31
Dispatch → Bulletin → News
by 
The Spooky Arboreal Commonwealth of Treekidistan.
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The North Pacific's Card Symposium 2026: Lecture Transcripts
During the North Pacific Cards Symposium 2026, multiple members of the cards community presented lectures on various topics related to the card game. This dispatch shall hold all the transcripts for those lectures presented in the Symposium discord server.
I take this opportunity to thank 
Arlizplot who compiled all the transcripts from the server inorder to publish as a dispatch. I extend my thanks to 
Isenoka, who has also volunteered in the transcription process.
Read the transcript here:
Before we get this started, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Treek/Indusse for accepting my (impromptu) offer to speak as well as to the TNP staff more broadly for hosting the first instance of the Symposium after three years! Furthermore, it's an honour to be here and to be trusted to share what I've learned with fellow NSers, whether you're an experienced trader or someone who's never touched the market.
For those that don’t know me, I am Arlizplot and I’ve been involved with NS cards for almost four years at this point, although I took a break for a while before I returned a couple of months ago, this time taking cards considerably more seriously.
I started NS as a fairly standard nation answering issues, writing dispatches and getting packs, and only really took the market seriously when I packed my first legendary (Dutchyland S2). After that, I began to create accounts based on my own roleplay and used them to slowly manually answer issues and scaled up slightly by the beginning of S3 to something like 100 nations (before I even knew what scripts were!). Of course, I never got very far at that time and I eventually let cards fall by the wayside once I lost interest, leaving my account to CTE for months before I returned at the beginning of this year.
Since then, I’ve been putting considerably more attention to cards, managing to complete two full seasons of legendary cards (S4 and S2) and whittling down the remaining few I have left, giving me quite a bit of experience trading for these cards, particularly with some of the less obvious aspects of card trading.
That’s what I really want to focus on today, the ‘Unwritten Rules of NationStates Card Trading’. I’m not here to give an explanation of farming, or to tell you what your cards are worth. Today, I want to talk about the social and psychological side of trading, both in public and private markets. We'll look at information asymmetry, reputation, mental traps, reading other traders, and a few tips and tricks that can make a surprisingly large difference.
I'll also be treating this as a fairly open-ended Q&A. So if there's something you've always wondered about cards, some trading situation you weren't sure how to handle, or even just a completely stupid question you've been too afraid to ask someone else, this is probably the place to ask it. I'll share what I've learned from my own experience, and hopefully we can have a discussion about the less obvious side of cards.
Before we get started, though, I'll briefly open the floor for any immediate questions for anything you'd like to urgently ask me ^^
[1]: I have a question
How long did it take to get to 1500 puppets?
A: I came back with 100 puppets and whenever I wanted to increment (farm more cards), I would add another 100 per session using Hare's Creator script, so it would have taken me a couple of months to get to that point I reckon
[2]: My really serious question
How do I bribe the moderators?
A: I hear that singing prayers to our lord and saviour Koem Kab helps, especially across several languages :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
[3]: Incredibly serious question here. Can I have an S3 AoCI :nothoughts:
A: I don't yet own one, you're asking the wrong person for that :sob:
[3]: oh lol
[4]: Whose your favourite collections focused player begging with n?
A: Narlizplot
/s
I hear that there's a very obscure NS player by the name of 'Novaya Zemlya Archipelago', I gifted them a lot of cards for their collections but I think they're not that well known
Despite that I still believe that they are very esteemed
[4]: It's nice to see you helping out new players!
Could you help me out and give me a leg :nothoughts:
A: Ok we're doing this now :PandaHappy:
[3] (Replying to Arlizplot): I hear they are especially fond of some random nation named Jordan Hugill. Not sure what's up with that.
A: (Sends [4] a legendary)
Easiest legendary of your life
[4] (Replying to [3]): Hugoat
A: Anyhow does anyone have any further questions before we actually get to the content of this talk?
[3]: Uh sure, actually a serious one now. How low do you foresee S4 legendaries falling (since they seem to overall be getting cheaper)
[2]: Can't fall below 1 mv
So 1 mv
A: That's an interesting question. I believe that there is a community minded 'floor' of legendary prices at somewhere around 10 bank (as I do believe that we're averse to having single digit legendary mvs unless they're deserving of such a price).
Of course this is due to people aggressively selling S4 legendaries for well below their MV prices causing the MV of certain unbacked cards to fall significantly, and also the decreased demand due to many people already finishing S4 legs and not having an immediate need to purchase more S4 legendaries for their collections.
Alright then without further ado let's get to the first section, 'the open market'
A: The Open Market
To begin, let’s start with the most visible part of card trading, the auctions which occur on the market.
When I say the open market, I'm primarily referring to live auctions which comprises the standard bid and ask auctions on the market. Compared to private negotiations, public trading is very transparent. Everyone can see what card is being offered, who is interested, and, most importantly, how much people are willing to pay. All prices of current and previous trades are public knowledge, through either the graphs on the cards themselves, the public trades page or a trader’s individual buys and sales.
This is where I think one of the first unwritten rules of card trading comes in. The public market isn't just a place where prices are discovered and cards are sold, but a place where people's behaviour and trade styles are displayed.
In an auction, you're dealing with everyone watching the auction, even if they're not actively participating. Every bid communicates something. Every decision to stop bidding communicates something. Even the timing of a bid can tell you something about the people involved.
This makes auctions particularly interesting from a psychological perspective.
One of the more obvious examples is bid escalation and incrementation. You might enter an auction thinking, ‘I’d be willing to pay 100.00 for this card.’ Someone else bids 110.00, so you respond by bidding 120.00. They bid 130.00, and suddenly the question you're asking yourself isn't necessarily ‘Is this card worth 130?’
Instead, it becomes, ‘Am I really going to let them have it for 130?’
It's incredibly easy for an auction to stop being about the value of the card and start being about the competition itself. You become invested in winning because you've already invested time, money, or attention into the auction. You might experience FOMO (fear of missing out) because the card is rare and you don't know when another opportunity will appear. You might become reluctant to stop because you've already bid so much.
This is where concepts like the sunk-cost fallacy and loss aversion become relevant. The money you've already spent shouldn't affect what you're willing to spend next, because it's already gone. But psychologically, it absolutely can.
One of the simplest pieces of advice I can give for auctions is therefore to know your maximum before you start bidding.
If you've decided that you’re willing to pay 500 for a card, decide that before you're sitting there watching somebody else bid 490. Because once you're at 490, the temptation to think, ‘It's only another 10’ is considerably stronger than it was when you started.
However, psychology goes both ways, because while you're participating in an auction, you're also observing everyone else.
You can start paying attention to how people bid.
Does someone immediately jump into an auction? Do they make tiny increments? Do they suddenly make a much larger bid? Do they wait until the auction is already competitive before entering? Do they repeatedly bid and then disappear? Do they seem particularly determined to obtain this specific card?
None of these things are definitive evidence of what someone is thinking. You obviously can't read someone's mind from their bidding pattern. But they can provide information.
If someone immediately makes a huge bid, for example, they may be signalling that they're highly interested in the card. Typically, this can have the intention of acting as a deterrent to any other spectators to participate in the auction. Someone who repeatedly makes the smallest possible increase (pennybidding) may have a very different strategy. Someone who enters an auction late may have been watching the entire time and simply waiting to see where the price settled before committing, or attempting to take the auction at the last minute (sniping)
The important thing is that you're not just watching the price. You're watching the people producing the price.
If you're simply watching an auction, you can still learn who is willing to pay large amounts, who consistently bids on certain cards, what prices particular cards are actually clearing at, which traders are currently active, and even what someone's collection goals might be based on the cards they're repeatedly pursuing. In other words, spectating is itself a form of market participation, where you as the player are gathering information about the market and about cards without spending anything.
I think it's also important to distinguish between ‘price’ and ‘value’
The price a card sells for isn't necessarily the same as what that card is worth to every individual trader. A card might have a market price of 500, but that doesn't mean everyone values it at 500. Someone might be willing to pay considerably more because it's the final card they need for a collection, because they need it immediately, or because they simply personally value it more highly
.
Likewise, someone might refuse to buy a card at 500 despite the fact that everyone else considers that a reasonable price, because they don't personally value it that highly. Someone might be willing to sell for considerably less if they need immediate liquidity (bank) or expect the value to fall over time.
So when you're looking at the open market, you shouldn't just ask, ‘What is this card worth?’, or even worse, ‘What is this card’s listed market value?’
You should also ask, ‘What is this card worth to this particular person?’
That distinction becomes increasingly important once we move away from the open market and into direct negotiations.
There is another mechanic of the public market that I think is particularly important to understand when discussing auction psychology, the concept of the match price.
For anyone unfamiliar with how it works, the final price of a matched transaction isn't necessarily the same as the highest bid. Instead, the transaction settles at the midpoint between the highest bid and the lowest ask available when the auction concludes.
This makes public auctions more psychologically interesting, because the number you're willing to pay or sell isn't necessarily the final amount by auction’s end.
In other words, the bid and ask prices aren't necessarily telling you what people expect to pay. They're telling you what people are willing to accept or offer as their limit, and that distinction matters when you're watching an auction.
It also creates an incentive structure. Because buyers know they likely pay less than their maximum bid, there can be less reason to hold back a high bid. If I think a card is worth up to 1000, bidding 1000 doesn't necessarily mean I have committed myself to spending 1000. I may simply be establishing my maximum willingness to pay.
And from the seller's perspective, the reverse is true. If I'm willing to accept 1000, I don't necessarily have to list at the exact price I hope to receive. The market can find a point between the two sides.
This is another example of why I think it's important to distinguish between what a trader does and what that action actually communicates.
For example, if the highest bid is 1000 and the lowest ask is 250, the eventual match price would be 625. The buyer's 1000 bid therefore doesn't necessarily mean ‘I will pay 1000 for this card.’ It can simply mean ‘I am willing to pay up to 1000, knowing that the eventual match price may be considerably lower.
That difference becomes extremely important once we start looking at how traders use information against each other. And, of course, this also gives us another psychological trap to watch out for. Just because you're unlikely to pay your maximum bid doesn't mean you should set an unnecessarily high maximum. The match-price mechanic can make large numbers feel safer than they actually are, and you still need to establish what you're genuinely comfortable paying before the competitive side of an auction takes over.
Importantly, there is the ever-present risk of a ‘drop’, where a trader with the copy of the card in question matches a higher ask and sets two concurrent auctions, one for a higher price and one for a lower price.
A sudden drop can cause people to panic, attempt to undercut each other, or become reluctant or even disappointed to accept what would previously have been considered a reasonable price. Just because the market has suddenly moved doesn't necessarily mean that the underlying value of the card has changed by the same amount.
There is also a distinction I'd like to make here between what is strategically effective and what is socially accepted.
Some behaviour can be perfectly valid according to the mechanics of the game while still being frowned upon by the community.
As an example, bidding when you see your friend on an auction might appear superfluous. Incrementing the bid in 0.01 increments instead of 1.00 might appear like it doesn't make a difference. The game mechanics might not care.
However, the community will.
As auctions are public, your behaviour can and will be remembered by others. If you're consistently a reasonable bidder, people may be more willing to deal with you in private. If you're constantly provoking bidding wars, pennybidding others, or engaging in other frowned-upon tactics, people can start to associate you with that behaviour.
And thus concludes my section on the open market, I'll give everyone following along some time to digest the textwall before I introduce some interactives!
Ok, I've just given you all a stack of theory, so let's see what you all would actually do in a few situations
A: Q1: The Friend’s Auction:
You see your good friend Schleswig-Holstein bidding on a card you really want for your own collection, the highly sought-after S1 Autonomous Star Systems. You’re willing to pay significantly more than the current match price, and there have been no signals that anyone else is considering entering the auction.
What would you do?
A. Bid normally. It’s a public auction and everyone has the right to participate.
B. Bid the lowest amount (pennybidding). You’ll be ahead and win the auction with the least amount of committed bank.
C. Message them first and ask if it would be ok for you to bid on top.
D. Don’t bid, because they’re your friend.
E. Bid against them, but only to where you think the card is objectively worth.
(React Results: A - 2, B - 0, C - 2, D - 2, E - 0)
[4]: D. Of course I would let my friend Schleswig-Holstein buy such a valuable card dear to their heart
[5]: Penny-bid with 10 seconds to go, then call them up on Discord so they are distracted and don't see the outbid - friends are temporary, cards are forever /jk
[2]: What are you- a teacher? :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: (to [1] as well, I completely forgot you could react with the letters I'll do that in my next ones so you don't need to sacrifice your vote)
[1]: based on history I'd go C, i messaged upc before overbidding and gifted a leg, either that or d if i didn't overly care for the card
[6]: Kinda depends on the friend, really. Is it someone I met in RL, who invites me over for dinner? Or someone I have occasionally chatted with online?
[4]: When arliz was in a Sunto auction that I wanted for my Ukraine collection i left the auction to them so I would be d
A (Replying to [2]): A guy trying to explain how to think about trading cards, not just how to trade cards would be my answer^^
The how-to guide I've left for Arty in a couple of days
A (Replying to [6]): It's your pick to interpret the question how you see fit!
[2]: If it were someone like @“new GOATles” -I would just try to ragebait
Orelse maybe C or D
A (Replying to [4]): (I will get you a Sunto for that collection eventually I promise you)
[4] (Replying to [2]): New Charles would be able to outbid you with the wealth from those puppets of his
[6]: F. The most harsh option: Pennybid, then kill their NS session and block them for a minute from logging in again. (:P joke, of course)
A: G. Go on their laptop and cut their internet/remove their tab so that they can't see the site auction
(this is a true story and I won an auction against Eugeniee once by doing such a thing, let's not talk about that here :joy:)
[2]: H. Just kill them
[4] (Replying to Arlizplot): Can I walk from the UK to Australia inside the one hour auction time
A (Replying to [4]): You don't know where I live >:(
[4]: :EvilPanda:
[1]: there's a limit, you can only walk 500 miles
[4]: But I would walk 500 more!
[1]: ok let's set the limit at 1500 miles
A: ok I'll hold this question open for a couple more minutes before we jump to the next one
(and of course I give a short explainer)
[2] (Replying to [4]): That's only allowed for Vaneesa Carlton
A: Alright, I'd argue that there is definitely not a universal answer to this question, and it perfectly illustrates the different paths you can take while on the open market.
A and B are completely legitimate from a mechanical perspective.
D might be good friendship etiquette, but you're voluntarily giving up a market opportunity.
C introduces communication and may be the most socially considerate option.
E sounds reasonable, but the phrase ‘objectively worth’ is itself questionable, as we've already established that market price and personal value aren't necessarily identical.
(before anyone asks I did choose A in this exact situation, as one of the people following this talk will know all too well, and I later regretted it as it contradicted so much about what I preach in leaving other people's auctions alone)
(one more for this section)
A: Q2: The Misclick
You’re watching an auction for the rare S1 Suffolk, but someone has accidentally bid 1000 instead of 100! You know they don’t understand the market very well and you have a copy of the card.
What do you do?
A. Drop at 1000. It’s fair game and free bank, taking advantage of their mistake.
B. Drop at 1000 and bid on the cheaper copy, it’s free bank without giving up a copy of the card!
C. Say nothing and don’t participate, watching to see if the market value increases.
D. Send a message or telegram of condolences on the misclick and offer to help ‘save’ the auction.
(React Results: A - 0, B - 2, C - 2, D - 4, :PandaEvil: - 1)
[1]: i've done all 4
depending on the bidder
A: let's make this more interesting
[2]: Someone should ask this question to Jared
[4]: They would drop and then outbid the 1000 bid for some reason
A: the bidder in question is none other than your friend Schleswig-Holstein
how will you choose to respond to such a bid?
[4]: Oh I would save the auction for Schleswig any day
My goat
A: this is going to become your new puppet I can feel it
[4]: I would drop and return the bank
[1]: for friends or similar: D
[2]: E. Do A because you needed bank, then gift them legs for compensation
[4]: :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: A and B could potentially be very profitable and mechanically, there may be nothing wrong with either.
But if you choose D, you've potentially sacrificed an immediate opportunity to build trust with someone.
If you choose A or B, you've gained from someone else's mistake.
(in this situation I chose D and helped to return their bank through transfers, said person has subsequently helped me a decent bunch in my own collecting)
once again there is no absolute 'clear' answer, the important thing is to recognise that the market isn't a one-time interaction
In a community as small as ours, the people you wage war in auctions with may well be the person holding the final legendary card for your collection!
[7]: Good morning! I missed the two first questions :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: Good morning [7], you're late to class! /s
Welcome to my section on cards: The Unwritten Rules of NationStates Cards
[7]: I would also save my friend Schleswig-Holstein though
[4]: That name feels familiar :Pika:
A: I think both of these questions ultimately point towards the same idea, and it's probably the central theme I want you to take away from this lecture:
What goes around, comes around.
You can absolutely make a profitable trade by taking advantage of someone's desperation. You can drive up someone's auction. You can pennybid them. You can exploit an information gap. And in that individual transaction, you might come out ahead. But the transaction doesn't necessarily end when the auction timer finishes.
The other trader remembers what happened. The spectators remember what happened. Your reputation changes. And that can affect the next trade, and the trade after that.
