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@oliver230230230_psn Do appreciate all the investigating you do. I’m operating on very little sleep so I may have misinterpreted some of what you said.

@Oliver230230230_PSN No, I know all that. Just you mentioned people can’t have more than 5 million as if it stopped people from interacting with the market and controlling cards. On Show Zone I’ve been in the top 50 for inventory nearly the entire year, and I usually only have maybe a million stubs in my inventory at any given time since it’s always other places. Semantics though, do agree with most of what you posted, just was clarifying the first part of that post

I’m probably sitting on 12-14 million stubs, with most of that being held on quick sells live series cards I can dump whenever. So 5 million isn’t a hard cap to my understanding, so it’s still plausible for legitimate users to be controlling some cards if they are that dedicated. Not as you described, since that screams to me obviously bots with the transaction windows described.

I’m still finding some success in the market flipping/buying, but I’m also only doing new cards since there is way more traffic there so it’s at times easier to move even with bots. I’ve also changed how I do my orders on certain cards this year, where I’m not jumping by just a few stubs every time I’m outbid. For the few cards that aren’t fast movers, I’ve tried to find the sweet spot where the bots won’t react. Sure, some cards I’ll end up overpaying for or underselling, and sometimes the bots are so aggressive that they’ll keep climbing until the buy now and sell now price are nearly the same.

There are also a couple of other factors contributing to marketplace problems besides just the bots. A example would be boss packs. Boss packs get overinflated if you don’t buy both during their inning. So that All-Star Mike Trout card is an easy target for bots because there aren’t that many available since most players locked him in collections. It would be nice if boss packs had a rewind just like events and ranked. I know we get the “second” pack when they do the final inning, but I think it’s time for SDS to think about this.

Player retention I think has also hit really hard this year. So as we’ve lost players for whatever reason, we’ve lost more cards being moved and available. On the flip side of that, the amount of bots probably hasn’t changed much. So we end up with a higher percentage of bots active in the marketplace compared to actual humans.

@SiberiaTigerCub_PSN Good to know. I just wasn’t 100% sure since I usually bulk order then check back after an hour or so. Sucks that bots are so aggressive again.

Can’t totally confirm it’s bots, since I’ve really only been flipping September Topps Now packs since they are very fast movers. But I do see a lot of bids now being undercut in groups of 3. Not sure if bots have moved away from the 2 bid pattern they’ve done most of the year. And I completely understand this could be legitimate users, just seems to be the first weekend of seeing bids in this pattern all year. Just an observation at this point, unless others are also noticing this pattern of seeing 3.

From my perspective, this was definitely the best market we've had for a legend collection. Enjoy your time off and thank you for all the support and communication throughout the year in addressing our issues and improving market experience.

Looks like the Brice Turang WBC card (earned through event rewind packs) was active earlier today for stub swapping/selling. So September 14th from 10:45AM PDT to 10:56AM PDT is where I'm seeing nearly 100 orders completed in a small window. Also seems to have been active late last night. Hope this information helps so you can keep banning these bozos purposefully and willfully breaking ToS. Is this the best place to report these types of issues Manu? Or should I be doing tickets.

If it had been animated, maybe it would have been more of a chase. I have both, but prefer to use the black one since that to me just looks better. Or maybe instead of just the red diamond accents, it was team specific so became a black diamond for a white sox. I’ve P5’d almost every animated card released this year, so for me that’s definitely a preference. But I would stay away from anything that adds stats based on rarity for competitive integrity.

I would say I pay very close attention to the market, so I will try to answer your questions/observations to the best I can. Feel free to reach out/DM (if that's an option here, or on discord) if any of my answers need more explaining.

Event cards have typically gone up on weeks where the event rewind isn't a reward. It's been one of my better ways of making stubs, buying the dip at 12-15k then selling for 25-35k. This one is higher because this event lasted 10 days instead of 4 days or a week, the last event rewind pack being 3 weeks ago, and the legend collection coming up. Egg series Montgomery and then Biz Mackey I would expect to be higher than the Vintage and Mural ones listed, since you have to have every Egg Series card for Beltran/New Legend and then the negro league baseball series the number required for each legend has increased. Plus with Events, less people are playing multiplayer modes, so for offline players/people who don't play events there are less of those cards available to them.

