Anatomy of a Market Meltdown

They say a picture says a thousand words. This one says, "Pain."

The Beginning

During the past ten days, I was able to reach a high of ten million coins, and it made perfect sense to purchase Team Builders at less-than-market rates. I spent 4 million on 78's, 80's, 81's, 83's, 85's, and 87's to build Team Builders. I was stoked to find that I would have a good part of today off work, and could finally be involved in a Team Diamonds release out the gate. 

Good Morning Sucker

After many minutes of blah-blah-blah and the disappointing realization that we weren't getting Ultimate Champions this time around, we were finally told on the Good Morning Madden Podcast what we needed to build the Team Diamonds: Team Builders, 83's, and 86's. I began to realize that I didn't have many clear paths to the 86 OVR items. I was able to buy a few, but the prices went north of where I was comfortable, and I adjusted my expectations on how many Team Diamonds I would build. I converted about two hundred Core items into Team Builders. I recorded a quick inventory into a spreadsheet, determined modest target prices based on anticipated demand, and rubbed my palms together, ready to play MUT Menus.

The Bell Rings

If there were ever a race where it felt like no one heard the starting horn, this was it. There was no market movement whatsoever. To my knowledge, I was one of the first to list a Fred Biletnikoff, and then I went on to list a Mel Blount and a John Henderson. It took forever, but Biletnikoff finally sold for 1649900 coins, and I got the sense that someone clicked buy thinking it was a 93, as much cheaper ones were still sitting idle on the market. I bought back Biletnikoff for 457k, intending to boost him with the Division Tokens. Mel Blount eventually sold as well. Supply trickled in, but users were not eager to buy. And within minutes, with supply flooding in and earlier listings being relisted hundreds of thousands of coins less than before, the rout was on.

The Twist

I elaborated on this in an earlier post, but in short, I inferred from the title of the Team Diamonds Token Replay Exchange Set that it was intended to convert the Team Diamonds Division Tokens from one sort to another. With the expectation that I could come away with a BND Biletnikoff and about 2 million coins, I swapped the two non-AFC West Division Tokens, and purchased the outstanding items I needed for a fourth Team Diamonds player (and a fourth token). I'm taking a loss on the Champion with the expectation of recovering the coins on the LTD. But when I tried to complete the set, I ended up with another Team Diamonds Champion. At this point, I have no path to an LTD without sinking more coins into Team Diamonds. It was clear that the only way to recover from this was to hold inventory and ride out this wave. I wanted to sell off my remaining Team Builders items, but many of them had inventories exceeding 100, and I realized that committing to any one now was going to be fraught with disappointment.

The Fallout

Henderson has sold, and I'm still holding onto three Team Diamonds champions, along with a few high value items that I continue to list on the high end of current prices, although these would still go out for a loss. I also have 14 unopened 87 OVR Team Builders packs, as well as a few other Team Builders packs. Leading up to today, I had spent a few hours here and there buying up items, and I'll end up losing one million coins on the exercise. Not what I was going for. I don't know whether prices will rebound, but it seems like there should definitely have been more of a market for these items. They're a nuisance to build. I'll probably come back to them now and then when inventory and current market conditions justify it, but the swings today were nauseating.

After the stream I realized the prices for the set was were too high and I luckily jettisoned all my stock before the crash so ended up coming out ahead and just buying the Ltd I wanted.

i'm sorry i'm not going to take the time to read all of that, but i made a killing today prebuilding the team diamonds.  i sold 3 of the limiteds for over 4m and when the prices dropped to 2m i just started making 92s with the divisional tokens and bought the limiteds i wanted.

if you had them prebuilt at the prices i recommended, then you still made profit even the current diamond prices.

phatalerror said:

They say a picture says a thousand words. This one says, "Pain."

The Beginning

During the past ten days, I was able to reach a high of ten million coins, and it made perfect sense to purchase Team Builders at less-than-market rates. I spent 4 million on 78's, 80's, 81's, 83's, 85's, and 87's to build Team Builders. I was stoked to find that I would have a good part of today off work, and could finally be involved in a Team Diamonds release out the gate. 

