Not all kick starters have the same volume of packs - I went GK + Pro so I have more than enough - plenty of people at lower tiers may find themselves hungry for more packs to open or draft.

The main reason I foresee a low initial price is simply a low level of platinum buy in. many people who don't want to put any more money in vs the population willing to drop some $$$.

Anyone who crunches the numbers may hold back their supply in favour of waiting it out but release is likely to be a buyers market until we have a new influx of players. Though people like Typhon willing to play the long game may keep the market from bottoming out.

I mean there's no doubt that the market will be flooded initially because of the KS packs - in my opinion anyway and I agree that the market for the second set will tighten up real fast as there isn't this glut of packs right out of the gate.

Then after that it kind of depends on what people do with the packs - if they're all opened and we're left with all single cards, the market for singles goes down and the market for packs goes right back up to $2

It might not be so flooded at release now that they gave the booster pack treasure chests event items. I probably will never sell a booster and will horde them until an event now...

There are almost 2 million boosters generated by the Kickstarter. Of those, almost half a million are to players at Champion or lower. Probably not many of those players will be selling boosters as they really don't have that much of a stockpile (maybe some Champions might sell a little).

That still leaves almost a million and a half boosters among King and above. Many of those players could be willing to sell off boosters if it's worth it to do so. Players pledging those levels are far more likely to be serious players and more likely to be able to (or think they are able to) go infinite. So most aren't going to feel the need to stockpile boosters. There's around 300K boosters being held by players with >250 boosters.

Sorry - what does "go infinite" mean?

The idea of supporting yourself without having to spend any more real money.

(Unless I've horribly misunderstood it.)

That's correct. Winning enough prizes to fund entry in your next competition. I.e. playing PvP for "free" by selling off enough prizes to keep playing. One example would be winning 3 packs in a draft, and selling off cards that you opened during that draft for $1 in platinum, and rolling all that into your next draft, and just keep doing that. It's quite hard to do, but should be possible in constructed or 8-4 drafts for very good players.

Never having to spend money to keep playing competitively.

Well now this has totally been brought into question now that we're unsure if you're going to be able to sell things to other players for platinum...

I can see why, though most likely we will be able to sell for platinum. The problem is which cards will be sold for platinum or gold the in-game currency. Unless there is a dual method of accepting gold and platinum, most people would want to sell in platinum. I don't expect PvP cards to be sold in gold, unless it's a crappy common. PvE cards are most likely all going to be in gold, then the market is divide into PvE-gold, PvP-platinum. Most likely people will be whining saying that you can't get any of the good PvP single cards for gold and stuff like that. Thought it's just a theory, but understandable theory. If you spend money, you also want to make money.

I was under the impression that you could set both a gold and a platinum price for any items you put up on the AH, so people could use either, but maybe I dreamed that up...

That'd be a good balance at least...I really hope you're able to get PvP cards with gold - some of them at least...

The question is why would you put a PvP card up in the auction house for gold? You need to spend money to get those cards, and gold is just grinding in PvE. You could us PvP cards in both PvP and PvE, but PvE for PvE only. You can also only get PvP cards from PvP. Commons in PvP I expect to sell for gold, rares and above platinum or if you're lucky, huge amounts of gold. Like I said, if you spend money, you want to make money.

The only reason would be if there is some market for Gold - Platinum conversion and you were able to get comparatively more gold for your card.

In D3 you couldn't access the real money auction house unless you have a payment method setup (credit card/paypal). You also needed one of their RSA tokens (credit card) or SMS verification (paypal). For these reasons a lot of players did not access the RMAC and while the best gear tended to be in real money there was plenty on the gold side.

So F2P players may not have access to platinum auction house unless they submit a credit card which many won't do.