is there any reason not to buy ****tons of gems, and use them to make booster packs, given that cards go for more than the gems do?
There's probably no reason not to do this while the market is still going the way it is.
Though, I think many other people will soon realize the same idea, and torpedo essentially every single game's card market. Or they'll realize that it's cheaper to just make the cards themselves rather than buy them off the market.
Wonder if Valve intended this. This is probably going to violently crash what little economy there was behind cards.
Though, I think the problem lies in why 1000 gems are going for 3 cents in the first place. Unless I'm mistaken, the best items are worth 100 gems and are 3 cents a piece? What's going on here?
Card and gem prices are showing nowhere near enough plasticity to present demand. Basically, gem prices haven't adjusted to the fact that you can buy loads of games, since everyone's unloading them at the lowest price, which is causing other people to unload at the lowest price since they think that's the only way they can successfully sell, which is basically keeping prices artificially low until the million-or-so sacks at $0.03 finally vanish.
About the only thing I can say is that this whole nonsense inspired me to finally go through my cards and finally offload them. Not that I had many, since I never bothered with cards or badges, but I've picked up a few thousand gems for cheaper than dirt (but seriously,
potting soil dirt can get awful expensive).