Welcome to our analytical journey through the galaxy of "Star Wars Unlimited" card game! After following my brother's passion for card games and his advise to purchase a "Spark of Rebellion" case full of collectibles, I wanted to:
Better understand the economic value of our collection.
Identify possible strategies for reselling part of our collection with a break even return on our investment in mind.
Therefore, I asked myself:
What is the total estimated market value of our collection, and how does this breakdown by card rarity and type?
What is the distribution of card values within each rarity category AND how does rarity affect the card's value?
To answer these I performed a detailed value analysis against the vibrant marketplace of cardmarket.com. To keep everything organized and make sense of it all, I used Excel. It helped me catalog every card and set up a dashboard. (You can find the source file here).
Some insights include:
We have a collection predominantly composed of cards valued >3€, yet boasting an overall approximate expected market value of 770€.
A mere 9 cards, out of the 2304 purchased, belonging in the above 15€ bracket hold a treasure trove worth approximately 390€.
The initial investment was 550€.
Actual cards sorted by rarity
At the start of our project, we took every card in our "Star Wars Unlimited" collection and listed them in an Excel spreadsheet. For each card, we also found its current selling price on the "https://www.cardmarket.com/" website. This way, we could see both the name of each card and how much it might sell for, all in one place.
To make our spreadsheet even more useful, we used Excel's conditional formatting feature. This let us color-code the cards. With different colors, we could quickly tell which cards were available for certain game functions, which ones were rare or common, and how their market prices compared. This color-coding made it easy to spot patterns and differences at a glance, setting us up nicely to dive deeper into analyzing our collection. This first step of organizing and pricing was key to getting a clear picture of what our collection looked like in terms of variety and potential value.
This is how part of our Excel Sheet looks after we are done:
Moving forward with our analysis, we looked at two critical questions:
What is the current total market worth of our "Star Wars Unlimited" collection?
How is this value distributed in our collection?
At the time of our market search, our total expected value amounted to 776.51€.
This is only an approximate evaluation and does not take into account transportation, packaging, and other potential costs.
And on value distribution:
Total value, though, is only half the picture. In how many cards is this value distributed? Normal cards seem to hold much value, almost 47% of the total expected value, but would it be a viable strategy to try and harvest this value?
We needed a bit more information:
Okay, percentage-wise, normals do hold a decent amount of value, but €364 in 2039 cards could be a tricky play. With an average of 0.17€ per card, selling them in bulk seems like the only way. That's a good insight, but probably not our first strategy to pursue; we'll need to keep looking!
So then, what are some effective strategies for extracting value through reselling parts of our collection without compromising our competitive edge in the game?
Strategy number one comes directly from here:
Now, this is valuable information. The top 5 cards represent €323 or 41.6% of the total expected value. Interestingly, the Darth Vader card, which is allowed up to three times in play according to game rules, appears three times in our collection. Given Darth Vader's popularity, this could be a significant advantage. Though it means I'd need to stick to playing Rebel, it's a trade-off I'm willing to make. We might be onto a winning strategy here.
Then, we can either focus on selling a few other valuable cards:
Or, utilizing some bulk selling:
As we wrap up our look at the "Star Wars Unlimited" cards, we learned a lot about their worth and how to smartly sell some without spoiling the fun of the game. This project showed us how to balance making money with keeping the game exciting. I had a great time figuring out my collection's value, just as I love playing the game. These lessons on card value are something I'll use as I keep collecting and playing. This adventure into the world of card collecting was as fun as it was educational, and I can't wait to put what I've learned into action.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out for any comment.