The reverse is true as well. If you're fair with someone, if you honour your agreements, if you help someone out when you could have taken advantage of them, or if you simply make yourself pleasant to trade with, those things can come back to you too.
Your reputation is effectively another asset in the market.
So when I talk about the ‘unwritten rules’ of Cards, I'm not necessarily talking about what's objectively right or wrong. I'm talking about the understanding that your actions have consequences beyond the transaction in front of you.
And that's what I mean by ‘what goes around, comes around.’
Does anyone have any questions for this section before we go and tackle the public trading environment?
this is probably a good time for me to run finder as well I'll get to doing that in the meantime
[4]: :flag_gl:
Maybe you'll pull an autonomous star systems!
[7]: Good luck, I hope you pull that S1 Autonomous Star System that you let your Schleswig friend have earlier
A: ooh I wonder what that could possibly be a reference to :Pika:
[4]: I think I prefer the independent planets abbreviation to that ones though :nothoughts:
[7]: Dammit, late to the answer lol
A: I chose that for a reason :P
[8]: artificial solar system
[4]: Dependant stars
A: regional cards would be kind of dope though
S4 The North Pacific (Legendary)
HOLY CRAP
[4]: S4 Swabia (legendary)
A: WANFN
I SHOUILDNT BE POSTING THAT HERE
[8]: :ThinkPika:
[4]: :s1:
A: [image containing S1 Escalan-Corps Star Island, pulled during the lecture]
sorry SORRY I can't help myself WTF
live symposium pull
[4]: Why didn't I run finder during my lecture :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
[9]: You should gift it to me
A: S1 for S3 legendary trust :pray: /s
[7]: reports the teacher for wasting class time
[4] (Replying to Arlizplot): Heh, room for one more?
[9]: Depends which S3 leg :melting_face:
[2]: Flexing in front of the students :EvilPanda:
[4]: Is card board broken again?
A: (cardboard is always broken)
[4]: I should have at least 2 posts there from yesterday
As wekl
A: yes yes class, we'll be getting to the next section shortly
[9]: Getting legendary Chicken Overlords 🫠
[4]: Legendary chicken :pandacookie:
[9]: Regional cards would be very cool though, yeah
[4]: throws paper aeroplane
A: let's get back on topic, does anyone have any actual questions regarding the open market?
don't ask me to put up a bid or an ask btw it's class time not recess
[7]: Too late, the principal already knows about this and will demand that leg you found as tax
A: :joy:
[7]: (I'm the principal)
A: The Public Market
Now that we've covered the open market, let's move into what I would call the public market, direct trades that are negotiated openly in a public channel, where everyone else can watch the conversation.
This is the middle ground between the open and private markets.
You're no longer dealing with the formal structure of an auction. There isn't necessarily a predetermined bid, ask or match price. Instead, two traders are directly negotiating what they think a card is worth.
But unlike a private trade, you're still being watched, and that changes things.
In a private negotiation, you can make an offer, receive a counteroffer, change your mind, ask questions, or reveal information without anyone else necessarily knowing about it.
In a public negotiation, every one of those actions becomes information for everyone else.
If I publicly say ‘Looking for S1 EVANGELION, willing to pay 2000.’
I've just told the entire market something.
I've told any person who owns EVANGELION that I'm interested.
I've told everyone else that I'm willing to spend up to 2000.
And I've potentially told other collectors that there is someone willing to pay that much for the card.
That means that public negotiation is not just a transaction. It's also a performance.
You're negotiating with the person you're talking to, but you're also communicating with everyone watching.
One of the first psychological concepts that becomes important here is anchoring. The basic idea is that the first number introduced into a negotiation can influence how subsequent numbers are perceived.
Imagine someone publicly asks:
‘Selling S3 Pirate Cove, looking for around 5000.’
Even if you originally thought Pirate Cove was worth 3000, you've now been given a reference point of 5000. You might respond with 4000 rather than 3000, because 4000 suddenly feels like a reasonable compromise.
But reverse the situation and imagine the seller doesn’t publicly post a price.
If you respond ‘I'll offer 3000,’ you've established a completely different starting point.
Now the seller is potentially thinking about whether 5000 is actually unreasonable compared to your 3000 offer.
This is why the first number in a negotiation can matter considerably.
However, anchoring isn't magic. If you throw out an absurd number, people aren't necessarily going to accept it simply because you said it first. A good anchor needs some degree of plausibility, particularly in a market where everyone can immediately look at previous trades and current listings.
And this is another reason why knowing the market matters. You can only anchor effectively if you understand what you're anchoring against.
The other major difference is the presence of spectators.
Let's say I'm negotiating with someone publicly and they make me an offer of 800.
I might privately think, ‘I'd actually accept 700.’
But if I immediately respond, ‘Sure, 700 works.’
I've revealed something.
Everyone watching now knows that I was willing to accept at least 700, and the other trader knows that their initial offer was probably too high. They might start wondering whether they could have gotten it for 600.
In a private negotiation, that information might disappear once the trade is completed, however, in a public negotiation, the audience gets to learn from your negotiation, and this creates an incentive to sometimes negotiate differently in public than you would in private.
You might make a slightly stronger counteroffer because you don't want to publicly establish a low valuation. You might take longer to respond because you don't want to appear desperate. You might deliberately make a concession publicly because you want to establish yourself as a reasonable trader.
Or, you might refuse an offer that you would have accepted privately because you don't want to establish that price as a precedent.
This brings us to another feature of the public market, precedent.
If I publicly sell a card for 500, that transaction can become a reference point for the next person selling the same card. Even if there was a very specific reason I accepted 500 that context may disappear.
Someone else now sees ‘This card sold for 500.’
They may not see ‘This card sold for 500 because Arlizplot desperately needed bank at that exact moment’.
Suddenly a single transaction can influence the perceived market value of an entire card.
TLDR, when you're trading publicly, you're not only dealing with your price. You're potentially helping establish everyone else's price.
We must also consider the concept of information leakage, probably the biggest danger of public trading.
Remember what I said earlier about watching auctions?
In the open market, spectators can observe your bidding behaviour.
In the public market, they can observe your negotiation behaviour.
Suppose you're looking for a particular legendary, let's call this one Insensible Hatred.
Someone publicly offers you one for 800.
You respond, ‘I'd really like this, but 800 is too high.’
They come down to 750.
You say, ‘I'm very interested, but I still can't do 750.’
They offer 700.
You accept immediately.
You've just told everyone watching that your reservation price was somewhere between 700 and 750, and you’ve done it for free. You've also potentially told the seller that they probably could have gotten more. This is why you need to be conscious of what your negotiation reveals, not just what it accomplishes. Sometimes the information you reveal can be more valuable than the money you gain from the individual trade.
This leads into the simplest piece of advice I can give for public negotiations, Don't negotiate against yourself.
If someone asks, ‘Would you pay 800?’
And you respond, ‘No, I'd pay 700.’
They haven't actually given you a counteroffer yet.
You've just volunteered information.
You could instead say, ‘What's the lowest you're willing to take?’
Now you've made them reveal information before you reveal your own limit.
This is particularly important when someone asks an open-ended question such as:
‘What's your offer?’
If you immediately give them your maximum, you've potentially done half of their negotiation for them.
And this is where the distinction between price and value from the previous section becomes important again. Knowing that a card generally sells for 700 is useful. Knowing that this particular person desperately wants 700 right now is much more useful.
There's another psychological effect which I think is easy to overlook: people don't like looking unreasonable in public.
If someone makes you an obviously lowball offer privately, you can simply reject it. If someone makes that same offer publicly, you now have an audience. That can influence both sides.
A seller might be more willing to compromise because they don't want to look greedy. A buyer might accept a slightly worse price because they don't want to drag out an argument in front of everyone. Someone might even make a concession simply because they don't want other traders to think they're difficult to deal with, and this can influence the negotiation.
But, again, there's a difference between understanding a psychological incentive and abusing it.
If you consistently use public pressure to force people into deals they wouldn't otherwise accept, people are eventually going to notice, which points right back to the same principle from the open market:
what goes around, comes around.
And thus concludes my section on public market trading, as before I'll wait a bit before I introduce some more interactives
(aka time for me to check my finder)
[4]: More interactives :PandaHappy:
A: bro is here only for the interactives and not the theory :sob:
taking the tests without taking the lessons
[4]: Button yes must press must press button
[2]: Starboard didn't actually had permission to this channel lol.
Added that post
A: zero stars 😭
alright let's go to some questions :P
A: Q3: #legendary
You're watching a public trade:
Player A: Selling S3 Defeated Pirate Cove, looking for 9000.
Player B: 7000?
Player A: 8888.88.
Player B: 7500?
Player A: I’ll do it for 8500.00
You own a spare copy of Defeated Pirate Cove. You would happily sell it for 7500, but you'd obviously prefer to get more.
What do you do?
A. Jump in publicly: ‘I'll do 7500.’
B. Jump in publicly: ‘I'll do 8000.’
C. DM Player B privately and offer them your copy for 7500/800.
D. Do nothing. You’re not in a hurry to sell.
(React Results: A - 1, B - 1, C - 0, D - 4)
A: I wonder what this card could possibly be
[4]: What about saying you'll sell it for 8499.99
[1]: D - I'm a hoarder
[2]: Offer them for 7500/800 ?
A: [image of a calculator app, 7500/800]
damn that's a bloody good deal
[7]: Obvious answer, I love selling legs
A: I'd take S3 Defeated Pirate Cove for 9.38
A (Replying to [7]): 'I'll do 10000.00' - [7] 2026
[2]: E. Buy the card for 8000 and sell it for 8200 privately
A: What would you do with TWO copies of S3 Defeated Pirate Cove?
seems like a pretty good card to have spares of
[4]: Junk them both
[2]: 404 packs to open :PandaHappy:
arlizplot [CARD], — 8/28/26, 9:19 PM
I should probably explain the idea behind this question, it depends on what you're trying to optimise. If I want to Giomax (bank now) I might choose options A or B. If I'm thinking of my reputation with the two people involved, I would probably choose D as it did not directly involve me.
The thing about public trading is that it's
well
'public'
[4]: One has to own a valuable card to be put in this situation :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: next question!
[1]: yes mr plot
A: Q4: Old Habits Die Hard.
You are Arlizplot.
You have spent months building your collection. You've bought, traded, farmed, negotiated and probably made several financially questionable decisions along the way.
But you've finally done it.
You are one card away from completing Season One Legendaries.
You post publicly:
Arlizplot: ‘Looking for S1 Soups. Paying 2000.’
And after a few minutes, someone responds.
[7] (Replying to Arlizplot): If it's my dear friend Schleswig-Holstein seeking to buy however, I'd offer C (private trade with discount) :PandaHappy:
A: Schleswig-Holstein: ‘I've got one.’
Nobody else appears to own a copy, or at least is interested in trading with you
You know this is your final card. Schleswig-Holstein knows it's your final card.
[4] (Replying to [7]): Like that one time!
A: What do you do?
oh god
A. Offer 2000 immediately. You don't want to risk losing the card.
B. Ask Schleswig-Holstein what they want for it and negotiate normally.
C. Ask them to give you a reasonable price.
D. Try to negotiate aggressively anyway. You might be desperate, but you don't have to show it.
E. Remind them that you're friends and ask whether they'd be willing to prioritise you over another buyer.
Now, here's the important part
I want you to answer this based on what you chose for Question One
(React Results: A - 5, B - 1, C - 0, D - 0, E - 1, F - 1)
[4]: Hello I am arlizplot. I would message Schleswig "PLEASE PLEASE I NEEEEED THIS CARD PLEASE I LOVE YOUR COLLECTIONS WE ARE FRIENDS RIGHT I GIFT CARD PLEASE HELP ME WE ARE FRIENDS PLEASE PLEASE"
A: F. Message Schleswig "PLEASE PLEASE I NEEEEED THIS CARD PLEASE I LOVE YOUR COLLECTIONS WE ARE FRIENDS RIGHT I GIFT CARD PLEASE HELP ME WE ARE FRIENDS PLEASE PLEASE"
[2]: G. Babe I'll do anything for that card. Please give it to me 🥺
[4]: Sure
[1]: If I said i'd pay 2k, i'd pay the 2k
[7]: H. I'm not Arlizplot, but rather [7] and as such, I am not seeking to buy such a trivial card
A (Replying to [4]): ayo I thought you were leaving your S1 Soups for me
A (Replying to [7]): above the social class of NS cards I see :Pika:
[2]: Love beats money
A: /s
[4]: Anyway seriously I would choose A because I would want my friend to be properly compensated for his card
But Im sure Schleswig would gift it if it's your last card :nothoughts:
A: This is where ‘what goes around, comes around’ stops being an abstract principle.
In Q1, you had an opportunity to make a decision that benefited you immediately.
Now, several questions later, you are the person who needs something from the same trader. Schleswig-Holstein hasn't forgotten what happened. Suddenly the decision that looked like a 50 bank profit might have consequences worth considerably more than 50.
BUT
Plot twist
There's one more piece of information.
[7]: You missed the chance to make a pun
Arlizplot twist
A: Instead of replying to you publicly, Schleswig-Holstein privately messages you:
‘I'll sell it to you for 1,500.’
That's 500 below your publicly stated offer.
What do you do?
A (Replying to [7]): be back I have to junk a leg for this missed opportunity now
[CARD],
A: don't wait for me to give A, B, C, D, E this time, I want to hear your actual thoughts! :Pika:
(this is one of two questions I have chosen to omit the answers, the other one will be coming up soon enough)
[4]: I didn't realise you had enough transfer cards to move 1500 bank Schleswig
[1]: private transfer to save bank, gift a leg at the end
[4]: Anyway I would ask if they are sure and I would try repay the favour later on
[2]: This could have been a good question in Schleswig-Holstein perspective?
Whether you'll gift that card, give him for less, give him for 2000, or demand more like 3000-4000 when you're the only one who can give it?
[7]:If I were a trader short on bank, I take the offer
But that is not the case, I'm a very rich trader and I'd pay them the 2000 anyways!
A (Replying to [2]): I was debating flipping the question while I was drafting actually but I decided against it
[4]: Gift it!
A: Clearly though, you take the offer
That's an excellent deal.
[4]: No I would gift it
A: But now think about why you're getting that deal.
Is Schleswig-Holstein being generous because you're friends?
Are they rewarding you for the way you treated them earlier?
Are they simply trying to help you finish your collection?
Or have you accidentally created a situation where your previous behaviour has become part of the price?
[4]: Mm remember to treat me right guys
A: This is the part of card trading that doesn't show up on the IA table. There is no statistic for: 'Schleswig-Holstein was willing to sell this card to Arlizplot for 500 less than they would have sold it to someone else.'
That difference isn't some theoretical, it's very much real, and that's your reputation at work.
[7]: Schleswig-Holstein is being generous because I gifted them a Season 3 Natiwahin Con, an inflated card with a Tuvalu flag, when they were just starting out
Nooo I was changing it lmao
[4]: Oh wait nvm I'm dumb
Yea I realised after
[7]: Like Arliz did with the names
[4]: :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: these nations are absolutely becoming puppets later
[4]: I thought it was a Bangladesh flag 🇧🇩 with a circle
A: I should probably make a statement about why I decided to remix the names, I want to draw attention not to the actual cards but to the process behind them
[1]: 2000 is a fair price for s1 legendary merethin
[4]: Why would I buy soups for 2000 when I can get it at a supermarket for cheaper
A: Live arlizplot laptop crash
fortunately I have a spare, we're using my junkdajunk laptop in the meantime
A (Replying to [1]): very high demand legendary, I hear it's as expensive as S1 legendary Prlizalot
ok does anyone have any more questions regarding public trading?
we're going to be heading into the section I spent by far the most time drafting, which is the 'private' market
[4]: Are Schleswig-Holstein and prlizalot friends?
A: they're not friends, Schleswig-Holstein doesn't know a 'Prizalot' but they do know a 'Prlizalot' and they're pretty cool
yeah ok you edited it 👍 I can confirm this to be true
[4]: :PE_PandaSleepy:
Can't spell lol
[1]: thoughts on mentioning people in public exchanges like, "@arlizplot would you sell your copy of s1 gio for 2000?"
compared to an open ended ask
A: Yes if you're intending on pinging somebody and reaching out to a particular person otherwise it's anyone's game
[7]: I heard Schleswig-Holstein and Prlizalot both trade often with Giuseppeland
A: If you're leaving it open to the general public the general public will respond
Of course if you're planning on reaching out to someone directly then it's probably best to directly message/telegram them
What I did say still applies though, you have more attention if you put the trade offer up through #legendary rather than DMs and this could be either a positive or negative depending on the trade
[4]: Ah Giuseppeland has that Nepal and Bangladesh collection!
[7]: Yes, and you can't forget their two crown jewels, the Argentina collection and the Flowers collection!
A: The Private Market
[4]: The sun and moon and the crimson circle
A: We’re now at the set of negotiations which can make or break a collection, the trades made privately. By private market, I’m referring to direct negotiations conducted through Telegrams, Discord messages, or other private communications, where the negotiation itself isn't visible to the wider market.
This is where all of the concepts we've already discussed become especially important.
In the open market, you have prices.