Good Morning Sucker

After many minutes of blah-blah-blah and the disappointing realization that we weren't getting Ultimate Champions this time around, we were finally told on the Good Morning Madden Podcast what we needed to build the Team Diamonds: Team Builders, 83's, and 86's. I began to realize that I didn't have many clear paths to the 86 OVR items. I was able to buy a few, but the prices went north of where I was comfortable, and I adjusted my expectations on how many Team Diamonds I would build. I converted about two hundred Core items into Team Builders. I recorded a quick inventory into a spreadsheet, determined modest target prices based on anticipated demand, and rubbed my palms together, ready to play MUT Menus.

The Bell Rings

If there were ever a race where it felt like no one heard the starting horn, this was it. There was no market movement whatsoever. To my knowledge, I was one of the first to list a Fred Biletnikoff, and then I went on to list a Mel Blount and a John Henderson. It took forever, but Biletnikoff finally sold for 1649900 coins, and I got the sense that someone clicked buy thinking it was a 93, as much cheaper ones were still sitting idle on the market. I bought back Biletnikoff for 457k, intending to boost him with the Division Tokens. Mel Blount eventually sold as well. Supply trickled in, but users were not eager to buy. And within minutes, with supply flooding in and earlier listings being relisted hundreds of thousands of coins less than before, the rout was on.

The Twist

I elaborated on this in an earlier post, but in short, I inferred from the title of the Team Diamonds Token Replay Exchange Set that it was intended to convert the Team Diamonds Division Tokens from one sort to another. With the expectation that I could come away with a BND Biletnikoff and about 2 million coins, I swapped the two non-AFC West Division Tokens, and purchased the outstanding items I needed for a fourth Team Diamonds player (and a fourth token). I'm taking a loss on the Champion with the expectation of recovering the coins on the LTD. But when I tried to complete the set, I ended up with another Team Diamonds Champion. At this point, I have no path to an LTD without sinking more coins into Team Diamonds. It was clear that the only way to recover from this was to hold inventory and ride out this wave. I wanted to sell off my remaining Team Builders items, but many of them had inventories exceeding 100, and I realized that committing to any one now was going to be fraught with disappointment.

The Fallout

Henderson has sold, and I'm still holding onto three Team Diamonds champions, along with a few high value items that I continue to list on the high end of current prices, although these would still go out for a loss. I also have 14 unopened 87 OVR Team Builders packs, as well as a few other Team Builders packs. Leading up to today, I had spent a few hours here and there buying up items, and I'll end up losing one million coins on the exercise. Not what I was going for. I don't know whether prices will rebound, but it seems like there should definitely have been more of a market for these items. They're a nuisance to build. I'll probably come back to them now and then when inventory and current market conditions justify it, but the swings today were nauseating.

also, the 92 prices have to come down or the limited prices have to go up, something will give.  i would get out of your 92 positions quickly and not try to hold out for a price spike.

also, i sold fred b for over 4m and was the first sale.  i was also selling most of my 92s for 900k-1.2m the first 30 minutes.  i posted my first 3 limiteds within 5 minutes of the promo starting though and my 92s were up within about 8 minutes.  it was a race.  after 15 minutes they started getting undercut.  i sold roy williams, fred b, vinny T for a combined 12m and i sold 11 of the 92s for over 950k with the rest going for between 650k-950k.  i sold the limited john henderson and limited keanu neal for 2.3m before realizing i should just put all the tokens into the 92 set and sell 92s.

twitchtaxpro said:

i'm sorry i'm not going to take the time to read all of that, but i made a killing today prebuilding the team diamonds.  i sold 3 of the limiteds for over 4m and when the prices dropped to 2m i just started making 92s with the divisional tokens and bought the limiteds i wanted.

if you had them prebuilt at the prices i recommended, then you still made profit even the current diamond prices.

I had the Team Builders. I had the 83's. I didn't have the 86's, and I had to burn through my 83's to make them.

I'm not blaming you, by the way. But sometimes one unanticipated critical piece makes the difference. Volume was another issue. I had vulnerabilities on both issues. And finally, the requirement that items be from the same division was damaging to me, as I didn't have 4 90's, 4 88's, 16 87's, 16 85's, and 16 82's from the same divisions. As I mentioned, the "Token Exchange" wasn't, and that was what clinched my not being able to turn a profit before the market collapsed.

phatalerror said:

They say a picture says a thousand words. This one says, "Pain."

