Why not to bid on the Steam Holiday Auction

[Skad]

Why not to bid on the the Steam Holiday Auction

**All price listings will be in CDN$ in this post

My advice is:
Don't participate in this auction and waste your money.

As we can't see all of the listings in the auctions, we don't know how much the highest bid is above the 100th, so I'll just go off of the top listing for now...

As an example:
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is currently topped out at 52 100 gems.
The highest ratio of gems to money I could find in my inventory was 1333:1 (80:0.06)
To make 52 200 gems, it would cost $39.15 (assuming I got all 653 (652.5) of the items at $0.06)
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive costs 16.99 at 100% price
You would be paying 230% of the regular price with gems
Selling items priced at $0.06 on the market yields $0.04 per item
To fully buy the game at $16.99, it would require 475 (474.75) items to be sold
It requires 137% of the number of items required to simply buy the game than to convert them to gems and then bidding on the game.

In conclusion:
It is more cost effective to simply sell your items for the required funds rather than converting them to gems and bidding on the game through the auction

Keep in mind, even if you already have the items, so you don't have to pay for them, it still takes more ITEMS if you use the auction

Also recognize that today is only the 12/13 (depending on timeline) of December, and the auction starts on the 15th, and the top bids will likely rise as more people compete for the spot.

[The J-Man (SneakiestChameleon)]

I shouldn't be complaining of this but man I can't even buy and sell cards because everyone else is shredding them for the gems. Outrageous! Most people can't even afford the gems to win a bid auction without having to buy all the needless crap to shred first.

[Kargor]

Escrito originalmente por Skad:

Why not to bid on the the Steam Holiday Auction

Oh, I got myself 10 gems and placed a bid :-) Got me 150 XP for a just a duplicate crap background.

[Holding These Alligators Down]

I figured out by the end of the first day that it's not worth bidding on anything. People are paying £30 - 50 worth of gems for games that you can just buy for less than £20 of real money.
What's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ point?

The Winter sale starts this week anyway.

[jmc8888]

You know what would be really funny. Is if they had something else planned for the Winter Sale, and all these people engaging in this stuff wouldn't be able to transfer it over.

Thus this whole auction would be trimming the fat before an actual one. I.E. everyone trading their stuff in, but now all that stuff may have a use for something during the Winter Sale. Not necessarily free games, but something.

I doubt it, but it would be really funny.



Oh and about the auction, I agree the whole bidding vs real price is out of whack. But there were reasons for that.

Valve set gem values on things, and so some people were buying up stuff for 3 cents, and converting them into sets and then getting a bunch of gems. So their cost might be $10 on a $20 game that others have to pay $50 to bid against.

Also the market for those who were early you could buy gems at 1/43rd the price. A whole bunch of 1000 gem bags went for around 3 cents, while later they went up to $1.30. That's a huge change peak to trough. So actually some people could bid 10.000 gems and only have paid 30 cents, while others might have to spend $13.00 to bid the SAME 10,000 gems. That's a MASSIVE difference.

Think about it. A game going for 40,000 gems, would only cost those people $1.20. While others $52.

So you have a situation where some people can overbid on stuff because they got it so cheap, because they ether bought early or found some cracks in the system when it comes to buying then converting into gems.

At some point if you find stuff for 500-2000 gems, a decent amount of people might be able to get one of those, but any higher and it goes into the people who spend money just to spend it and the market traders who happen to buy at the right time.

[Skad]

Escrito originalmente por jmc8888:

Also the market for those who were early you could buy gems at 1/43rd the price. A whole bunch of 1000 gem bags went for around 3 cents, while later they went up to $1.30. That's a huge change peak to trough. So actually some people could bid 10.000 gems and only have paid 30 cents, while others might have to spend $13.00 to bid the SAME 10,000 gems. That's a MASSIVE difference.

Think about it. A game going for 40,000 gems, would only cost those people $1.20. While others $52.

So you have a situation where some people can overbid on stuff because they got it so cheap, because they ether bought early or found some cracks in the system when it comes to buying then converting into gems.

This was caused by an exploit in the gem system, valve shut down the auction temporarily while fixing the exploit, and reverted all gem transactions. All the gems that were bought during that time were returned (if legitimate), and the buyer was refunded. All bids were also reset, so this isn't relevant.

[Hopper]

I'm about to get a 4 dollar game with $0.68 cents worth of gems. Seems like a good deal to me. Less popular games you can get for cheaper prices. But games like Kerbal and CSGO are not worth it.

[eddiepc]

I won "The typing of the dead collection" worth £18.99. It cost me £3.20 on gems from the market plus about 85 pence worth of crap from my inventory.
I leveled up with the auction badge, got rid of a bunch o junk that would have took a forever to sell and got a new game for a good price.(it will prob go on sale tomorrow for 10 pence,but hey thats steam for ya).
I didnt notice the auction until 16th so missed the cheap gems,ended up paying about 65p per bag.
There is still some good games though going for less than half price in gems
like san andreas,gta3,colin mcrae rally,abes odysee/exodus,naild etc etc
Theres no point trying to compete for new titles now if you didnt get your gems for 3p a sack
Good luck to everyone that is still bidding!!!

[Hopper]

All I am going for is
-A halfway decent less popular indie game
-Getting a $3.99 value for $0.68 worth of gems
-The lvl 3 badge for winning an auction
I get that, and I will be happy

EDIT: 76th copy of Cubemen is mine

[kdodds]

FWIW, it doesn't say any level on the badge. And, atm, it says 200xp for the win. Guess there's no XP for bidding.

[Random Reference #98]

Sure, if you want a game that's popular with the kids you won't find a good deal but I got $46 worth of games for $7 worth of gems from leftover crap I never wanted and couldn't sell.

[Frijolito The Revenant]

EZ KATKA

[RZW]

I bought up around 150 $0.03 and $0.04 emoticons before the auction started, and a few gem sacks when they were $0.55. Spent around $45 all up.

Won:
-Styx
-Bound by Flame
-Blood
-Dreadout
-Legend of Grimrock Bundle
-Paper Sorcerer
-Sherlock Holmes Awakened
-Disciples 3 Reincarnation

All on day one, then cashed in my remaining gems for $1.20 and got $20 back. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me, you just had to be clued in early... You snooze, you lose.

[Arcull]

The people with the most money end up having a better chance of winning free items for the holiday. At least Valve asserts that it is indeed an American company.....

[GKツ]

you are nice