How the FIFA 17 Team of the Year affects the transfer market? How high are the TOTY prices? What’s the best time to buy Ronaldo TOTY? What happens to NIF cards prices of players featuring in the TOTY? When will be the best day to sell my cards? It would be great to know the answers to all of these and other questions, wouldn’t it? That’s why we’re publishing this guide which analyses the variations on the players’ prices along the FIFA 17 Team of the Year. Knowledge is power!
Quick Access
Introduction
Basic Principles
The Market
NIF cards of players featuring in the TOTY
TOTY Prices
Comprehending the FIFA 17 TOTY Prices
Guide’s introductory note
In the past three years we have been collecting information on the prices of hundreds of players’ cards, in different stages of the season, including during the TOTY. We’ll use them not only in order to predict what is going to happen in FIFA 17, but also to publish other more specific and detailed trading guides.
This series of trading guides we’ve been publishing obeys to a logical sequence. If you haven’t read one of the previous articles, we recommend you do it now. As we have said here before, prices on the FUT market vary according to several factors, like for example the type of card, the player, his real life performance or the release of promotional packs. That’s why it’s impossible to describe with 100% accuracy what is going to happen with the price of a determined card because every case is a different case. What we’re doing here is give you a general idea of the evolution in the average card’s price. It doesn’t mean all cards will behave the same way at some point. We’re talking tendencies only. So now that’s been warned…
Basic Principles
General notions on the way FIFA 17 TOTY affects the players’ prices
Predicting the price of a card isn’t an easy task. This year it’s even harder. The FUT market has never been so unpredictable as it is now. There are several factors responsible for that but there is a time in the year with a bigger weight in the way how the prices change: the Team of the Year. TOTY is the most important moment of the game, introducing the best FIFA 17 cards but also causing the largest price changes.
We analysed these variations very carefully throughout the year and were able to come up with some important conclusions.
Market Crash
Prices in general gradually decrease as the TOTY release approaches. On the first day you’ll witness the biggest price drop of the season, except for the NIF cards of players featuring in the TOTY.
IF Cards
The IF cards’ prices start to rise during the TOTY, as an effect of the anticipation to the January updates.
NIF cards of players featuring in the TOTY
Most certainly it’s a bad idea to buy these cards during the TOTY. Their prices rise even more when they’re replaced by the blue ones in packs.
TOTY Cards
The TOTY prices drop in peaks on the first hours. A new devaluation occurs on the week after the end of the TOTY.
Now that you have an idea of how the players’ prices vary due to the TOTY in FIFA 17, it’s time to go deeper.
The FIFA 17 TOTY and the Market
Variation of FIFA 17 players’ prices due to the TOTY
All FIFA 17 cards are affected by the Team of the Year in a way. It is responsible for price drops before it even starts. Part of the devaluation that’s registered before FUTMas is the effect of the TOTY coming right after. It’s expected for the cards’ prices to suffer a reduction of about 15% on the month before the long awaited 9th of January.
In order to simplify the analysis of the market’s behaviour, we’ll describe separately what happens to the NIF cards and what happens to the IF cards.
The NIF cards lose value progressively through the weeks before the TOTY. The biggest drop is registered both on the day it starts and the day before that, which by the way is a Sunday, a day of the week when prices are lower. Only on this day the market should drop more than 3%. And that is followed by an apparent stabilisation which lasts until the weekend arrives. At this stage prices tend to rise very slightly, then, just as the TOTY cards stop coming from packs, the market rises again. This price increase tendency lasts about two weeks, then the natural course of devaluation is resumed.
| NIF CARDS PRICES DURING THE FIFA 16 TOTY | |||||||||||||||||
| DAY | -1 | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT | SUN | MON | +1 | +2 | +15 | |||||
| % | ↓ 3% | ↓ 6% | ↑ 1% | ↑ 0% | ↑ 0% | ↓ 2% | ↑ 2% | ↑ 0% | ↑ 2% | ↑ 2% | ↑ 1% | ↑ 3% | |||||
Click in the image to maximize itThe behaviour of IF cards’ prices during the TOTY is slightly different. Although the lowest prices are also expected on January 9th, the truth is that the difference comparatively to the values registered immediately before the Black Friday is much smaller. After hitting a historical minimum on the first day of the Team of the Year, the price tendencies start being just one: increasing. During the whole week, day after day, the cards keep becoming more expensive, reaching a price increase of about 15% between the first and the last day. Just as the blue cards stop coming from packs, the IF cards’ price increase becomes even more evident. This behaviour is explained mainly by the anticipation of upgrades season which can make many IF cards gain value.
