I have been steadily building my Splinterlands deck by obviously pulling them from chests but also by buying them off the market to patch the weak spots when I discover one.
The one big question I'm always facing is whether to buy regular foil cards or go for gold. In this post, I'm going to dig deeper into that while pondering this everlasting question. Enjoy!
Battering Ram
As an example, I'm going to use one of my favourite **Neutral** splinter cards - **Battering Ram**.
This angry-looking fellow goes very well with Tarsa as its weak melee attack is increased by the summoner's buff. This combined with its speed(3) and the Opportunity ability will give it a good chance to take out the weakest (unprotected) opponent monster.
The best thing about Battering Ram is its low cost when it comes to mana so it's a perfect fit for those little league battles. A great addition to any deck!
However, to be fully able to enjoy its services you might want to upgrade it to at least level 3 because level 1 Ram has only 1 speed point making it an easy prey.
So, should you get many regular foil Rams and upgrade them or buy a single gold foil one? Let's take a look.
Ram Prices
By the time of writing this, the Battering Ram Prices are at:
- Regular Foil - $0.29
- Gold Foil - $4.95
In order to upgrade your regular Ram to level 3 you would need to buy 14 copies which would make this option a little bit cheaper at the current price - 14 x 0.29 = 4.06.
But. Just like with any market, there are some rules that apply and Splinterlands marketplace ain't no different. In this case, there might not be enough supply with that price to make the upgrade worthwhile.
If I added up the 14 first ones on sale correctly, the total cost of a regular level 3 Battering Ram would be $4.42 so it would still be slightly cheaper to do it that way instead of buying a single gold one.
With a price difference of only $0.53 I would definitely buy the gold Ram. Even though both examples share the same stats, the GF ram will also give +10% to rewards. I like numbers but I'm not nerdy enough to start making calculations of how fast that price gap would be filled so I'll just leave that to your imagination.
If the gap was much bigger I would perhaps reconsider buying regulars if I was merely building my deck to do well in battles. Still, there are other more things to consider.
Ram Price Development
Even though I'm currently building a competitive deck as fast as possible, I also try to consider the future value of cards. As gold cards are much more scarce, I assume they hold their value better and perhaps gain some.
I bought my Battering Ram some time ago and cannot remember the exact price but if I'm not totally wrong, I think it was $2.something. If this was the case I managed to really "buy the dip" as the GF Ram peaked as high as $8.4!
In comparison, the regular foil Battering Ram's historical price development chart looks a bit different as seen below. It too has had its peaks but hasn't held the value as well as the gold one. It's also worth mentioning that the peaks here are made by the lowest card on sale at the time while the BCX price has been steadier.
In the future, I would probably have to sell the level 3 Ram cheaper than if I had those 14 pieces still as singles. So another point for the gold.
Now between you and me, I actually put my GF Ram up for sale for that $4.95 but came into second thoughts. My initial idea was to use the DEC I would've gotten from the Ram sale to purchase GF Goblin Psychic ($1.55) and GF Mycelic Infantry ($2.21).
Then I compared the circulating supply of these assets a bit more and decided to hold on to the Ram.
Circulating supply of Battering Ram:
- Regular Foil - 29,970
- Gold Foil - 2,179
While being "just a common card", Battering Ram from the Dice edition has quite a low supply compared to rare Mycelic Infantry for example which has a supply of 7,740.
Back to the actual topic.
Conclusion
I'm not saying regular cards are bad investments, on the contrary, you could for example buy many copies of a certain card in hopes it will gain value in the future and then kinda "take profit" by selling some of them.
Also, I'm not sure if the Ram was the best possible example for this topic - I'm sure there are many cards with a bigger price gap between RF & GF versions making the scale tip toward buying the regular one.
Perhaps the most common thing making us players choose the regular foil is, of course, the fact that many gold ones are simply out of reach with their insane prices! Still, as for me, I go for the gold whenever my budget allows.
Thank you for reading!
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DISCLAIMERS:
Thumbnail image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splintercards and Splintercards
