(Approved by Raven)
The Official Steam Trading Card Thread
FAQ
What are Steam trading cards really?
Well, it's pretty simple. Each game has a set of cards (from 5 to 15 cards per set) you can collect, and if you collect a full set you can craft a badge. Crafting a badge will net you 100 XP and will also drop an emoticon and a profile background. The badge is yours to keep, and you can feature it on your profile page for e-peen points :-3
But how do I get trading cards?
Each game has a certain amount of allocated free card drops, equal to about half of a set, which you get simply by playing the game. Other then that, there are three ways to get trading cards. a) you can buy them on the Steam marketplace, b) you can trade (with both friends and strangers) and c) receive booster packs.
Booster packs, what's that?
A booster pack is just a pack containing 3 trading cards. When you have received all of your allocated card drops for a game, you become eligible for a booster pack for said game. A booster pack is given out when a badge for that game is created. You are only eligible for booster packs if you have been online in the last 7 days, so make sure you log onto Steam often to remain eligible for booster pack drops! You can also get booster packs by breaking down cards into so called gems and then turn the gems into booster packs, but I strongly reccomend against this, because you'll destroy cards and other items that have a far higher value than what the cards you'll get in the booster pack will be worth. You are better off just buying the cards from the marketplace in that case.
Great, but why should I care about trading cards to begin with?
Of course, you are free to ignore them, but trading and buying/selling cards to complete sets can be fun in and of itself. In addition, even if you don't want to craft any badges or anything like that, you can always just sell your cards on the market and get back a few cents which you can use to purchase other games. If you get booster pack drops relatively often (which, I'll admit, takes a huge library of eligible games, and also a relatively high Steam level), you can even get enough money from that to purchase a few games per year (doesn't sound like much, but free stuff without any effort is always welcome, right?).
