Adventures in WWE SLAM Digital Trading Cards

Topps seems to have cornered the market on Digital Trading Card Apps.  First with Baseball and Bunt, then Football with Huddle, onto Major League Soccer with Kick, moving into the entertainment world with Star Wars and The Walking Dead, moving to the octagon with UFC Kick, and finally most recently the WWE and SLAM!

All the apps function basically the same, you get free coins each day you log in, you can spend those coins on digital card packs containing at least 5 cards usually.  There are inserts and hits including highly sought after digital Signatures and Relic pieces.  These cards can sell for big bucks on eBay.  Yes, digital cards.

In Bunt, the baseball game, Signature cards have sold for hundreds of dollars.  In Star Wars the first "insert" card ever released, so called "Vintage Han Solo in the Cockpit" went for a couple hundred at it's peak.  Yes, digital cards.

Now I have gone on and off with virtually all of the apps, and at this time I'm in all of them except Soccer.  I really only care about Star Wars and WWE Slam.  I was into Star Wars on Day 1, but took off a several months, only recently coming back.  I've got a decent collection, but I missed a ton of releases.

In Bunt I'm only collecting Angels, and Mike Trout specifically.  I'm not collecting anything specific in other apps.  This allows me to cross trade, which can be a bit tricky some times, you always run into the possibility of being scammed or burned.  But if you're smart you can mitigate that risk.

So there's an app for The Walking Dead.  I started playing it a couple months ago, before I had even watched a single episode of the show.  I have read all the comics, but only started binge watching the show in mid June.  I got up to the beginning of Season 5 before I had to take a break.  I'm not collecting a lot, besides the Fan Choice set and the free daily teal singles.  I have completed a base White, Blue and Red set (your standard Common, Uncommon and Rare base).  Since I don't really care about collecting, I can and usually do stash my coins for when the Fan Choice hits once a week.  the last couple of weeks I've managed to get more than one of the Fan Choice weekly card within a few packs, so by yesterday I had over 200K coins stashed.  I decided to blow a few on some packs and went for the 10K Base expansions.  I pulled an Aqua Variant of Daryl Dixon, with a card count of 31.  Yup thats a big hit.  Ebay has it going for $15.


Over on WWE SLAM I've been watching the insert releases and noticed something awfully interesting.  Most of the insert sets have had a similar pattern, they're releasing 6 or 7 card sets with three different variants.  The "easy" variant is a 1:10 pack pull, but once a card is released it's available for the run of the set.  The mid-range variant is usually a 1:15 or 1:20 and available for only 24 hours, then sold out.  The "hard" variant is either 1:25 or 1:50, and capped at 750 or more commonly 1500 cards.

As the releases went on, a pattern began to emerge: the "easy" variant of the last couple days' releases were actually the lowest number card count.  The final trading day before the award is released there's a frenzy in the fan feed looking for the final card for the "easy" set, and there just aren't enough to go around.

Here's an example:

The first Insert card set was "Charisma" - a 7 card set with 3 variants, Blue (1:10), Purple (1:15), Pink (1:25/1500 CC).  Day 1's Sasha Banks has over 6400 cards, the purple has 2391 and the Pink has 1500.  By Day 6, Booker T there's between 1012 and 1124 of the Blue, 2083 of the Purple and 1500 of the Pink.  Wait a sec, why don't I know the true card count?  AHA, the "easy" tier has the card count hidden from view.  You can still estimate by sorting the ALL CARDS listing by Card Count and guestimating from the cards with a count on either side.  The final days' release, Enzo Amore has only between 525 and 542 Blues, 2368 Purples and 1500 pinks.  So while there are several thousand of Day 1s there's only a few hundred of Day 7.  Anyone trying to complete a set that doesn't pull the day 7 1:10 has to trade, and there aren't very many to trade.  In fact, once the award was released, there were 290 Blue awards, 374 Purples and 484 Pinks.

Same thing happened with the Speed Set and it's final card Finn Balor, same thing happened with the Power set and it's final card Braun Strowman.  Same thing happened with the earlier Aerialist set (which only had 2 colors) and the Warrior Tribute (which had FOUR colors).

See by the final day, there are multiple releases available for that 1:10 pull.  So your 1:10 is a 10% chance to pull ANY of that set's releases.  Obvious math indicates that it's a 1:60 or 1:70 pull (depending on how many cards are in the set) for the final day's cards.

THIS week we had two insert sets ending on the same day, FLIGHT and "Family Ties".  Both with 3 variants, and both with 6 cards.  They both ended on Thursday August 11, and coincidentally (or not maybe) Topps chose that day to release a brand new huge set, HERITAGE WAVE 1, which funneled off a ton of pack purchases.  By the end of the day, there were a total of 769 White Charlotte Flights and 533 Black Uso Family Ties.

Now I did buy a couple of Heritage packs early in the day for 10K coins (the Insert sets are only 5K) but as soon as I realized I needed to finish my Family Ties set, I stopped and started going for Family ties packs, and actually managed to pull the rare Black Usos.  At that time I still needed the day 5 card, the Rhodes Family, but I was able to make a trade for that.

