ncGrunt

EA's disdain for small market teams is laughable. Mahomes is the runaway favorite for MVP 10 games into the season and they manage to give him his first post launch card... a 90 OVR than ranks 20th overall among available QB cards... in the same release they give Jimmy G a 93 OVR.

If EA really is buying cards, that's the only factor that matters. They can then set the prices wherever they want them. Sure, they inject money to the market through the seller when they buy them, but that money is reused by the seller to have to buy at an elevated price too so its a wash. They only need to buy enough to assure the new postings are higher. Meanwhile, EA still takes 10% on every transaction.

I've had two theories. Either A) EA is releasing fewer cards meaning everybody's money is fighting for less supply creating higher costs, and/or B) EA is manipulating prices (which I have suspected for a couple years). There is nothing that says EA doesn't participate in the marketplace themselves. For example, if the Dante Hall is over 1m, but then one posts under 900 and then 800 pushing prices down... what stops EA from having a logarithm to buy the lower ones up and redistribute them into packs. It would prevent the market from bottoming out and they could basically hold any price level they wanted requiring people to spend more coins... hopefully needing to buy packs to make up the difference. This is basically a state fair carnival game complete with bent basketball rims and cans heavily weighted on the bottom so they don't knock over.

How are all of these new cards sustaining > Million dollar prices???

Yep. They're clearly keeping supply low to keep prices high too. Chiefs fans have options to pay >1.3m for Hall, >500k for Okoye, and >700k for Suggs. Other than that, we haven't had a card release anytime recently.

Sounds a lot like a timeshare sales pitch. Hard pass.

The only redeeming quality from this year so far is that MUTHead will take weeks to write the articles that explain how EA disappointed me by ignoring my team each release. I am not met with immediate disappointment. I can procrastinate and pretend I expect things to get better. EA and MUThead are just dialing it in this year. It's a couple of guys sitting on a beach somewhere and they finally realized that people are going to shove wheelborrows of cash at them regardless of whether they put in the effort.

Apologies to the community this year. I won't be around this year to complain incessantly about the lack of Chiefs releases on behalf of Chiefs Kingdom. Last year, It took too much time to keep up the team just so I could compete with player after player using the exact same META strategy. It started to feel like a job instead of a hobby. Giving it a year break. Until '23, Go Chiefs! See you at Super Bowl LVI! #MVPat

I think you are confusing "Free Speech" with The Freedom of Speech that is specifically guaranteed by the First Amendment. You can apply the concept of Free Speech to anything without necessarily saying its a violation of the Bill of Rights.

But you can always count on the MLB to track a 99spd WR after first covering the TE short, then, still 10 yards in front of the WR, while running at full speed, leaping 8ft in the air like an Olympic high jumper backwards over the bar to catch a ball, which based on trajectory has no business being where it is. That's a given.