Rebellion, The Last Mile - Part 1

As we approach the end of the Rebellion Set, the question on everyone's mind is if Rebellion will go out with a bang or not. The current pace of sales of Rebellion packs bring to mind the words of T.S. Eliot, although he didn't have Splinterlands in his mind when he wrote "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The time has come, and we only have to wait 51 more days to find out the final print rate of the Rebellion Core Set. This post was written on the 30th of October, 2024. There are still 1,261,974 Rebellion packs available, and each day 25,000 packs are burned or sent to the DAO, assuming they are not bought by players (if people buy, say, 3,000 packs on a single day, then 22,000 packs are burned or sent to the DAO).

This means that, no matter what happens, the Rebellion will end on the 20th of December, if not earlier (if people buy more than 25,000 Rebellion packs per day, then the packs will run out earlier than the aforementioned date).

With only weeks remaining until the Rebellion core set officially ends its run, people are watching every pack sale like hawks (at least I know I do). What lies ahead as we inch closer to the December 20 deadline? Will the pace of sales pick up, or will packs remain available right up until the last minute?

First, let's take a look at how Rebellion sales/burns proceeded this past week:

October 22 2024:

October 23 2024:

October 24 2024:

October 25 2024:

October 26 2024:

October 27 2024:

October 28 2024:

October 29 2024:

While the above screenshots contain all the necessary information, it helps to highlight a point or two.

• The sum of circulating and open packs can give us the number of packs that were sold each day (by tracking the change of this number on a daily basis)

• If Rebellion ends with a whimper, it will be a very rare (i.e. expensive) set of cards to own. Let's randomly set the boundary to 1 Million packs sold (the sum of Open and Circulating packs). If we don't easily cross this boundary, I expect Rebellion to remain elusive for most players.

• If Rebellion ends with a bang, sales will pick up us we approach the December 20th deadline, and we can arbitrarily define success as a total number of packs sold close to 1.5 Million. If that's the case, the market will smooth out as months go by, especially given the fact that some players will be circulating their Splinterlands assets like always (selling Rebellion to buy Conclave Arcana).

• The wildcard in our situation is the DAO, and the packs it is holding. If the DAO participants vote to sell the DAO Rebellion packs, then the printing of the Rebellion set will eventually double. It goes without saying that simple supply and demand considerations lead us to card prices 50% cheaper than what they are today (even if it doesn't happen immediately).

• There is no reason for the DAO to hold the Rebellion packs for years, as these packs will lose their value once Rebellion moves to Wild. But at what price should the DAO sell its packs? This will certainly be discussed in detail when the time comes for such a proposal.

How many packs did the company sell these past couple of days? We can infer the number of packs sold by adding the "Open" and "Circulating" packs and subtracting this number from the day before. And here is the result:

Not spectacular, to say the least. However, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. There are still well over a million packs available, so there is no rush to buy at the moment. Let's wait and see what happens in December.

Moreover, the company sales are affected by the secondary market. People are selling their packs slightly cheaper on the secondary market, but keep in mind that there are only 60k Rebellion packs circulating, which is a tiny number. Once these are gone (and we don't even know for sure that every one of these packs will hit the market) then buying packs from the store will be the only option.

Speaking of which, how many packs are currently for sale on the secondary market? As I am writing these lines, there are 97 packs for sale on Hive Engine and 209 packs for sale on the Splinterlands Market. That's a total of 306 packs...People may list more packs for sale on the market, but the circulating supply will keep decreasing during the process.

With only a few weeks left until the final sale day, it’s anyone’s guess how things will unfold. My personal estimate is that packs will start selling like hot cakes in December. Although there is another major core set in the works, this won't be available until April 2025. Which means that for 4+ months the Official Store will have no packs for sale. People might want to hold some Rebellion packs just in case this drought translates to more demand. And some people just like to gamble. The new set will not have all the legendary cards available in packs right away, but Rebellion currently has shown everything that it has to offer. And while the chances are very slim, buying a Rebellion pack for $4 or less could result in a Gold Foil, Eternal Tofu: