Icon Trading
What Is an Icon Card
Icon cards are a type of special card, each Icon is exactly that, a player who has had an iconic career and has likely retired. In the previous editions of FIFA, each Icon had three different cards to represent different stages of their career. A base, mid and a prime card (one for the beginning of their career, one for their prime years and one for the end of their career.)
What Is Icon Flipping?
The concept of flipping an Icon is very simple but in reality, a little harder to implement.
Icon cards have a very low drop rate in packs and are therefore in very short supply compared to their demand (especially your higher rated cards like Ronaldinho, Pelé and Ronaldo).
Due to their limited supply, the card prices fluctuate more than your regular gold allowing for traders to make a decent profit, the rarer the card the more they are likley to fluctuate.
A good example to use as an example is Weekend League, desirable Icons will usually be bought on a Thursday for a players Weekend League games and sold after the finished (between Sunday and Monday).
Icon cards have a very low drop rate in packs and therefore are in very short supply compared to their demand (especially your higher rated cards like Ronaldinho, Pelé and Ronaldo).
How To Know The Best Price to Buy and Sell For?
This is the MOST important step to Icon Trading, without knowing the prices you are almost guaranteed to lose a lot of coins.
Due to market fluctuations, it is possible for you to buy the cheapest card on the market but the price to drop below that if bought at the wrong time.
"At this point most will be saying, that's fantastic but how do I work out the RIGHT time?"
Here are two ways to help you master the Icon market:
Adding cards to your transfer targets
This is the most reliable way to check what the current price that each player sells for! Add as many as possible and record what they sell for.
As discussed earlier, prices fluctuate so it is worth keeping this as up to date as possible. It will take time to learn each player's prices so it is advisable to start with a small pool of players (3-5 players is usually a good amount).
85 Robert Pires is one card that works really well at the time of writing this guide, this is due to the fact he is one of the cheaper Icons (The lowest possible price for an Icon is 64,000 but that would be discard price) but still has some demand, mainly due to his nationality.
(FUTBIN gives a rough average of the price per hour not for every sale hence why it may not show the lowest or highest)
Therefore, if you were to have bought one of the cards that were selling for 75,000 coins. you could easily sell for 84,500 (the price he sold for above) with a healthy 5,000 coin profit after tax (EA charge 5% on all sales).
Some may ask why list him 'only 84,500', that is a very valid question, just because a card is listed at 112,000 coins, it does not mean that it is guaranteed to sell, even if it is the cheapest on the market. These are what we would call an anomaly and not the normal range of a card's price. For example, if you were to list a card for 110,000 and it did not sell between 2-3am, it is very unlikely to sell (unless it sold as an overpriced sale).
If you were to list a card for 84,500 it would have been the cheapest card on the market for well over 12 hours and allows multiple relists and therefore multiple chances to sell.
FUTBIN market sales history
FUTBIN sales history is a tool you need to be using if you want to trade with Icons successfully, to access this page is very simple.
Once you are on the player price page, click on the button that says 'Market Sales History' as shown below.
Once on the Market Sales History page, you can filter by console and then either via Live prices (Covering the past month) or Daily (which shows the average sale price per day).
The reason why this is better to look at when trying to work out buy/sell prices is because the live prices only shows you what cards are currently listed for and not the price that they will sell for.
If the three lowest price cards expire, don't sell and aren't relisted, the cheapest on the market is 87,500. Even though the lowest price on the market is 87,500 it doesn't mean that the card will sell at this price.
Looking at the above there were 3 sales between 83 and 84.5k coins, this would therefore be a good price to list cards at. As you can see the fluctuations are between 65k and 85k in terms of sales price.
The reason why you should start with a few cards rather than all is so that you can start to learn the prices, memorising them will allow you to buy a card without having to check if a price is favourable (by this time it is likely the card has sold).
A Few Important Tips
Tax
Due to the cost of some icons, the 5% tax can be a very large amount, you will need to know how much this is in coins.
You can use the FUTBIN tax calculator for that its the easy way to get a fast answer !This is usually really important with the high end expensive icons. For example if you list an Icon for 5 million coins and it sells, you will need to buy for less than 4.75 million coins or you will actually lose coins.
If You Are Not Sure, Do Not Buy!
Unlike paying 3,000 coins too many for a ToTW card, buying Icons can cause massive losses. This is one of the most important things to remember when you start Icon trading, always double check if you are not sure by using the methods above.
It is much better to double check and miss an opportunity than to panic buy and lose a million coins!
Overnight Selling
Icon cards usually rise overnight (If using GMT/CET). The reason for this is that the players base is mainly based in Europe, therefore the supply of cards overnight is much lower, this means that fluctuations are more likely to happen.
Pro Tip: To take advantage of this tip, make sure you list these cards for 6 hours before you go to bed, you can usually increase the price a little to allow for greater profit margins.
DO NOT Confuse Cards – Usually the rule is Baby Icons are the cheapest and the Moment Icon version of each card is the most expensive, however sometimes this is not the case. For example Base and Mid Icon Larsson.
Most Mid Icons are more expensive than the Base Version, however Base Icon Larsson costs more than the Mid due having better stats. Be careful not to confuse or assume that the higher rated versions of the card will always be more expensive!
The Best Time To Look For Deals
Deals can pop up on the market at any time, the best time to find them though is during times of panic selling and massive supply. When people are buying packs with FIFA points, some will prefer to get a quick sale and a decent coin injection, therefore allowing for a healthy undercut.
Fresh Icons
If you happen to pick up a FRESH Icon card, you can sell it for a premium, a large amount of the player base
like cards that haven't played any games yet and will therefore pay more for it.
Pro Tip: This normally works best with attackers!
Sometimes It Is Better To Cut Your Losses
If you have held a card for a while and it just isn't selling (Use it as a learning opportunity and work out why) Take a hit on the price and sell.
You will be able to recoup the loss by flipping a few icons and if you continue to hold you will miss out on other potential buying opportunities.
There is always a chance that cards could rebound, if you need a second opinion, it can be discussed with one of our traders in the Levelled Up Discord.
Icon Filters
Filters change on a daily basis due to price fluctuations, so it is almost impossible to advise on specific filters in a guide. We can give advice on what ways to create these filters though.
The 59th minute is where you will get the highest chance of a deal, most of these may only be available for a few seconds and therefore if it takes you too long to get to the 59th minute you will need to refine your filter slightly.
Filtering by nation is one way to reduce the amount of Icons listed, the best nationalities to use for filters are those with many players for around the same price. Countries like France, Argentina and the Netherlands are very good options.
The reason you want to do this is because it allows you to pick up another player's card if listed for lower than usual.
For example below, if you were to have a filter with the Max Buy Now price as 125,000, you may still find a French player worth more than that and therefore if an 87 rated Claude Makélélé was listed for 125k you would be able to make an easy profit.
Patience Is Key
Do not expect to become one of the best Icon sellers overnight, at first it may take some time to identify good purchases. If you lack patience, Icon selling may not be the right method for you. However if you devote a bit of time, this could make you millions.
