Mobile games tend to obfuscate how much you are spending. It makes it easier to justify digital purchases when you aren’t quite sure of the actual cost. It’s why you will see many different in-game currencies that all exchange with each other at various rates. Today I’m going to break it all down for you so we can see how much a new card in Marvel Snap can cost.
Conversion Rate
In the scenario that you don’t have enough Tokens for a purchase, the game will direct you to a conversion of Gold to Tokens to cover the difference. 1 Collector’s Token equals 1.3 Gold. If you don’t have enough Gold, you get directed to the Gold offers from the bottom of the shop that has enough Gold needed.
Be careful of this though, because that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the cheapest offer to buy Gold. For example, if you needed 5000 Gold you’d be directed to buy the 8000 Gold offer for $99.99 instead of the cheaper option of buying both the $19.99 and $49.99 options.
Card Prices
Marvel Snap cards each have different price points depending on what Series they are from. Series 4 and 5 encompasses all the new releases in a season, so that’s where we will be focusing our attention today.
For simplicity, I listed the prices in USD but I recognize not everyone uses USD (myself included). The USD prices are calculated using the cheapest combination of offers to get you the amount of gold needed without too much surplus. For example, a Series 4 Card costs 3900 Gold but there is not an offer for 3900. There is one for 3850 though, which means you also need to also get the 300 offer.
The Season Pass
Let’s talk about how great a deal the Season Pass is relative to everything else in this game.
For $9.99 you get a Series 5 card. Not only is it a new card, but since it’s the feature card of the monthly Season Pass they tend to make sure it’s a good one. For the duration of the Season Pass, it is the only way to get this card. It only enters Series 5 proper when the next season begins, which jumps the price of the card up to 6000 Tokens or $99.99 in value.
In addition to the card you also get a bunch of currencies and cosmetics. The full list can be found in our Season Pass section of the website. Click here for a look at July’s Season Pass.
I want to take a second and focus on the currencies. 900 Gold and 300 Credits. The 900 Gold in particular is great when you take another look at the Gold offers in the shop. Dollar for dollar the Season Pass is heralded as the best deal in Snap, period. One of the most often repeated pieces of advice is that if you are only going to buy one thing in the game it should be the Season Pass. This still holds up today.
The Super Premium Season Pass
Marvel Snap’s newest deal is being met with concern and controversy. Let’s look at it in more detail and compare it to other offers.
Starting this season, the Super Premium Season Pass is getting an upgrade. I’ll forgive you for not knowing this already existed because it has not been an enticing deal before. The SPS Pass previously included 3 borders, a new super rare variant, and 10 bonus levels on the Season Pass. Many would agree, myself included, that this was not worth the $10.99 price tag. In an effort to make this better they are now substituting the variant for a brand new Series 4 card. If you get the SPS pass combined with the Season Pass right away it’s $20, but if you buy the Season Pass and wait to upgrade it’s $21.
I would optimistically call the reception of this, “mixed.” At the time of writing my post on X about this has 64 comments and they tend to be pretty evenly split on the subject. It’s a very small sample size, but it shows it isn’t a clear cut issue for many. You can check out the comments yourself here.
If we look at just the numbers, $10.99 for a new Series 4 card is a good deal relative to other pricing in Marvel Snap. A Series 4 card costs 3000 tokens, which equates to $54.98. When you look at it like that, it becomes easier to see why there would be people willing to jump in at that price point. That being said, It’s not a simple matter of pricing.
Free to Play
This is where all this analysis begins to get tricky. It would be fair to say the vast majority of people do not spend money on resources, but wait to accumulate them naturally through in-game free to play sources.
You get 3000 tokens from the credits you get from the Daily and Weekly Missions every week. Combine that with the daily 50, the Weekend Mission for owning the new card, and opening tokens on the Collection Track you can get close to 4000 a week. This allows players to get a new Series 5 card every two weeks, or a new Series 4 every week. With some careful planning, players can get any new release they need for their decks as it releases or shortly after.
Gold is scarce these days but there is still quite a bit of free to play gold to get each season. Between the Weekly Challenges, hitting rank 90, and the free levels of the season pass you get 1600 gold for free each season. Combine that with some light spending of the season pass and that number jumps up to 3100 gold! Most people use Gold for variants and cosmetics, but there is the occasional bundle that includes a Series 5 card that you might not otherwise own. Gold can be seen as a backup to tokens for card progression in that way.
With this consistent stream of free resources there aren’t many who need to spend money to buy more. Most players work with what they have to maintain their collection how they see fit. The issue that we are starting to run into is that Marvel Snap is releasing more cards than ever before, meaning your free to play resources are going to be used up faster if you are trying to get as many new cards as possible.
Final Thoughts
Adding a new card to the SPS Pass means that players who have gathered and saved their tokens feel like those tokens have been devalued, as they can’t use them to get a card they otherwise would have. The other half of that is that not every player has hundreds of thousands of tokens saved up and are now able to get a new card for a much cheaper price. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
Monetization in games is always a tricky subject. I know I personally enjoy Marvel Snap because I get to play a competitive card game as cheaply as possible at a very high level. I want that to continue.
I’m giving away a SEASON PASS! Come follow me on X and comment in the post OR comment down below answering any of these questions and you’ll be eligible for the giveaway.
- How many tokens do you have saved up right now?
- How many new cards do you typically get in a season?
- Do you buy the Season Pass and are you thinking about getting the SPS Pass now?
The deadline for this giveaway will be Friday July 11. I can’t wait to hear all your thoughts.