One of Valve’s riskier decisions with Artifact was to tie its cards to the Steam Marketplace. When the game launched, it was possible to buy every card you needed to complete your collection that way, but getting your hands on the most sought-after rare cards was an expensive proposition, with certain heroes costing nearly $20. But markets rise and fall, and now you can get a complete set of Artifact cards for around $40.
In fact, the cost of a full collection of Artifact cards has recently dipped below $40 for the first time, according to a site called How Much Does Artifact Cost that tracks current card prices and adds them up. For one of each hero card and three of everything else, the price at the time of this writing is $40.64. For May 9, the average price for a full collection was $39.15.
Again, these figures are aggregated from current prices on the Steam Marketplace, which of course means individual cards are getting cheaper. When we rounded up Artifact’s most expensive cards in December, the highest-priced cards were Axe ($17.91) and Drow Ranger ($13.57). Those cards are now $1.53 and 61 cents respectively.
Prices for Artifact cards have been in steady decline. Part of this is explained by the lack of demand—after an initial concurrent player count of more than 60,000, Artifact now usually has less than 200 players at a time. But the bear market for cards is also likely tied to the fact that Valve has said it’s planning to rework Artifact’s economy, and even rethink its core design. Players are likely waiting to hear what the company’s plans for Artifact are before sinking any more money into the game.
