We're kicking off another feature series! Community contributor "Snuffy", summarises the highs, lows and memes that made an impact on the Marketplace this week.
Disclaimer: none of this is financial advice. I am just a random dude on the internet staring at these charts as a hobby. Don't do anything stupid based on anything I say!
My morning routine for this past week has been something like this: Wake up, immediately grab my phone to read up on what I missed, grab a coffee, open all the markets side by side and stare in amazement at what I find.
So much has happened in the two weeks since Gods Unchained cards became tradeable. Last week I described how the market flooded with cards at prices far below people's expectations and how buyers jumped at the opportunity to snag a few good deals.
Nothing has slowed down this week. In fact, those who have been looking at the market activity were able to witness a true feeding frenzy as big movers swooped in and bought out entire card stocks by the hundreds.
Competition has been fierce, market websites were crashing due to people refreshing a page every second and the market graphs are so steep not even Alex Honnold would climb them. There's too much to write about so let’s dive right in.
The Trollbox
Those who have been trading crypto for a long time are probably familiar with the fabled trollbox. This was basically a live chat on certain old exchanges where buyers and sellers spent their time discussing the market at length. Given the anonymous nature of these chats, it didn't take long for these chatrooms to become so meme-tastic that the term "trollbox" came up and never left.
In GU we have the Trading Discussion channel. Most of the traders of GU cards can be found here, giving live analysis of what's going on in the market, what hot items to look for, whether or not items will go up, down or sideways and what colour lambo they will be ordering once mass adoption occurs.
This last week, the chat has also been a combustion engine for frenzies. Simply mentioning a card was enough reason to see prices doubling within minutes, something that others picked up on to turn it into their main trading strategies.
Another big topic is the future viability of genesis cards in general. While overall most people seem to be quite happy with how things are going right now, some members of the community have voiced their fears that in order to ever become viable for mass adoption, Genesis cards will have to either see a reprint or become obsolete in the meta.
This is because the effect of scarcity can already be seen in some of the hotter items, reflected in the high prices for single cards. Others have acted on this by selling off their entire holdings in anticipation of Season 1, holding firm to the belief that power creep is inevitable. Debate on these topics is heated and has been going on since the market opened.
Nonetheless, significant amounts of ETH has entered the market and buyers have taken big positions in certain items. The whales have surfaced, feasting on anything they find appealing. and while this is happening, the market sentiment is reflected in the trollbox, with rallying cries to "stop buying all the Lambogorgons so there’s some left for me" heard far and wide.
Meteorite
The Legendary market has kept climbing steadily with many cards now trading above initial pack value. Jason, Medea's Muse still leads the race (0.4305 at the time of writing), followed by Avatar of War (0.3075), Tyet, Heir To The Sky (0.2665) and Avatar of Magic (0.2645).
Jason's climb seems to have slowed down a bit, reaching its peak around 0.49 earlier in the week before hitting a wall of orders around 0.5 and up.
The same seems true for the others, with the orderbook filling up at, or around their current price levels which leads me to believe the initial discovery phase for these cards may have finished its first cycle.
Without the presence of buy orders on the available markets it’s a bit tough to pinpoint an exact price floor, though more often than not, anything sitting .02 below asking price gets snagged up pretty quickly.
At the other end of the spectrum we have Mistress Scythia still at the bottom of the listings at 0.0533, followed by Namebinder Zal'zie (0.0559) and Shadow Prince (0.0574).
The biggest swings this week were seen in the Epics market as the big traders satisfied their needs with legendaries and were hungry for more.
Last week I wrote about how the Epics market still had a lot of upswing potential, which has manifested itself in a doubling of prices across the board. Demogorgon still leads the way, climbing to 0.1691. Ocular fiend breached all the way to 0.1076 earlier in the week after the highly anticipated nerf to runes turned out to be less severe than expected and is now sitting at 0.0892.
The biggest surprise for me was the climb seen in Highborn Knight, going from the lower 0.03 regions all the way to 0.1145 before dropping down to its current level of 0.0738.
Again, trailing way behind we can see the less commonly played cards in the set (Equivalent Exchange, Synergy Golem, Fill the Coffers).
The rares market is still recovering from the initial market flooding we saw when trading was enabled, though here we can now see the first signs of stabilisation.
Pyramid Warden leads the race, trading higher than the average for epics (0.0325) which is also reflected in its common presence in decks. Anputian Magus, still being a very strong card for both rune and zoo/aggro archetypes is following closely behind (0.0276) with Trojan Golem in third place (0.0172).
I still foresee a lot of upwards potential in the rares market, with the labour of approving 100 metamask transactions being a bigger deterrent than the actual price itself.
The same holds (mostly) true for the commons market, where many investors have expressed their frustration at gas prices being higher than the actual cards, combined with the frustrating process of approving every single purchase individually. I predict not much will see significant movement here until bulk buying becomes easier to do. That being said, the one card worth noting is A Real Man, spiking as high as 0.005 earlier in the week before dropping down to 0.0039 at the time of writing.
Those who have read my report last week know that demand here basically comes from a group of buyers who seems to be serious about their desire to turn every single meteorite version of A Real Man into a diamond fusion. Meme or not, the effect is that this card has gone up x40 in value since market opening, noting the highest gainer in the genesis set.
