Man buys Steam Deck by selling over 20,000 Steam trading cards

One man set out to buy a Steam Deck using only the money he got from selling Steam trading cards, making a public call to action for others to send him all their spare cards. And, after selling over 20,000 cards, he’s finally reached his goal.

Ringler, known mainly for being a competitive Smash player, put out a call to his audience on February 2, 2025: He wanted a Steam Deck, and he wanted to get his hands on one in an unusual way.

My goal is to buy a steam deck entirely with trading cards

— The Soverign Netizen (@Ringler_SSBM) February 3, 2025

This one small tweet sparked a massive movement, resulting in thousands of people sending Ringler unwanted trading cards from their inventory to help him reach his goal.

Man “crashes Steam’s economy” to fund a Steam Deck

For those unaware, most Steam trading cards are worth next to nothing. Finding a card that’s worth more than 10 cents is a rarity, with the vast majority of cards being worth 2-5 cents. To buy a Steam Deck, he’d need to sell a lot of trading cards.

It came to the point where Ringler had to automate the process of accepting trades and selling cards due to the sheer quantity of cards he received, with him, at one point, selling 5 cards a second.

In his last update, he had over 20,000 cards in his inventory.

LETS GOOOOO WE CROSSED THE PRICE FOR THE BASE MODEL
Heading to the gym for a bit (incline bench and zercher squats) but when I’m back I’ll be catching up with dms/thanking people
Steam makes trade history pretty easy so I can to have a big thank you post or something cooler pic.twitter.com/Pc2EW0DG3g

— The Soverign Netizen (@Ringler_SSBM) February 5, 2025

The process of automating and sorting through the tens of thousands of cards he was sent likely took a bigger time investment than a standard 9-to-5’s wage would have required. Nonetheless, Ringler pushed on to accomplish something no Steam user had managed before.

His account stopped working entirely at points, with the amount of trades and sales he was making overwhelming Steam’s backend. Ringler was eventually forced to slow down his automation and use a VPN to keep Steam from flagging his account.

But he got there eventually and earned over $650 from just selling Steam trading cards alone.

That’s not only enough to get a base Steam Deck, but a luxury 1TB storage OLED model. What started as Ringler just wanting to play Binding of Isaac in bed has turned into one of the most bizarre and overly complex crowdfunding stories in history.

He knows it too, as Ringler poked fun at just how ridiculous his methods were as the massive waves of trading cards kept coming in, joking that he was “crashing Steam’s economy.”

This campaign earned him over $600 in just 4 days, which is, oddly enough, more than his total winnings in almost 10 years of being a competitive Smash Bros. Melee player despite some strong tournament finishes.