Rift Watchers Gem, Gold Foil Legendary and Skewed Average

After opening 60 Rift Watcher gems yesterday, I discovered that the average value of monsters found per gem was around $3.9 each. This value was simply derived by dividing the prevalent dollar value of all my Rift Watcher monsters based on Peakmonsters' evaluation by the total number of gems I opened, which is 60.

Yesterday and in previous other publications, I mentioned that I managed to buy 122 Rift Watcher gems, out of which I opened the aforementioned 60. After opening that 60, I proceeded to open another 43 gems, bringing my total to 103 gems opened at the moment.

The result from opening the last 43 was dramatically different from the first 60 as my luck shone through. I ended up picking up a gold foil legendary and that instantly skewed the average value per pack.

Keep in mind that the values I use to calculate average values are instantaneous but for the most part, hover within a certain range because nothing "crazy" has happened in the SPlinterlands card market in recent times.

Moving the average

It is common knowledge that while averages are useful in statistics, they don't necessarily offer a "true" representation of a data set. It is for this reason that many statisticians prefer to use median for certain data sets.

In some way, Splinterlands data set is somewhat randomised since we're not certain of the rarity of monsters we'll get. The best we can speculate is that each gem contains at least one regular foiled rare monster, everything else is up in the air, even if you use potions.

With that said, each potion increases your chance of receiving a gold foil or legendary. Epics also appear from time to time but for the most part, you'll mostly receive rares and commons.

So, considering that we're depending on infinitesimal boost in chance, using average does not tell the full story in SPlinterlands. On top of this, it is worth adding that averages can easily be skewered by anomalies in the data set and that was the case after I received a legendary gold foil.

At the time of writing, the total dollar value of all the Rift Watchers I received is around $557 from opening 103 packs. This puts the average value derived from each gem at $5.4.

Keep in mind that at the current price of vouchers, each gem costs around $5.406 in the game, so at that average value per gem, I'm just about breaking even without considering the value of the 10 potions I use per gem(5 each of Alchemy and Legendary).

Now, the point is that all it took was a gold foil legendary to give the illusion that I'm somehow close to breaking even at the current market rate. In fact, it is not out of the question to speculate that I could eventually break even at some point because of the gold foil legendaries in my collection.

If you're a regular Splinterlands player, then you know that finding a GF legendary is just down to pure luck. I found mine at the 75th gem opening and assuming I had calculated my average at that point, it would have given me an even better illusion of breaking even from gems.

There are people who have opened hundreds more gems than I did but didn't get any GF legendary. However, I wonder if they had a better spread of maybe Epic summoners and their averages will be like mine.

In any case, the point is that averages don't tell the full story when it comes to opening gems/packs in Splinterlands. Potions increase your chance of finding higher quality monsters but overall, it is just luck.

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