In the public market, you have prices and an audience
In the private market, you have people, information, and uncertainty. That makes private trading considerably less transparent.
If someone posts an S1 Examlandia for 1000 publicly, I can look at previous sales, current auctions, and other people's reactions before deciding whether that's reasonable.
If someone privately messages me saying, ‘I've got an Examlandia. What would you offer?’, there are many things I don't know.
I don't know why they're selling.
I don't know whether they've already contacted other people.
I don't know their reserve price.
I don't know whether they're testing the market.
And they don't know what I'm willing to pay.
That is information asymmetry.
Both sides have information the other side doesn't have, and private trading is largely a game of deciding how much of that information you want to reveal, when you want to reveal it, and what you can get in return for revealing it.
One of the biggest mistakes I see in private negotiations is revealing too much information too early.
Suppose someone messages you, ‘Are you interested in buying S2 Autonomous Star Systems?’
And you respond, ‘Yes! I've been looking for one for ages. What's your price?’
You've just revealed quite a lot. You've told them that you actively want the card, that you've been looking for it, and that you may be willing to pay a premium, and you haven't received anything in return.
A much more neutral response might be, ‘Possibly. What are you looking for?’
Now you've put the next decision back onto them.
Maybe they say 1000, maybe they say 700, maybe they tell you they desperately need bank. , maybe they reveal that they've already had another offer.
Every one of those answers gives you information, but you haven't committed yourself to anything.
This leads into one of the two important principles of private trading, Information is a currency.
You shouldn't necessarily be secretive or deceptive. You simply shouldn't volunteer information that the other trader hasn't earned through the negotiation. One of the most valuable pieces of information you can discover is urgency.
Imagine two people selling the exact same card.
Seller A says ‘I'm selling because I have a spare’.
Seller B says ‘I really need 500 bank today. Can you buy this?’
Those are completely different negotiations.
The card is exactly the same
The market hasn't necessarily changed.
The person's circumstances have changed.
Seller A has very little reason to compromise.
Seller B has a reason to prioritise liquidity over price.
The reverse can happen with buyers as well. Someone might desperately need the final card for a collection, while another buyer might simply think it would be nice to have, or to acquire their 18th copy. This is why I've repeatedly come back to the distinction between price and value.
And this is where I want to introduce another concept which may be new to some of you, but which I believe is the single most important principle of trading:
INITIATIVE
Initiative is the ability to make the other trader respond to your decision rather than you responding to theirs.
Think about a simple situation.
Someone messages you ‘Selling S2 Examlandia. What would you offer?’
They've effectively handed you the initiative as they’re asking you to establish the first number in the negotiation. You can now anchor the negotiation.
However, imagine the same person subsequently says, ‘I'm looking for around 800.’
Now they've already established an anchor, and you're responding to theirs, and the initiative has shifted.
This matters because the person with initiative generally has more control over the direction of the negotiation. They can decide whether to make the first offer. They can decide whether to wait. They can decide whether to reveal information. They can decide whether to accept, counteroffer, or simply walk away.
And importantly, initiative doesn't necessarily belong to the person with more bank or the more valuable card. It belongs to whoever currently has the ability to force the next meaningful decision onto the other person. This creates what I call the initiative gap.
At one extreme, you have a situation where one trader has almost complete initiative.
For example, ‘I need this card for my collection. You're the only person who has one. What do you want?’
That's an enormous initiative advantage for the seller.
At the other extreme, the seller might approach you saying ‘I desperately need bank today. Would you take 500?’
If you know the card is normally worth 700, you now have the initiative. They're effectively asking you to decide whether to accept, negotiate, or take advantage of their urgency.
However, initiative can shift back and forth throughout a negotiation.
You make an offer.
They counter.
You ask why they're selling.
They reveal they're in a hurry.
You now have more initiative.
They mention they've received another offer.
Initiative shifts back towards them.
You say you can pay immediately.
It shifts again.
This is why private negotiation is so much more than just the numbers being thrown around, it’s about who is making whom react to the negotiation.
That brings me to the opposite condition, zugzwang. I'm borrowing the term from chess because I think it describes this situation particularly well. In chess, zugzwang is the situation where you are forced to make a move as it is your turn, even though making a move is disadvantageous.
In card trading, I would use it slightly more loosely. Zugzwang is when circumstances have removed your good options, forcing you to negotiate from a disadvantageous position.
You're the buyer who has spent six months looking for the final card. You're the seller who needs bank before a deadline. You're the person who has publicly announced that you're desperate. You're the only person who needs the card.
Or perhaps you've simply allowed the negotiation to reach a point where doing nothing is no longer a viable position.
That's zugzwang. Initiative and zugzwang are two sides of the same coin.
Initiative is about who controls the next move.
Zugzwang is about what happens when you don't have a good next move.
You can therefore think about a private negotiation on a rough five-point scale.
[1]: ah the legendary card zugzwang
[2]: Packs opened.
Finder time :PandaHappy:
A: +2 — Strong initiative:
You have significant control over the negotiation. The other trader is responding to your terms, and you have several viable alternatives.
+1 — Slight initiative:
You have a modest informational or situational advantage, but the other trader still has meaningful options.
0 — Neutral:
Neither side has a clear advantage. Both have reasonable alternatives and the negotiation can move in either direction.
−1 — Slight zugzwang:
The other trader has more initiative. Your options are becoming narrower, and you are increasingly reacting to their decisions.
−2 — Strong zugzwang:
You have effectively lost control of the negotiation. You need the transaction, have few alternatives, and the other trader can dictate the terms.
This scale can change during the same negotiation.
A (Replying to [2]): good luck!
[4]: I hate when the other trader has zugzwang
A: (this means that you hate being in an advantageous position, interesting)
[1]: masochism
[4]: Yes I am consumed with kindness
[7]: What if the other trader has a Zwangzug (and your need it for your chess collection?)
[4]: Idk zwangzug just zugzwang
[2]: [Image of Zigzagoon]
A: You might begin at −2 because you desperately need a card. Then you discover the seller desperately needs bank.
Suddenly you're at +2.
Then they reveal that they've already received an offer from someone else.
Perhaps you're back at 0.
Then you realise that seller doesn't actually need the card, while you need it to finish your collection.
Back to −1.
The numbers haven't necessarily changed, but the information has.
It also explains why the first offer can be disproportionately valuable.
For example, imagine that someone DMs you:
‘Would you sell your S3 Sevastopol?’
You say, ‘Sure. I'd want 800.’
Now 800 is the anchor.
But suppose they instead say ‘I'd offer 1,000. I need it now’ The buyer has moved first, but the seller has the initiative as they know what the buyer is willing to pay, as well as the circumstances for this purchase.
Therefore the first offer does not always increase initiative. A terrible first offer can obviously damage your position. For the seller, however, when the first offer is genuinely a steal the initiative can be worth considerably more than the small amount of information you had to reveal to make it.
Sometimes the best way to gain initiative is simply to recognise that you already have it.
If someone offers 700 for a card that normally trades for 500, you don't necessarily need to immediately negotiate them up to 750. You already have the advantageous position.
Trying to squeeze another 50 out of the transaction might gain you 50 bank while damaging a relationship worth considerably more.
Initiative is different from simply “getting the best price.” Initiative is about controlling the negotiation. The final price is only one consequence of that control.
Anchoring, as before, is another important component.
If someone messages ‘Would you take 400 for this?” and you were considering selling at 500, 500 suddenly feels quite reasonable.
But if they say, ‘I’d pay 600.’ then 500 suddenly feels like a bargain. Nothing at all about the card changed, but your psychological reference point did.
This is why you should ideally establish your own valuation before entering a negotiation. Otherwise, you risk letting the other person establish your expectations for you.
The same principle applies to concessions, as people like feeling that they've won a negotiation.
If I offer you a card for 1,000 and you negotiate me down to 900, you feel as though you've accomplished something. If I simply offer it to you for 900, you might still think it's a good deal, but you don't have that same sense of achievement.
This is why controlled concessions can be useful. You might say ‘I could do 950,’ and then ‘I'd be willing to go to 925,’ and then ‘900 would be my absolute minimum.’
Those concessions need to actually mean something. If you immediately go from 1000 to 800, the buyer learns that your first number wasn't very meaningful.
They'll probably ask, ‘What about 700?’ and now you’ve lost initiative.
Initiative should not and must not be confused with manipulation.
You don't need to invent fake buyers. You don't need to lie about competing offers. You don't need to deliberately misrepresent market prices. Most importantly, you don’t need to treat every single trade and interaction with fellow traders as a chance to optimise for +2 initiative.
There is a difference between being strategically aware and being dishonest. In fact, this is where reputation becomes particularly important.
Private trading might appear to make reputation less relevant because nobody else can see what happened. Private trading actually makes existing reputation much more important than in public or in open trading.
If I have a reputation for being reliable, reasonable and pleasant to trade with, someone might message me privately before they even consider putting a card on the public market.
They might say, ‘I've got this card. Interested?’
Nobody else even knew the card was available. That’s an incredible advantage and it all came down to reputation.
The reverse is true as well.
If you're known for wasting people's time, reneging on agreements, exploiting mistakes, or being impossible to negotiate with, people don't necessarily need to publicly condemn you, but they can simply stop messaging you.
Someone else gets the card, opportunity, or the first offer, and you might never know that your reputation caused it.
That is one of the most important things about private trading, you often don't see the consequences of your reputation.
This brings us back to information asymmetry. Sometimes this gap is unintentional, but other times, just because you have more information, you may choose not to exploit this position.
An experienced trader might know that a particular collector has been searching for a card for months. They might know that a card is unusually scarce. They might know that someone is about to complete a collection. They might know that a price which looks normal to the other person is actually an incredible deal.
The less experienced trader might know none of that.
If you're the person with more information, you have a choice.
You can maximise the immediate profit, or you can use that information to help someone understand the market.
I'm not going to argue that every good trader needs to be altruistic, that's @Novaya Zemlya's job. If someone offers you a genuinely good deal, you're allowed to take it. Nobody should feel like they’re obliged to leave money on the table to act according to their morals. At the same time, there is a difference between benefiting from a favourable market situation and deliberately exploiting someone's ignorance.
The first is reputable trading. The second is trading your reputation.
Therefore, that is why I think the private market is where all of the concepts we've discussed finally come together.
Information determines what you know.
Initiative determines who gets to act on that information.
Zugzwang determines who is forced to react.
Reputation determines what opportunities you may be given in the future.
The strongest traders are not always the ones with the most bank, the most DV, or the highest
intellect. They're the people who understand which of those factors actually matters in the negotiation they're currently having.
I'll leave this up for a little bit longer before we go to the final section of interactives
Any question as well? I know I just introduced a completely new set of terms :P
[4] (Replying to Arlizplot): What's with the /s
It is true!
[7] (Replying to Arlizplot): The strongest traders are not always the ones with the most bank, the most DV [...]
Disagree :p
Where's the pandarich when I need it
A (Replying to [4]): edited!
[4]: Idk pandarich
A (Replying to [7]): not always but often
[4]: :pandagio1: :pandagio2: - I know these though
A: I think having a lot of bank is definitely a contributing factor in being a strong trader :P
[7]: :PandaHappy:
[1]: :PandaPoor:
[4]: :pandalaud:
[7]: Nah I get your point, just playing around lol
A: alright, it's schleswig-holstein's favourite section now
the final section of interactives
Q5. The Balance
You have been searching for S2 Autonomous Star Systems for six months.
Only one person has contacted you:
Seller: ‘I've got one. What would you pay?’
You know the normal market price is approximately 1000. This is your final card for a collection.
What is your position?
A. +2 strong initiative
B. +1 slight initiative
C. 0 neutral
D. −1 slight zugzwang
E. −2 strong zugzwang
(React Results: A - 0, B - 0, C - 0, D - 4, E - 0)
[4]: I seem to remember some evil behaviour on s2 Autonomous star systems
[2]: No legs today :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
[1]: you've been searching, but they've come to you
[7]: D because it's been 6 months and only they have contacted you, so one could think they are perhaps the only person that want to trade it, at the same time the initiative is now yours to make a good offer
A: Precisely, [7] got it
You're at -1 because while it appears like you're screwed, you have no idea what their circumstances are in order to be willing to trade such a card
[4]: I wonder what circumstances you'd go to for a S2 autonomous star systems arliz
A: If they're desperate for something, say bank or another season completion, quoting [7], 'the initiative is now yours'
A: Q6. The Swing of Initiative
You're negotiating privately for a legendary.
You start with ‘I'd pay 800.’
Seller, ‘No, I need at least 1000.’
You ask, ‘Are you in a hurry to sell?’
They respond ‘Not particularly.’
Where are you on the scale?
A. +2
B. +1
C. 0
D. −1
E. −2
(React Results: A - 1, B - 0, C - 1, D - 1, E - 5)
A: Ok so yes, you're at -2 because the seller has all the initiative in this situation, not needing to sell the card at all and being largely disinterested in negotiating the price down .
I would argue that depending on scarcity of owner it could be on a scale from -1 to -2 but you're definitely not neutral
HOWEVER
Then you discover:
‘Actually, I need bank tonight. I've got another purchase coming up.’
Where are you now?
A. +2
B. +1
C. 0
D. −1
E. −2
(React Results: A - 4, B - 0, C - 0, D - 0, E - 0)
A; Yup, you're at +2 because your bank is relatively more valuable to the seller than the card is to you, so you hold relatively more initiative and this is a connection for 'instant' bank, making said trader more likely to accept a worse trade
Now, I would like to introduce one final question
A: Q7. The Last Stand.
You are looking at an ask for an exceptionally rare card. It is currently at 7500.00.
There are fewer than 50 copies of this card in existence.
The card normally trades in the same tier as the other expensive legendary, which I will not be mentioning here.
You have no copies, and this card is important to you. You need it for your collection desperately. You check the owners list and discover that almost nobody has a spare. The card rarely reaches auction at all, as it is almost always traded privately. The last sale was over a year ago.
This may be your only opportunity to obtain it.
So you grind, farm, sell and transfer until you finally have 7500.00 bank in your balance.
One morning, you place the bid.
Minutes go by without much happening.
Then somebody else places a bid on top of you.
You look at who you're bidding against.
They're a top 10 card trader.
You know they have considerably more bank than you. In fact, they have close to 50000 bank.
You know they understand the market extremely well.
You also know that the auction has a maximum potential bid of 10000.00.
You, however, don't have 10000.
You have enough bank to match the current ask, and that's essentially it.
You cannot realistically win a bidding war against this person.
They can push the auction all the way to 10000 and still have an enormous amount of bank left over.
And, importantly, they already own a copy of this card.
So here's the question
What do you do?
and there will be no options given this time.
[4]: DDOS
[10]: ramp up the clock and sell anything witha bid
A: honestly valid but then you'd be risking said trader dumping a 10k bid anyway
[8]: based on a true story
A: you may know where I'm going with this one...
[1]: go in debt and ask giuseppeland to bid 10k
A: maybe I should have put in multiple choice answers
[4]: Oh yea I didn't think of that
I'm sure Giuseppeland would help me
[8]: this is how i got s1 last utopia actually
nicky bid for me when i ran out of bank
[10]: wait let me rephrase. you let them say above for a bit and sell sell sell, once its close bid maybe 10 times, chances are they wont jump to 10k first. also if you're desprte you can junk your whole deck and puppets gift you all their epics and you junk them or somthing
[2]: Giuseppeland did not attend your first lecture :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
A: Alright, I'll finally reveal what happened
This wasn't hypothetical. This was my auction.
[11]: gasp
A: I was the person with no copy.
I had spent the time grinding the bank, this was one of the major cards I needed for my all-legendaries collection, and I knew how exceptionally difficult another opportunity would be.
And looking back at everything we've discussed today, my position was about as close to −2 zugzwang as you can realistically get.
I had almost no alternatives. I needed the card. There were almost no spare copies. The card rarely appeared on auction. I had only enough bank to match the ask.
If the person I was bidding against decided they wanted the card, I simply couldn't stop them.
I couldn't outbid them indefinitely.
I couldn't credibly threaten them with a higher bid.
I couldn't rely on having another opportunity tomorrow.
I couldn't even rely on being able to find another copy privately.
If they wanted to exercise their advantage, they could have simply forced the price upwards, or even immediately bid 10000.00, and I would be done.
But then something happened that none of the numbers could ever predict.
They pinged me in the cards server and told me to just “bid over them.”
Think about what that means.
This was the person who had essentially every material advantage in the situation. And yet, instead of using that advantage, they explicitly gave me permission to take the position back.
I still had very few alternatives.
But the person who had the ability to maintain the zugzwang had voluntarily chosen not to.
They had the initiative, but they gave it away.
I bid 7,600.00.
The auction matched, and S3 Morover sold for 7550.00 on the 29th of June, 2026.
[4]: :PandaPartyCelebrate:
A: And I think that's probably the best place I could end this talk, because it demonstrates something that all of our frameworks struggle to account for:
the player
We've talked about price and value.
We've talked about information asymmetry.
We've talked about reputation.
We've talked about initiative and zugzwang.
We've talked about incentives, psychology and opportunity cost.
All of these are incredibly useful ways of understanding the market.
But they're not laws of nature.
They're frameworks for understanding people.
Initiative tells you who has the ability to control the next move.
