AL #92: Should You Buy the Pudgy Vibes Card Game?
It's a bull market for Trading Card Games. Is Pudgy IP worth chasing in cardboard form?
Kain mentioned the recently launched Pudgy Vibes Trading Card Game in his recent post It’s still a bull market relax:
While we typically study companies from the point of view of their Founders, I thought it would be more fun to look at Vibes TCG from a collector angle – should you buy it?
Author's Note: My point of reference is that I've spent way too much time studying Magic’s first edition set “Alpha” (I have an out of print encyclopedia featuring all the cards, I'm listening to a 10+ hour set review podcast, I follow the Alpha 40 metagame closely and bought later editions of many of the cards).
Quite simply I have much more to say about Vibes from the collector's perspective as opposed to the game designer’s or producer's perspective.
This should be pretty interesting for anyone into collectibles as I will be exploring ways TCG collectors analyze collectibles with data.
We will also briefly discuss what it would take for a crypto-native TCG to succeed.
A Closer Look at Vibes TCG
Here's everything you need to know about the 1st edition “Enter The Huddle”.
Vibes TCG is a 2-player TCG game with a both physical and digital version of the game.
Players build 52-card decks and compete for who can reach a 15-card game state first at the start of their turn.
The physical version is already collectible. Here’s an example card courtesy of grading institution PSA:
There are 2 products:
Boxes of 24 packs each with 12 cards ($150 each)
A set of two duel decks for beginners ($29-44 each)
After doing some quick math:
There are 2000 sketch cards total
About 15,000 boxes total
And 4,320,000 cards total (outside of the beginner duel decks).
This is a pretty small print run (the first Alpha print run for Magic the Gathering is thought to have 2.6M cards and it sold out very quickly.)
The ratio of base cards : foils : sketches is 1 : 10 : 1000.
We could try to guess the ratios of commons to uncommons and so on as well, trading cards are typically printed on sheets with standardized ratios, it’s likely Vibes have had to use alternating sheets so there are too many possibilities to explore.
Let me know, however, if you figure it out.
What makes cards valuable beyond scarcity
For collectors, scarcity is enticing—but only if paired with compelling reasons to care. That brings us to the broader pillars of TCG collectibility.
IP: While Pudgy is not the most well-known IP in the world, it’s a powerhouse in crypto. This is a significant advantage compared to building a TCG based on completely new IP and pretty essential for a card game that doesn't aim to be very competitive.
However, it would be a mistake to tie the value of the cards to the success of the brand overall. There have been many card games from very successful IPs like the old Star Wars TCG released in 1995 that failed despite significant initial interest.Playability: It’s often said that collectors collect “playability”. Even cards that are valued based on nostalgic reasons tend to be nostalgic because they were very good and rare back in the day when they were played. Magic's “Power 9” cards are still some of the most expensive in the entire game and that is simply because they are still useful in Vintage, a format that essentially allows players to compete with any card ever printed and had a very limited print run.
For me, Vibes strikes a good balance between being accessible to kids (it doesn’t need land resource management that Magic requires, there is no life tracking, car effects are pretty simple, etc.) while also having potential for unbounded complexity. The game does have “the stack” which is a way to resolve multiple spells cast in response to each other. Having the stack effectively means that cards and game states could get much more complex over time if needed to keep the game fresh for players.
However, it’s not clear that a healthy competitive scene has emerged yet at least in cardboard form. It's not even clear that there are sufficiently many players in many communities to sustain local metas.
At another level, playability creates a floor on value. If you own a box of Vibes, even if the price crashes you could build a few decks to play on a family game night.
Art: Art can be really important. Sorcery TCG is an example of a TCG that is trying to create highly collectible cards that are hand-painted.
While the Pudgy Penguins art is appealing to the Pudgy Penguins community it could be seen as somewhat repetitive compared to something like the Pokemon TCG which has thousands of different creatures.
Demand Dynamics: Certain cards may see what’s known as a “buyout” where individual buyers try to corner much of the supply to increase prices.
Without a deeper analysis of the singles market on eBay it’s hard to say that buyouts are happening but it’s fairly possible especially at the level of sketches which already go for $0.5M for a full set.Digital Game. It's helpful that Vibes launches with a digital version, allowing different people in the Pudgy Penguins community to play together more easily before local playgroups may form.
However, the game is pretty basic and the UX is not very strong. Notably, there have been many examples of healthy IPs launching digital card games and shutting them down like the Witcher’s Gwent.
If you do like how these factors stack up for Vibes, the next step is to figure out what to buy.
Collect boxes if you wish to speculate
I expect people will be collecting Vibes cards as a crypto-related novelty.
There are a couple off ways you could collect Vibes:
Just buy a box of 1st edition and both duel decks and keep them sealed
Complete a base, foil or sketch set of all the 1st edition cards
Collect what’s know as a “global set”, every version of a card available
Collect all cards of a given theme
Collect a “playset” of all cards, meaning 4 of each card in any variant that would technically allow you to build any viable 52-card deck
But by far the easiest way to make a profit in TCGs is to simply buy the sealed product (a box) and wait.
Buying singles (individual cards) require predicting the collectibility of different cards and that will heavily depend on the power level of future cards, the evolution of the competitive scene and so on.
There is a “gambling” premium associated with unopened sealed product so if you want to maximize profit the best way to do it is avoid opening your boxes. It’s also more operationally efficient since you don't have to sort cards, maintain their grade or run individual auctions.
What’s the upside?
If a box costs you $150, what can 1st edition boxes sell for down the road?
Pokemon and Magic the Gathering 1st edition boxes sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yu-Gi-Oh “Vol 1” individual boosters are sold for north of $100 on eBay.
For more recent card games with a larger print run, the price differential is smaller.
Disney’s Lorcana “First Chapter” was notoriously overprinted and boxes go for only about $350 eBay (MSRP $144) despite the playability and initial success of the game (over 1 billion cards have been purchased already).
So if you plan to get a single box, don't expect to turn even $1000 in profit any time soon.
Where should Vibes go next
I want to mention a couple of ways the game’s longevity could be increased:
Start to develop a competitive scene for the game, potentially rooted in crypto conferences or other important events. Try to get crypto influencers involved and do this in person. Make it a show, make it fun and about the people. Think n00bcon championship but for Vibes.
Expand the lore and the art. The TCG should be an opportunity to introduce new characters and settings and keep evolving the friendly & familiar art style to make cards even more desirable to those new to the IP.
Identify the target customer. The average Pudgy community member likely won't become a die hard addict of the game. Whether it’s kids or certain types of community members, it’s important to think about who will play & collect this game in the long run. The creators should work hard to make this audience as happy as possible through content, events, lore and more.
If you’re a die-hard Pudgy Penguins fan or love the thrill of chasing sketch cards, a 1st edition box of Vibes TCG might be worth it.
Of course, it’s not a strategic investment. The lack of competitive play, narrow artistic appeal, and mainly crypto audience that tends to move on to the new & shiny thing makes this a high-risk collectible.
There are probably better ways to speculate on cardboard.
But for those looking to get their families into TCGs or wanting to celebrate the Pudgy community, it is a surprisingly well-designed game that won't disappoint.