I’m handing the reins to Sorare manager SoSpursy for this one. She’s going to give you her take on the new Limited cards, as a newer manager, and some tips on how you can get off to a flying start.

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So you keep hearing about Sorare and you’ve been thinking about joining. But you keep seeing stuff about cards that sell for thousands of pounds, and you know there’s a cryptocurrency element to the game, and so you continue to sit on the sidelines.

That was me last summer.

My Sorare hesitancy continued all the way to February, which turned out to be the first in a whole string of mistakes. More about those in a moment. But first of all, there’s been BIG news from Sorare this month. Gamechanger news.

It’s a whole new ball game

With a cavalier disregard for superstition, Sorare picked Friday 13th August to launch their new Limited scarcity cards. You can get the lowdown on them here.

Right now, suffice to say that these rather fetching new yellow cards – with a scarcity of one thousand of each per season – mean the game is no longer for those with deep pockets. Right now you can put together a very competitive team for around £500, and I expect that figure to FALL in the weeks to come.

I’m writing this guest post to encourage you to sign up TODAY and learn the Sorare ropes. That way, you’ll be able to monitor prices and ready to pounce as soon as they reach prices that are acceptable to you.

I’ll also share some details about my own Sorare journey, highlighting the blunders I’ve made along the way, and how I’m trying to learn from the cock-ups when it comes to planning my Yellow Card strategy.

Bonus sign up offer: I highly recommend you sign up using someone’s link, such as Mel’s affiliate link. And not only because she is my friend and fellow Football Index survivor! Using a link means you’ll get a free limited card once you’ve bought your first five cards at auction (which you don’t get if you join straight through the site). Mel is also super helpful, super patient and super good at answering all your beginner questions, too! (In case you’re the suspicious type, reports that I’ve been promised an espresso martini for every sign-up are somewhat exaggerated.)

Five beginner mistakes I made when I joined Sorare

1. Bad Timing: I chose a rubbish time to sign up. It was at the height of a boom in new players, which meant the cost of cards was rising, hour by hour. If I’d joined when Twitter friends first suggested I did so, I’d have been quids in, as an early adopter.
   
2. FOMO: In my haste not to get left behind – classic FOMO – I overpaid for my first few cards. Also, I didn’t buy particularly wisely. Those first few times you bid at auction, the adrenaline surges. It’s fun. It’s easy to get carried away . . .
   
3. No Strategy: Before I could say, ‘Slow Down!’, I had a bunch of overpriced players and no strategy whatsoever. Too many defenders and midfielders. Not enough goalkeepers or forwards. From all corners of the earth. I was like Harry Redknapp on deadline day. (Jay Boothroyd plays for a team in Japan. Who knew! A snip at £90, and who cares if he’s 39-years-old?) Happy, but haphazard.
   
4. No Confidence: Eventually, I was able to put a team together in Global All Star Division 4. By then I’d run out of money, so I tried to foist some of my more dodgy purchases onto other Sorare managers by putting them up for sale. It was do-able, but I lost money. I’d have done better by offering to swap my unwanted players for someone else’s unwanted players, but I was too nervous to do this, in the beginning. (As for Jay Boothroyd, he turned out to be one of my less bad buys . . . I’ll have you know he scored 70 points this game week!)
   
5. Rushing: With hindsight, I didn’t make enough use of the common cards (the White Cards you get for free when you sign up with Sorare). These are intended to help us learn the ropes on Sorare, playing eight game weeks in the Rookie League. I didn’t take this seriously, because I wanted to ‘play for real’ with my pricy Red Cards. An error.

Six months later . . .

First, the positives: Despite all of the above, I now have a bunch of players who are able to compete in the Global All Star Division Four.

Here, you can win roughly £25 for scoring over 200 points and roughly £50 if your players score 250+ (I say roughly because the payouts are in Ethereum, so the price varies.)

All told, I’ve won over £300 via these payouts. Moreover, my Gallery – i.e. all the players I currently own – is worth quite a lot more than I’ve put into Sorare.

I have yet to win any cards, although had I picked my very best – highest-scoring – players for Game Week 192, I would have done so.

My bugbears: I felt I’d missed the boat. Since Sorare is a pay-to-pay game, the early adopters and big spenders have literally snaffled the best cards. And they’re not shy about telling you about all the prizes they win, week in, week out. You’d have to be more of a saint than I am not to feel envious.

On a more positive note, one of the things I really do like is the price transparency. You can see a card’s entire financial history.

