Card Valuation Strategy

How do you know which Cards are good?

It largely depends on what your own personal goals are, but there are few patterns that apply across the board.

## Core strategies

### Ego management: Fan to Skill ratio

Managing Ego is a key part of the game. Maybe you take pride in keeping your meter at 0%. Or maybe you're okay with a little Ego, so long s your STARBITS income is at a certain level. Either way, what matters is your Total Skill vs Total Fans. When a card has a "good" Fan:Skill ratio, it means it gives you more Skill than Fans. You can also think in terms of "Net Skill." Positive net Skill is typically preferred because it helps lower Ego.

### Instrument Specific Luck

The instrument types matter, because they impact the Music Lesson Missions in different ways. Namely, every 10 Luck = +1 Max Skill earned per relevant lesson. So some players might try to specialize in grabbing their preferred type of instrument (vs having a diverse collection).

### Cost-efficient Singles

Buying singles from the Market is a common approach to advancement. Obviously, you want to shop for deals, depending on the Main Stats you're after.

### Optimizing Ability to Play (Energy)

Running out of Energy sucks! That's why Pizza and energy management is important if you want to be more active and less passive.

### Boosting for Advantages

Most boosters are quite nice, as they can permanently increase game rewards and income. The most powerful ones are the XP boosters.

### Collecting Uniques for Player Rank

Owning unique cards is the most impact metric in the overall Player Ranking Score. The rewards for being high up on the leaderboard are fairly trivial (if you can afford to compete at this level, then the sprinkle of SWAP.HIVE you receive is minuscule). Therefore, trying to max out this tends to be for bragging rights.

### Collecting oddities

Like any trading card game, sometimes milestones or oddities crop up, and collectors... just want 'em! For example, a card with a very low or interesting Mint number might fetch a price.

## Evaluating the Cards

With these ideas in mind, we can come up with some loose classifications for Cards.

### Early game Commons: People & Vehicles

These are Common cards that have way more Fans than Skill. They are really only good for Collecting Uniques and helping low level players increase Fan count before they have to worry about Ego. These cards will be some of the cheapest on the market.

### Common Instruments or Vehicles

These cards usually only give 1 measly Luck. They're not very helpful, and are among the cheapest cards out there. Sorry, Tuba.

### Skilled Commons

Common cards that have significantly more Skill than Fans. These are generally worth slightly more than other kinds of Commons.

### Balanced Commons

Commons where Fans = Skill. Owning these cards doesn't really impact your Ego. Take 'em or leave 'em.

### Fan-heavy Rares

These come with a healthy dose of Fans, but not enough Skill to offset them. Rares tend to offer a better cost/stat than Commons though, so it's often better to get one of these versus a handful of Commons.

### Balanced Rares

Excellent cards! Strong boost in Fans with no hit to Ego. These will command decent prices.

### Skilled Rares

As you can imagine, these cards are even more sought after than other kinds of Rares.

### Instrument Rares

These are great... if they're in a class of instrument you want.

### Epics

Even if an Epic is Fan heavy or an unwanted instrument, the sheer rarity of the card usually gives it a big price multiplier. It is almost never cost efficient to buy an Epic for stats. Enjoy them if you pull them, and buy them if you have other reasons for owning 'em :)

### Legendaries

Like an Epic, but usually 10x better or more!

### Seasonal or Special cards

The function and rarity of these cards vary. You can expect them to be in higher demand than Commons, and likely in higher demand near the beginning of an event than near the event's end.

### Utility cards

These are cards you need to own to do things in the game. Many are permanent (you can't really "spend" cards). Because they help boost progress or unlock aspects of the game, they are always considered to be useful, and the price will reflect that. These include but are not limited to:

* Energy Boost
* Pizza Box
* Risky Whiskey
* Coffee Cup
* XP, Skill, or Fan Boosts
* Petrol Cans
* Storage Cards
* The i6 Mid Range Acoustic
* Vehicle card with the word "Limo" in its title