why so expensive

[TheDaniel420]

i want to collect cards an get badges but some of them are expensive. I think cards need to get cheaper

[Nope]

price are decided by people, you can try convince all sellers on steam to lower their price. Or you can try trading for the cards you want instead of buying.

[Arun1000]

Most normal cards are priced below 10p.

[Ulfhednar]

Thats true, some are really expensive. However you dont need to buy or trade for expensive ones. Every badge gives you 100xp, no matter how much the badge costs. If you are not collector of rare badges and just want to get your steam profile leveled up a bit you can get cheap sets instead.

[Dan5000]

Buy gems and craft boosters instead, every set is worth the same in gems, the crafting cost for boosterpacks get cheaper the more cards it needs to finish a set.

Its 6000 gems devided by the number of cards to know how expensive a boosterpack will be.

Then you take the number of cards it needs. If a game has 5 cards to craft a set, the cost of a single card in that set will be 400 gems.

If a game needs 15 cards, the cost of one card will be 133.33 gems instead. To get the same full price.

That means:
Crafting a single set will always cost 2000 gems
Crafting 5 full sets will always cost 10000 gems

Obviously, opening boosterpacks, you won't always get the cards you need, far from it... but if you are trading and get just the amount of cards you need in total for a game you plan to craft a set for, the total amount of gems for however many cards a set needs, is always the same.