Remember what I said about The Walking Dead cards earlier and cross trading?  Well watching the fan feed I found someone who wanted Walking Dead for their Slam, and had a White Charlotte Flight for trade.  I made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

I gave up the Aqua I got the previous day, plus a couple of other rare base expansions and he traded me the Charlotte Flight.

So once I got it, I immediately advertised it on the WWE Fan Feed and on reddit in R/TOPPSWWE.  My minimum trade was for a signature card, which at that time were selling for at least $5.00 and more like $8 to $15.   After a couple of hours of truly awful offers, I decided to put it on eBay with a fixed price at $14.99 or best offer.  The first offers came in and they were pathetic, less than 1/3rd of asking price.  BY that time I already had trade offers of at least 3 mat relics from Heritage (which are selling for between $1.50 and $4.00 depending on who they are, the ones I was offered totaled about $10).

I finally accepted a great offer, $8.00 cash via Paypal and a Dean Ambrose Signature (worth about $8.00 right now) through eBay.



So here's a spreadsheet with all the current insert cards and their population.

My Topps user name is Grendelsen unless noted

Remember I'm cross trading:

Walking Dead (mattiasgrendels)

Bunt (wildwill) 

Huddle (wildwill)

Knockout

For

Star Wars 

&

WWE Slam

Topps Bunt is Back for 2014

The fusion of online trading cards and fantasy baseball that Topps introduced in 2012 is back for another season, and Angel Favorite Mike Trout is their official spokesman this year, which means his mug is all over the app.  Not that it's a bad thing mind you.

The bad thing about BUNT is that your previous cards won't gain you points this year, so you'll have to spend a bunch of coins on new cards, or trade off your 2013 for 2014.  However, since today is the first day, the market for 2013 and previous cards not just went soft, but it melted into a mush.

So this year we're able to do 9 for 9 trades or 9 for 1 or any combo that would allow.  SO that's better than the 3 previously.  We're now only allowed ONE account per device, which I think is great to get rid of scammers.  Sadly scammers will still try to scam, and Topps won't be able to do much about it, just as in previous years.

We do get a new "rate your trader" functionality, but since you can make a rating on a declined trade, I'm not sure how that's going to work out.  We'll have to wait and see on that.

Oh and the players themselves score points way differently this season.  Now it looks like each player has 5 tiers of cards from Commons worth 1x points to Super Rares, which I guess are worth 5x or something.  Not really too sure on that.  The other rarity levels are each worth more now too, uncommons are green and worth 2x, rares are red and worth 3x and scarce are silver and worth 4x.

I'm back playing this year, my user name is WILDWILL (same as in Huddle too).  Hit me up as a friend and send me your Angels cards.  All I care about is collecting the Angels Team Set.  If you tell me you read my blog in a trade offer I will give you a free DOUBLE 2013 rare from my collection.

AND hit me up on this Bunt/Huddle/Kick fan forum where I'm also WILDWILL

Topps Huddle 2013 Is OUT

So just like their BUNT app which is almost over for the season (and I now have 2K cards in) Topps released their HUDDLE app today, which is basically the same as Bunt only for Football.  I don't know about you but since FB is the national pasttime now, I suspect it's going to be very very popular.

So what are you waiting for, download it NOW, and sign up!  Use WILDWILL as your promo code and you'll get extra coins!  Then trade with me.  If you put in the comments that you read this on my blog I'll give you something extra in your trade!  (HOWEVER, make it a fair trade don't ask for the Sun, Moon and the Stars and expect to get it for scrubs just because you read my blog... ;0 )


Also make sure you sign up for http://huddlemania.boards.net/, the premier community to discuss Huddle outside of the game.  There's also a Buntmania which I'm very active on as well.

Come on join the fun!

Oh and finally, I'm participating in the annual Pojo Football Pick'Em http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/pickem/809

Apps Galore - FREE COLLECTING!

I have not bought a single pack of 2013 baseball cards.  I admit it, I'm weak.  The Angels aren't doing anything exciting and I've never cared for the rest of the league, plus when I'm not working I can't justify spending my wife's hard-earned money on cardboard.

That doesn't mean I haven't been collecting cards though, I'm doing it virtually via the Topps Bunt app. It's both a complete set of cards and a game in one free program.  Today they are doing a promotion where if you enter another user's name (mine is WILDWILL) as a promo code you'll get extra coins to start.  Plus they have been giving away promo codes for free coins left and right (the one for today is HEARTANDSOUL).  It's a fun game you should try it.  And if you do, trade with me, I'll give you something nice if you mention my blog in your trade offer.

I can also recommend highly the BuntMania webforum where you can learn all about the game, keep up with promo codes and post massive trade lists, which you can't really do in the app.

I've also been playing Star Trek Rivals though it's not so much a CCG, as a weird quick game with cards.

Lastly don't forget to sign up for GI JOE Battlegrounds which isn't out yet, but is coming soon.  If you use promo code HISSTANK you'll get a free Major Bludd card along with your free Storm Shadow.  Also sign up for the HissTank forums while you're at it.