I Sold my Entire Collection of Steem Monsters Cards

If you play Steem Monsters you may have noticed that I was selling a lot of cards in the market over the past week. In fact I sold so many cards that I'm down to zero cards in my account. I played Steem Monsters everyday for nearly 5 months, never ever missing a daily challenge. So why did I suddenly make the decision to end it all eight days ago.

(photo for the sake of a photo)

Obsession

Over the months I became increasingly obsessed with my Steem Monsters collection. I became addicted to building my collection as cheaply as possible. If you’ve played the game you know that this means checking the market frequently to snatch up great deals before someone else does. Once you start checking the market repeatedly throughout the day, you realize that people unload cards for cheap pretty frequently. This just fuels the addiction and thrill of checking. It became the first thing I would do when I turned my computer on and the last thing I would do before I turned it off. Towards the end I was actually spending as much time building my collection as actually playing.

The introduction of Dark Energy Crystals(DEC) token currency became the last straw for me even though I think it is good for the game. You can earn DEC for every win that you get. DEC can be converted to Steem or several other coins and tokens on the Steem Engine DEX. Prior to the introduction of DEC, most of the time I just completed my daily quest and then quit. This would usually take me anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. However, earning DEC creates an incentive to play even more which I did. I realized that this whole thing was becoming increasingly unhealthy for me.

Uncertainty and Change

An issue nagging in the back of my mind was uncertainly of the future. I would ponder which cards would be the most useful and valuable in the future. I wondered if more advanced cards would be released in the future which would make older cards dated. A dragon splinter card with 2 attacks was recently released and obviously in the future, monsters with several attacks could exist. As a small account I also had concerns about competing. For example, the new Gold Summoners have ended up being affordable only to larger accounts.

Dealing with changes can be frustrating even if they are good for the game. A lot of players were annoyed with the change from receiving Beta packs to getting Rewards cards instead. I couldn’t complain about this since it happened before I started playing. The change with the introduction of DEC affected some of the dynamic of card pricing in that it made rarer cards especially Gold foils worth a lot. I and some others ended up selling out of Gold Foils too soon by not predicting that their value would ultimately be protected.

Conclusions

The gameplay to me is just complex enough to keep things interesting. I never really got tired of playing it. The look and feel of the game to me is solid though I wish there were a few less glitches. Sometimes I wonder if it is really the game or my slow internet speed that causes the issues.

As a beginner in the Steem platform for most people it will be easier to get some Steem playing Steem Monsters than posting on Stemmit. You can get cards everyday by completing daily quests and sooner or later you are going to get lucky and receive a card that is worth several dollars or more. And now with the addition of DEC you get Steem simply by winning games.

I took in about 230 Steem in total from selling the cards over the past week and powered it up. I'm now at about 270 SP and I was at about 60 SP when I started Steem Monsters in early January. So Steem Monsters made me a little over 200 Steem in about 5 months. That includes the game itself as well as earnings from Steem Monsters related posts.

Thanks to the creators of Steem Monsters, @rentmoney for introducing me to the game, my fellow players, and all the people who purchased cards from me. It was a fun journey and I look forward to seeing more applications which can harness the power of the Steem blockchain like Steem Monsters.