[QuikSand]

Team Diamonds rolled out this afternoon. Some notes, for whatever reason...

Those of us who "invested" toward this program being mostly like its previous variations just got screwed up and down. The Chargers set is not only not exclusively Chargers cards like in prior years, but now reveals to be no Chargers at all but only division rival cards. What perverse logic is that? Show off how much you love your team by collecting the players you hate the most? Fuck me.

So, anyway, the sets are revealed. And it feels like with the release there was also a big wave of suddenly-available cards for each of the component units, for every set. I know for certain that, frex, the 82 LT R Slater card was generally sitting with maybe 2-6 copies available over the last week or so, since I was searching for cheap ones to poach.. cheap would have been 2-3K, but prices would vary a lot. Now, he (and the many many other 80-86 base cards now in one or more TD sets) are suddenly available in huge volume, with oddly standardized pricing... like 8K to 12K but literally 40-80 copies of each of them. I presume this is centrally driven, not an organic market.

So, I wanted to make some money off this, and felt like maybe the play was to create some artificial shortage for the set-builders out there. I picked one 80-rated card who was in the Philip Rivers set, Denver LB Josey Jewell. There were about 25 copies out there, and I started to buy them all up. 6K, then 7m then 8,9, 10K. I stopped there, plosted a few for sake at 23 and 24K and hoped to see some profits.

Instead, I saw the pool replenish quickly with lots more at 6-9K. Feels like an algorithm.

Anyway, i just listed a bunch of cards that I had on hand that seem to be in these sets, and am a seller, rather than really a buyer. The 92 cards are in a feeding frenzy now and selling for 600K-1M but I'm far away from worrying about that much. Just tryna make a buck here and there in the transitions.