Zugzwang tells you who has been forced into an unfavourable position.
But neither tells you what someone will actually choose to do with that advantage.
They could have exploited the fact that I desperately wanted it. Instead, they chose not to.
And that's something you simply cannot see on the public trades.
You can see that the card sold for 7550.
You can see its previous sales.
You can see who owned it.
You can see the rarity.
You can see the bids.
But you can't see why someone decided to let another person have it.
So if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from everything I've talked about today, it's not that you should always have the initiative, never reveal information, or maximise every trade.
It's this:
Learn the market. Understand the psychology. Know the incentives. But never forget that you're trading with people.
Because ultimately, the most important unwritten rule of Cards isn't about the cards at all.
It's about the people behind them.
Because what goes around, comes back around.
Thank you EVERYBODY SO MUCH FOR COMING AND PARTICIPATING IN MY 2026 SYMPOSIUM TALK
[2]: Emotional story
[4]: And they all lived happily ever after?:nothoughts:
[11]: [GIF of applause]
[7]: :PandaHappy:
[2]: They loved each other
[7]: I love loaning bank to others
[4]: Very fun lecture arliz:PandaHappy: worth staying up for I enjoyed it a lot :PandaPartyCelebrate:
[2]: We are all here for love not for friendship
[4]: :PandaHappy:
[1] private market: [GIF of ‘private conversations’]
A: This was a truly insane talk to write and prepare, I'm glad you thoroughly enjoyed it
[2]: Great lecture @arlizplot
Can I get a leg for this anyhow
A: and that is the first thing that somebody asks xD
[4]: Can I get one?
A: done
[7]: as the famous rich trader Giuseppeland, I'd always help my friend Schleswig-Holstein in such a sticky situation
(Sorry that I missed the tail end, had to go do something IRL)
A: I'll be opening this channel up for general q&a for the remainder of the symposium, where you're free to ask me about any of the concepts I've gone over today, but also anything you've always wanted to know about me, Arliz, the actual player behind the screen
[2] (Replying to Arlizplot): Thank you :PandaHappy:
[4]: Anyone see the powerx ranking posted this week?
Gold Giuseppeland, cracktearrow
Silver - 9004, Michaelswill, Svalbard Archipelago
Bronze - prlizalot, loudeasier, capitalist-sweden, philtown2, southlands
[12]: That was a really really long read. Arliz I would like to have the transcript please lol
Also wonderful lecture, never expected this to be so interactive! Well done!
A: I'm working on transcription of all the lectures, I'll have them all up on dispatches for everyone to read so that they don't get lost after the symposium ends!
I did my best to change it up and make it as engaging as I possibly could
[12]: ooh! Initiative! I like it.
I was supposed to do it, but works lol
Loved it!
A: I'm heading to sleep now absolutely exhaused by this, I'll get around to any and all questions in the morning!
[12]: G'Night!
[7]: :rofl: :rofl:
I think you made some mistakes though, it's
Gold - Giuseppeland, Cracktearrow
Silver - 5009, Tomswill, Svalbard Archipelago (aka Schleswig-Holstein)
Bronze - Prlizalot, Nicola Laudisio, Capitalist-Sweden, Billtown3, Southlands
[13]: I will read this tomorrow
[4]: Players named after both Norway (Svalbard) and Sweden in the top 10! If only Denmark had a good NS player!
[12]: Haaland but from Denmark
[14]: I never think about any of that when trading. I just go based on how much I like the person wanting the card for how agreeable I am.
I do put some thought in when I make the offer. When asking TalAkMaChen for their spare Moreover I did offer ex-nation cards in addition to the MV.
Would you like me to negotiate more if you ask for cards in the future?
A: Of course this was all just my own ramblings, everyone is going to have their own opinion/style on trading, and I dont expect this to be some magic all encompassing compendium for trading at all.
(when I was trading with you for cards before I made sure to put my offers well above what I'd usually propose, fwiw. Each to their own.)
[14]: What's the best Owl House fanfic you've read while farming?
A: Excellent question! My personal favourite, although it doesn't solely belong to that fandom is 'A Lost Owl' which in my opinion ticks all the boxes as to what I'm looking for in a crossover
The plot is fantastic, OCs are very natural and they manage to fit Luz very naturally in the new setting
[14]: Cool. I haven't read that one. Adds to long list of things to read
[15]: Far out that was a long read
Very worth it though thanks for sharing @arlizplot :PandaHappy:
Interesting, informative, reasonable, engaging, fun, and honestly just a vibe
(If only my irl lessons were like this)
A: hours of my life spent writing/editing this talk, I'm glad you enjoyed it^^
[15]: How could I not :PandaHappy:
Needed the advice too because I have been dropped a once or twice on legs recently
Question that is about as unrelated as possible, any advice for my S3 collection? 218/223 of course because Psy/Heavens Reach/The Big 3 are not feasible for my royal smediumness
Very public so dangerous move I know lol
A: you're requesting public advice from the symposium, this means that you have an audience!
season three it's possible to find someone with a lot of spares, ideally someone who has not yet completed S4 to swap. most people with S3 spares are generally willing to trade them at or close to MV so you won't need to be concerned with that
[15]: Indeed it does, as well as putting it out there that this is my plan so if anyone has anything available (cards, knowledge, or advice) they know I am interested!
A: off the top of my head Dabarastan and Sunto might cause some strife but you have Sunto, Dabarastan is the other mid tier cte
[4]: Thinking of zwugzwang
A: yes
think of zugzwang
make sure that you're not putting yourself in -2 or -1 when negotiating
[4]: Before every auction/trade I will read the Arlizplot lecture first
A: don't be like 'I NEEEEEDD DEFEATED PIRATE COVE RAHHHH ILL PAY ANYTHING'
the other person suddenly knows that you're desperate and probably willing to pay a premium
[15]: Lucky for me I don't need Defeated Pirate Cove
In fact I don't need it that much I will not pay anything
[4]: Did you see I won another giveaway?
This is an important question
[15]: If you're asking me then yes :PandaHappy: Very nice job
[4]: Both of you
A: after I transcribe this one I'll have it up on dispatches so that anyone can see it and benefit from it in the future
[15]: Oh yeah I forgot about Dabarastan
A: forgettable yes, Sasten is another one but you have it
[4] (Replying to Arlizplot): Aren't you going to post them all?
A: I'll do my one and your one as my priority, might run out of time to do the others
[15] (Replying to Arlizplot): Very good point
[1] (Replying to Arlizplot): zugzwang -1
A: I've got a lot to run, currently I'm on my national server for a game (where I'm the server owner for Australia and New Zealand) and we're negotiating a Pacific coalition with 7 other servers
that's been a lot of fun talking with all the staff/owners
[4]: I wrote 1500 words of sweet sweet lore today
A: typically, the seller has a slight advantage and the buyer is at a slight disadvantage under normal market conditions
I say this because cards are more specific than bank, anyone can have 10k bank but only so many people can have Defeated Pirate Cove, as an example
[16]: The seller has the advantage because they hold all the cards
A: true but not always, under conditions where the seller desperately needs bank then it can flip the other way
and I think it's neutral when both people are swapping stuff for mutual collection completion
[15]: Naturally
[1]: reflecting on the content here, while i've had a lot of fun adopting the concept of zugzwang to point out some public "deals", I think you've put together an interesting analysis of social behaviour in nscards to sort of formalise an abstraction of what is often intuitive for established traders.
I found it interesting how at some points the text did resemble ai patterns, but i think that is really just modern communication
A: I wanted to basically put together my thoughts and also the thoughts of others as to what we actually go through when we process trades, since it's easy to tell someone to 'get better' but that to mean nothing if said person is unable to understand the process as to how to 'get better'
re. AI, I wrote this in the style of an actual speech, like if I were to hop into a VC and actually deliver this by me talking, so some of the patterns I used fit more with what I would say rather than what many people are used to seeing me write.
no generative AI was used in the production of this section
NationStates Trading Cards is a thing that when you answer issues, you have a ⅕ chance to get a pack of cards. To see if you got a pack, you can scroll all the way down once you answer your issue, or you can go to your deck. Trading Cards have 6 rarities (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra Rare, Epic, and Legendary) and as of now 4 seasons (Season 1, 2, 3, and 4). If you had a nation that had CTE when Season 1 was released, you would have an Ex-Nation card. I made a google doc that shows you a season of a certain rarity, with ex-nations implemented too. You can view it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DvRK2xaU7gV4E-7H2KkqHQj9sZVvSUUZEErtBPCIVj4/edit?usp=sharing
Now you may take a look at the International Artwork page and ask “How do these nations get such high market value?” There is an answer to that for most nations, Card Farming”. Card Farming is when you create other nations, typically called puppets, and you answer issues, open packs, and sometimes gift them to your main nation
Puppets and Puppet Storages
To get started, you want to make puppets, which you could do so manually or you could use Hare’s Creation Assistant (https://hare.kractero.com/tools/creation) and do it through the Nation Creator script. Once you create a puppet, you want it to found a region. This region will serve as your Puppet Storage where all of your puppets move to. To move your puppets easier, I recommend the Moving Puppets script and by clicking 1 then 2, your puppet is in the region
Some people like their puppets to have a specific flag that is not from the game. You could change it when you create the nation, or you could use Hare’s Decorator (https://hare.kractero.com/tools/inscription) with the Flag/Banner Uploader and Flag/Banner Uploader Close Settings Page.
Manual Card Farming
Manual Card Farming is where you manually log in to a puppet, answer issues manually, open packs, and sometimes gift them to your main nation
I was a manual card farmer before, and I still remember some of the experiences I had from it. I remember the many strategies I made, and the difficulty of doing some things
Firstly, I would recommend creating a google sheet. It would include your puppet’s name, the last login, the current CTE date, the days until it CTE’s, and a warning to log in. I would check it daily and see if there are any warnings to log in, else I would just farm a few puppets everyday.
If I ended up forgetting to check it and realized I have tons of puppets to log into, I would use Hare’s Pinger (https://hare.kractero.com/tools/ping). It is script free and can be run while you play games, have a meal, or even go out on some errands.
Below are some Advantages and Disadvantages of Card Farming
Advantages:
Search through cards as you are farming for any collections
Select Specific Issues options
Disadvantages:
Takes a long time
Have to worry about puppets CTEing
Script Card Farming
Script Card Farming is where you download scripts and it speeds up your card farming.
The most used are GotIssues (https://hare.kractero.com/tools/gotissues) and JunkDaJunk (https://hare.kractero.com/tools/junkdajunk). GotIssues answers issues randomly on your puppets and JunkDaJunk junk cards that are not needed and gifts the wanted ones
I currently serve as a script card farmer, and I love it. The paradise of script card farmers is Hare (https://hare.kractero.com/), where there are tons of scripts you can use from Gold Retriever, to Orphans, and much more!
These https://hare.kractero.com/resources/tools are some extra scripts you can use
Below are some Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages:
Much Faster
Not much work needed
Disadvantages:
Random Issues Answering
Searching for Cards Separately
Thanks for reading this lecture. I am happy to answer any questions you have
[1]: What is the main issue with searching for cards with script farming?
[2]: How can I bribe the moderators?
[1]: Impersonating my puppet
A (Replying to [1]): as far as I know, there is not a script which searches through your puppets to find specific cards, so you have to do it manually
A (Replying to [2]): Error Detected. Cannot Generate Answer
The mods will most likely not give you a card for bribing
[1] (Replying to Art Landia): Finderrrrr
[2]: I hate the mods /j
[3]: Can confirm with the manual farming. I currently have about 280 nations for card farming, and I mostly farm on my phone. So yeah, I can confirm its quite time consuming
[2]: I take around 80-90 mins for 360 puppets with scripts
[3]: But I am fine as is, since I answer issues fast. By that, I mean I always pick the first option and just junk any cards that dont have above 0.50 MV
My goal in the two previous lectures was to document the history of the community and all of its facets, and while I pondered doing it again, I decided that it would be more interesting to look forward rather than backward. Therefore I'll be discussing my views on the current state of Trading Cards and what to expect for it in the future. I hope you enjoy and I'll be taking any questions!
2023 vs 2026: a different card game
As a nod to my previous lecture, I've dedicated a small part of this one to compare the state of the cards community now and three years ago, when the previous Symposium occurred. I think the most significant change since then is how scripts are much more accessible than before: any older player will remember how hard it was to set up Python to run the notable GotIssues script, while nowadays it's very accessible on the Hare suite made by Kractero, while JunkDaJunk wasn't even widespread at that time and now most people use it.
Hare also has a multitude of other scripts that satisfy the diverse needs of cards players, from the Orphans and revived Queries that are a collector's companion, to the Ledger that allows one to compare various statistics among the top players in the leaderboard.
With regards to the leaderboard, one of the key happenings described in the 2023 lecture were market value changes that took place in November 2022 a week before the Season 3 arrival. My then record inflation to 26 million deck value was still fresh in people's minds, as was the erasing of such deck value (within my deck and that of many other players) shortly after. I finished that lecture with a phrase hinting at the future, stating that only time will tell what the future would hold for shake-ups in the deck value leaderboard, and we have the clear answer now.
What we see is that inflation resurfaced in a different manner, with players accommodating the auction tax by switching from low-owners to cards that they owned hundreds of. Between the years of 2023 and 2024, I wasn't very active and it was Mike who led the market in inflation, but competition slowly ensued when I returned to full activity, and the decks worth several million that we had seen in 2022 were once more a reality.
This of course culminated in my March 2026 plan to break my own record, reaching a new level of 40 million deck value until another market value change was enacted, with [violet] explaining that technical issues prevent any player from owning more than 10 million deck value. I retook first place in the deck value leaderboard using more conventional methods, and currently both me and Mike have over 10 million deck value spread out across puppets, with several other players above a million.
In short, what was once a rather unusual strategy became much more normalized over the years, and inflation is now an established way of playing the game that has to be considered whenever we talk about the card economy.
The modern market and the problem of inflation
In the current card market, the relationship between rarity and market value has become increasingly complicated. Legendaries have traditionally been regarded as the pinnacle of card rarity, and therefore one would naturally expect them to be among the safest cards to hold, yet we are now seeing Season 4 legendaries declining in value.
Although my opinion is that hoarding legendaries is overrated and shouldn't be the only playstyle, it needs to remain viable and that isn't what we are seeing here, despite actions such as Laud's creation of the renewed Cardtel Exchange to increase the coverage of players backing legendaries, and despite there being more bank in circulation than ever before in the market, which should hypothetically increase their values.
This leads us back to inflation, because that's where most of the bank is redirected to nowadays. It isn't intrinsically problematic, and I think inflated decks are part of the excitement and variety in the leaderboard. As one of the main benefactors I recognize, however, that it has made the game less economically healthy.
One must recognize that avoiding inflation is impossible unless we remove the very concept of market value from the game, but it's certainly worth asking the question of how we could have inflation without degrading the experience for non-inflators, and simple market value tweaks like those of 2022 and 2026 aren't enough.
Some common proposals floated around have obvious flaws. Restricting valid trades to only those made between different Accounts (the future game feature) will reset a lot of existing market value and I fully support its implementation as a start, but it ultimately does not stop inflation in the long run, because inflation teams composed by several players have already been created and their appeal would only increase.
Higher tax thresholds are a possibility, although they might be seen as too restrictive for legitimate trades, and a hard market cap depending on rarities is far too prohibitive and doesn't combine with the free market nature of the market and its auctions. Instead, my favored idea is the proposal for MV decay.
How would it work? This MV decay system would consider the entire trade history of a card, and then take a guess on whether it has recently been inflated, based on whether there was a sudden increase in trading prices. This should be particularly obvious when there are hundreds of copies bought at very low, meaning someone was hoarding a card, followed by trades valued at several hundred, or even thousands of bank.
If a card fits these criteria, and some amount of time passes with no trades at all, its market value would begin to deflate at a certain rate. Players consistently backing a card would not have any issues, nor would hoarders of off-season legendaries, since historical trade records of such cards wouldn't be the same as those of an inflated card. This would also address the deflation of season 4 legendary values as more players decide to invest in them.
The cards community and organizations
So far I've discussed the question of market value inflation, but another really important aspect of trading cards are the communities that organize around it. They organize contests and giveaways, help new collectors out, and spread regional engagement in cards. But their nature has changed substantially from the early history of cards, since the early boom of cards organizations subsided after the death of TCALS and pull events, and only a few survived since then.
First of all, the Card Gardens maintain their status of oldest continuously active cards organization, where I’ve hosted weekly card giveaways and monthly contests for 6 years, and recently expanded our operations to include the forum-based Card Awards, Collection Awards, and NationStates Trading Cards Poker. For those interested, all of it has been documented in the Gardener’s Gazette, the only major newspaper in recent years that is entirely cards-focused.
Another example of non-regional cards organization is the aforementioned Cardtel Exchange led by Laud, and it has been able to attract several members due to its unique goal, focusing on returning some value to neglected legendary cards.
How about regional cards organizations? The few that survived also did so because of uniqueness. The Wellspring, for example, started the idea of a Card Fund and even survived a major disaster when the entirety of the fund was wiped with the deletion of 9001 early last year, soon rebuilding a lot of value. It connects the Fund with its own regional currency that is strongly integrated into most aspects of the region, far more than any other region delving into cards.
