Where Have All The Cards Gone?

Aka TOTW in the Marketplace

So let's recap what we talked about last time. Last time we talked about how Supply and Demand lines work. We discovered that when the price goes up, suppliers want to supply more, and purchasers want to buy less. Converse to this is that when price goes down, suppliers don't want to supply as much, and purchasers want to buy more.





Now remember what happened when we increased the overall amount of supply? We moved the Supply line to the right, to represent an increase in the underlying amount of cards on the market, this made the two lines intersect at a lower price point, with more players sold.





Remember this graph?





Awesome, if you remember these things, then you're set for this article. Today we're going to talk about what happens when a player gets into the Team of the Week, we're going to talk about how that players price changes when their supply drops, and the demand for them rises.

















DECREASE IN SUPPLY:





Now in real life a supply level can drop for a multiple amount of reasons. Let's say we're making Burgers in our burger shop, and all of a sudden a new disease which only effects cows breaks out and all the cows start dying. Suddenly your Beef Patties cost a whole lot more to buy, so you're going to charge more for your burgers right? Now, you won't sell as many as before, people aren't willing to pay those prices; but some people still will! I know I couldn't live without burgers, could you?



Now in FUT there's only 'one real' decrease in supply that I can imagine. Throughout the year more and more packs are being opened, meaning that more and more players are flooding into the market and constantly lowering the prices. But what happens if you couldn't get that player in packs anymore? Well that's exactly what happens when the TOTW rolls around.





KEY POINT: LAST TIME WE TALKED ABOUT THE WHOLE MARKET SUPPLY FOR EVERY PLAYER, THIS TIME WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ONE SINGLE PLAYERS MARKET.





For those of you who don't now, Team of the Week (TOTW) is when a player does well in a real life football match, later that week EA reviews the games, and picks player that they think deserve a limited time card with upgraded stats. During that week if you 'pack' that player when you're opening packs, he will be a black framed card with upgraded stats. And no, I didn't max out my credit card this week trying to get striker Ronaldo, that would be stupid...





















Can someone please inform me if TOTW players have a lower pack pulling weight when they're in there? Or is that just confirmation bias of me not ever getting any?





Now while this doesn't lower the underlying supply level in the market, as in the cards that were their previously don't disappear, what it does is it reduces the growth of the supply level. What we're going to assume in this situation is that this reduction in growth represents a 'decrease' in the underlying supply of cards on the market. This could hold true as players who have that card are less willing to sell because they want to use it, or it could not hold true because players who have that acard are now willing to sell it at a higher price. This is where economics is fun, we get to assume things and come to our own conclusions! :)





So what happens when we decrease supply? So remember how we moved the supply line to the right to simulate an increase in supply? Well it's just as simple as that, but the opposite. What we're going to do is move the supply line to the left to simulate a decrease in supply.





This is shown in the below graph:













So remember how the market price ends up where the supply and demand lines intersect? This is because this is the value where the kid down the road with Messi is willing to to sell his card for intersects with the amount of hard earned coins you're willing to part with for this card. Well when we move the supply line to the left, simulating a decrease in supply, this intersection point moves. As you can see from the graph above, the intersection point is now at a higher price but with less being sold. Makes sense right? Instead of 50 Bentekes being on the market for 50,000 coins, we now have 40 on the market for 65,000 coins. Ouch.

















INCREASE IN DEMAND:





Well what else happens in real life when a player gets into a team of the week? Well that player actually did well on the weekend! To a person like me or you reader who knows the stats of every player religiously like FUThead is our bible or something, this may not make much of a difference. But to the average FUT player who plays a couple of games over the weekend, opens a few packs now and again and has a few thousand coins lying around, they want to use the player that they saw score the winning goal on the weekend. This is an increase in the demand side of the graph.



So what happens when we increase demand? Well it's the same as increasing or decreasing supply. Now which way do you think an increase would go? Left or right? Right? Right! Well done! Increases are to the right, decreases are to the left when using the standard supply and demand graph. Well what does this look like?





This is shown in the below graph:













See how the demand line has moved to the right? And remember how the market price is decided where the two lines intersect? Since we're no longer using the blue demand line, but the green one (D1 and D2 for you nerds out there, no not Division 1 and 2) the players equilibrium price and quantity has moved! We're now selling more players at a higher price. So our Mandzukics are now selling at a higher quantity for a higher price! Those 30 we picked up for 1000 are now selling for 2000 coins instead! Or are they...













So what we've done here is talk about the two different sides of the supply and demand graph moving when a Team of the Week comes out, but what happens when we mix these two things together?





DECREASING THE SUPPLY WHILE INCREASING THE DEMAND:





So first we move the supply for the player....













Then we move the demand for the player....









Which moves our equilibrium from where the red and blue lines intersect to where the green and yellow lines intersect....













WHICH INCREASES THE PRICE WHILE THE AMOUNT OF PLAYERS SOLD STAYS THE SAME





Makes sense right? The increase in players sold from people wanting more is countered out by the decrease in cards being sold, but in both cases the price rose! Which means in the end the price rose more than if just one of the changes happened!





BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US?





Are you a fan of the Mansour Financial Group? Do you want to create multiple teams that on paper and accounting sheets should run over every team in their league? Well why don't you use some of the stuff you've learnt today. The only problem is I'm telling everyone else the same thing.

















To be honest that's a bit of a stupid question, everyone in FUT wants to build a big bank so they can use the best players online, and finally beat that 12 year old nemesis you have whose clubs name is "Class on Grass" and only uses players above 90 pace.





What you can actually do with this knowledge however is invest early in players who will feature in the upcoming TOTW.



Now there's different ways to do this. You can buy players before the games when you think they're going to do well, you can buy the players after they've done well in a game, you can watch the market and buy the players before TOTW is announced etc etc. The difference between all of these is how much risk you want to take on against how much money you believe you can make. Buying early at the lowest point before the game is the riskiest, but has the greatest reward.





Unfortunately if we knew how much each player would sell for, whose in the TOTW each week, and that sort of information we would be LOADED after the first round of games. But we don't know this unfortunately, so we have to try and predict it. This is called speculative investment, but I think that's enough for today, and we'll cover exactly what this is another time.











So what did we actually learn today? We talked about how players prices rise when they're in a TOTW due to two things, people are getting less of that player in packs so the supply level has dropped, and people are wanting to purchase those players more which is represented by an increase in demand. We discussed how these two things together lead to a similar level of players being sold, but an overall increase in the price. We talked very gingerly about how to make money off this, but again I recommend you talk to one our qualified FUT Wealth Specialists about this instead of putting it on my head.



As always, liek, comment, share, tell your friends, send the blog to your mu, hit up your group chat and tell all about how Hamish is making your FUT market knowledge more pretentious one graph at a time. Thanks for reading guys.

So what happens when we mix these two things together? If we decrease the supply we sell less players at higher prices, if we increase the demand we sell more players at higher prices. But what if both are happening at the same time like in a TOTW type scenario? Will we sell less? Will we sell more? Well depending on the exact increase and decrease we might do any of the above! What we're going to assume here for explanations sake is that we have the same increase in people wanting to use those players that did well, as the decrease is in the amount of those players appearing in packs.