Shines
Last week I stated that shines have a ceiling of max 5x its previous tier due to the future addition of fusing cards to create a higher shine level. After putting a bit more thought into this, I conclude that I was wrong in this assumption.
I expect the multiplier to sit a bit higher, depending on market volume available. Buying the 125 meteorite cards needed for a full fuse would have a serious impact on any market, especially at higher rarities which would have severe effects on the underlying values. I now expect the ceiling to be related to the average value of purchase at pre-tier rather than just the entry market price.
Currently, we see an average spread of between 4 and 6 times the previous tiers for shines, with a dwindling supply forcing shine prices to steadily climb. I do suspect price suppression once fusing is enabled, even though this will have a simultaneous effect on the market value of the tier these cards were fused from.
I still believe that there is a ceiling for shines, since at some point it will become cheaper to just fuse the desired card yourself. That said, we won't know the exact effects until fusing is enabled.
Quick word on diamond legendaries: these prices have steadily gone up. Not a lot of these are actually trading hands, though, as time progresses we see the low hanging fruit being picked up. These items are not for everyone so it’s only natural that these cards trade less frequently than the more accessible meteorites. That said, anything below 7 ETH doesn't take long to be picked up, with the current low sitting at 9 ETH. I expect this climb to continue as time goes by.
Promos
Big money has moved into the promos market and prices have gone up across the board. Light's Bidding is currently sitting at the astronomic price of 17.5 ETH for a single card, with the latest sales entry at 15.375 ETH.
First Phoenix has skyrocketed all the way to 8.2 ETH for a single card, with close to no market volume to send it to 10 and beyond. Blessed Chimera saw a rally from roughly 1.2 all the way to 2.6 ETH at current prices, witnessed by many as a discussion about promos pinpointed the card as being quite useful in certain archetypes.
With supply for promos being low as it is, it doesn't take much movement to have dramatic effects on the market. A single card purchase can cause a doubling in asking price for the next card on the order book and depending on who holds it, some of these cards may very well never enter the market again.
Chests
Chests have seen a steady increase in value as the week progressed. Mere minutes after posting last week's report, the market for legendary chests skyrocketed for a few moments trading as high as 1.6 ETH for a single chest. Prices have dropped since, currently sitting at 1.33 ETH for a single chest. Rare chests are currently trading at 0.1486.
Last week I pinpointed pack value as being a prime reason for chests to see their price action. I now have to nuance this belief and point out a sealed item is of itself an item of value. Whoever holds the chest does not only hold the potential value of the packs inside, with it also comes the choice of whether or not opening the chest is a good idea.
As supply for chests goes down, sealed chests become utility holding items of rarity, which on their own is reason enough for them to be valuable regardless of expected gains of opening them.
Other TCG's such as Magic The Gathering have pack potentials sometimes as low as ten cents on the dollar, meaning that opening the packs can leave you with a fraction of what you had when you kept it closed. Still, these boxes sell at their current values. I still predict chest values to go up over time, even if the expected value becomes less and less relevant over time.
And Now, The Weather
I expect next week's price hikes to be less severe for legendaries than what we have seen this week. A lot of action has taken place these last two weeks but now that the order books are filling we can start seeing some walls forming.
As I said, pinpointing a floor is hard but there are enough people smashing the refresh button that there is always someone to buy up the quick flips. Epics still have upside potential, though a doubling across the board may not be as easy to accomplish as it has been so far. If the overall market sentiment slows down we may even see a slight correction as listings outpace buys.
Rares and below still have plenty of upside potential, though as noted this is quite labour intensive at this point so movement here will be a bit slower. The future implementation of fusing will see the biggest effect here at commons and rares, when that happens we may see some wider rallies as this relies less on singular individuals and will have more of a mass appeal.
Chests will keep doing what they do, I expect these to keep climbing over time. Promos are funny, noteworthy here is the marginal volume could send things in any direction. if a single seller decides he needs a quick flip and there aren't any buyers around at that time, the drops may seem significant even if the overall trend is still up.
Shines may keep climbing, however with the future expectations of fusing I do think people will tend to keep an eye on the pre tier price levels more and more. an exception to this rule will be legendaries (and to some extent epics), where the material cost at market prices is enough to drain an entire orderbook of its volume (if the volume can ever be found at all).
Helpful links
- [tokentrove] (tokentrove.com) one of the most active marketplaces for single cards right now.
- [Opensea] (opensea.io) is where most people go for bulk card purchases.
- [GU.Cards] (gu.cards) another marketplace to keep an eye on when hunting for deals.
- [GU Market Watch] (fourshore.github.io) is a real time tracker of market activity, showing trending card sales, recent listings and more.
- [Cards Unchained] (https://cardsunchained.com) is a tracker of the current meta and which cards see the most usage overall. while not directly a market tool, this does help tremendously with spotting new trends when looking for things to buy.
- [RMI] (https://real-man-index.herokuapp.com/RMI) this is an API to keep track of the Real Man Index. Not used for anything right now as far as I can tell but if you feel like making your own charts to track A Real Man, use this.
Alright that's it for now.
Let's see how things played out next week! ~Snuffy
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