I personally collect every card from every game I can and sell them to save a little money on games I buy. It seems more valuable than any gamestop rewards card or whatever else is out there. collectors can collect and scrimpers and savers can scrimp and save. Seems win win to me.

I've bought and sold a bunch during the wintersale, I ended up crafting a bunch of badges and still made a bit of money so I guess it's ok.

The only thing I don't like is that Valve know there are people out there who will buy every game just for these cards. When I think of that it seems a little sleazy, and I know I should blame the person for making silly decisions like that, but I can't help place some blame on Valve because they know full well they are 'exploiting' those people. Still, it's all optional and the ability to make at least some money is better than nothing. It'd be cool if they had more rare drops like DotA or CS:GO, but then that would probably get more people to make more bad choices.

I spent probably like $10-15 buying a bunch when they first came out. In hindsight that's probably one of the stupider things I've done in my life.

I wish the way booster packs were handled differently. Or how you get cards after getting all the initial drops from a game.

I've bought a handful of 20 dollar games and even more on sale games due to all the cards I sell, so I love them based on that, I also find it fun to search for random cards and see how much people are selling them for on average, and every once and a while you'll see someone selling one of their cards for half the price of the average, so I buy that person card then put it back on sale for the average price and make a profit.
But I have zero interest in them otherwise. But to each their own if people feel they are worth collecting.

I've crafted 3-4 badges at first for the fun of it and see what it was all about, then made the conscious decision to either go with crafting and trading, or sell it all. I've sided with selling, and am quite happy to take the money and run. I'm not going to disparage those who craft as they are necessary for me to sell, and we are necessary for them to craft.

I've made about $40 off of them and spent about $5 so I could have a stupid level 5 Saints Row The Third badge on my page. I suppose I like them for the reason alone that I can sell them off, but there are easily ways I would enjoy them more. Though they would be near valueless if they changed it to work like this, I'd much prefer that I either got an unlimited number of cards per game or that the cards were tied to achievements (in the latter they'd pretty much have to take away the badge levels). Not being able to craft a badge without spending any money instantly sucked any of the fun out of it for me, so selling them and either getting discounts on games or free games was the way I went. I don't dislike them, but in my eyes, they basically just exist for me to sell.

I've largely forgotten that they even exist.

I think its pretty dumb. I don't even pay attention to it.

It's great, its basically free steam money.

I made a couple of badges initially but I don't actively try to anymore. I'm just disappointed they didn't turn it into some kind of card battle game like the one in Rage.

I think they are pointless but I sell all mine and made about 25 dollars in total so its great for that. The cards themselves are stupid and fill no purpose to me, you get a little badge on your profile and a jpg to put on your background.

hmmmm, I'm kinda mixed on them. The whole sell button, the graphic showing you how the market works, and the market place are really well implemented. I made about 15 bucks off of duplicates, but I'm at level 23 and really all of this is to level up your steam community profile.... which steam community itself is already kinda...... merple purple. It's uhhh..... hard to describe. I mean I don't know why I'm leveling up my badges to just get new slots in my profile to show off my silly fan art of TF2 for the weird TF2 art community that I don't take serious. I mean I love the whole process of crafting a badge, but really don't care for steam community itself, I'm not going to read a community member's Metal Gear Rising Combo list.

The cards are fun to collect but illustrate how odd Steam Community really is.

@cale said:

Ironically, that isn't happening at all. Or like, maybe a couple people are doing it, but not many. Counterintuitively, you don't actually need to own a game to have the badge for it. If you just want all the badges, buying, say 8 trading cards at 25 cents a piece from the Steam Community Marketplace is only $2. That's a badge (well, it varies, but many badges require 8 cards). Want to get that badge 4 more times, resulting in a max level badge (level 5)? That's about $10 total.

So yeah, Valve is fleecing these OCD collectors for money, but getting a max level badge probably only costs $10-$15 per game. Which is much cheaper than buying that game if the game costs $20 or more. Granted, many of the OCD collectors are also the types with enough disposable income to have over a thousand Steam games anyway, but still, I don't think they're buying them for the cards. Anyway, this guy:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/sneepeur09

He has 528 badges, but only 396 games. Clearly has a ton of badges for games he has neither played nor even bought.

Anyway, for myself, I do a bunch of trading during the big Steam Sales (since crafting a badge during that time gets you a trading card, instead of a shitty coupon for some game you don't want) and craft a bunch of badges then, but otherwise ignore trading cards most of the time. I'm content to just make a bunch of level 1 badges, and occasionally get boosters, and that's that.

@bisonhero: I only realized after posting you could get the cards for games you don't own. I guess it's not as devious as I imagined.

If dumb people buying stupid virtual cards that do nothing allow me to save a few bucks on games, I'm all for it.

I've made around 23$ with them, they're fantastic!

you only need to own the game to get free drops. you can just buy whatever cards you want though.

I like it when I find a rare one because then I can sell it for like 2 dollars.

SO FAR I don't care for them, this thread did remind me to sell them which didn't make me much, but every bit helps!

Sold pretty much every one I had during the last sale. Got like $8-10 or so in total. Bought that Paper Sorcerer game with it after it showed up on UPF but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Got me a few dollars off Jazzpunk too.

I've made a few dollars off them so I can't complain. Getting a small discount on a game is cool with me.

They're incredibly dumb, but if people wanna keep tossing me a few cents here and there for them that's cool I guess.

I don't mind them. They got me Far Cry 3 Deluxe pack and Pinball Arcade Pro table for free.

I hope I get more cards, so I can get more stuff for free.

I don't mind their existence, but I wish Steam would abandon the pretense that it's for Trading. They are a commodity, and the marketplace needs to stop acting like anyone cares who they are buying and selling to. Buying a Sale card is a nightmare. any card posted on the first page of results is sold before you can try for it. Just let people say what they would pay for X numbers of cards, and let the marketplace act on that.

I am a fan of the dumb chat emoticons you can get from the system. Like the poop from The Binding of Isaac.

I've made $0.86 playing video games, it's awesome.

I love 'em. They scratch my "Ooh, a random thing drop!" itch, and they get me some extra money for Steam sales because I care not for badges or emoticons. I think I've gotten four or five games with card money already.

I only crafted a handful of badges and have little desire to keep crafting new ones. I've sold most of the cards I've collected and made a decent $10-$15 so thanks to all the suckers out there.

I like them; I've made over $85 from Steam cards so far.

I started out collecting them, selling any duplicates and only buying cards for games (or in the case of Indie Game: The Movie, a movie) I really liked to get the level 1 badge, but now I just sell them all.