The North Pacific Cards Guild, although it formerly relied on pull events (impossible with the death of TCALS) and great card giveaways (less viable after the departure of r3n, and then Fauzjhia) has been able to reinvent itself with the return of the monthly collection competitions and now the Symposium, which I am glad to see. In short, if anyone wants to create a cards organization today, they need to set a clear vision and unique goals setting it apart from others, and that's a good thing.
The relations between staff and community
Another key aspect to consider when pondering about the future is how the card community interacts with NationStates staff. They have brought in a number of improvements over the years, most significantly the advent of the API shard for junking cards. But the relation has also been rocky at times, most notably when there was a failed attempt to introduce issue captchas, and more recently in the discussions over a puppet cap.
We've also had a tendency of people nominated as Trading Cards Development Managers being distant from the community, whether by design (Fris) or inactivity (Racoda), which ends up not being very helpful when it was supposed to be the very role to maintain contact.
Starting with the most controversial discussion of recent times, I am in favor of the nation cap proposal, as I previously commented in that thread. I’m of the opinion that the cards community’s activity is sustainable with a cap between 1k and 2k nations, and that the issues with the current leaderboard being rather difficult to get into will be alleviated by the aforementioned combination of excluding intra-Account trades once that update happens, and then implementing MV decay.
However I also support the idea of providing an alternative way for farmers to get packs. Card farmers already work under the approach of pressing a button to get packs in practice, and it puts pressure on site in various ways: having a ton of puppets, answering issues on each of them, and the resulting need for the site to recalculate stats for each farmer puppet.
Then it makes a lot of sense to add a simple button with 20% odds of a pack, or use the Best Nation game to generate packs, in a way that people would no longer require puppets to farm. As farmers migrate to the new system, one would eliminate server strain from thousands of no longer needed nations and from stats recalculation, while new players keep joining cards due to the issues gateway.
Last but not least, I think the staff (including the future Trading Cards Development Manager) should also strongly pay attention to codifying other achievements into the game rather than just a deck value leaderboard. This includes rankings for bank, number of cards, and season on one hand; and a new focus on collections on the other hand, whose site features are vastly in need of improvement.
Some good improvements would be collection descriptions to better explain the intent behind the collection; collection tags so that players can identify their collections by broad thematic categories; and a collection search by name, size and other criteria so that people can more easily find out collections about a given theme! And the crowning feature would be reuniting all these features into a collections page similar to what we currently have for dispatches.
Thank you for your attention, and I'm hoping to answer any question that you might have!
[1]: I didn’t read it yet but I have a question for you none the less!
Why have you stuck with cards? You have quite a NS career outside of cards as well but this space has held your attention and interest the longest by far.
(My question has nothing to do with your lecture :P)
G: :laughing:
[2]: Great lecture! I especially love the suggestions around potential improvements to collections, something close to my own heart!
G: no worries, I'll still answer
[3]: my question exactly lol
to add on to that: how do you manage all your NS stuff as well as balance it with irl, as i know you are currently in college
[4]: would be great to see cards transition from a value based game to a collection based game with highlights and accessibility around finding and comparing collections. Great insights even if biased as a dirty condemned inflator :p 💜
G (Replying to [1]): My gateway to cards were the season 1 and season 2 TWP collections back when I was more regionally involved, but what made me stick with cards was the variety of ways to do things in the game!
You can create collections, collect legendaries, stalk the market for the best deals, hoard your own card, inflate your puppets, or just chill out in the community and just have cards as a hobby, all of them are completely valid
and this brings me back to one of the main topics of the lecture, the current economy of cards is not very healthy with regards to playstyle diversity, and my proposed solutions aim to both bring greater stability to the market for those who like the market, but also greater importance to the non-market portions so that all who can be recognized
G (Replying to [3]): Unfortunately, I don't think the way I play NS is currently sustainable in the long run, I do dedicate a lot of time to university (aka getting the master's degree) but I also live at my parents' home and don't have to work yet, so that frees up more time than what an average person would
I think that in the future I might return to a level of activity closer to what I had in 2023-2024, never absent from the community but also not actively farming nor doing other big card projects like my search for cards I need for collections among every single custom flag (which I hope to finish this year)
[3] (Replying to Giovanniland): yeah, i feel like ive already reached the point of “too busy to farm a lot”, where, unlike you, i stayed smaller with my puppet count so i feel like it’s a more manageable task for me.
thanks gio!
G: you're welcome!
Fixed some formatting issues, I had written this into a word processor but the paragraphs ended up being too large for discord so hopefully they are now split better
G (Replying to [4]): I may be a dirty condemned inflator but I am also a collector who values collections greatly and would love to see more collection focused features as well :PandaHappy:
[5]: Pardon me for my lack of knowledge, but what was TCALS?
G (Replying to [5]): TCALS (Trading Cards Anti-Laundering System) was a system originally designed to increase the risk of heisting when one made a bank transfer, hence its name
It took a card being traded at auction far above junk value (a potential transfer card) and increased the chance of it appearing in card packs, even if it was an off-season
But players found out they could use it to generate copies of valuable cards, and thus pull events were born (they had several stages of development but I'll just give the broad idea)
You would have someone selling a s1 leg very high for example, and increasing their bid by 0.01 every second - each window between bids was a chance for someone to pull, and this caused large farmers to acquire dozens of copies sometimes.
The entire system was tweaked a few times and at last removed in November 2021 - but given the fact that many regional organizations had focused too much on pull event hosting rather than more unique activities, several of them went inactive after that.
[4]: you spoke a bit about the development manager position for cards, how do you think a player in that position should interact and liaise with the community? you have experience being a moderator in the discord space for cards servers so you have some insight into being both a player and someone with responsibility.
G (Replying to [4]): Great question, especially now that NS staff is accepting applications for that position! I think a good development manager should be actively involved in the cards community both onsite and offsite to get a good vision of what the current community needs are at a given time.
As you said, I've been a moderator in the NSCards and Gardens for a long time, while also being very present in the game. It's a good test of how to balance the personal views I have of other players with mod decisions, not letting my opinion cloud my judgment.
That is also present when one is a NS staff, but the responsibility would be far greater due to the official game tools available at one's disposal and the access to confidential info. On the other hand, several moderators do frequent cards discord spaces so it doesn't seem infeasible to stay active in those spaces while holding the position.
Last but not least the dev manager should also not let their personal views over cards cloud their choices of what features they'd recommend for admin review, to the detriment of the community. They should ideally be active in Technical threads about cards and have a strong interest in discussing the feature suggestions there, even those they personally oppose, rather than being dismissive (as I often thought of Fris' comments back in the day)
[1]: What are some names from the past who have been all but forgotten to time. They may not have been a corner stone of cards but you still remember them.
[6]: Great lecture!
G: Thank you!
G (Replying to [1]): (Updating this as I remember more names)
Ponderosa - the original host of the Collection Collection thread, gracefully gave me the keys when I offered some help and kickstarted what it has become today
Recuecn - the collector who introduced me to the NS Cards server and to card farming tools, they used to collect animated cards
The Unified Missourtama States - not really forgotten, but surprisingly, most people don't know that I did not found the Gardens, it was TUMS who founded it and led it between April 2020 and October 2021
Evrigenis, The Cosmic Mainframe, Grand Abaco and Zeritae - very early members (by that I mean 2020) of the Card Gardens
Great question, this also made me go back in time with wayback machine to see some old rankings and realize that the last time I was outside the top 50 was May 2020! (I was 52nd at the time, with only 3k deck value - Refuge was 10th with 20k DV and Koem was first with 142k)
[7]: Recu has always been someone great to talk about things!
Wonderful lecture as always, Gio! I'm happy to have hosted you here. Questions are incoming.
[7]: A more of a historical kind of question.
Do you remember who discovered that TCALS could be operated in a scale that could help us generate legendary cards? What was the early pull events like?
Over the years, you've seen a lot of players join and later retire from the community. There absolutely would be names that you think should've still been around as active members of the community. This could be people who were very active farmers, collectors or contributors in any kind.
What would be some names that come into your mind?
G: Great question!
I don't know who found out about the existence of TCALS - it might very well be several separate instances since the mechanic is fairly simple - but when I joined the NS Cards server in December 2019 pull events were just kicking off, and the TNP Cards Guild took the lead in hosting polls for what card could be pull evented
What I do recall very well is that up until April 2020, these TNP pull events only yielded two or three copies of a card, until a very pertinent observation was made by Recu
perg: last bid change, 39 minutes ago. Last find: 39 minutes ago.
OT: last bid change, 38 minutes ago. Last find: 32 minutes ago.
this connection between bid change and card finds was then tested further in the infamous Pergamon pull event with repeated 0.01 increases which yielded dozens of copies (and ended up crashing the card's value)
these two were separate Pergamon pull events to clarify, that card was very popular back in the day lol
G: Far too many to list but here are my top five:
Koem, no further explanation needed
Noah, they were an inspiration to me in the early days with they market exploits and weird stunts
r3n, their contributions to card scripts were insane (market watch, card queries and so on) and I think only Krac equals them
Christ Triumphant, they had several cool collections across puppets and then just vanished one day, several are still in my thread's Boneyard (the section for CTE owners)
Svenskskit, they were a fellow inflator who used to farm at the time of the day when I inflated cards, getting a ton of finds due to TCALS, and were awesome to chat with.
[8]: That was an excellent read! Very interesting (and awesome!) proposed changes, and it would be really cool to see them implemented :PandaHappy:
Always nice to hear from more experienced players
G: thank you!
[7]: I can't recollect Christ Triumphant from my memory at all. But I do identify the rest. That's a wonderful list!
G: Some of their collections are listed here 
viewtopic.php?p=37038439#p37038439
[7]: Pull Events were pretty fun as long as it lasted! Pretty sure S3 Chan Island would've been with a lot more it we had TCALS today :p
G: The big three of S3 would've been pull evented to death lol
indeed, another fault of S4 is that the CTE pack rate being bumped from 10% to 50% means that we'll probably never have something like it again
in my opinion it shouldn't have been bumped that much
[7]: Yeahh absolutely right. Let's hope some community centric changes do happen when the new cards development manager is appointed.
I just hope it's someone who's in the community, is active and is ready to hear our suggestions and thoughts
G: :PandaHappy:
[9]: Great lecture and a great read portraying the future of card farming
So my question for you is, how do I convince the mods with suitable bribes to make my card a legendary?
G: I wouldn't be able to advise on how exactly to bribe them, but I heard that making some prayers to Koem Kab increases the chances of bribes succeeding
[10]: Amazing to see your prospections on our community. It really helps us mortals envision the possible futures of cards💕
[11]: Very nicely written lecture, and it's a nice callback to all your previous appearances in the symposium.
I have a question, and it's to do with your playstyle. Of course, you're known as the one with the #1 DV and the one with the most bank, but in an alternate universe, would you have gone down a different route.
G: I think it all depends on the time and circumstances alternate me would have joined the game
For example, if I had been there since the beginning (april 2018) I could have gone the route of hoarding legendaries. The hoarders already had a decent advantage back then, so when I joined in 2019, I saw in inflation (whose potential wasn't yet explored) a way to challenge the status quo.
But alternate me could also very well continue focusing solely on collections, since they were what brought to the game in first place. I think that'd be my route if it weren't for the 2020 exploits involving TCALS which led me to seek a more active position in the leaderboard.
[12]: how much cards will be affected by the upcoming accounts?
[13]: When you were first starting how long did it take for you to maintain a good amount of bank?
[9]: How to punish people who steal my cards by pennybidding?
[2]: What are some underrated playstyles you think deserve some more love?
G (Replying to [12]): Considering that most numbered nations are already excluded from having cards, I believe the impact will be lesser than many people think, but I could still see a reduction from the S4 level of 241k cards to somewhere around the S2 level of 169k cards
This also means the barrier of entry for being a legendary will increase, so I anticipate even more competition in people trying to boost their stats and authoring resolutions/issues
[12]: isnt S2 the smallest season in card count?
G: Yes
[12]: as you said numbered puppets are already excluded so will the card count still drop that much in S5?
[7]: worst situation would be, they introduce accounts before S5 and only the main nation gets a card :/
G (Replying to [12]): There are still a lot of non-numbered puppets, especially those owned by card farmers over the proposed caps, so I think so
[12]: hmmm
G (Replying to [7]): Too restrictive imo
[12]: when do you think accounts will come out?
since mods have mostly completed the GA2026 project
i doubt new forums will be coming anytime soon
[7]: new forums won't happen any time soon
it is not at all an easy task
[13]: I hope it doesnt
G: I think less than a year since it's one of their stated main projects
[9]: You didn't answer my question :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
[7]: Sacrifice them to Koem Kab
[12]: burn them at the stake
G: There's three questions to answer still, I'll get to them now
G (Replying to [13]): Good question! (Very long answer incoming)
When I adopted script farming I only had 50 nations and tended to have only hundreds of bank since I was spending a lot in buying TWP cards
But once my priorities updated to rising in the leaderboard I began expanding it to 100, then 200 and so on. During the era of pull events this was very important, it meant I could have greater chances of pulling expensive legendaries to sell for bank (as I did not hoard them) - and by the time TCALS ended in November 2021 I got a record 40k bank
Now of course these conditions aren't possible anymore, so what about the current farming meta? Well, I did not farm between 2023 and 2024 and ran out of bank before Season 4 started so I had to start from scratch!
Thankfully, with the Hare scripts I could now farm more effectively and use 1000 puppets as I do today, meaning that I could return to having tens of thousands of bank more easily
Though note that I have a few special conditions that other farmers don't, namely
selling all legendaries to get more bank
the MV factory, where I inflate cards and sell them later for bank (requires long term planning)
I also had some help from TUMS retiring and giving me their account, so my net worth increased
Still, even without these, it's still easier to accrue tens of thousands of bank today if you have over 1000 puppets, due to the industrial scale scripts we have access to nowadays.
G (Replying to [9]): My recommendation is to keep a better eye on auctions and outbid those pennybidders rather than punishing them after the damage was done, whenever possible
But in case they're particularly obnoxious (we've seen a few cases this year) the community will generally help you in shutting down their market opportunities as much as possible
[9]: Cool
[14] (Replying to [12]): Unsmurf can give a good idea
Though it is missing puppets of non-farmers with a lot
G (Replying to [2]): Last but not least, so I don't forget to answer this question:
1) The big collection makers (such as Vylixan, Apexiala, and you) are still fairly underrated, in the sense that much more attention goes to the deck value leaderboard, despite the fact that collections have been one of the main card features since the beginning. I think a dedicated global collections page with the features I suggested adding would be fundamental in bringing more recognition;
2) This will be controversial but I also think the auction hawk playstyle (such as Midlands, Timao and Hujen) deserves some more attention. They are often reviled here in the discord community, but their issues tend to be related to etiquette, such as pennysniping (pennybidding at the last minute, which is very annoying). The idea of profitting as much as possible from auctions with minimal or no help from puppets is interesting by itself, and it'd be cool to see some players explore that without the annoying parts.
[2]: I don't see any collections!
G: :rofl:
[2]: you mentioned a little about the impact of the upcoming accounts feature in potential inflation changes, do you think there are any more possible changes to cards that accounts could bring and in an ideal world what changes to cards would you hope that accounts would bring
if that makes sense
G: Yes, that makes sense
For the purposes of this question I'll assume that the current proposal of accounts is what will be released, in which a player may have more than one account but only one Prime account, which includes one WA nation and other potential boosts
My opinion is that the accounts system should not significantly change the inner workings of the market, aside from the proposal to exclude inner-account trades from affecting MV, and as such, things like gifts and transfers would remain working as they do currently
Instead, accounts have a much greater potential to inspire QoL changes for cards, I'll mention a few ideas that I think are feasible:
Mass card inscription during a new season, coupled with mass nation settings changes (setting the same motto, flag, etc);
The ability to have an overarching view of the cards and collections across all your nations, and all auctions where one of your nations is involved (or at the very least a menu that allows you to quickly switch between each nation's decks);
Grouping together puppets in the DV leaderboard, as well as in future leaderboards that I defend the addition of (such as bank, number of cards and seasonal DV).
and the most important changes would be to pack generation:
pack generation should be tied to the Prime account, with a new puppetless way for card farmers to get packs as I mentioned at the end of my lecture;
limited number of perks per day in a single designated nation within that Prime account (not necessarily your WA), such as boosted off-season packs odds, to boost casuals' engagement and get more new people involved.
[2]: Thank you for the answer, combining puppets into deck value leaderboard would certainly be beneficial to me heh, I do hope accounts can bring some good QOL changes to cards!
[15]: Gio, do you think there will be a new rarity that is rarer then Legendary?
G (Replying to [15]): Nope
There aren't any good reasons to break with 8 years of tradition, and even if a majority of the community wanted it, the likely result would be mods and issue editors occupying most of such a new rarity, which isn't a very interesting outlook
[16]: Do you think the percentage of adopted WA resolutions will affect rarity?
