Dear Splinterlands Community!
In this article, I would like to write about a recurring phenomenon in the Splinterlands card market: price pumping.
About card prices
My site's primary feature is to track card prices (both sale and rental) and determine trends by periodically synchronizing with the markets. For each card, you can always find this information:
- Current price
- Current price/BCX (CC)
- Smallest low price from the last 14 days ("Min price")
- Highest low price from the last 14 days ("Max price")
- Average low price in the last 14 days ("Average price")
- Current price's difference from the average ("Price change")
Average low prices are calculated from all low prices synced from the market in the last 14 days.
Sample (Level 1 regular Lorkus)
- Current price: $31.5
- Current price/BCX: $31.5
- Min price: $29
- Max price: $39.89
- Price change: -16.2% (not bad)
What is card price pumping (trap)?
Card price pumping means the following:
- Somebody ("the pumper") buys all cards below a certain price
- Then place one or more cards back just below that price
- Wait for the "victims" who buy these cards at a much higher price than before
Sample: Torrent Fiend/Spawn card pumping
Nowadays, most of the Chaos Legion legendary cards are around $0.50. I experienced that the Fiend/Spawn (the 0 mana cards) card prices were pumped up regularly.
If I were the "bad guy" and wanted to pump a price, I would do these steps:
1.) I see that Torrent Spawn's price is pretty good right now: $0.50 2.) I know that this card is a must-have in Wild League water matches 3.) I buy all Torrent Spawn cards with a price below $1 4.) Then I place them back just a little bit below $1 (e.g. $0.95) 5.) All I have to do is wait for the "victims" and take the profits
How can you detect pumped card prices with SplinterTrends?
The easy way without logging in
If you decided to buy a card, perform these steps before making the transaction:
Sample: Buying Level 1 Filthy Scavenger (Conclave Arcana legendary card)
- Visit https://splintertrends.com
- Search for the card by its name:
- We see that the current price ($10) is nearly ~60% higher than the average price ($6.258) and nearly twice the minimum price ($5.249)
- Maybe it's not the best moment to buy this card... Don't walk into the trap 😉
Digging a little bit deeper after login
Let's see a seriously pumped card price 😊
You decided to buy a copy of Riftwatcher summoner: Fernheart
- Visit https://splintertrends.com
- Search for the card by its name:
- BANG! ~170% difference from the average price and almost 7 times the min price! It's a serious trap!
Let's see what led to this:
- Login with HIVE Keychain
- Click on the Average price:
- The average price report shows up:
- If you scroll down, you will find two charts:
- Low prices/card (previous 14 days)
- Quantities (previous 14 days)
- If we check the first chart, we can see that there was a big jump on 2025-09-20 (from $0.23 to $1.544)
- If we check the second chart, we can see the drop in the quantity as well (from 9 to 3)
These two information prove that this was a potential price pump
What can we do?
- Don't buy cards with a serious difference between the average price AND the minimum price. I want to emphasise the importance of the latter because one price spike can distort the average price.
- Wait a little bit until the price normalizes. If you want to get notified about a better opportunity, create a watchlist item. You can read about this feature HERE
- The amount of the accepted difference is up to you. I prefer a maximum of 20%
Searching for the top "pumped prices"
Are you curious what the top pumped card prices are? Do the following:
- Go to https://splintertrends.com
- Switch off Show Modern card only
- Click on the Price change header in the main table:
Want a good Grim Reaper for a nearly 17x price? I bet you don't 😂
My thoughts about this phenomenon
I know that card prices are always changing. Some cards are more popular than others. But I believe many price pumps are done deliberately — and they are dangerous to our purse. However, not all sudden price increases are traps. Sometimes, many cards are just purchased at the same time to build a higher-level card. The result is the same: some cards become overpriced.
With this article, I wanted to highlight this kind of risk. I hope it helps you to make better decisions.
Happy browsing! Peter
- https://splintertrends.com
- https://x.com/SplinterTrends
- https://discord.gg/YU82wKDhhC
- https://splinterlands.com?ref=splintertrends
- https://beeswap.dcity.io/tokens/TRENDZ
Posted Using INLEO