The Steam Marketplace

*shudder*

The scene opens in a seedy backstreet, a valve hisses with steam, a jittery dropout approaches a shifty looking man in a trench coat. The twitching skinny looks like a university student, wearing jeans and a half life 3 t-shirt and is fervently clutching a Devil May Cry 5 "V" card. He utters, "Please sir, I'm collecting for a badge on a devil may cry game a really like... I bought it from you."
The man in the trenchcoat is unflinching, the light in the alley is dim and shadows flicker across his face, only his eyes are really visible, piercing yet soulless.
"I have two of these 'V' cards, I was hoping to trade it in for one of the cards that I don't have. Can you help me Mister Marketplace" pleaded this geeky student-looking man, stretching out the card before him.
Mr. Marketplace, reaches down and plucks the the card from his hands, in his gruffest poor-people east London accent he replies, "I might know someone, who might buy this for the average of £0.10, then I'll give you £0.08 for it!"
The pale geekier man, went paler still, "But if you take 20% that is not enough for another card..."
Mr. Marketplaces eyes lit up, "Maybe you wanna get rid of some of your other cards, make some cash to buy some more" leaning forward his silhouette hanging over the cowering geek, "or better yet, why don't you give me your money,  and you can buy as many of my pretty little picture cards as you want", breathing heavily, with bull-like snorting through his nose, "maybe if you are really good you can make some money!"

The steam marketplace is awful.

Most of the games you play will send you a nice little message every now-and-then with a notification you have earned a trading card for the game. What are these mystical cards? What do they do? Why do they exist?

On each game you have a chance to get cards, once you collect all of them you get a pack with "rewards" these rewards are rehashed promo artwork and icons for use in the steam application, but still compelling, nice to get a little extra to show some love for your faves. However there are some odd mechanics around it. You can only get roughly half the cards per game, so if a game has 10 cards attached to it, you will only ever be able to get 5 card drops from scratch, that is it. The remaining cards have to be acquired from the marketplace. Also little bit of insult to injury, that is 5 card "drops" therefore you can get the same card to drop multiple times.

The actual process of selling and buying these cards exists tucked away in the "Community" tab, where you are expected to engage with other "humans" to ask for and trade cards. Similar to that of ebay, or in my experience the WoW auction house.
1. General: WTB: Huniepop Cards

This is also where other in game commodities are sold:

Most of these are weapons or some kevlar armour, homestly this stuff makes it look like how i imagine the "dark-web" looks. Oh and for extra scumminess, as illustrated above Steam will skim off that 20% for themselves.

All that aside, as fans of the new Resident Evil 2 remake, I decided I wanted to spruce up my Steam to reflect that.
I promptly trash-sold all my half collected cards or doublers for games I have no desire to collect pack for (Thanks every jackbox game I own!) and then put up my request for the Resident evil cards I didn't have (undercutting the average because I am a total skinflint)

Eventually, after about a week I got my full set of 8 cards. 

But there is yet another layer of Random loot-cratey Gatchaness,  the rewards you get are also random, here is me hoping for a Police station background, and then finding out it is the least common one! (of course it is!)

Anyways as a little epilogue to my tale of sadness, I got the gas station... and 50% off a game I am sure I already detest, just from the name alone!

Love and falling into the trap,

Richie X