How long until you start keeping Deck Value at exactly 5,000,000 DV
G (Replying to [16]): 1) I don't think so, doing so would effectively boost those nations with "nice" stats. So far equal weight has been given to nations with various kinds of stats, and what changes it is solely the top x% threshold and number
2) Probably not in a while, I still need to finish my big project of reviewing all season 3 custom flags (currently at 55k of 83k) and then I'll have a lot of real life things to do
[16]: Why aren't you checking flags for Doctor Who and Legend of Zelda?
[7]: Why aren't you inflating my card Gio
G: :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
G (Replying to [16]): To answer the first question, I've actually been watching for cards some other people need, but I'm not particularly knowledgeable in those two themes so that puts me in a disadvantage
G (Replying to [7]): and as for this, I can inflate your own card for a small fee of bank! (I'd need to calculate based on how many copies you have of it)
or any off-season card for that matter
By the time I came back, I was significantly more tech and programming savvy from before, having a chill job in IT, which let me dedicate a lot of time to cards (I still have a chill job, working remotely with ass pay, which is why I'm able to support a field of 3.5k puppets). Immediately upon joining, I basically lived in script-help. I actually don't remember the history of what I developed, but I do know that I mostly decided to work on scripts that would be beneficial to me first and open-sourced them to help others. A lot of the tools serve business needs for me, but also for others.
Tool History Ramble
The first one I worked on was issue-stats, which there's a good chance you have used. It maps issue options to their corresponding MWQ stats, though it is no longer officially maintained due to me being an editor. I made this mainly for myself, as I found it immensely annoying to search the issue on MWQ, look at each issue, and try to calc out which was the most optimal choice for me.
The second tool I developed was queries (the new one), which I made as mainly a challenge to myself and to fill the void left by the end of r3n's queries. It is important to note that I actually never used r3n queries, so all the features were made off assumptions and what I heard, and I also do not have a personal need for queries as a leg only and personal card collector, but I hope it helped a lot of people! I believe it went through a technical migration, having been built as a React/FastAPI application initially, before I became sick of React due to having to work with it professionally, and migrated it to the current stack of Svelte/Express.
Most importantly, having been posting in script-help a bit and reading the pins, I noticed that a lot of the serious card scripts for those who really wanted to climb required Python. And for those who use Windows, python is absolutely abhorrent to install on Windows (at least at the time). Not a problem for me as a certified NixOS user (I'm a larper, I was using Siduction at the time). I decided to start working on a web interface where people could just run these tools in their browser, with no installs required besides perhaps some accompanying userscripts. By the way, Hare is pronounced (Ha-re, pronounced Japanese). Hare's initial beta, named GI-Browser, was released on September 11th, so it's nearing its 3rd anniversary. My gifts are open. From here, Hare ended up expanding in terms of both offered settings and tools, though I do not think it really got popular among the community until mid 2024, remaining relatively niche. If not too crazy, Hare does take user requests!
The rest of that year ended up being busy, with the first release of Card Preview, an absolutely sexy script for testing how flags look, which at the time worked for Season 1-3. Ledger was released to log historical trade data October of the same year. Ledger probably has way more features than I or you remember, apparently it tracks the current CTE status of all season legendaries: https://ledger.kractero.com/legendaries.This is also on the homepage of Hare apparently. It also computes daily trade data, something that I am certain 99% of you did not know until now: https://ledger.kractero.com/daily
Cardtainers was eventually made to be a card-focused container solution over the multi-account native Firefox containers, though I won't say much about it as I barely remember it due to the death of containers. I liked the logo I made for it, and rest in peace. SCS will carry the flame.
To bring back the old r3n trade records, I threw together Bazaar, another Svelte application supported by the ExpressAPI Maki. Bazaar was honestly pretty terrible for a long time, but now it should be lightning fast now that it is properly indexed. It is possible that Bazaar/Maki are missing some trades: Maki is busy doing grafitti and the records are actually gathered locally on my internet via script, and then sent to Maki to add to the database through a post request. Usually even if my internet is out for 8 hours all of them are caught, but that is how the system is set up. Bazaar/Maki itself is surprising as it was actually used to build another tool, that being Unsmurf. On this note, anybody is welcome to do what they want with the APIs I have documentation for, just don't kill my VPS.
The most recent r3n revival was the return of the TNP queries, due to popular demand, and currently co-exists with the newer ones. It still remains on the https://test.kractero.com/ domain, as it is perpetually a test, all thanks to the source code being provided by Atlae. One day, this will get a real domain.
Useless Header
The migration of firstly the domain sideroca.com (if anyone remembers this) to the egotistical domain of kractero.com was mainly because Sideroca is a character in the game Arknights, and I was unsure about the ethics and legality of squatting on the domain. However, it doesn't hurt to let people know whose projects that these belong to as well.
Anyway, the migration of queries from a React and FastAPI application was mainly due to my absolute disdain for React and the problems of managing a codebase that relies on two separate languages and two separate deploy stacks. I am not a fan of using Next.js as a full stack solution either, Vercel is complete trash and only really good for professional work at my job. Moving to Svelte and Express let me remain in one language in an enjoyable front-end framework (as enjoyable as the front-end could be) and a simple battle-tested backend API framework.
Another thing - to those who enjoy the TNP Queries-lite, I have no deep understanding of how it works. I managed to figure out it out enough to deploy it, but under the hood, I have not put enough effort to understand the internals of the application. At some point in the future, with emphasis on the at some point, I aim to merge kee and the old queries together, but who knows when that will be.
Lastly, Hare is in desperate need of a refactor and I have some features that I want to implement that will have to wait for said refactor. A huge problem I have with Hare is that it isn't DRY (this stands for Don't Repeat Yourself). While there are some components, tools themselves are largely repeat the same logic, especially on the mount step, and it just isn't very fun to read or understand. Some new features that I want to incldue and are waiting for this never to come refactor include:
1) If a nation failed due to some non-authentication reason, like NationStates or your personal internet, Hare will reattempt the nation until it will finally give up.
2) Multiple setting presets
3) An automatically updating changelog and version
Future Hopes
A project that NEEDS to be done though is either crowdsourced tagging of national flags, or having an LLM tag them with a system prompt like detect wreaths or colors or whatever, or reverse search. Also, if you can make a good organized guide for setting up cards that is easy to follow, that would be great. For season 5, it would also be a great idea to scrape the status of every single nation with a card in the game right at the start, but I'm going off the rails again.
Some ideas I want to seem implemented would be an extension to the junk shard that takes a body of all cards you want to junk and junks them all rather than 1 by 1 would be awesome. Similarly, one that would take a collection ID, verify that you have them, and then let you pass a body of all cards you want to add or remove would also be sick.
Also, if you know Blue Archive, I have a tool named Hare, the queries API is named Kotama, the bazaar API is named Maki. I need something named Chihiro to complete the quartet, right now ledger's cronjob/action is named it but that's just not the same.
Conclusion
When making Hare, I never realized that it would become so versatile. It initially released for only cards, with support for gotIssues, JunkDaJunk, and Gold Retriever. Eventually, it expanded to include support for container management like Login Sheet, before just becoming a general NationStates tool, with a pinger, spyglass, and endotarting, and is evidently used outside of cards. I never would have known that an attempt to make cards accessible would grow so far. Also, Sheetify is the greatest tool on Hare, and is so versatile. N-Day, Z-Day, settings management, moving regions; if you know how to make userscripts, Sheetify can basically do anything.
Since this is just a stream of conciousness, I would like to point out other statistical analysis and data that you can look at right now. My yearly data on 2023,
2023 has been a busy year for trading cards, where the market has had significant activity and notable trends. This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the card market's dynamics in 2023, and will open by drawing comparisons to the preceding year, 2022. The focus is on market activity, and various statistics are examined, considering both trades involving gifting (where the price equals 0) and those without.
In the realm of card trading, the year 2023 witnessed a surge in activity, boasting 2,493,179 trades and movement of 3,112,218.81 bank. Excluding gifts, which constituted 45.7% of all trades, there were 1,139,606 transactions with an average value of 2.73 bank. The market was filled with many players, with 72,061 unique buyers, 116,020 unique sellers, and a total of 126,660 nations participating.
2023 | 2022 | |
Total Trades | 2,493,179 | 1,521,153 |
Total Trades Excluding Gifts | 1,139,606 (45.7%) | 915,644 (60.2%) |
Average Bank Per Non Gift Trade | 2.73 | 22.88 |
Total Bank Moved | 3,112,219 | 20,953,130 |
Unique Buyers | 72,061 | 62,578 |
Unique Sellers | 116,020 | 98,377 |
Unique Participants | 126,660 | 110,398 |
Trades over 250+ MV | 947 | 7588 |
Trades over 500+ MV | 209 | 6177 |
Comparing this robust performance to the preceding year, 2022, reveals significant contrasts. In 2022, there were 1,521,153 trades, resulting in a total movement of 20,953,130.28 bank. The exclusion of gifts showed 915,644 trades, constituting 60.2% of the total, with an average value of 22.88 bank. The unique engagement was slightly lower, with 62,578 buyers, 98,377 sellers, and 110,398 participating nations.
Digging deeper into the insights, it becomes evident that 2023 not only saw more trades but also witnessed increased player-to-player interactions compared to 2022. The market's dynamics were significantly influenced by changes in market value implemented in November 2022, leading to a substantial decline in average trade value and an 85.1% decrease in the total bank moved. Analyzing trades with values over 250 further emphasizes this transformation. Despite this, it is clear that nothing will stop Varanius, Upper tuchoim, and 9003.
While slightly more players participated in cards in 2023, it remains debatable whether this increase is solely attributed to unique players or the expansion of puppet armies.
Amidst the bustling card market of 2023, several noteworthy trends and interactions have emerged.
Some of the most prominent traders, such as Noahs Second Country, Koem Kab, and Mikeswill, have consistently made moves, showcasing their influence on the market. Notable transactions include the trades of over 300,000 cards by War Dogs IV, reflecting a remarkable dedication to card collecting. Newcomer Il Sonno della Ragione Genera Mostri is notable in the fact that the majority of their trades occur in non-zero transactions, indicating a large level of activity in interacting with real humans.
In terms of gifting, Seanat and Valoptia have gifted the most legendaries, while Fauzjhia continues their streak as being one of the most generous players in the game. Osheiga has a propensity for big game hunting, as seen by their leading (tied with Giovanniland) 69 (nice) purchases of cards over 250 bank.
The most transferred legendary is The Stalker, which has seen a remarkable increase in market value due to the efforts of Vulxo. Dune Cat has bought more uncommons than the rest of the top 10 uncommon buyers combined.
The dynamics of trading hours, days, and months have also been intriguing, with December 9th standing out as the most active day in terms of bank movement, witnessing substantial transactions.
For a comprehensive exploration of these trends, including detailed statistics, insights, and charts, view the full report 
over here.
, 2024
2024 has wrapped up, and it has been a packed year in cards, with despite the challenges and changes that have affected cards, the market and activity have remained strong.
The year started quietly, with Infinitta being selected as one of the new frontend administrators (which would become important later). A month later, however, the server hamsters revolted, and the site crashed on April 14th, leading to a nine-day outage. During this time, a storage drive containing the last 11 months of card data was damaged and hadn’t been backed up. The hamsters were eventually appeased and returned to their work, but it wasn’t until May 10th that the market returned to life, after the data was recovered by our lord Salusasecondus and the technical team. This was a traumatic time for cards, as many expected a potential loss of 11 months of data (though I do have all trades archived), but thankfully that didn't happen.
Rumors of the upcoming release of Season 4 began circulating in the summer after Sedgistan teased the community about work starting up on it. In November, adjustments to CTE rates made it significantly easier to acquire rare CTE cards for various collections, including the much sought-after trio of Annihilators of Chan Island, Chan Island, and Morover.
As the year came to a close, Sedgistan continued teasing the release of new cards, and just before 2025, Roavin pushed out Season 4 and the inscription period. Big props to Infinitta for designing the cards!
This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the card market’s dynamics in 2024, beginning with a comparison to the numbers from 2023, looking at trends, trading activity (both for gifting and non-gifting transactions), and more.
2024 remained strong, with 2,457,636 trades facilitating a movement of 3,716,289.74 bank. Excluding gifts, which constituted 41.9% of all trades, there were 1,028,833 transactions with an average value of 3.61 bank. The market was filled with many players, with 81,490 unique buyers, 121,834 unique sellers, and a total of 134,450 nations participating.
Below is an overview table, percentages indicate a change from the previous year (2022 is not pictured).
2024 | 2023 | |
Total Trades | 2,457,636 (-1.4%) | 2,493,179 (+63.8%) |
Total Trades Excluding Gifts | 1,028,833 (-9.7%) | 1,139,606 (+45.7%) |
Average Bank Per Non Gift Trade | 3.61 (+32.2%) | 2.73 (-88.1%) |
Total Bank Moved | 3,716,289.74 (+19.4%) | 3,112,219 (-85.1%) |
Unique Buyers | 81,490 (+13.2%) | 72,061 (+15.1%) |
Unique Sellers | 121,834 (+5.0%) | 116,020 (+18.0%) |
Unique Participants | 134,450 (+6.1%) | 126,660 (+14.7%) |
Trades over 250+ MV | 1,118 (+18.1%) | 947 (-87.5%) |
Trades over 500+ MV | 467 (+123.9%) | 209 (-96.6%) |
2024 closely matched the raw trade numbers of 2023, which was surprising given that the market and cards was inaccessible for nearly a month, and anticipation for season 4 caused large farmers to decrease their market activities to store packs.
The average bank spent on a card increased by almost 1 bank, which could be fueled by the remarkable +123.9% increase in trades over 500+ MV and +18.1% of over 250. The latter could be explained by the completion and continued pursuit of off-season legendary collections, inflation, or just a general increase in the desire to use bank as a resource.
Similar to last year, 2024 witnessed increased player-to-player interactions compared to the year prior. While more players participated in cards in 2023, the majority of this is likely the growth of puppet farms.
Amidst the bustling card market of 2024, several noteworthy trends and interactions have emerged.
Rarity and Season Trends
The uncommon market took a hit in 2024. While last year saw some notable movement with S2 Varanius and collectors finishing up seasonal uncommon collections, 2024 experienced a stark decline, with over 110,000 fewer trades involving uncommons.
On the flip side, legendaries saw a slight dip in purchases, but when they were bought, they commanded an impressive average of 77.35 bank, higher than last year's 64. Season 1 legendaries averaged 354 bank, a sharp rise from 210 last year, while Season 2's average climbed to 90.2 from 64.5. A good number of s1 and s2 legendary collections were finished in 2024, which could explain this.
The common market surged which I would assume is due to more transfer cards, with commons across all three seasons seeing a rise in average market price.
Trades and Traders
This year saw a significant uptick in high bank trades. The top 10 trades of 2024 were all valued at over 9,001 bank, with 9 out of 10 near the 10,000 bank mark. Notably, Annihilators of Chan Island only made up 3 of these trades. When just looking at legendaries, the leaderboard is dominated by the three main s3 cte legs.
In terms of bank moved, Noahs Second Country remains the undisputed leader. Kractero emerges as the leader in purchases, while Noahs Second Country leads in sales.
Once again, War Dogs IV holds the crown as the most active trader by volume, with a staggering 180,430 trades over the second place.
As for gifting, War Dogs IV remains at the top, though Yodle isn't far behind. The United Peoples of Centrism gifted a total of 2,535 legendaries, almost all of which were transferred to UPC (themself). When it comes to cards bought over 250 bank, Upper tuchoim leads, while Valoptia tops the leaderboard when filtered for legendaries. On the flip side, Empire of Caldrasa sold the most over 250 bank, while Shibutani leads with 52 when filtering to legendaries. Shibutani was instrumental to completing my own S1 legendaries, so shout-out to Shibutani.
The legendary purchasing market was notably dominated by Koem Kab, who purchased three times more legendaries than the second place Varanius.
Newer Players
The 2024 market saw many new players get into cards. Newcomers like Anarco argentina made their mark with an impressive 27,710 trades, while Communist-Denmark also made waves by purchasing an astounding 13,956 commons, edging out Anarco argentina by over 1,000 purchases.
Card cleaver made notable appearances, with 15 in the report, but unfortunately they have since cte'd.
To conduct your own exploration of the numbers, view the full report over here.
, and 2025
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.
2025 saw a huge increase in activity compared to 2024, with 3,132,214 trades facilitating a movement of 4,865,491.59 bank. Excluding gifts, which constituted approximately 46.6% of all trades, there were 1,460,699 trades with an average value of 3.33 bank. The market saw an increased amount of unique participants, with 95,568 unique buyers, 144,934 unique sellers, and a total of 157,259 nations participating. High-value trades remained strong, with an increase in the amount of over 500 bank, with 1,112 trades over 250+ bank and 529 trades over 500+ bank.
Below is an overview table, with the colors and percentages showing any change that occurred from the previous listed year.
