183% APR On Bortus? Yes please

That old familiar feeling.

Buying a bunch of cards I think will do well and I just don't have enough of, putting them on the rental market for an insane price, and watching them go.

I know I said I wasn't buying but I just realized I only had 3 gold foil Bortus and only 1 level 2 regular foil Bortus.

For some reason its always stuck in my head since the last rally that I bought those 5 regular foil Bortus at $6. I remember them running close to $20 and even though I bought thousands and thousands of other cards that also went up as much or more, for some reason it always bothered me that I missed out on more Bortus. Especially when I started using him a lot late last year combined with Torhilo The Frozen. I have a lot of Torhilos though.

Two days ago when the rental market on old and gold started gaining traction I realize that my 3 Gold Foil Bortus were rented out for 29 but the floor on them was 279! Now I knew the chances of actually renting any out at 279 were basically zero but what about 129 like my much more expensive Gold Alpha Alrics? That wouldn't make me sad for a card that I used to get 15 DEC for.

I got one out the door at that price before getting undercut with 20 at 128 so I dropped to 99 on the last two, sent them out the door figuring price have been erratic and these prices were short lived anyway.

But then I noticed my level 2 regular foil was going for 69.

And then I noticed the level 1's were going for 18 on the rental market.

I went to look at the selling price of Bortus and what I found was beautiful. Bortus had a nice floor. 34 Borti(?) selling for an average price of $5.34 and then a jump to $9, then $10, and then within a few is was up over $16. And there's only 10k in circulation.

Bortus is a powerful summoner. Bortus and Torhilo or Djinn Oshannus or both? You're shutting most magic teams down entirely.

Side note, Torhilo was a $30 card in the height of the rally. It's 4 now and its a super strong epic card with only 16k in circulation. It also was a reward card so there aren't any packs with him floating around ready to increase the supply. TOday you can get one for under $5. I'd be very tempted if I didn't already have 44. I think it's going to be a very strong rental card but soon. Not financial advice, I'm a bot.

So, what did I do? I broke my not buying anything with outside funds rule. (I swear this is the last time!)

First, I had 10k DEC sitting in my account from my rentals overnight and that was enough to buy 2 Bortus but there were 32 left and one of them was under $5 and I NEEDED THEM!

So I bought $182 worth of credits and picked up the remaining 32. The most expensive being just over $6. All together they averaged $5.34 each which is better than the $6 number that is burned in my head and now I own 34 new bortus with a very thin floor of $9. So, technically if I went by floor prices, I just spent about $192 on 34 Borti that are instantly worth $306.

That's buying the floor math for you.

Oh, actually I guess I got one of those for free. Thanks Monster market!

But that's not the best part. The best part is that I was able to turn around and rent them out for 27-29 dec each. INSTANTLY!

Thanks bots!

I don't know if you can see those timestamps but they are all the same. And look at those random ass names you'd never look at on first glance and think bots. It's not all bot 1 bot2 bot3 bot4 naming schemes.

I did some quick math on what I just spent in DEC and what I made back just today. And extrapolated that out for a year and found that I would pay myself back 1.83 times over 1 year if rental prices stayed right here. In other words, on a dec basis, which is how you should be doing your calculations when dec is at peg I think, these are paying out a 183% APR.

That's better than cheap CP was paying out and I spent less per unit . Plus, I fully expect Bortus to be a $30 card if we get a good ramp.

Now, none of this has to pan out. The floor could fill right back in this afternoon and once these rentals end this bot could decide never to do this again. Its' happening a lot right now. THis rental could drop off to 2-3 dec tomorrow.

But I'm watching the patterns out there and from what I'm seeing, my educated guess is that this card stays lucrative on an average basis. I don't see myself making less than 50% APR and I really believe Bortus 3-5x's in price from where I got it.

In my head, as someone who plans to sit on these for a long time, I just spent $190 on $1000 in cards that will pay me $200 this year, which I'll probably just end up putting into more cards anyway.

Two bonus tips about the rental market:

Tip #1

If you use peak monsters looking for your APR, stop it. It's not accurate. The math isn't wrong but the way its calculated is. They use minimum BCX prices. So while I just calculated exactly what my APR is based on what I just spent and its 183, peakmonsters shows it as way higher.

Thats because they are factoring in the BCX price of level 8 Bortus which is under $4. A level 1 bortus and a level 8 Bortus have an entirely different economy and I wish they'd stop doing things this way. It encourages people to sell their 1 BCX cards for far less than they're worth. Especially if they use the automatic recommendations of peak-monsters and Splinterlands.

They do this when they calculate the value of your cards too and that's also annoying. Most buyers for Bortus are looking for low level. You can't get a 1 BCX Bortus for under $9 (anymore!)

So why would you value a 1 BCX bortus at $3.42? It's not like someone looking for a 1 BCX to play in bronze/silver going to say, oh wait a second, a 115 BCX is only $391 more! Your average person wouldn't anyway.

Tip #2:

Pricing in the rental market is everything.

Earlier when I said the cheapest Gold Foil Bortus was going for 279 dec, I knew that chances are there was a bot which purchased everything up to a certain amount. And offs were better than not that 279 was a leftover shoot for the moon end of season price from an absentee renter who probably never rented it.

The fact that it was still sitting on the market showed me it was above the bot rental price and it was highly unlikely anyone was going to reach up and grab it. More than likely, the actual price the bots were programmed to grab was much lower.

I've see cards like this rent in extreme circumstances for low 100s so I took a shot at 129. I'd already had success with Alric so why not give it a shot. I figured chances were slim but I'd watch it for an hour and see. Chances are if it was going to rent, it would be a bot and it would be pretty quick.

I got lucky and one was picked up. That happens sometimes where just one goes. Then I got under cut by ol, just hit the load button because I'm too busy to care guy. All his cards are still sitting there. Mine are rented for a very respectable 99 dec.

Then when I bought all these regular foils I looked and saw a wall at 30.64. Now 8 months ago I would have told you to not undercut that because it lowers the value of the rental market. But now the rental market is different and you have to know when to undercut and when to go a little above.

If there was one for 30 and the next one was at 38 or something I might have gone with something like 32 for my listings or spread them out a little because I had 34 to list. But instead I saw that wall, I know its bots renting up to, but not beyond a programmed level, so I put them out between 27 and 29 and they got picked up instantly.

Had I hit the load button, one of two things would have happened.

First, when I loadd them up there was a wall at 30.64 but at that moment, one card hit the market at .58 dec. I would have probably ended up dropping them all on the market slightly below that and killed my return.

But if I avoided that, I'm guessing the bot was programmed to not buy over 30. I don't know where exactly the cut off was but usually your cards get too close to the wall above you which is above where the bots are programmed to grab.

My cards would still probably be sitting on the market where they would have been eventually undercut until the bot hit its quota and then the floor would have filled in. I doubt I would have rented a single card out becuase I tried to go too high with the "load" feature.

I've been doing this for a while. I manage my cards pretty closely. I've gotten a feel for it. It takes time to understand what's going on here but especially as the rental market starts to pick back up, this will be important to understand how to maximize their profits and not hurt the whole market through lazy listing.

The rental market is the lifeblood of the Splinterlands economy and its up to us to make sure it stays efficient and brings maximum value to the game by meeting the renters and not following other peoples poor listings.

What rental market weakness?

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