80
Dispatch → Meta → Reference
by 
The Kingdom of Kractero.
.
640 reads.
2024 - Year in Cards
2024 has wrapped up, and it has been a packed year in cards. Despite facing challenges and numerous changes, the market and activity have remained strong throughout the year.
The year started quietly, with 
Infinitta being selected as one of the new frontend administrators (which would become important later). A month later, however, the server hamsters revolted, and the site crashed on April 14th, leading to a nine-day outage. Unfortunately, during this time, a storage drive containing the last 11 months of card data was damaged and hadn’t been backed up. The hamsters were eventually appeased and returned to their work, but it wasn’t until May 10th that the market returned to life, after the data was recovered by our lord 
SalusaSecondus and the technical team. This was a traumatic time for cards, as many expected a potential loss of 11 months of data (though I do have all trades archived), but thankfully that didn't happen.
Rumors of the upcoming release of Season 4 began circulating in the summer after 
Sedgistan 
teased the community about work starting up on it. In November, adjustments to CTE rates made it significantly easier to acquire rare CTE cards for various collections, including the much sought-after trio of Annihilators of chan island, Chan island, and Morover.
As the year came to a close, Sedgistan continued teasing the release of new cards, and just before 2025, 
Roavin pushed out Season 4 and the inscription period. Big props to Infinitta for designing the cards!
This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the card market’s dynamics in 2024. We will begin by comparing this year’s performance with that of 2023, focusing on key market trends, trading activity (both for gifting and non-gifting transactions), and examining the impact of significant events on the card economy.
2024 remained strong, with 2,457,636 trades facilitating a movement of 3,716,289.74 bank. Excluding gifts, which constituted 41.9% of all trades, there were 1,028,833 transactions with an average value of 3.61 bank. The market was filled with many players, with 81,490 unique buyers, 121,834 unique sellers, and a total of 134,450 nations participating.
Below is an overview table, percentages indicate a change from the previous year (2022 is not pictured).
2024 | 2023 | |
Total Trades | 2,457,636 (-1.4%) | 2,493,179 (+63.8%) |
Total Trades Excluding Gifts | 1,028,833 (-9.7%) | 1,139,606 (+45.7%) |
Average Bank Per Non Gift Trade | 3.61 (+32.2%) | 2.73 (-88.1%) |
Total Bank Moved | 3,716,289.74 (+19.4%) | 3,112,219 (-85.1%) |
Unique Buyers | 81,490 (+13.2%) | 72,061 (+15.1%) |
Unique Sellers | 121,834 (+5.0%) | 116,020 (+18.0%) |
Unique Participants | 134,450 (+6.1%) | 126,660 (+14.7%) |
Trades over 250+ MV | 1,118 (+18.1%) | 947 (-87.5%) |
Trades over 500+ MV | 467 (+123.9%) | 209 (-96.6%) |
2024 closely matched the raw trade numbers of 2023, which was surprising given that the market and cards was inaccessible for nearly a month, and anticipation for season 4 caused large farmers to decrease their market activities to store packs.
The average bank spent on a card increased by almost 1 bank, which could be fueled by the remarkable +123.9% increase in trades over 500+ MV and +18.1% of over 250. The latter could be explained by the completion and continued pursuit of off-season legendary collections, inflation, or just a general increase in the desire to use bank as a resource.
Similar to last year, 2024 witnessed increased player-to-player interactions compared to the year prior. While more players participated in cards in 2023, the majority of this is likely the growth of puppet farms.
Amidst the bustling card market of 2024, several noteworthy trends and interactions have emerged.
Rarity and Season Trends
The uncommon market took a hit in 2024. While last year saw some notable movement with S2 
Varanius and collectors finishing up seasonal uncommon collections, 2024 experienced a stark decline, with over 110,000 fewer trades involving uncommons.
On the flip side, legendaries saw a slight dip in purchases, but when they were bought, they commanded an impressive average of 77.35 bank — a solid 13 higher than last year's 64. Season 1 legendaries averaged 354 bank, a sharp rise from 210 last year, while Season 2's average climbed to 90.2 from 64.5.
The common market surged which I would assume is due to more transfer cards, with commons across all three seasons seeing a rise in average market price.
Trades and Traders
This year saw a significant uptick in high bank trades. The top 10 trades of 2024 were all valued at over 9,001 bank, with 9 out of 10 near the 10,000 bank mark. Notably, Annihilators of chan island only made up 3 of these trades. When the focus is narrowed to just legendaries, the leaderboard is dominated by the powerful triple threat from Season 3 CTE legs.
In terms of bank moved, 
Noahs Second Country remains the undisputed leader. 
Kractero emerges as the leader in purchases, while Noahs Second Country leads in sales.
Once again, 
War Dogs IV holds the crown as the most active trader by volume, with a staggering 180,430 trades over the second place. Even if you filter out gift transactions, they still maintain a commanding lead.
As for gifting, War Dogs IV remains at the top, though 
Yodle isn't far behind. 
The United Peoples of Centrism gifted a total of 2,535 legendaries, almost all of which were transferred to 
UPC (themself). When it comes to cards bought over 250 bank, 
Upper Tuchoim leads, while 
Valoptia tops the leaderboard when filtered for legendaries. On the flip side, 
Empire of Caldrasa sold the most over 250 bank, while 
Shibutani leads with 52 when filtering to legendaries. Shibutani was instrumental to completing my own S1 legendaries, so shout-out to Shibutani.
The legendary purchasing market was notably dominated by 
Koem Kab, who purchased three times more legendaries than the second place Varanius.
Newer Players
The 2024 market wasn’t just about the established players. Newcomers like 
Anarco Argentina made their mark with an impressive 27,710 trades, while 
Communist-Denmark also made waves by purchasing an astounding 13,956 commons, edging out Anarco Argentina by over 1,000 purchases.
Card cleaver made notable appearances, with 15 in the report, but unfortunately they have since cte'd.
To conduct your own exploration of the numbers, view the full report 
over here.
Edited:
