Today I made some final adjustments to complete my first phase of the card staking goal for Land in Splinterlands. All good!
During this review, I had a look at the best soulbound reward cards by production points, at this point.
This is when I discovered this 3 BCX gold foil legendary:
This card would give me 7,500 PP, when staked on land, and if I get another one, that's 10k PP. Nice!
Unfortunately, it's the only soulbound GFL reward card I have, but it's better than having one of each, 3 different GFLs.
Starting from here, I wanted to dig a little deeper into the analysis of what was the better course of action: playing the game since soulbound reward cards were introduced or renting out my playing deck.
This cannot be an exact comparison, since I haven't done them in parallel. It is though based on historical results from playing the game, and a best guess of what my daily average from renting would have been for my playing deck, considering it declined in time, especially after the introduction of listing and update fees (beginning of March).
Regarding soulbound reward cards, I only accounted for the gold foil ones at the minimum price for a card of that rarity on the market. These prices can be lower when these rewards cards will be up for sale, or they can be much higher if that happens during the bull market or the older they get. Obviously, the regular foil reward cards have a value, but I consider them the margin I take for not having the exact information both for the price of these cards and for the rental income.
With this information, let's see how we compare.
For the rental income, I have chosen 4000 DEC/day as a potential average. It could be lower right now, but I don't know. I haven't rented out my playing deck in a long time, so I don't know how much I'd get for it currently. I do have some elements of comparison from my last daily rental income and other people who have chosen to rent out their high-leagues playing decks lately. I've chosen a number a little higher than I think I'd get these days, based on the fact that the rental income has been descending during the last few months, and I should use an average.
With that average and approximately 165 days since soulbound reward cards have been added, we have 4000 * 165 = 660,000 DEC. At a price of 0.00078$ per DEC, that would mean 515 USD.
Now, let's see what were the actual rewards by playing the game.
I received 363 USD in rewards that have a price (excluding potions). From this total are excluded potions, merits and reward cards. With potions the total is 809 USD, but let's leave them out since they don't have a market price.
The optimistic evaluation of the soulbound gold foil reward cards based on the lowest prices on the market for each rarity, would bring their total value to around 275 USD. I ignore regular foils because it's too much to calculate and the added value should not be extraordinary.
Even so, 363+275 = 638 USD, which is more than 515 USD I estimated for potential rental income during the same period.
That means playing the game (in Diamond and Champion) was more profitable. Obviously, there were many approximations and estimations in this analysis.
But, let's keep in mind that the DEC should not go (much) above 1$ per 1000. While the price of cards can go way up in the bull market.
Plus, there are some interesting PPs already for some of the reward cards, which are soulbound, so can't be traded or rented out, but can be staked on land. Some of them are great in combat too.
Overall, I think playing the game was more rewarding than renting out the deck would have been. Even if the rental income would have been a little higher.