Star Wars Card Trader New User Guide: Tips, Hints And Strategies

By Nick Tylwalk | Mar 21, 2015

If you’re a Star Wars fan and haven’t checked out the Star Wars Card Trader app yet, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. Created by the card experts at Topps, the free app allows fans to collect and trade digital cards featuring characters and vehicles from the original trilogy all the way up to the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

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The basics are pretty simple. Using an in-app currency called credits, users buy packs of digital cards that can include base cards, several levels of parallels and occasionally, rare insert cards. The Topps team keeps things interesting by introducing new cards to chase every day, and you can rack up awards that include special account badges and extra credits for collecting subsets of the overall collection.

Even though it’s fairly straightforward, it can be a bit confusing for newcomers. With that in mind, we’ve put together a Star Wars Card Trader new user guide, full of tips and hints to make your virtual collecting experience in a galaxy far, far away that much more satisfying.

Don’t spend all your credits as soon as you log in. It’s tempting, for sure, especially since if you log in for seven straight days, you receive an even larger amount. The thing to remember is that new packs hit the Cantina at different times throughout the day, and if you want a shot at the insert cards for that day — some of which sell out quickly — you’ll want to have credits on hand when the proper packs arrive.

To stay in the loop, consider checking the Transmissions tab (it’s the first option from the main navigation, signified by what looks like a satellite transmitter icon) and allowing notifications to your phone or tablet. That way you’ll always be informed when new cards go on sale.
Trading is the name of the game. No one is fortunate enough to pull every card they might want, so the place to go to find a trade partner is the Fan Feed (the second option on the main navigation, with an icon that looks like four Stormtrooper heads). Here you’ll see an ever-updating list of people advertising what they are looking for and what they might be willing to offer in return. Simply tapping on the name of the person in any message opens a menu where you can see their user profile, offer a trade or add them as an in-app friend.

Tapping on the little ‘+’ icon in the upper-right corner of the Fan Feed allows you to post your own comment. A few general things you might want to know: “dupes” is short for duplicates or doubles, and refers to when people have more than one copy of a particular card. Users also frequently refer to the different colors of parallels; at the time of this post, they are white, blue, red, yellow and gold in increasing order of scarcity — and perceived value, to most fans! Topps has also introduced special purple, green and orange cards as rewards or cards you can only find in specific packs. Inserts are cards that aren’t in the base set and are often (though not always) highly prized.
Your home page contains info about your activity on Star Wars Card Trader, including your trader rating, pending trades and awards you’ve earned. One thing to notice here is your Force Score, which rates how “valuable” your collection is on a scale of 100. Topps hasn’t explained exactly how the Force Score works, but you’ll want to keep adding cards as often as possible to keep it from slipping.

When offering trades, there are a number of ways you can sort the cards of a prospective trade partner. Perhaps the most useful one is to sort by duplicates, allowing you to easily view which cards that user has in excess. A good way to improve your trader rating is to find people who are seeking “dupes for dupes” trades and simply offer them cards they need for cards which they have in excess. For example, you might offer two blue cards you have in quantity for two blue cards in return. Don’t forget to rate every completed trade. You can also rate trade offers you end up declining, and it’s considered good etiquette to give high ratings in those cases as long as the other user made a serious offer.
Be wary of making trades outside of the app itself. Many Star Wars Card Trader users also use the other Topps card trading apps (Bunt for baseball, Huddle for football and Kick for Soccer) and will offer trades of cards from one app for another. The only way to do this is to simply give the cards in exchange for nothing in both apps, and while there are honest people who do conduct themselves honorably in these types of transactions, there are also scammers out there too. Be very wary and do your homework before accepting any offers of this type, as Topps customer service won’t help you if you end up losing out from such deals.

The Cantina is where you can buy packs and get more credits if necessary. The Main Cantina is where you’ll find packs most of the time, including different types of base packs and special packs that will rotate in and out of the store. If you’ve spent real money on credits during a particular day, you’ll also Find Master Packs, which make rarer cards easier to pull.
Speaking of buying credits for real money, you might want to consider waiting for a bundle or sale deal to do so, as you’ll get more bang for your buck. You can also get free credits by watching videos or agreeing to offers from Tapjoy, some of which also require you to spend real money. Though you’ll earn less credits with each successive video you watch in a given day, definitely check them out daily, because they make for an easy way to pick up an extra 1000-1500 credits.
Han Solo might not have wanted to ever be told the odds, but you’ll want to make note of them. Often, a new insert card will be given a ratio, like 1:30. That means that every pack has an equal 1-in-30 chance in yielding that card. That being the case, it sometimes make sense to buy the cheapest possible packs (currently the Mace Windu Base Pack for 1000 coins) to give yourself as many possible chances to find the insert for the least amount of credits.

Aside from simply enjoying your collection, the My Cards tab has a helpful feature that can prevent you from accidentally giving away one of your favorite or rare cards. If you tap on a card to view it up close, you’ll notice a little lock icon at the bottom of the screen. Tapping it will lock the card and prevent other users from asking for it in a trade. Simply tap the icon again to unlock it, which makes it fair game for trades again.

Next: More on the launch of Star Wars Card Trader

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