2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | |
Total Trades | 3,132,214 (+27.5%) | 2,457,636 (-1.4%) | 2,493,179 (+63.8%) | 1,521,651 (+11.8%) | 1,361,548 (-14.3%) | 1,588,192 |
Total Trades Excluding Gifts | 1,461,109 (+42.0%) | 1,028,833 (-9.7%) | 1,139,606 (+24.4%) | 916,117 (+13.5%) | 807,560 (-20.3%) | 1,013,012 |
Average Bank Per Non Gift Trade | 3.33 (-7.7%) | 3.61 (+32.2%) | 2.73 (-88.1%) | 22.89 (+71.1%) | 13.37 (+361.4%) | 2.90 |
Total Bank Moved | 4,865,491.59 (+30.9%) | 3,716,289.74 (+19.4%) | 3,112,219 (-85.2%) | 20,965,517.09 (+94.3%) | 10,791,362.86 (+266.8%) | 2,942,626.82 |
Unique Buyers | 92,568 (+17.3%) | 81,490 (+13.1%) | 72,061 (+15.0%) | 62,656 (+2.8%) | 60,961 (+3.1%) | 59,096 |
Unique Sellers | 144,934 (+18.9%) | 121,834 (+5.0%) | 116,020 (+17.9%) | 98,379 (+5.6%) | 93,171 (+6.3%) | 87,631 |
Unique Participants | 157,259 (+17.0%) | 134,450 (+6.1%) | 126,660 (+14.7%) | 110,403 (+4.8%) | 105,392 (+4.4%) | 100,937 |
Trades over 250+ bank | 1,112 (-0.6%) | 1,118 (+18.1%) | 947 (-33.0%) | 1,413 (+20.7%) | 1,171 (-7.3%) | 1,264 |
Trades over 500+ bank | 529 (+13.3%) | 467 (+123.9%) | 209 (-96.6%) | 6,156 (+25.9%) | 4,891 (+393.7%) | 991 |
2025 saw a spike in activity, with significant growth compared to 2024. This shows the healthy and stable state that cards is in, even eight years (!!!) after its release in 2017.
The excitement around the long-awaited Season 4 likely played a huge role in this activity. New seasons usually bring back both older players and pique the interest of newer players looking to get in on the action. With a new season comes new collections, and this contributed to a lot of market activity. The wider accessibility of card scripting through tools like Hare and the influx of newer players provided the perfect environment which allowed more players to participate in the market.
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.
I would like to hold a special section to talk about the death of rares. While numerically, in terms of total trades, rares hold their weight in being an intermediary between uncommon and ultra rare. Unfortunately, they lag in pretty much every other metric.
The average price of a rare on the market is 1.69, compared to the common 2.37, uncommon 1.64 and the ultra rare's 2.39. In 2025, rares had an average price of 1.69, the only ahead of uncommon by 0.05. Rares do not dominate any metric, in comparison to the lower rarities, where commons lead in trades and bank due to their transfer potential and high quantity and uncommons due to inflation.
Rares were even traded less than ultra rares in 2025, where ultra rares had 271,486 trades, while rares only had 233,437. Even broken into seasons, the S2 Rare, which is the highest season-rare combination, had an average price of 5.94, the lowest of all leading season-rare combinations, the next being S3 ultra rares at 6.25.
Trends aside, rares occupy an awkward space in their junk value, being worth 0.10 banks means they are worth just enough to be annoying with the junk pop-up, but not worth enough to really move the needle. Rare is also the category you tend to get as a player by just being founder governor, and new players typically fall into common or uncommon, or advance far enough to become ultra-rare. Anecdotally (from the rarity composition of the cards server), getting rare is quite difficult.
I know I spent a lot of time dunking on rares, but it's worth mentioning those who endeavor to keep it alive. The market value would have been absolutely dead if not for the inflation of S3 Gongle by Upper tuchoim before his retirement from NationStates. Other active buyers on the rare market are Borkmaster and Pierpontia.
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
Rank | Nation | Deck Value |
1 | 2,883,418.95 | |
2 | 2,048,969.00 | |
3 | 1,303,839.05 | |
4 | 831,960.81 | |
5 | 801,149.00 | |
6 | 523,186.79 | |
7 | 460,215.92 | |
8 | 430,265.86 | |
9 | 398,112.25 | |
10 | 387,627.11 | |
11 | 386,015.48 | |
12 | 329,423.17 | |
13 | 271,379.42 | |
14 | 260,021.26 | |
15 | 247,579.92 | |
16 | 236,271.96 | |
17 | 235,735.07 | |
18 | 233,481.27 | |
19 | 225,876.56 | |
20 | 216,536.00 |
Year End
Rank | Nation | Deck Value |
1 | 5,127,168.53 | |
2 | 4,190,693.00 | |
3 | 2,832,270.84 | |
4 | 2,240,710.42 | |
5 | 1,295,343.04 | |
6 | 1,277,204.11 | |
7 | 1,006,770.88 | |
8 | 989,959.19 | |
9 | 931,063.45 | |
10 | 895,394.59 | |
11 | 702,192.46 | |
12 | 700,843.87 | |
13 | 654,153.72 | |
14 | 562,999.96 | |
15 | 541,869.89 | |
16 | 460,059.69 | |
17 | 433,346.98 | |
18 | 429,754.77 | |
19 | 398,703.20 | |
20 | 368,964.96 |
To conduct your own exploration of the numbers, view the full report over here.
all analyze yearly card activity and can be read and upvoted. You can also view your 2025 yearly data here: https://wrapped.kractero.com/. Get ready for the 2026 version of these as well!
So that's basically it. I came back in mid 2023, threw together issue-stats for myself. Made queries for fun, made Hare to help the community, and basically decided to fill the hole r3n left. I would like to end with saying that most of this is for fun and as a member of the community and just another player of cards. I prefer not to advertise my tools on the forum, but feel free to include them in guides and whatever. Queries and Bazaar are hosted on a VPS that I pay monthly for (yes, I pay for cards). If you want a feature, raise it on GitHub, DM me, or ping me in script-help. I can bite, ignore, or not see it, but if you bother me enough I will respond. And if something's broken or you need help, let me know. Just know a pet peeve are questions that can be solved by trying it yourself. If you have any ideas for future projects, I'm open as well, though the likelihood is lower, the iron was hottest 2-3 years ago.
Thank you for reading this unorganized mess.
[1]: This has been great read! It is as technical as I wanted it to be. I do have questions for you but I'll let that be posted here as I wake up Tommorow.
Thank you for presenting this lecture :PandaLove:
K: It could be even more technical, but I mainly remember the pain of developing them but not actually the design decisions and the bugs that caused the pain.
[2]: Great lecture, I love how we get a view into your brain as you write down your thoughts. mTruely unmissable community member, thank you for your service to the community with the sheer amount of scripts you have made. I know I certainly would not have been this big into cards without Hare and I trust many others can say the same.
K: Thank you, though it's just a gigantic word dump :meltingface:
[2]: Yes but I think thats exactly what its charm is
[3]: As someone who is very much a newcomer to scripts, and learns more every day about how to use them, it was very interesting reading the history of it all! Thank you for sharing - both the lecture and all of the tools you've worked on :PandaHappy:
[4]: The accessibility HARE brought is amazing and always a pipe dream for me when I wrote the og scripts.
[5] (Replying to [4]): "But I miss having to deal with irritating Python installation that would go wrong if you breathed too loud near the PC while it happened!" (joke)
[6]: I love the idea of crowdsourced tagging! (or LLM based tagging with human revision)
I've waded through a multitude of custom flags to find more cards for my collections, which isn't something most people even have the time for, and that would be a big help so that others don't need to do what I did lol
Since you mention the need for 'a good organized guide for setting up cards', what would you personally add into such a guide?
I've always thought that the old guides to cards don't accurately reflect the current meta anymore (and I no longer have access to updating the TWP one), so writing a new guide is a long-term project that I'd be willing to tackle, but feedback would be vital to its success
K: Crowdsourced tagging would be great indeed, but it 100% would need some automated image analysis alongside it or to start because humans are inconsistent, so if say you and I tag two similar cards we might tag them differently and miss a tag. Like if someone is collecting cards with flowers in them and I miss a flower in the background. LLMs are also stupid, but it would save a lot of the initial work, give some level of consistency, and would also work as a great starting point since an empty slate with zero tags seems like it would suck to springboard off of.
When I was referring to a card setup guide, I meant particularly scripting. The problem with these is that a lot of them are written by either me (you never want the dev to write end-user guides) or people who just know what they're doing and are cursed with tacit knowledge. The guides end up glossing over stuff that may be difficult or unintuitive to the newbie. On the other hand, some people may write guides that are too overly handholdy, wanting to define everything or explain everything too deeply, which just ends up boring people.
I think the optimal solution would be to have an amateur, probably one familiar with cards already, follow a guide from start to end, with no intervention from the author. Whenever they get stuck, they should note it down, perhaps with what they thought they were supposed to do. This would help identify over-assumptions on the guide's part. They can also identify what parts can get cut. This should be an organized process as well. New players do get stuck and come ask for help in script-help, but this is often just impromptu and unclear.
I think like fancy infographics or videos, perhaps even narrated, would also help. Sometimes a visual medium just helps people more.
[6]: Great answer, I particularly agree with the need to strike a balance when writing a guide to not make it either too hard on the reader or too lengthy, and including visual elements
[7]: I'd be perfectly happy to tell you if a dispatch can be followed by a person who doesn't understand scripts. Or technology. Seriously, I had to look up what LLM meant. It sounds like it could be helpful for checking flags (a project I gave up on) but I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to use it.
Does the Blue Archive game make more sense than the anime?
K: The game provides a lot more context than the anime, but the premise is still ridiculous and requires suspension of disbelief.
[1]: As the topic of a guide came into discussion, I'll letting y'all know that the Comprehensive Guide to Nationstates Cards will be getting rewritten to include whatever is necessary.
.
Trading cards are NationStates' own trading card game. You can generate, trade, and collect cards representing other nations, with each card having its own rarity and value. There is a whole dedicated market where you can buy or sell cards, and compete to rise through the rankings for most valuable decks, as well as increase the value of your nation's own card. Or, you can simply create your own themed collections, e.g., your friends, enemies, regionmates, best flags, and anything else you can think of!
Given that players from many regions (including The North Pacific, The West Pacific, The East Pacific, The Pacific, The Rejected Realms, 10000 Islands, and Texas, to name a few) have actively been involved with cards, deciding to get involved with this field will open players to an entirely new community to explore! (And yes, even game administrators, issues editors, and moderators are heavily active.) Of course, not just the wide-ranging community is to take note of, but you're also entitled to making a name for yourself, whether by collecting the most cards of a specific theme, achieving one of the most valuable decks to ever grace the leaderboard, possessing the most bank out of any player, or by becoming a philanthropist whom continues to serve as an example of pure generosity (people have actually done this in the past)!
Whoa. Sounds cool! But how do I start?
Each player has a (roughly) 20% chance to obtain a card pack from answering an issue. Answering these daily will reward you several packs, and the maximum you may store per nation is 9. You will know if you won a card pack by scrolling to the bottom of the screen right after answering an issue, as seen here:
... or by answering all your issues, going back to your nation's main page, and clicking on the card logo:
... in order to check whether you've won any packs! Each pack contains 5 cards, and some might already have bids placed on them. If you wish to quickly gain some cash, sell the card to that bidder, especially if said bid happens to be over junk value!
Junking is the act of trashing your card (done by clicking on the card and pressing "junk"; note that cards from rare rarity and upwards will require confirmation before junking) in order to accumulate a set number of "junked bank". This varies by rarity, with commons yielding a junk value of 0.01 bank, uncommons a value of 0.05 bank, and so forth. Players typically do this in order to quickly generate bank (since selling a card at auction takes a minimum 1 hour) and instantly pay for a card. Do this if you're short on time!
Of course, sometimes you won't immediately get a card you want. If you're caught in this situation, you are able to do the following: A) lodge a standing bid with the bank you have and wait for someone to notice, B) telegramming an owner of that card, or C) by posting on the card forum to have people quickly check whether they can sell a copy!
Once you gain a card (whether from buying or simply opening packs), assuming you wish to actually keep the card (and not junk/sell it), you can then A) start a collection (done by clicking "Create a collection" at your nation's card page and adding cards to said collection) and/or B) view the cards you have in your deck, and you may even use deck filter buttons to narrow down the list of cards you possess in case you want to view specific ones!
Finally, it's important to know that all nations possess an official deck limit for how many cards each nation may store. Once you reach said limit, you must consume a certain amount of bank in order to expand your current capacity, otherwise gifting becomes unavailable and your nation will be restrained from opening further packs (though you may still purchase more cards from auctions).
Expanding your capacity increases by the squared exponent of every whole number (i.e. 1, 4, 9, 16, etc.), and purchasing the Site Supporter badge from the store grants you double the permitted capacity (along with doubling the capacity you gain each time your limit's expanded).
To give you an idea, here is a table of the expansion costs for (both) regular users and Site Supporters (brought to you by Valentine Z):
Without Site Supporter | With Site Supporter | Cost | Cumulative Cost |
50 | 100 | Automatically given to all players | None |
100 | 200 | 1 | 1 |
150 | 300 | 4 | 5 |
200 | 400 | 9 | 14 |
250 | 500 | 16 | 30 |
300 | 600 | 25 | 55 |
350 | 700 | 36 | 91 |
400 | 800 | 49 | 140 |
450 | 900 | 64 | 204 |
500 | 1000 | 81 | 285 |
550 | 1100 | 100 | 385 |
600 | 1200 | 121 | 506 |
650 | 1300 | 144 | 650 |
700 | 1400 | 169 | 819 |
750 | 1500 | 196 | 1015 |
800 | 1600 | 225 | 1240 |
850 | 1700 | 256 | 1496 |
900 | 1800 | 289 | 1785 |
950 | 1900 | 324 | 2109 |
1000 | 2000 | 361 | 2470 |
The list goes on, naturally. Don't think that this is the maximum number of cards you can store!
Any particular tools to help me trade?
Yes, actually! There are several useful player-created features to utilize at your convenience:
List of Cards in XML - Created by active code junkie and trader Ballotonia, this downloadable file contains an index for every single card in the game! In total, there are an estimated 180000 cards (per season), so use this list if you are aiming for a massive collection! [Note: it is highly advised that you download a text editor such as Sublime in order to better read this file.]2. Card Queries Page - Created by (another) code junkie + trader 1 very fast endotarter, this tool allows players to look up cards of a particular type, including card rarity, badge type, government type, and more. Use this if you don't feel like manually searching for what you need!
3. Card Market Watch - Another creation by 1 very fast endotarter, this document serves to actively track the statistical data regarding the entire card market, including auction activity, every legendary's combined market value, the total amount of cards currently pullable, and just how generous the gifting has gotten; all of these are noted daily and recorded up to its date of creation (i.e. July 7, 2019).
4. Goldretriever-Web - Created by Java enthusiast Racoda (and inspired from the original version by Valentine Z), this open source application will (automatically) output the total amount of bank + deck value (along with, should you input the password for each nation, the number of unanswered issues and unopened packs) for each nation listed! As to how it's done, 1) go to the website, 2) input the name of your nation(s) (if you have multiple accounts, press the "Enter" key each time you list a nation's name to add new lines), and 3) press "Start". [Note: if you wish to also calculate the number of unanswered issues + unopened packs per nation, you must ensure that the mode is set to "Auto" to enable the feature and then list both the nation's name & password and separate the two with a comma.]
5. NationStates Card Management Queue - Created by long-time user Anozia (and later expanded upon by traders Destructive Government Economic System and Racoda), this script utilizes the Tampermonkey extension (instructions on how to use the script + extension being found here) in order to allow many features, including 1) the saving of specific (or all, when using the Card Queries tool) cards to a queue for selling/gifting when needed, 2) the addition of a cards icon at the top of your nation's page (clicking on the icon will conveniently redirect you towards the deck page), and 3) the removal of the nation-name from Season 2 cards (when the lower half of the card is clicked) to allow full access to the flag appearance of the cards! [Note: the script version that you must use to access these features is within this post, as provided by Evrigenis.]
6. Firefox Containers - This guide - written by code expert Racoda - goes over an extension specifically made for the Mozilla Firefox browser, with said extension allowing you to trade/farm cards on multiple tabs simultaneously! Racoda's guide may take a while to understand, but it will definitely prove to be one of the most beneficial tools if you plan on utilizing multiple nations for card purposes!
Final thing, please note that using a script that automatically performs card-based actions (including answering issues to obtain card packs, placing bids/asks, or junking cards) has been ruled illegal, per Eluvatar's and [violet]'s respective announcements, so if you plan on developing any of these tools... you'll probably realize that none of the players will actually use them. Other than that, have fun with coding!
I thought of making this announcement in the last day but here we go. TNP Cards Guild will also be around to do anything that could be of help.
I prefer that the rewriting part be more of a community effort, I'll be around asking for opinions anyway.
[7] (Replying to Kractero): Good to know. I never played the game. And watching the anime made me feel like I was missing some important context
[8]: Very Interesting read kractero! The accessibility of your scripts made getting into cards much easier for me and they are essential for my collection projects! Thank you very much for this! I especially like the idea of the tagging of flags, would help a lot with finding cards for collections!:PandaHappy:
[9]: i quite enjoyed cards wrapped, you’ve put together something that helps players get a little recognition for themselves in an accessible way. it will be fun to see it for 2026. what do you think works best / is most interesting and were there any challenges in putting it all together?
K: For wrapped, it wasn't particularly difficult to make since I had all the data. The main trouble was what was interesting enough to include, because there's only so much you can show. I also wanted to make it look visually appealing and have all the transitions like the actual yearly recap stuff, which didn't happen.