The Beginning

During the past ten days, I was able to reach a high of ten million coins, and it made perfect sense to purchase Team Builders at less-than-market rates. I spent 4 million on 78's, 80's, 81's, 83's, 85's, and 87's to build Team Builders. I was stoked to find that I would have a good part of today off work, and could finally be involved in a Team Diamonds release out the gate. 

Good Morning Sucker

After many minutes of blah-blah-blah and the disappointing realization that we weren't getting Ultimate Champions this time around, we were finally told on the Good Morning Madden Podcast what we needed to build the Team Diamonds: Team Builders, 83's, and 86's. I began to realize that I didn't have many clear paths to the 86 OVR items. I was able to buy a few, but the prices went north of where I was comfortable, and I adjusted my expectations on how many Team Diamonds I would build. I converted about two hundred Core items into Team Builders. I recorded a quick inventory into a spreadsheet, determined modest target prices based on anticipated demand, and rubbed my palms together, ready to play MUT Menus.

The Bell Rings

If there were ever a race where it felt like no one heard the starting horn, this was it. There was no market movement whatsoever. To my knowledge, I was one of the first to list a Fred Biletnikoff, and then I went on to list a Mel Blount and a John Henderson. It took forever, but Biletnikoff finally sold for 1649900 coins, and I got the sense that someone clicked buy thinking it was a 93, as much cheaper ones were still sitting idle on the market. I bought back Biletnikoff for 457k, intending to boost him with the Division Tokens. Mel Blount eventually sold as well. Supply trickled in, but users were not eager to buy. And within minutes, with supply flooding in and earlier listings being relisted hundreds of thousands of coins less than before, the rout was on.

The Twist

I elaborated on this in an earlier post, but in short, I inferred from the title of the Team Diamonds Token Replay Exchange Set that it was intended to convert the Team Diamonds Division Tokens from one sort to another. With the expectation that I could come away with a BND Biletnikoff and about 2 million coins, I swapped the two non-AFC West Division Tokens, and purchased the outstanding items I needed for a fourth Team Diamonds player (and a fourth token). I'm taking a loss on the Champion with the expectation of recovering the coins on the LTD. But when I tried to complete the set, I ended up with another Team Diamonds Champion. At this point, I have no path to an LTD without sinking more coins into Team Diamonds. It was clear that the only way to recover from this was to hold inventory and ride out this wave. I wanted to sell off my remaining Team Builders items, but many of them had inventories exceeding 100, and I realized that committing to any one now was going to be fraught with disappointment.

The Fallout

Henderson has sold, and I'm still holding onto three Team Diamonds champions, along with a few high value items that I continue to list on the high end of current prices, although these would still go out for a loss. I also have 14 unopened 87 OVR Team Builders packs, as well as a few other Team Builders packs. Leading up to today, I had spent a few hours here and there buying up items, and I'll end up losing one million coins on the exercise. Not what I was going for. I don't know whether prices will rebound, but it seems like there should definitely have been more of a market for these items. They're a nuisance to build. I'll probably come back to them now and then when inventory and current market conditions justify it, but the swings today were nauseating.

Excellent write-up...it was like reading an episode of Mad Money.

phatalerror said:

I had the Team Builders. I had the 83's. I didn't have the 86's, and I had to burn through my 83's to make them.

I'm not blaming you, by the way. But sometimes one unanticipated critical piece makes the difference. Volume was another issue. I had vulnerabilities on both issues. And finally, the requirement that items be from the same division was damaging to me, as I didn't have 4 90's, 4 88's, 16 87's, 16 85's, and 16 82's from the same divisions. As I mentioned, the "Token Exchange" wasn't, and that was what clinched my not being able to turn a profit before the market collapsed.

Gotcha...I did post a couple days before it dropped about cleaning up the division ratios.  I would sit in all tb til Thursday tho when 86s flood.in

twitchtaxpro said:

Gotcha...I did post a couple days before it dropped about cleaning up the division ratios.  I would sit in all tb til Thursday tho when 86s flood.in

Yeah, I saw that, but it wasn't economically feasible for me to do that. I didn't have a shot at all of the divisions, and would have restricted my choices in a way that could have been damaging. (Well, we see how that turned out.)

