What is the best use of funds early on?
 

First time PT player here and just started up my team and figuring things out in an entry league. The one thing I am struggling with is deciding the best way to use my limited funds early on.

I have about 4k right now, am I better off buying 4 bronze packs? Save up for 1 gold pack? Or use all that money to just bid on individual players?

What is your favorite strategy when just starting out a team?

The general consensus is that you get more value by bidding on individual players instead of opening packs. While there's a chance you might get a Diamond or Perfect card opening packs, similar to investing your money versus buying a lottery ticket, individual players are the best way to go.

Thanks for the response. This is exactly how I have been operating so far but wasn't sure. Appreciate it.

This is really hard to answer ... with 4k PP you could buy a decent card, but of course it won't be nearly enough to get real studs ...

By buying standard packs (I always go for standard packs instead of gold packs) you at least have a shot at one of these great cards everybody is raving about.

with 4k in the entry league I am just upgrading every position I can. fill your lineup with a couple golds that you can get for 1000 and the rest silvers that cost only a couple hundred and your team will start racking up achievement points against the other teams who left a bunch of irons on their roster

I agree with dkgo. Buy 2-3 gold upgrades with your 4K.

I agree with the consensus here - individual players.

Once you reach a level where your stagnant (assuming you don't want to spend real money) then it makes sense to gamble on packs - since the achievement point totals won't get high enough to buy the studs.

Cards Packs
 

Recently Ive been trying the route of getting card packs versus AH, and lemme tell you, its not doing so bad. Ive filled out my rotation, with a Sale, Seaver, and a G. Cole, and gotten a T. Hoffman for my pen and a Realmuto to upgrade my catcher all with like 25-30 packs. I love the AH, but packs are viable.

If you have gotten 5 Diamond or better cards in 25-30 packs then you are one lucky dog. Even though packs worked for you, it's still a more efficient use of points to upgrade through the AH.

I disagree with the consensus, although it depends on your available funds.

If you can afford to buy PP $100 at a time to get 175,000 points, and if you have some patience and self-discipline, the pack strategy can be HIGHLY profitable.

In PT 19 I did an experiment with one team. Opened 425 packs with purchased points and sold the best cards to open more and more packs. That's where the self-discipline comes in. The only high-value card I kept for myself was a Lajoie I couldn't resist. The rest I sold. By continually selling and repurchasing, I opened an additional 873 packs, plus after raising the kind of points I did, I still had another 264000 points that I used for 5 key team upgrades on the AH.

In other words, I turned 425,000 points into over well over 1 million points of value. Primarily by opening packs.

And let me add, that I kept track of my draws and really only had slightly better than average luck. The key to avoiding bad luck is that this might not work on a small scale, you need a large enough sample size for your luck to move towards average.

Says you.

I studied this, and disagree.

I even went so far as to make a model spreadsheet with average pricing data and odds of getting cards.

While it often takes a large number of packs purchased to avoid early bad luck, eventually you will have more points by selling everything you get and buying more packs.

In trials, it usually starts being profitable after hitting 1 non-Live perfect, or a couple non-Live diamonds. Which could happen quick if you're lucky, or take a few hundred packs before you're profitable.

So you need a good up-front investment. And you have to be willing to stick with it until you have some profits before you start siphoning cards to your team.

Also in PT19, eventually AH prices dropped to the point where it was no longer feasible. I'm sure that will happen in 20 also, but with the real life season just beginning I suspect this strategy will remain profitable through the summer at least.

You are probably correct. I will amend my statement to say IF you're not going to invest a lot in PP to start, it's probably better to purchase off the AH. The problem with buying a lot of points and opening packs is twofold: first, you have to be willing to sell the cards you get mercilessly, and two, you have to not have terrible luck.

I probably fail at both of those!