Great GA, but maybe add to your posting that it's NA exclusive. Oh, and have a free bump with this. :-)
Comment has been collapsed.
You can use the badges to impress ladies and get hot dates.
Comment has been collapsed.
You can sell the cards for money, or craft them which gives you a badge, +XP to your steam profile, an emoticon, a profile background, and a coupon.
Downsides are it mucks up your playtime stats, and if you're the type of person to do refunds on steam it'll cut into the playtime limits.
Comment has been collapsed.
I personally idle free crap games to trade the crap cards for cards of games that I enjoy so that I can complete those sets and... stare at them in vain.
Comment has been collapsed.
I just do it for a side hobby, idk why it just makes me happy so might as well xD
Comment has been collapsed.
I had cards accumulating for years from general play, not farming, and I thought they were completely pointless since I don't care about leveling my steam account. Then I found out I could sell them all. Most got me $0.05, but some were worth quite a bit more. I sold something like 125 of them and earned enough to buy Firewatch for free.
Comment has been collapsed.
mostly already answered. imo though just idle and sell on marketplace for steam wallet funds to buy another "bonus games" basically. ^^
thanks 4 chance n' bu^^p!
Comment has been collapsed.
Honestly unless you really want the Steam levels, there's no big point in the badges. If you've got a big library and a handful of obscure, unbundled games, you could be looking at $10 or more in cards. Great for saving up for sales or indie stuff.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't care about Steam levels, and I don't think it's really worth my time to list cards anymore. They mostly just sit in my inventory now.
Comment has been collapsed.
Seems like you have received more than enough answers, so I'll just bump~
However, I idle cards so that their game is eligible for booster packs. Small profits each time one drops.
Comment has been collapsed.
I had a crapton of cards, emotes, and wallpapers. Sold off most of it and had made about $80, which I just used the last of to by Nightshade. So farming cards and making badges can have a decent return, but honestly listing all that stuff took some time.
Comment has been collapsed.
I used to do it to increase my Steam level, but then I quit caring :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Badges are useless. It's just another e-penis thing. There are other reasons to farm cards, but I guess you don't care about them.
ps: I knew the giveaway us just for NA, but I had to try the custom rule because it's one of the biggest rules I've seen so far 0.0 I passed \o/, but it's NA only anyway (ಥ‸ಥ)
Comment has been collapsed.
Excuse my ignorance for asking this question here. I havent been following anything about cards and farming them on steam. What is the benefit of farming them to create badges?
Also gib [NA]
Comment has been collapsed.