Strictly Short: Legally Buying Puca Points VS. Buying Cards

I recently realized how lucky I have been with PucaTrade. I have received a lot of the cards that I need from other PucaTraders. This has left me with very few valuable cards to trade away for points. Thus, I started thinking about new ways to get the most bang for my buck as I refilled my PP.

I must acknowledge that, if you break the PucaTrade Terms of Service, you can purchase PucaPoints from other members. I do not condone this practice. It was clear to me that buying PP from another user would be a bad idea. It would be terrible for one of the most vocal supporters of the service to get his account banned. However, a cursory search did reveal that I could purchase PP at a rate of $.35 per 100 PP. Using this baseline, I set out to discover if it was feasible to purchase cards for cash, and mail them out for PP. (Spoiler .. IT IS!!) Let’s talk about how.

Keep in mind that the values used in this discussion may fluctuate; I can only use the values available at the time of this writing. My goal is not to instruct readers on specific cards to buy and send for points. Instead, I want to illustrate that it is feasible to obtain a good rate on your cash investment when trying to get  PucaPoints. As with most things I discuss, this method will take a little bit of work. In my opinion, however, the payoff is there.

The Promoted Trade Dashboard is available to everyone. All it requires is a little bit of time to crunch numbers. This tool has allowed me to take advantage of up to a 500% bonus. Here’s how it works in a nutshell: I commit to a trade, and then buy the card from TCGPlayer.  I ‘drop ship’ (mail the card directly to the trade recipient) from TCG. This gets the cards to the receiver fast. I reap the benefits of buying low (with cash) and selling high (for PP).

Note, I do not necessarily concern myself with the highest percentage bonuses on the dashboard. Sometimes these can be cheaper cards, and not worth the effort. Instead, I sort the list by Size of Bonus and look for Bonus % of more than 275% or so.

For example, I found that I could get a solid 20,000 pucapoints for a Noble Hierarch.

 I quickly threw these numbers into Excel and started calculating. I could purchase the Hierarch from TCGPlayer for a cost of $63. In return, I’d receive $200 worth of pucapoints. This meant that I’d be spending $31.50 in cash per $100 worth of PP. That’s a better rate of return than the current rate of $35 per $100 ($.35 per 100 PP). I feel that buying PP from other traders no longer makes sense when the Promotion bonus option offers better deals, and is within the TOS.

In other words, if I was to buy the same amount of PP from another player, I’d have to spend $70 cash. Instead, I spent just $63 cash on the Hierarch. This may seem like a small margin. However, if you turn these points around and acquire cards that you need at a lower promotion rate, you are increasing your ‘profits’ without breaking any rules. This exercise requires a knowledge of the cards you want to acquire and understanding what the current promotions are on those cards. If the cards you want are ALSO promoted at 500%, this method probably isn’t for you. 

For the sake of this article, I chose Watery Grave and Koth of the Hammer as the cards I would want to acquire through PucaTrade. Watery Grave from RTR is currently at a base of 1172 pucapoints, and top promotion is 2500 points. Koth of the Hammer is base 1300 points, and promoted at 2500. Full playsets of both of these two cards at their promoted price would cost 20,000 PP. That’s the same amount of Puca Points as the promoted Hierarch. If I was to buy four copies of each of these cards, it would cost me $92.36 in cash from TCGPlayer. Instead, I can feasibly obtain $92.36 in cards for the cost of buying and sending a single $63 card.

The biggest risk with this scenario is that the exact cards that you want may not be sent to you via promotion.  Although this is a risk, I chose two cards that I myself have been sent by random members in the past. I have faith in the system, and I am perfectly comfortable using this method to pad my points. I acknowledge that others with very specific wants may feel differently. The point of this article is not to argue the health of the system. Rather, I want to show that there is more than one avenue to increasing your point total.

If you find yourself in a spot where you have little faith in the system, but want to make it work, feel free to check out some of my very popular PucaTrade articles.

• Have Courage and Be Kind
• Puca Trading–The Strictly Average Method
• Strictly Short – A Want List That Works

Always remember to Give and Let Give

-Strictly

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