What can I do with steam gems?

[ZonkedCello]

I don't know anything about gems(or anything in general about Steam other than installing, downloading and playing my favourite game from time to time.).

I checked my inventory and noticed that I have about 3350 steam gems worth of items. It is a lot? Is it little? What do you do with these gems?

Thank you!

[IFIYGD]

You can bundle them into sacks of gems (1000 gems per sack) and list them for sale on the Steam Marketplace, or you can spend the Gems on Trading Card Booster Packs. Some Traders trade for cards or items with gems- and usually only for really cheap cards or tradable items.

And no, 3350 is not a lot of gems. I have just over 12k gems, and could burn through them buying Booster Packs pretty quickly.

[ZonkedCello]

Oprindeligt skrevet af IFIYGD:

You can bundle them into sacks of gems (1000 gems per sack) and list them for sale on the Steam Marketplace, or you can spend the Gems on Trading Card Booster Packs. Some Traders trade for cards or items with gems- and usually only for really cheap cards or tradable items.

And no, 3350 is not a lot of gems. I have just over 12k gems, and could burn through them buying Booster Packs pretty quickly.

Thank you for your response.

Now I need more answers. What do those Trading Card Booster Packs do and how do you get the gems?

[AustrAlien2010]

They do nothing, unless you open them. Then you receive cards. But that would be a waste, because the booster packs have unique artwork on the pack that you may want to collect.
(Same as cards. You may want to see the artwork on a card and collect them, the same way you collect games or artwork that achievements have. But you can also look up the artwork on the internet, or by looking at someone else's cards or achievements, and then you can also see the artwork.)

Its all rather pointless. Its just funny to have a pack of cards that you can trade, but nobody knows exactly what's in the pack.

[AustrAlien2010]

Do not expect anything, or for me to support it. Its obviously just a way for Steam to make some profit. But you can play if you want. Its just some gamey thing.

You will not accomplish anything yourself by doing this, and its not needed that you play or even look into it.

[SLAYER187]

I ignore cards entirely lol as they are as useless as my PC without a CPU!

[ZonkedCello]

Thank you guys @IFIYGD, @AustrAlien2010, @JR APOCALYPSE aka Slayer187!

[sEver]

Oprindeligt skrevet af AustrAlien2010:

Do not expect anything, or for me to support it. Its obviously just a way for Steam to make some profit. But you can play if you want. Its just some gamey thing.

You will not accomplish anything yourself by doing this, and its not needed that you play or even look into it.

That's rather harsh judgement from a person who is on Steam, playing video games.

Steam Metagame Intro

Video game is a computer program displaying some images, text, numbers, playing sounds, all coming together into some sort of entertainment for a human mind. Steam meta-game is no different.

Completing a game, leveling a character, or getting an achievement is a very similar kind of accomplishment, as getting a level 5 badge for a game, or getting the rare emoticon/profile background for it.

If you like leveling and getting loot, Steam meta-game is basically a game.

It is of course not "needed" (what game is though?), to play it.
One can start with selling some cards from games they don't really like that much, and then buy some cards for games they do like a lot, so they can craft a badge with those cards and get an emoticon or a profile background for their fav game. That's fun enough for most.

Steam Metagame Breakdown

Basically, the whole Steam meta-game consists of:

1. Cards, that drop while you play, but you will never get all cards by just playing, you need to buy around half of them from someone else.
1.1. If you gather all the Cards for a game, they can be used to craft a Badge

2. Badges - they have five possible levels. When crafting a badge, you get:
- A badge to display on your profile (an icon with a title, similar in nature to an achievement)
- Steam experience, that rises your Steam Level
- Often you also get other items (profile backgrounds, emoticons, coupons with discounts often for undiscovered unpopular games)

3. Your Steam Level when increased, makes you get more slots for Steam Friends or more "showcase" panels for your Steam Profile, stuff like that.

4. Gems as a sort of "scrap". You can grind Cards/Emoticons/Profile Backgrounds down to gems. Then you can:
- Use gems to craft a booster pack for one of your games, containing THREE cards
- If you have 1000 gems, you can pack them in a Gem Sack (internally in Steam Code actually called a Barrel of Game Goo) and sell that on the market.

Currently they go for around 0.37 USD a sack.

This establishes the value of 100 gems at around 3.7 US cents.

See:
https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/753/753-Sack%20of%20Gems

Powerplaying the Steam Metagame

1. You could take a look at the market and start making booster packs that are either expensive on the market, relative to their gem value, or that have chance to drop expensive cards (this is often related), to sell the packs or the cards from within them for real Steam Wallet money, with which you can pay for anything (games, subscriptions, etc).

2. You could be buying items (emoticons/profile backgrounds) that are cheaper than their gem value and scrap them. (remember, 100gems is ~3.7 cents), that scrap can be used in step 1 or

3. That scrap from point 2 you could sell on the market for 0.37 per sack of 1000.

Does any of the above constitute "acomplishing" anything?
For a meta-game enclosed within a game platform, I'd say that's more than enough.

Of course remember, that your time also has value,
and if you're not having fun, you probably shouldn't be doing all this.

Myself, I dabble a little ;)