This has only been at the edges of my news cycles, but apparently graded cards, such as Pokémon and even sports cards, have been making waves in the collectibles market. I’ve not had much luck finding anyone to look at the cards I’ve kept in mint condition since the ’90s, as it takes hundreds of dollars to get something graded and you have to mail them in to places like PSA.

That being said, there’s been this influx of apps and websites all about virtually ripping cards. According to the apps, they actually own all the cards you can get, and you can either sell them immediately or get them shipped to your house. There are at least three that I constantly see advertised while I’m Game Grinding. I tested one out because it had a daily pack that didn’t require purchases, but after a week they deleted my account and refunded me the $10 deposit I had, which caused roughly $25 in pulled card sales to disappear.

Anyway, I don’t like the lottery-method gambling idea behind pulling cards and hoping for the best, but some of these apps gives bonus packs just for depositing money into the account. My idea for the project was to take either $20 or $50 for each app and take advantage of their bonus packs and deals to get as many “free” pulls as possible. Then see which ones come out ahead or give me trouble withdrawing any money. I don’t like the idea of losing up to $60, but I’ve made worse decisions this year….how much money did Yieldmax funds lose?

My biggest worry is losing the money due to withdrawals failing rather than losing them on the card pulls. Also, I did want to point out that I’ve continued the Atlas Earth Grind the last few weeks. It’s not bad, but they do highly incentivize a $10-a-month subscription. If you complete their monthly season pass, it produces 12 new lands’ worth of Atlas Bucks, a badge, and a legendary parcel upgrade. 11 commons and 1 legendary — with only doing the boost 20 hours a day instead of 24 hours per day (without interrupting sleep) — would be $14.48 per year. Assuming you actually maintained the $10 subscription for 12 months straight meeting all requirements, and had bad luck to produce only common lands you would end up with 132 commons and 12 legendaries (really more, because the monthly total is 1259 and we’re rounding down), plus 12 badges. So worst case scenario: $182 per year off of a $120 spend in year one. Year two, would end up with $240 total spend on a $379 per year return.

For anyone wanting to test this game out, I would caution that you cannot get the $10 price on the monthly season during that month –only before the month starts. During the month it costs $15, and I do not see a reasonable means of actually completing the tasks without the full month’s worth of time. I’m less than 50% of the way in points and I started 10 days into the month and didn’t fully understand the challenge requirements math.

~~Miniwing~~
Gaming for Cash