To your other questions, I have made nearly 250k this week flipping, so would be interested in which cards you've specifically been targeting, since I would say it's been successful for the cards I'm targeting. Yes, there are still bots active, they just aren't doing the 300+ orders anymore to make it obvious. I know you mentioned the bots now moving to doing the orders by every 30 seconds in another thread, and I agree with that and have seen it on cards as well. I called out the Postseason Victor Martinez as being a stub transfer card yesterday (I know there are more, but that one I easily noticed) so you are right again on that. I have never spent money on stubs, and have built myself a great nest egg of stubs spread between roster updates, flipping, and holding onto cards, so it’s been fair in that I’m making stubs in multiple ways. To answer your 'resentment', personally I would only say I hate headliners and chase packs being so bloated, so when I buy those cards those are the only ones I hate the market for, but chase cards have been inflated for the last few years so am trying to get used to it. Maybe I have just accepted the market for how it is, since it's kind of just been inflating each year since '24, but I've definitely noticed patterns the last few years on which cards or series are safe investments and ones to avoid because of volatility.

Working great for me so far. Margins are back and haven’t seen any selling queues of 300+ orders. I did notice that Victor Martinez (Postseason) seems to be active for stub trading. I kept a weekend Classic pack unopened just in case things jump high before the legend, but this is an outlier jumping to 350,000+ and having tons of completed orders in a short amount of time. Seems very suspicious for a card released back in April, so not sure what you can do with that information.

Update #2: Locked out again and logging out and back in not working after another 3 tries. Was mass flipping/juggling 4 cards actively and seemed to be triggering the lock after 40 or so orders, but the first time it let me right back in after logging out. I understand we are combatting bots, but it seems we keep repeating a cycle every week of having the levers too tight, loosening them and then bots just back within 24 hours.

Edited: Logging off and back on worked the third time. Not sure why that one worked. Orders placed for mass flipping Topps Now Jake Rogers. Will update again if more orders go through or if it locks up again.

Getting the same error of “request verification failed, account was not put on a score cooldown” since the update today. Logged out and back in twice but still not working at all. iPhone 12, not on a VPN. Tried both WiFi and 5G, Verizon.

Edited: Started working again after logging out and logging back in twice. Will update if this fixes the next time I’m stuck on the fetching data loop.

App is in a rough spot for me. Will be working just fine, then I will get stuck in the fetching data loop for several hours. Probably has to do with me doing bulk orders when flipping. I don’t know or understand the reCaptcha stuff, but I’m guessing since I mainly use the app for flipping in bulk, each order placed or cancelled adds up fast.

I’m still able to use the game for market orders though, and I’ve got a good stubs bank to work with while this iteration of the app gets fine tuned. My worry is I don’t want to get restricted on the app again like back in April, so just to be on the safe side I guess I should slow down on bulk flipping? Or atleast if I do place bulk orders and get outbid, slowdown on how frequently I change my orders.

Was surprised to not see a few more choice packs sprinkled as hidden rewards. Not complaining though, since the packs from the goals are good. Just seems the last few years they’ve moved towards listing all the good rewards instead of hiding them.

As others have said, lots of packs. I would imagine there will be some of the outdated choice packs, like the launch Legends and WBC choice packs. Might also include some Spotlight Any packs. This is copium, but would love to get a pick any headliners pack. Not that any of the cards are game breaking, but the market has been wild for headliners most of the year.

@Sarge1387_PSN Black Ops emblem creator comes to mind as well. Just wish we could have nice things without degenerates ruining it for everyone.

I would absolutely love to see a feature where you could create your own bats. But then I remember that created uniforms exist and there are too many that should be banned.

This. I’m going to most likely leave the extra packs unopened. Wish there was an exchange for all no sell dupes in the game though. With Team Affinity this year there were lots of the uniform packs that some teams you’d end up with dupes as well.

I only heard of YFK because of the cheater video back in March. All I’ll say is if you were trying to make a point to SDS, you would have continued showcasing cheaters and stayed in that lane. Instead he and his followers played stupid games and won stupid prizes. I do hope SDS continues to target the market bots, stub sellers and cheaters. Those are all areas that need improvement. But trying to pin all the blame on SDS for knowingly breaking ToS is just new levels of copium.

If my kid threw rocks at a neighbor's window and broke them, I am still financially responsible for the consequences. I can't just pass the buck to my child. As a parent, I am 100% responsible to guard over the type of media they consume, and sometimes their actions are a reflection of myself. If true, this is a great teaching moment for all parties.