Steam Market advice

[MachRay]

So I started to get back into using Steam after the recent Sekai Humble bundle and started to become aware of trading cards and badges.

I started to run games to collect more badges and even tried out buying a whole set of CS GO cards thinking it will net me something worthwhile. Of course I found out that the valuable stuff is from playing CS GO and using keys.

So my question is Is there a place of reference on how to play the Steam market?

I've read Steams faq, looked through post on the market group in Steam, and checked out the reddit subforum but there isn't really any guide on getting started on wheeling and dealing in the Steam Market.

Is it best to just sell the cards? Is there sets in which would be good to complete for valuable emoticons/ backgrounds/coupons/dlc? Is it best to find cheap stuff/complete badges to break it down to gems? Does leveling up your account to get the extra bonus chance of booster packs all that useful?

I spent almost the whole day trying to figure it out and mess with stuff and its starting to give me a headache.

I do have a bunch of cards now, a couple of backgrounds, an emoticon, a gift game, and a coupon.

I was thinking of scraping together enough to sell and buy some cheap games to get more cards or get CS Go and figure out how to get the gun skins which are valuable. I also am going to try to play Dota 2 a bit and maybe tf2 to see if playing nets me anything.

Any advice or even pointing me to a better guide would be appreciated.

 

[spoderman]

It depends on what you're after. Do you want the easiest/most convenient way of building up steam wallet? Then just sell off all of your cards. Do you want high value emotes/backgrounds to use for yourself? Then craft badges for games that have valuable emotes/backgrounds.

I think the best method of making steam wallet is buying a bunch of cheap card sets and then waiting until the seasonal sales goes live so that you can get a steam seasonal sale card for each badge you craft. The summer sale comes up very soon, June 22nd, so if you wanted to do this that'd be the best time. That way you'll be able to sell each of the summer sale cards for profit early into the sale, but keep in mind this takes effort to buy cheap card sets and may not be worth your time, plus the summer sale cards drop in value over time if you're not quick to sell them off.

If you decide to do this, make sure you buy the card sets at least 7 days before the summer sale starts so that the listing cooldown will be over (you have to wait 7 days to relist any emotes/backgrounds/cards you earn from crafting a badge if the card set that was used to craft was bought from the market originally). These two methods I've listed are the absolute easiest ways of profiting, that don't require too much effort.

I don't have any links to guides or anything though, sorry. Just going off of personal experience.

 

[MachRay]

Thanks, I'll try that out and hunt down some cheap sets.