Neither of us expected that we were going to have LTD-upgradable Champions. And it's dawning on me now that this might have been what triggered the collapse. When you have an ultimate champion set that can earn you many millions, you have to commit to it. I expected to get my engine going, build and sell and therefore cycle through sets over a short period of days. There are hundreds of MUT users that are disciplined enough to hold the line on prices when there that sort of juice involved. Folks with your level of experience got in, identified the pivot, and got out.

It was a good learning experience in a way. At the same time, I was preparing for a different Team Diamonds program, a program where perhaps EA would return to its established tradition. Instead, EA buried it with a superficial tweak to the bland sets from last year, along with the elimination of the Ultimate Champions.

phatalerror said:

Yeah, I saw that, but it wasn't economically feasible for me to do that. I didn't have a shot at all of the divisions, and would have restricted my choices in a way that could have been damaging. (Well, we see how that turned out.)

Neither of us expected that we were going to have LTD-upgradable Champions. And it's dawning on me now that this might have been what triggered the collapse. When you have an ultimate champion set that can earn you many millions, you have to commit to it. I expected to get my engine going, build and sell and therefore cycle through sets over a short period of days. There are hundreds of MUT users that are disciplined enough to hold the line on prices when there that sort of juice involved. Folks with your level of experience got in, identified the pivot, and got out.

It was a good learning experience in a way. At the same time, I was preparing for a different Team Diamonds program, a program where perhaps EA would return to its established tradition. Instead, EA buried it with a superficial tweak to the bland sets from last year, along with the elimination of the Ultimate Champions.

I think the mistake you made was not pivoting to just building champions and not captains.  Right now you don't need to complete 4 division sets.  Any set works and then use your token to make another 92 to sell.  Don't worry about having 4 tokens from a division.

twitchtaxpro said:

I think the mistake you made was not pivoting to just building champions and not captains.  Right now you don't need to complete 4 division sets.  Any set works and then use your token to make another 92 to sell.  Don't worry about having 4 tokens from a division.

Building more champions became impossible for me because I have no 86’s, and there was no cost-effective way to obtain them. I ended up with a glut of Team Builders and various 87’s. In MUT 25, the 90 OVR Team Builders were the item gating the sets for just about everyone, and I would have made out like a bandit if that had been the case this year. This time around, it was a random OVR tier that ended up being the gold amidst a bunch of lead.

phatalerror said:

Building more champions became impossible for me because I have no 86’s, and there was no cost-effective way to obtain them. I ended up with a glut of Team Builders and various 87’s. In MUT 25, the 90 OVR Team Builders were the item gating the sets for just about everyone, and I would have made out like a bandit if that had been the case this year. This time around, it was a random OVR tier that ended up being the gold amidst a bunch of lead.

Well good news is 86 will tank in 27 hours. They'll drop a little today but by Thursday at 2pm est they'll be 40k or less

twitchtaxpro said:

Well good news is 86 will tank in 27 hours. They'll drop a little today but by Thursday at 2pm est they'll be 40k or less

Once the 86’s fall in price, the Team Builders I’m holding will creep up. While the 92 OVR Team Diamonds will never return to 800,000, I do think overall market demand will have a consequential pressure pushing their floor upward, and consequently the cost of the LTD’s upward.

I don’t want to discount the value of building Team Diamonds LTD’s at a slight overall loss, because you do come away with a BND 92 OVR. I do believe there will be a path to patient completion of these sets at a modest profit, just not at MUT 24 levels. It was simply a door I wasn’t ready to walk through yesterday.

phatalerror said:

Once the 86’s fall in price, the Team Builders I’m holding will creep up. While the 92 OVR Team Diamonds will never return to 800,000, I do think overall market demand will have a consequential pressure pushing their floor upward, and consequently the cost of the LTD’s upward.

I don’t want to discount the value of building Team Diamonds LTD’s at a slight overall loss, because you do come away with a BND 92 OVR. I do believe there will be a path to patient completion of these sets at a modest profit, just not at MUT 24 levels. It was simply a door I wasn’t ready to walk through yesterday.

I think you should unload by Friday at the latest.  Hopefully the release isn't too big tomorrow but all of those champs will hurt the respective td at the same position