Dear fellows splintermaniacs, here we are with a new insight on the card market using the PR index, which I introduced for the first time in this post and expanded a bit on the first chapter of this saga.
I am providing almost live updates, about the collected data and their interpretation, thus if you have the gentleness to follow my foolish journey you will see how challenging it actually is to find some order in those numbers. And here, I can anticipate, I met my match. Therefore, I am asking for some help in the interpretation, this help will be kindly paid with a little giveaway (the most important one I can afford).
Giveaway rules
- any well thought and well-exposed contribution in the comment section is eligible, no need to explain that simpler comments or revisited copy-paste of other's concepts will be ignored
- up to 5 contributors will be rewarded with a card of their choice between:
Venari Heatsmith
Pelacor Deceiver
Gargoya Lion
Pelacor Conjurer
Pelacor Bandit
Pelacor Mercenary - Giveaway ends in 7 days
We can start with the easiest part: on the last chapter, we confirmed the hypothesis that edition is an intrinsic property of the cards that influence the PR value, though we faced the fact that rarity had not the same influence, or to better say, it has no influence at all. At least on the larger edition sets.
Here we will see if rarity affects PR in the mini editions: Promo, Dice, and I added the Reward cards that are currently in the printing period.
For the making of these graphs, I used the same timeline as the ones in chapter 1, thus, from Feb 9th till Feb 21st. If you remember it, we had no evidence of a meaningful change in the PR value due to card rarity, but I had the feeling that higher rarities have a narrower PR distribution, which could mean a more reliable investment for a non-playing actor.
These graphs look identical to the older ones to me. I don't see any meaningful change in the PR and the narrower nature of epic and legendaries remains just an impression. In the future, I will perform some deeper analysis on that, like ANOVA for the differences and even a simple standard deviation for the distribution. At the moment I just have something else to do, so forgive me if I prolong this.
This week I started having a look at how to use the PR to facilitate bargain hunting, for both player and non-player investors.
My thesis is quite simple:
in a set of cards that shares the same intrinsic properties a very low PR indicates that the card is strongly requested especially at his first level, thus by newer players, and his price maybe does not reflect its value. A very high PR means that the price of the card is not driven by rental demand, so it's maybe valuable for the higher leagues, or for some reason it is expected to gain value in the near future, or it's overpriced.
Therefore, it's quite simple to get an average of the PR value in a data set and get only the cards that are more distant from that average, using this process to skim cards that are less interesting.
The strength of the thesis is that looking at PR value instead of the price alone we have a snapshot of the perceived utility, which is lesser affected by volatility.
A weakness is that we can have this information only for a few cards type. But this is just because it's quite time-consuming to collect all the data needed, and if the method is proven valuable, there will be incentives for automating the process.
For the first test, I get all the regular Beta PR values from 9th Feb till today Feb 25th. I have chosen an entire edition as a set with the same intrinsic properties because we demonstrated that rarity is not relevant, I have no information about foil type, thus I excluded gold.
Moreover, I removed all the PR values taken in the last 3 days of the season, because in chapter 1 we showed that they strongly affect the PR average, while they do not affect cards that are not rented for CP (data not shown).
I calculated the average for each day, then for each card, I calculated the distance from the average and get the sum for all days. Finally, I ranked all the cards from the most positive to the most negative distance and get the top 3 at both extremities and I will discuss them.
I should have had separated monsters by summoners, but I got 2 monsters and 1 summoner at both the top 3, so I'm calling the day with this setup.
So...
The average PR for the Beta edition regular foil is 4.02, or in other words, 29 years to pay off the card from renting alone.
The Top 3 positive distances require 88, 54, and 50 years more, respectively, to pay off.
The Top 3 negatives require 20, 19, and 18 years less.
The highest PR average with a stunning 117 years to pay off is 4.63 and the lowest is 3.52 with "only" 9 years required.
time to reveal
Top 3 negatives
Mischievous Mermaid
is a top magic card, with 2 damages for only 5 mana. I can see why this card is highly requested even in lower levels.
From Splintercards we know that its price dropped more than 83% from the high in the last 3 months. With capital disposition, i should consider it for a strong buy
Cyclops
This card has no appeal to me, i can see 2 ranged damages, 6 mana and neutral may have some utility, but i don't feel it should at lvl 1. From splintercards we can see a price drop of 41% from the high, but it is notable that in the last few days it almost doubled from the bottom of 2.8$. I probably miss something here or it's just a temporary outlier, what do you think about?
Alric Stormbringer
He does bring storms, look at him and find a shelter. I miss the times when a benefactor rented it to me at 1 DEC/day, he just stopped a couple of weeks ago, probably he noticed that anyone else asks at least 5 times more, likely 8 or 9. Having him gives the opportunity to choose a magic play when green is not available, which easily leads out of bronze in minutes. I believe that 90$ is a high price, but it's probably not.
Top 3 positives
Flesh golem
A wonderful card. If you disagree probably you haven't met him in a Kron-Llama deck. Nevertheless, he's actually useful at lvl 3, with the heal, so I can see why he has such a high PR, there is no demand for it to be rented at lvl 1, while the card itself is quite valuable. Moreover, splintercards informs us that it dropped 60% from its high. and 40$ for a lvl 3 is something to consider.
Tyrus Paladium
A summoner that is available in the starter set, thus there is no demand for it at lvl 1, and its presence in the highest ranks of the PR it's an easy call. I can see why a summoner is still considered a great asset to hold and I wonder how many single bcx copies of it are still around. Nonetheless, this guy's price dropped more than 70% from the high and it's now 11$, I think we are plenty of better deals but I wouldn't feel comfortable selling it.
Kobold Miner
Here we are again with one of the cards that I use the most. I love it, but given the fact that I rent it easily at 0.1 DEC/day I need to ask, shall I sell it if I had a copy? It dropped 53% from the high, nonetheless, is more expensive than the flesh golem. I believe it's overpriced and I would definitely flip it for something more valuable, or to better say, something that could appreciate much more.
Eventually, we ended this extremely long second chapter, I feel that all this single card analysis thing should be better refined, but still seems to be useful for both purchase and sell purposes. It helps at skimming, it is not a stand-alone method and still relies on expertise for the interpretation results, thus may not yet be used by non-player investors. But maybe one day...
What do you think? Am i missing something? are there in the beta edition some strong buy or strong sell that are not included in this list (they should and some of them are very close 4th or 5th places)
In the next chapters
- Gold foils - I will start to follow them, promise
- more single card analysis - will be interesting, promise
- strat from perceived utility - seems promising, promise
- deeper statistics methods - won't be too much, promise
- and much more, promise