Steem Monster Alpha cards - get ready for FOMO?

Since a few days the Alpha packs are now sold out and since then prices have started to creep up step by step. I have argued several times in the past that prices of all cards combined used to have an upper limit as there was an arbitrage relationship between secondary market prices and the costs to acquire new packs.

Since the Alpha cards are sold out now and there is no option anymore to create additional packs with Alpha cards, this upper limit is now lifted and the prices of the Alpha cards can finally lift off.

A slight increase is visible already on all card level. I used to be able to buy lots of regular common and rare cards for 2cents and 6 cents - this is however no longer possible and the cheapest cards now are sold for about 4 cents. These are mostly stemming from some of the guys which bought a lot of packs in the last hours before Alpha sold out and I would expect prices to increase even further once this supply comes to an end.

Most visible however is this this development however at the level of the Gold Foil cards. Interesting is especially the development at the level of epic Gold Foil cards. Prices have gone up to more than 90 USD for some cards recently - which is an only logical development in my view.

These cards are also very rare - on average only 140 - 150 cards have been created - about 5x the level seen for the Legendaries. However, at prices of around 50 USD these are 10x to 40x cheaper than the Gold Foil Legendaries.

Additionally, these cards have some further advantages to the Legendaries:

1. As they are much cheaper these are assets which can also be picked up by less wealthy people
2. Liquidity in these cards is much higher than for the Gold Foil Legendaries, which makes them a lot easier to sell if you want to take profit or need cash.
3. If you are a whale and have bought a complete set of legendary Gold Foil cards and really want to play with these, you might most likely want to own also a lot of Gold Foil epics.

Considering that Steem Monsters continues to attract new player, collectors and investors it might not take more than just one additional whale to result in a significant increase in prices. As said before, the upper limit set by the availability of new Alpha packs does not exist anymore, so prices could theoretically go up a lot now. Are you prepared for a possible FOMO to lift prices up?

Wishing you all the best,
Tim