| IF CARDS PRICES DURING THE FIFA 16 TOTY | |||||||||||||||||
| DAY | -1 | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT | SUN | MON | +1 | |||||||
| % | ↓ 1% | ↓ 2% | ↑ 3% | ↑ 2% | ↑ 1% | ↑ 2% | ↑ 5% | ↑ 4% | ↑ 5% | ↑ 5% | |||||||
Click in the image to maximize itNIF cards of players featuring in the TOTY
Price variations of NIF players who received a TOTY card
One of the most recurrent doubts on players’ minds has to do with the behaviour of the prices of NIF players that are rewarded with a TOTY card. As you would imagine, this analysis has to be made differently for each position, not just because the players’ values are way too discrepant, but also because the days in which the cards are coming from packs or not are also different.
If you’re waiting for the release of the Team of the Year to buy the regular card of a centre back or goalkeeper who is very likely to feature in the TOTY, don’t do so in the first days of the TOTY week. The reason why you shouldn’t is because just as the NIF cards stop coming from packs, they suffer an increase of more than 10%, something very considerable since we’re talking about a period of just two days. On the third day, when it’s once again possible to find these cards in packs, a very accentuated price drop is registered, something around 30%. Their minimum is hit on saturday, the same day increases of around 20% over the prices we had before the TOTY release are registered. It’s very interesting to observe that the behaviours of these five cards on the market are very similar to each other.
Click in the image to maximize itAs for the midfielders who receive a TOTY card, their NIF cards’ prices are constantly slightly increasing from the day the TOTY is announced. This behaviour stays the same on wednesday and thursday, when you can’t find them in packs. Just as they go back to being available, there’s a slight drop, then follows an increase of about 15% in a single day (sunday), as a result of the anticipation of the end of the most important week of the season. On the next days prices continue to increase, although in a much more moderate rhythm, reaching a maximum approximately three weeks after the end of the TOTY, with an accumulated valorisation of almost 50%.
Click in the image to maximize itThe attackers’ price evolution is easier to describe. Basically, from the first and to the last day of the TOTY, their prices are always increasing. Between the day of the TOTY announcement and the next saturday, these NIF cards’ prices increase about 10%. This increase gets even more accentuated starting from sunday, and dragging itself until tuesday, when the maximum is reached with an accumulated valorisation of almost 30%. If you’re thinking of buying a Ronaldo or a Messi, maybe it’s best to do so in the first week of january, before the TOTY is released.
Click in the image to maximize itTOTY Prices
Variation of TOTY prices
Once again, it only makes sense to do an analysis of the TOTY prices if we divide the cards by position.
The first blue cards to be released are the goalkeeper’s and the defenders’. Just like what happens to almost any IF card, they appear on the market at very high prices and after a few hours they can cost much less. As for these first cards we’re analysing, the devaluation in the first 24 hours can reach up to 40%. From tuesday to wednesday, the day when the market is already saturated with these cards, their prices reach their minimum, a drop of 5 to 10%, followed by a slight recovery until the weekend arrives. If you’re willing to take risks, you may also wait for the week after the TOTY, when the estimated devaluation can reach 15%. Until the middle of July, the tendency is always a slow devaluation, while it can reach cumulatively 25% in six months, and so we’re able to verify that events almost don’t affect their prices. In the two months that precede the FIFA 18 demo release, prices slightly increase, and then go back to decreasing afterwards.
Click in the image to maximize itBuying the TOTY card of a midfielder just as it’s launched is always a terrible idea. Only in the first 48 hours they tend to lose about 20% of their value. On the weekend prices slightly increase, but if you wait until the next week you can save almost 20%, which is a lot of coins for a card like that. The devaluation along the next six months goes on but in an extremely slow rhythm. At the end of this period it’s expected for them to have lost at least 10% of their value. On FIFA 16, the Community Week affected the TOTY prices, making them lose 10% of value at the end of 5 days, and recovering that loss in the two next days.
Click in the image to maximize itThe most desired cards of the game have a friday 13th as release date but things will only go bad if you try to buy them in these four days in which they’re available in packs. Only in the first 24 hours it’s expected for them to lose up to 25% of value, while the most reputed the player is, the biggest the devaluation will be. Until the end of the TOTY, prices maintain themselves more or less stable, suffering a new devaluation on the next week when it can reach up to 20%. If you’re willing to take risks, this is the best time to buy a TOTY attacker since a new accentuated devaluation isn’t expected to happen. Only as the FIFA 18 demo is released prices might go back to decreasing in a visible way. Until then, they’ll normally follow a natural tendency of slow devaluation, although the prices of Ronaldo and Messi are almost impossible to predict.
Click in the images to maximize it