After just over one month of release, FIFA 22’s Ultimate Team mode has seen an unprecedented market crash, plunging the value of a number of gold cards.
Currently, only 12 Gold players are valued over 100K FUT coins, which is very unusual at this point of the game. Usually, it takes more months for the values of players to fall.
This has allowed more players to build meta teams very quickly, but traders and pros are left unhappy.
There are arguments for both sides of the coin. Let’s assess the good and bad of an early market crash. (all figures for Playstation)
The good
Casual players get to buy their favourite or meta players early on in the game, making the dreadful early stages of the mode much shorter.
The Ultimate Edition, which gave players 4500 FIFA points, made it almost certain that players would skip the starter teams with silver or bronze players.
The grind to get players like Kevin De Bruyne is much less. At the same stage last year, his card was worth 264K. This time around, it’s valued at just 71K.
The bad
While building a meta team is much easier, the very best players haven’t fallen as fast as the mid-tier gold cards.
Last year, at the same stage, Lionel Messi’s gold card was worth 673K. This year, it’s worth 652K; not that big a drop.
This has made upgrading teams much harder. The mid and low tier golds just do not have the same value as before, meaning that packing and selling them won’t help you earn coins quick enough for a Messi, Mbappe, Ronaldo or Neymar compared to before.
To make things worse, Icons are actually higher priced than they were before. Ronaldo’s mid icon card was worth 9.5 million coins on November 5 last year. This year it’s 12-13 million.
Traders are also facing troubles. Frenkie de Jong fell from 105K to 50K in the space of one week, imagine how many players lost more than 50K in card value.
It’s almost impossible to make money from trading this year, as players are facing losses like never before.
Verdict
The winners are the casual players who do not expect buying the absolute top tier cards and are content with their teams. For everyone else, it’s a huge loss.