[10]: Thanks for the very informative history into what has now become the premier scripting website for NS cards (and for some other uses too). It was very interesting to read through!
I have my own question, what draws you back to cards often? As someone who's managed the goal of having every legendary in the game, what's left in it for you to chase?
Thank you once again :PandaHappy:
K (Replying to [10]): Because leg count go up make good vibes go up. I have a lot of free time as a remote worker and someone who can't drive at the moment due to medical conditions (these are both happenstance, I probably would still farm insanely if both weren't true). Cards is a great way to burn time and is always great to do while watching a video or doing anything. I'm also trapped on the site now that I'm an editor. I also happened to become a name sniper and what else do you do with puppets but farm (r/d answer not valid)
My own Collections Journey!
Starting Out
After I began taking cards seriously in November last year, it didn’t take long for my interest in card collections to form. After discovering the feature, I read the collections collection (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=484200) and I decided to start my own flag collections, beginning with Russia and central Asia. Without any knowledge of card queries, I initially began finding cards for these collections by individually checking all 200 of my puppets at the time for cards that they had pulled to see if any of them fit. I also searched words themed around these countries in NationStates to see if any nations had it in their name and if they had cards, for example “Russia”, “Kazakhstan”, “Moscow”, “Astana”. My first big break in finding cards more efficiently came with me noticing that you can filter cards on Junkdajunk which have specific flags, which meant I didn’t have to individually check every puppet of mine every farming session! This new ease of finding new cards inspired me to start more collections with countries and flags that I like, when I started collections for Mongolia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, West Papua, Laos and Cambodia around the end of December. It was at the start of this year that I discovered card queries on hare, which allow you to see a list of cards which fit a specific criteria, such as the flag. This allowed me to easily find all cards for a season with the specific flag I was interested in, and I quickly began bidding on them all. It was an amazing feeling to see my West Papua collection for example go from about 10 cards to nearly 100 in just a few days.
Expansion Into Collection Puppets
However, the speed at which I was acquiring cards would lead me into new problems! The first is deck capacity. Capacity needs to be upgraded every 250 cards, (500 with site supporter, which I have), initially costing 40 bank per the first 4 upgrades and quickly rising, to 60, then 80 and 100. The cost of this quickly scaled and became by far the thing that I spent the most bank on. For example, I currently have 1149 s4 cards in my central Asian collection, and 1878 cards in that collection in total. This comes to a total of 80 bank for storing the s4 and 120 bank for storing everything. However, when my deck capacity already has risen to the point of costing 100 each time, this means that it would now go to costing 200-300. Therefore, to expand the number of countries I collected, I began to create collection puppets to hold them. The first puppet I founded for this purpose was Ulm-Memmingen-Vietnam, for Vietnam. Vietnam has 315 s4 cards, so instead of spending an extra 100 bank to store them on my main account, I could send them to a puppet with only the starting price of upgrading needed, 40. For some nations, such as Botswana with under 250 s4 cards, I wouldn’t need to buy a deck capacity upgrade on that puppet at all, whereas on my main account the extra 121 cards in Botswana’s case would bring me closer to another deck capacity upgrade. The next problem which collection puppets help to solve is the per nation collections limit. Each nation on NationStates has a limit of 25 collections, which disappointed me when I first reached it! By spreading my collections across puppets, I can manage much more than 25 collections.
The founding of collection puppets for each nation would also have another benefit which I would grow to love later on, that being having smaller collections on each nation for greater sorting, as well as the main collection and comparison between collections that you can do when having them on different nations. One joy of mine is checking the Deck value leaderboard of my puppet region to see which collections puppets have the most deck value.
“Megaprojects” and Attempting to Collect All S4 Standard Flag Cards
Over the next month I increased my puppet count to about 600, meaning that I was making a lot more bank. I also finished my s4 bids for my current collections. Therefore, I decided to start my first “megaproject”. At this time, all my collections were made up of a singular nation, with the exception of Central Asia which was made up of 5. However, I decided it would be fun to create a joint collection of all nations in Oceania, a region which has 34 different standard flags on NationStates, a huge increase on my previous collection efforts. In fact, Oceania is my largest collection to this day, with over 10,500 cards. This was around the time I truly had discovered my passion for the processes of bidding, sorting and managing my collections, with thousands of cards now in ownership. After I bid on Oceania s4 cards, I started yet more large regional projects, founding collections for the Baltics, Balkans and Central America. The next stage was beginning these “megaprojects” on puppets, firstly with the UK and then the Caribbean. My UK collection was the first collection which I founded “sub collections” for, not only do I have the main Uk collection, but I also have individual collections for each different flag. While massively increasing the time it costs to sort everything, I love seeing the additional view you get from having them, and it makes everything feel more complete. My Caribbean collection has 24 sub collections as well as the main collection, going right up to the collections limit. The final major change in how I approach my collections happened when Giovanniland suggested that I collect every single country flag, giving me an example on how I could sort some of the remaining countries.
While it wasn’t my intention when founding all my different collections, I decided to go for it. I created puppets for every single collection and created my plan for which flag collection would be stored on which puppet. While I have not yet completed this goal, I am not far off, with only a few regions still needing to be bid on. It was at this time that I decided to move all my flag collections to puppets, which is also a huge project. In total now I have 56 flag collection puppets, who currently hold 56,000 cards between them.
Guide to starting a collection
The world of NationStates card collections is a fun and rewarding one, however choosing an initial collection theme or idea and getting started can be tricky. This guide will give an overview of different types of collections for you to consider, as well as how to find cards for them!
Collection Categories
The majority of NationStates collections fall into one of these categories:
Flag of the card – Collections based around the flag/image on the card. Examples are country flag collections, animal collections. Anime collections or any number of others!
Example Collections - page=deck/collection=97944, page=deck/collection=97730
Rarity/ex nation collections – collections aiming to collect all cards of a specific rarity. While Legendary is of course the most coveted rarity, collections exist for every rarity! Ex nations are limited to s1 and are more difficult to find!
Example Collections - page=deck/collection=84225, page=deck/collection=7483
Properties of the card – such as name, badges, motto, government classification.
Example Collections - page=deck/collection=100826, page=deck/collection=58924, page=deck/collection=34401, page=deck/collection=71128
Region of the card – regional collections are a staple of NationStates collections, and collecting cards from your own region is a fun way to start collections!
Example Collections - page=deck/collection=55438, page=deck/collection=83166
Maybe these categories have given you a couple ideas for a collection you’d like to start yourself! Maybe you want to collect cards themed on your own country or a country you like, maybe you have a favourite animal or colour you’d love to find cards for, or maybe you want to collect your regionmates! But how do you find cards for your collections? Well firstly, looking for similar collections to the one you want to start could provide some inspiration! While unfortunately NationStates does not have a collection search feature, you can check which collections individual cards are in. If you want to start a collection based around cats for example, then checking which collections a card with a cat on it is in would be a good start. However, the main way to find cards is:
Queries
Queries on Hare (https://queries.kractero.com/) created by Kractero allow you to easily find cards based on a selected property of them. Hare queries allow you to search for a cards name, pretitle, motto, flag (if standard), banner, government classification, region, card rarity, badges and trophies. This means you can get complete lists of cards for any collection based around any of these things! Queries is very simple to use. If you are looking to output cards with the England flag for example, then you select “flag” from the dropdown in the left box, “like” from the dropdown on the middle box (can also be is/is not in some other categories) and then “England” in the third box. You then enter your NationStates account name in the user-agent box, and it will output all England flag cards! The bottom option, “check decks, collections and bids” allows you to filter out cards you already own, to avoid duplicates. If you enter your own nations name into the decks box then any card owned by your nation will not show up, meaning that all cards are new! At the top of the screen, you can choose which season to search cards from and which view you have, either the card name and ID or a picture of the cards flag.
While queries is excellent for finding cards for all the categories listed, there are some collections which it cannot find cards for. This is specifically cards with a custom flag, as they are all grouped into the same category in the flags section – “uploads”. This means that you cannot search for specific cards with a cat flag, or an anime flag, or a doctor who themed flag for example.
So, how can you find cards for these collections? Aside from the previously mentioned checking previous collections, cards for these collections could be found by firstly searching queries for names that are similar to your theme. When I started my Bears collection, I did a queries search for “Name like bear” and found some cards with bears on the flag. Aside from that there isn’t too much unfortunately you can do, other than attempting the arduous task of checking every single custom upload flag! You will come across eligible cards when farming and any friends you make in cards could look out for these cards for you too!
Thank you for reading, i can answer any questions anyone might have!
[1]: With that, it's time for Q+A!
[2]: Awesome lecture, thank you for sharing your experiences and it's certainly impressive how you've managed to do so much the community in less than a year!
NZA (Replying to [2]): thank you :PandaHappy:
[2]: Besides collecting the flags of each country, how do you decide when a card fits a given country collection? I often think of such criteria when updating my Brazilian collection, for example, and I assume you do too
NZA (Replying to [2]): For my country collections I look for flags and the name, so any card with a country flag or a custom flag themed around a specific country or with a name linking to the country but an irrelevant flag would fit.
I have kept that criteria for all of my country collections
[3]: How long does it usually take you to finish a collection?
[2] (Replying to NZA): That's fair, I dislike those cards with irrelevant flags not matching the name, but in exchange I'm very lenient when adding flags even with a vague Brazilian culture/history/etc reference lol
[1] (Replying to NZA): So in the case a Novaya Zemlya Archipelago card in the future could qualify for your Russia collection?
[4]: I really appreciate your hardwork and dedication you put for your love for flags from various parts of the globe and putting it together by collecting cards of them. I also appreciate your generosity and dedicated lecture for the newcomers and small farmers which will really help them to start their own collections and farms.
Ah, so my question for you is how do I bribe the admins to give me more legendaries?
NZA (Replying to [3]): For season 4 specifically as current seasons are the only ones I will realistically finish, it tends to take about 2-3 months after placing bids for all of the cards to come through.
For example I made bids for my Bermuda collection on the 7th of June and the final S4 was sold to me on the 10th of august
NZA (Replying to [1]): Definitely yes!
NZA (Replying to [4]): Thank you for the kind words! While I don't have much knowledge on admin begging, gifting me cards for my collections seems to come with a heightened chance for a legendary card to find it's way into your account :nothoughts~1: :pandanefarious:
[1]: Collecting cards in such a large scale requires a lot of effort and determination. I've never had the motivation to go for a really huge collection where I usually end up stopping half way.
At the beginning, you said that you used to find cards manually until you discovered tools. Do you think that the tools and scripts we have are not that easily accessible to newcomers in the sense that they don't figure things out in the start?
[3]: Just like when @“new GOATles” went crazy when you gifted ulm-Charles legs 🤣
NZA (Replying to [1]): I think they are decently accessible and I believe people are willing to help, I just didn't really look around for them and I didn't have any friends in cards at the time. The one question I did put in script help at that time was unfortunately ignored :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards: although it wasn't about collections.
Ultimately I think if you do join the cards server and ask for help there will be people (especially me) who will help you!
NZA (Replying to [3]): All Charles-Memmingen cards are pulled naturally and I have not yet seen any evidence otherwise!
[5] (Replying to NZA): Tried this. Unsuccesfull thus far
NZA (Replying to [5]): Patience is a virtue :nothoughts~1:
[5]: Great lecture though, truely fits your niche as (imo) the best collector of all time
[4] (Replying to NZA): Is this a trade offer :EvilPanda:
[5] (Replying to NZA): That is true
NZA (Replying to [4]): :pandanefarious:
NZA (Replying to [5]): I think Philville2 , Vylixan or Apexiala would have something to say about that :nothoughts~1: . I appreciate the kind words :PandaHappy:
[5] (Replying to NZA): nah, only Philville comes close, and those only because he collects literally ALL cards
NZA: It certainly isn't a competition :nothoughts~1: :nothoughts~1: all collectors are equal in my eyes :PandaHappy:
[1]: JnJ appears
NZA: Maybe not all
[2]: Another question: you mentioned a couple of your collection categories that could give new traders an idea of some collections to start.
If a new collector asked you for the top 3 topics that deserve a collection but aren't actively sought after, what would you say?
(Totally not saying this so I can add more collections to the thread in the future) [5] (Replying to NZA): Media trained I see
NZA (Replying to [2]): Some interesting ideas that I have thought of for potential collections to start myself
Card properties- an example I have thought of would be called newborns and would be nations with 5 million population on their card. Other collections about properties on the card like this aren't too difficult to find on hare and can be a cool collection to start with.
Colour collections - I eventually went with green which is my favourite colour but I do think that a large collection showcasing flags with a specific colour is a cool idea
While I don't have anything specific in mind for a third (if I did I would have started it myself) the collections collection has a section for collections whose owners have cted. Reviving one of these collections for yourself would be a fun collection project and is an easy view to some previously explored topics which might not be being actively collected.
The forests and naval themed collections there look most interesting to me!
[4]: I am pretty sure 'Ayuzh' will be a pretty good category for collecting cards
NZA (Replying to [4]): It is in my friends(I think) collection :PandaHappy:
[2] (Replying to NZA): Great answer! I particularly recommend looking at the CTEd collections, not only they are cool themes but one also gets a headstart of finding cards to buy
And the last question from me for now, what's your favorite collection excluding your own ones?
NZA (Replying to [2]): I think I have said this before but it is your own Roman collection, a theme which captures my own favourite historical interests- page=deck/nation=giovanniland/collection=71942
A very honourable mention to Fhaengshia's "baby photos and the retirement home" which I think is an incredibly fun and unique idea for a collection! - page=deck/nation=fhaengshia/collection=83643
[2]: :PandaHappy: :PandaPartyCelebrate:
In my totally not biased opinion, I think it's a great choice
[6]: Great talk, I love how it drips with enthusiasm for card collecting. Enjoy!
NZA (Replying to [6]): Thank you for the kind words :PandaHappy: :PandaHappy:
[7]: grrrrrrr :pandagun~1:
NZA: Is this a question? :nothoughts~1:
[7]: no
oh i have a question
NZA: Fire away
[7]: so what’s it like having 1500 puppets
NZA: It's great, you get so much more legs and bank :pandagio1:
Of course an interesting question to ask from someone already possessing 1500 puppets :nothoughts~1:
[7]: how long does it take you to farm all them
5 hours?
NZA: Like 3 hours to do isses
I do packs separately
[7]: that’s too much time for me :pandawhenherunsoutofcards:
NZA: :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards: , I won't be able to farm like this when I'm back at uni next month lol
[7]: yeah lol i’m too busy
NZA: At least you own the most productive puppet on Nationstates!
[4]: You should know how it feels...right?
[8]: It takes 5-6 hours for me
That’s why I am not able to do a full farming session for the past few weeks
[9]: Huge text wall
my farming speed is about 1000 issues per hour
So if I had 1500 puppets, it's gonna take 7.5 hrs to me💀 💀 💀
Guess I need to speed up
[5]: 3600 seconds per hour, 1800 issues per hour no?
I tested and I do 30 per minute so thats 1800/h
Isnt it just internet speed tho?
NZA: I have good internet :PandaHappy:
This is supposed to be about collections though :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
[10]: oh wow it's up it's up!!
@Novaya Zemlya time to spend an hour reading message history!
@Novaya Zemlya amazing lecture on collecting, I've got two questions of my own!
NZA: :PandaHappy:
[10]: Q1. Is there a collection that, in an alternate universe, you'd be pursuing due to different circumstances?
Q2. Is there a card you've always wanted to obtain in order to gift to someone else?
NZA: Like do you mean a collection that I'd like to do but someone already has done it or something I'd like to do but can't afford?
I haven't really had too many in mind, the few Tibet and Bhutan cards that gio still needs for his collection I would love to pull and gift!
And a S1 leg that you or fhaeng needs, as It would be cool to help with those collections
[10]: thank you for responding and thank you for your lecture!
yeah 'too broke'
aka pandapoor
NZA: To answer a little, if I didn't pursue all country flags I would have collected all S4 ultra rares and epics
However I think I can't afford to do both lol
I also would like to do an all leg collection but due to limited supply and my other projects I also think I couldn't afford it
In another universe maybe I am going for all legs and you are a country flag collector lol
Thank you for your questions and your kind words :PandaHappy:
[11]: Excellent lecture @Novaya Zemlya very interesting and informative :PandaHappy:
Regarding a green collection, would all uncommon cards automatically count because though the flags aren’t green the frames are all green?? Looking forward to seeing you starting that collection and will definitely be keen to help (green is the best colour) :PandaHappy:
NZA: It is just based on the flags thankfully! An uncommon collection would be cool but there are just too many of them :WhenPandaRunsOutOfCards:
[11]: Yeah nah that’s fair lol
NZA: page=deck/collection=101100
I have founded it although I won't be making bids on it until after my S4 flag collection bids are made
[11]: 👀
All seasons??
NZA: Yes!
[11]: Will start sending some cards over today from all my storage nations :PandaHappy:
NZA: But no country flags, just custom ones!
Well by no country flag I mean the standard flags selectable in NS, so a card with the old Libya flag would be eligible
[11]: Sounds good to me!
[12]: A very nice read to see your experience and insights into collecting, and the methods you use for collecting at scale.
NZA: Thank you :PandaHappy: