While I'm not happy with things that are going on with Splinterlands, I still see the game at least surviving which made me start buying bottom price Max Level Gold Cards for these reasons...

Market Price vs DEC Peg Burn Value

By this point, card prices have been beaten down so much especially on the Chaos Legion Set and old reward cards that many actually started to burn them for DEC. This because it's nearly the only way to get some value out of them if you want to exit since there are almost no buyers. With the price of DEC also still below peg, many holders are trying to sell cards just above the actual burn value but below the burn value in case DEC would be at peg.

So if you believe DEC will get to peg at some point in time, you can buy these cards, use them and if the time that DEC gets closer to peg you have the option to just take back your money not even needing a buyer. This with the upside potential that cards somehow will be given more usecase again combined with new players coming in pushing up the price. The fact that some max level gold cards go for under 5$ is just completely insane as based on prices packs go for and the probability, only the biggest whales should be able to get their hands on these. The downside risk is that Splinterland goes bankrupt without finding someone to take over the game which would make all assets near worthless.

The Gold Card +10% Bonus Benefit

So for each gold card you use in a match you get a +10% Glints (and SPS) bonus in your earnings if you win the match. Most of the time in Splinterlands when it comes down to cards, the earnings that you get from them are merely a small part of how much value the cards lose over time especially of you are a pack buyer. So being able to buy cards which at DEC Peg price allows you to burn them for a profit is actually a good way to possibly increase your earnings in the game. This especially if you are a Champion Wild Player with enough SPS staked.

So Gold cards for higher level players are exponentially worth more which I guess is one of the reasons why the top players get in so many battles as for them buying Energy might actually not be a bad deal.

Archmage Most-Used Cheap Cards

If you have a large card collection and a lot of choices, gold cards become less valuable as there are only that many matches that you are using a specific one while you expect to lose 50% of your matches. However, when looking at the line-ups that Archmage submits it only really varies a little bit with some cards being used all the time while other cards rarely to never. So once I saw this I started looking for the cards that are used enough times for it to be worth owning the gold card if it goes below DEC Peg burn value...

In the last 20 Battles that show in my history, 4 of them utilized the Pelacor Bandit which is one of the cheapest and most overprint card in the game. Other cards that I noticed that are used a lot are...

It are only the Gold Common cards who offer the best value to get the +10% earnings bonus as their burn value by far is the lowest at 5$ while Rares are 11$, epics are 26$, and Legendaries are 52$

Purchased Cards

So far I only picked up one card which I managed to pick up under the DEC Peg Burn Value which was the Pelacor Bandit.

So far, it already won me multiple battle in a day and each of them slowly but surely adds up in earning getting an actual yield on the investment with a very low risk for the asset to actually be devalued unlike most cards in the game.

Hidden Opportunity Cost!

One of the hidden risks of buying cards with an eye to earn a tiny bit extra in the game while very likely not getting burned on them is the opportunity cost of putting money into other assets and crypto while we are in a bull run. That's also the reason why I'm not going wild on it and only plan to buy a handful that are used a lot by archmage and only when the price they are sold at is low enough to make it worth it.

Conclusion

If you run a bot in Wild while owning enough SPS in the higher leagues, it might be very much worth to look out for Max Level Common Gold Cards which are selling near the burn value. These have limited downside price risk while they offer great benefits in the game with the +10% earnings bonus on each match where they are used in.