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THE TWO MOST PRODUCTIVE WAYS TO "BUY LOW"
Getting good value in auctions, especially a robust offering of auctions like this, requires understanding the market. In Madden terms, I think there are two fundamental ways to get good value:
-Understand the "proper" price for a card, and purchase it when it becomes available with a BUY NOW price substantially below that level
-Take advantage of poorly designed pricing where the BID price is minimal or otherwise too low, and win through bidding or default at an aberrant low price
Nothing shocking here. A few thoughts:
When the MUT auction house is robust (it still is, more or less, now, even in July at the end of a cycle with a basically abandoned game) the ability to grab cards just sitting around at too-low prices should be pretty low. You have to go looking for them.
The key way to do so is to be searching on a set of cards that will generate fewer than 100 results, and sorting by NEWEST. Doing a search like this, combined with an understanding of what prices merit your attention and action, is the best way to do this BUY NOW sniping. Lots...even most... of the value in the auction house is gained by unwise sellers posting players at too-low prices, and wise buyers taking advantage of that and buying them quickly.
As for the latter approach, this is basically the reverse. The two ways to get way-too-low pricing through actual bidding are either that an auction goes largely undetected and the only bidder walks away a super-cheap winner, or there's contested bidding at the close-out and the price essentially gets set by the second-most-interested bidder. Both are potentially high value opportunities, but are inconsistent.
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