2025 - Year In Cards

2025 Cards Report
by Kractero

Through an eventful and long 2025, the only constant and source of comfort was NationStates cards. As the only relevant part of the site, this is not too surprising. A lot happened in 2025 in the world of cards, including the much anticipated release of Season 4 in early January, with an amazing design made by Infinitta. Card activity remained strong throughout the year, and overall, things are looking quite healthy in the market and the world of cards.

This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the card market’s dynamics in 2025, beginning with a comparison to the numbers from 2024, looking at trends, trading activity (both for gifting and non-gifting transactions), and more.

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Cards Wrapped

Fan of Spotify wrapped? Do you like how their yearly report just randomly releases at the start of December and not at the start of the next year to actually get a yearly recap of data?

As we all know, NationStates Trading Cards is just better than Spotify, so here is your 2025 Cards Wrapped. The data is a bit limited since the server is not powerful enough to do more complex queries, but if you want any more complex queries, I can probably do it for you on request.

Trades and Traders

Many new players began playing cards in 2025. Among new traders, meaning they did not record a single trade in 2024 (admittedly not the best metric for "new"), K16 leads, having conducted 41,303 trades on the market. After filtering out puppets, other new entrants who appeared include Kortit, Urcea, Globalizhuang, Greater westfalen, Abyssinian Klugetown, Subhamnation, and Ogivya.

Noahs Second Country owned the high-value market, making up the entire list of top trades, common trades, and epic trades, due to their efforts early in the season in completing the legendary collection and assistance in inflating S1 9003. The Season 3 CTE trifecta (Annihilators of Chan Island, Chan Island, and Morover continue to command significant market attention.

In terms of trade volume, War Dogs IV continues to lead in trade count, at 112,761. Not too far behind are Communist-Denmark and Giovanniland. The latter leads the world in terms of cards bought for over 250 bank. Collectively amongst their puppets, Philville2 may be the true leader in market activity.

Season Trends
Obviously, with the release of Season 4, it would make sense to look at trends in how the seasons played on the market for 2025. Being the newest season, Season 4 predictably dominates the other seasons in terms of both total trades and gifts, while having a lower average sale price. Still fresh in people's mind, Season 3 still leads in total bank moved on the market, at 2,013,856 bank, 986,566 more bank than season 4's 1,027,290. Season 2 leads in the highest average trade price, at an astounding 11.36, despite its lower trade volume, which is likely due to inflation.

Season 1 trades are dominated by Kractero and TalAkMaChen, though I only use Season 1 to transfer. Season 2 trades by Astolfo, Season 3 by MikesHope and Communist-Denmark, and Season 4 by Kittyuwu and War Dogs IV.

S4 commons were the most traded kind of common and rarity/season combination in general, at 1,156,548 trades and 571,708 trades at a non-zero cost, for an average price of 0.42. This volume is expected for a new season, though the average price trails behind S4 uncommon (0.58) and S4 rare (0.66) slightly, which mainly shows the decline of rare cards.

It's clear that Season 4 is a buyer's and seller's market as people seek to complete collections, while S3 retains a large amount of activity due to being a young offseason. S2 retains its position as a high-value and inflation-driven market, and S1s are both hard and expensive to get.

Rarity Trends
The common market, as usual, held a commanding lead over the other rarities, due to the ease of collecting and use in transferring. Commons had 1,875,003 trades and moved 2,063,492 bank. Notable participants include Philville2 and Anjan Kloss.

The uncommon market rebounded from last year, adding on 83,641 trades. Overall, uncommons accounted for 494,618 trades, moving 409,806 bank. S2 Uncommons are particularly popular, holding a 10.61 average price on the market.

While rares languish in the mid-tier, the ultra rare fulfill their role as the mid tier rarity. Ultra rares had 271,486 trades and moved 284,408 bank, with an average 2025 price of 2.39. Notable players include Ostrovskiy and Volikara.

The epic market had 173,443 trades and an average price of 3.90, with 382,002 bank moved on the market. Notable players in the epic market include Seanat and Midlands. From a farmer's perspective, epics are interesting, as a lot of epics tend to be high gold badge nations that are not especially recognizable, and are also at the position where they are easy enough to pull and only require two to junk in order to gift a legendary.

The legendary market, being the highest rarity, had the highest average price in 2025, at 87.42, and moved the 2nd most bank after commons, at 1,545,644.

Temporal Insights

2025 was front-loaded, with the first half of the year being more active than the second. This checks out, as the release of season 4 was literally at the start of the year. The leading traders and bank movers all moved significantly more bank during this time period. In the first half of the year, Noahs Second Country dominated, while the last half was Giovanniland. As expected from the Cardens leader and a universally liked player.

The most active days of the year all occurred in January, all clustered immediately after the S4 release. A question was posed on the NS Cards discord about the most hyped NationStates event by ForFishing, and anyone who answered N-Day or Z-Day are mistaken. You need to participate in a season release to understand why a new season is the best.

11 AM UTC is by far the most active time of day in terms of total trades, likely due to a convergence of early morning American, afternoon European time zones, and evenings in Asia Pacific. In terms of bank moved, the time frame shifts to 17-22 UTC.

Monday and Saturday are the days in which the most bank is moved, while Sunday has the highest total trades. Thursday is the day in which the least activity happens.

Milestones

The S4 legendary collection was completed by many in 2025. Noahs Second Country was the first, doing so on the 16th of January, and a second time on the 27th, before second place me, on the 1st of February. Mikeswill then did on the 11th of February.

Another huge accomplishment is Philville2 having collected every single s4 card. Yes, every single s4 card, spread across a few large capacity nations. You read that right, every single s4 card.

A lowlight of the year was the junking of all legendary cards by Valoptia, the world frowns on them.

Big Farma Report

You can view a daily look at big farma at the ledger.

Growth was significant in big farma. Mikeswill and Giovanniland dominate the market, with a steep decline after the top two portfolios. By the end of the year, Mikeswill nearly doubled in value, which will make investors happy. It is clear both of their growth is due to the appreciation of their collected assets, and not liquidity. Koem Kab's growth was markedly slower, but holds on.

Communist-Denmark was one of the strongest performers in the mid-tier of the market, with a strong and steady growth. Their growth emphasizes the importance of both a strong grasp on market fundamentals and high investor confidence. Varanius remained near the top but saw relatively slower growth, which points towards a more conservative approach and a prioritization on stability over risky growth ventures. Newcomer K16 exploded into the scene, with the assistance of outside capital from Giovanniland. Laudesia had a strong second half of the year, with strong value creation of their own assets

On the other hand, underperformers like Kractero need to rethink their approach. It is proven that collecting the current season legendaries, while perhaps a recipe for long-term growth, does not provide short-term growth rates desired by investors. Despite selling the shovels, it is clear they do not know how to make things out of dirt. However, reluctance from the board towards organic value creation means we do not recommend investing in this portfolio, as they will likely continue the same behavior that has caused their slow growth and board decline.

We also saw the fall of notable big farma member Upper tuchoim, who applied for capital bankruptcy due to their real-life retirement from NationStates.

Big farma continues to hold low bank relative to their deck value, which makes sense, as the purpose of bank is to use it to acquire more deck value rather than hoarding it for liquidity. Conversely, those with higher banks may have had more muted growth or conservative approaches.

At the end of the year, the market became significantly more top-heavy, with the barrier to entry in big farma growing significantly. The barrier to the top ten more than doubled, and the top 20 border grew by 152,000. The dominance of especially the upper echelon of big farma means that their moves may disproportionately affect the rest of the competitive market.

Year Start

Year End

To conduct your own exploration of the numbers, view the full report over here.