Top tip: As soon as you’ve got your Sorare account, link it with SorareData. This FREE site is an essential tool. Spend plenty of time familiarising yourself with it to learn about players, prices, scores and other managers. And you’ll never unwittingly pay over the odds for a card of any colour!

But Sorare being a pay-to-play game, the big spenders get the best cards, and win more prizes. In fact, one of the good things is the transparency . . . cards I was paying waaaay over £100 for had once belonged to someone else who’d bought for a few quid.

As the months went on, it was hard not to be jealous, discouraged and – frankly – less engaged with Sorare.
Except for one thing. I kept reading that a new scarcity was coming. That instead of only 100 Rare Card per player per season, there would instead be 1,000 player cards per season. The hope was killing me . . . until finally the new Limited Cards arrived, exactly as promised.

The next stage of the journey

Here’s how I hope to learn from my Sorare experience to date:

As the months have rolled by, I’ve become increasingly impressed – and reassured – by the way Sorare run their business. From things I read and hear, they need to hire more people in customer service, but when it comes to the Big Stuff, they deliver. And the Limited Cards are no exception.

The roll-out has been smooth and the cards well selected – which is to say, there are lots of high performers being released from the get-go. It was also a smart move to ensure the Limited Cards will play in Sorare leagues where only Limited Cards are allowed; protecting prices of cards already released, and ensuring all Limited Card managers are on a level playing field.

At the time of writing we are four full days into the new scarcity, and some of the cards I’m tracking have had eight or nine of their promised 1,000 auctioned already.

So what have I bought? Nothing yet! I’m sitting on my hands, watching as prices begin to find their ‘true’ (stable) value in the market, the ‘truth’ inevitably being subjective.

1. No FOMO for me! I’m expecting prices to fall. At present, a ‘reasonable price’ for a Limited Card – in my opinion – is not more than 20% of a Rare Card. Already, I’m seeing some cards going for a lot less than this. And because there are ten times as many Yellow Cards as Red Cards, I believe the prices will fall day by day, until they find a level . . . I’d guess about 10% of a Rare Card.
   
2. Strategic: I’m going to play in the new Challenger Europe Division 5 League. I’ve always enjoyed watching Dutch football, and since joining Sorare I’ve become a lot better clued-up about Belgian teams. So that’s my exclusive focus right now.
   
3. Financially Aware & Hopefully Astute: This time round, I’ll be more Daniel Levy than Harry Redknapp. I’ve set a budget, I need a squad of ten players, and I’m waiting until the price is right.
   
   Top tip: Don’t get caught out on the secondary market! For example, a Rare Card for MSL Goalkeeper Carlos Miguel Coronel sold a couple of days ago for £750. His Limited Cards have been selling at auction for around £90 (other than the very first card, which, inevitably went for a lot more). I know this, because I’ve just looked at SorareData. The £90 seems fair, as Coronel is good, but not great. However, when I look on Sorare there are a bunch of chancers, seeking to make a fast, profitable flip. At the click of a button, I can buy a Limited Card of this player for over £300 – and more! DON’T FALL FOR THIS IF YOU’RE NEW TO SORARE! Monitor the player in the auction market, be patient and you’ll pay a lot less. Value cards by recent prices ACTUALLY paid, rather than by other people’s wishful thinking.
   
4. Financially Realistic: We can’t have it both ways. The new Limited scarcity introduces what I think of as a new era of financial fair play onto Sorare. It’s essentially a very clever reset, with low(er) prices and many more cards, so that a big barrier to entry has been removed. By getting involved now, we can think of ourselves as the early adopters of yesteryear. But with one very big difference. I don’t expect the value of my Limited Card gallery to increase in value in the same way as the Rare Cards have done. If anything, I expect prices to fall in the short-term, simply because there are (potentially) ten times more Yellow Cards than Red Cards, and I’m actually not as patient as Daniel Levy. That’s not to say you can’t grind out a few flips, if you price competitively. And longer term, as manager numbers increase, there might well be price rises for those of us who get cracking soonish. But I’m not counting on it.
   
5. More Fun Than Arsenal: After the curtain-raiser against Brentford at the weekend, I anticipate Arsenal results are going to give me pleasure this season . . . at least until Arteta gets his P45, which might well be sooner rather than later. But my genuine pleasure is going to come from me new Sorare Limited Card Squad.

SoSpursy, playing in the Sorare European Challenger Division 5 will be a work in progress. Let’s see what happens.

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Ready to start your journey? Get started on Sorare.