Set Up Your Bank Roll aka MUT Solos
Before you start working the Auction House (AH) you need a bankroll, and theres a couple of ways to go about this. Option one is to go out and buy packs/bundles, spend a couple of hundred dollars, and sell whatever cards you pull on the AH, but that costs money and were riding the No-Money Spent wagon all the way to a 99 overall squad.
This brings us to Option 2, grind solos. Its boring, you dont want to do it, but you have to start somewhere, and this is the best option if youre not going to reach into your own wallet. Its early in the Madden season, so if youre interested in getting into MUT as well as finding schemes for CCM, its not a bad option and its better than just hitting practice mode because the AI behaves differently in practice mode.
With that said, you also want to cheese the fuck out of the CPU, so our first goal is to find a cheap run play that works and eats clock. I recommend stretch plays, especially out of jumbo TE formations, spam the fuck out of it. Runs help you eat clock and get the objective done within reasonable time. When you start a solo make sure you have accelerated clock turned on, should be at 10 seconds. Youll fly through solos this way. The CPU loves hitting the flats, I suggest a heavy coverage, rush 3 and make sure to have hard flats with purples behind the flats, aka Mable coverage.
So how much money do you need? Well that depends
I once got sick of MUT, spent every single dime I had on an investment that went belly up, and had about 16k to my name. I got the urge to play again a few weeks later, worked the AH for a few weeks and I turned that 16k into about 2 million coins. I think it was easier to make coins that year because you couldnt check the AH for what a card was worth. EA decided to add a lookup feature in Madden 16. You go to your binder, highlight the card, and hit the L1 button to see what the card is going for on the AH. This limited the amount of snipes. A snipe is a card purchased at rock bottom prices. Folks were now able to get an idea of what the market rate was for a particular card without doing any leg work. That doesnt mean snipes were gone, there were just fewer.
Last season Smokey did some Captain Sets, these sets required limited 74 overall gold cards. He quickly realized what a pain they were to do. No one gives a shit about 74 overall cards, so in Madden 15 you could find these cards for 100-1000 coins, purchase them, and flip them for up to 100 times the purchase price. This was harder to do in 2016 because of the lookup function. That doesnt mean they were gone for good. I flipped at least a two dozens of these rare gold cards, bought at 100-2000 coins, and sold many for mid five figures. My man DJ Fluker, who netted me 300k after sniping two of his cards for about 2k total, was probably my biggest money maker early in MUT16. Unfortunately, these sets are no longer in 17.
So why am I bringing this up? Dont do sets, snipe collectibles for the sets.
Dont do the legends sets, learn what the market is charging for the Champ Bailey gold card, and pounce on him when some nimrod thinks the base Bailey card that goes into the set is some trash 80 overall gold card. Snipe Bailey, flip on the AH, and slowly use the proceeds to purchase Bailey outright. Thats the name of the game, we dont do sets unless we can make a profit on the set, and normally, if you can make a profit on the set, you may be able to make a bigger profit by selling individual pieces rather than the end product. You need to learn the market, learn what cards are going for. Two good sources are
http://www.muthead.com/ and
http://mutmanager.com/ . They keep good track of what cards are selling for, and the ebbs and flows of the market.
You still havent told us how much money we need?
Relax, Im getting there. Lets get some other basics out of the way first. Search filters are critical for sniping cards. We want to sort through various categories as fast as possible, and we want the cheapest price available. Intuition may tell you to search a particular category or set with Buy Now set from lowest to highest (selected by holding R2 + Square). Youd be extremely stupid to do this. But you told us we need to get the card as cheap as possible? Its fine to search with Buy Now set from lowest to highest if you are looking at one specific card/item, and nothing else. If youre looking for one specific card its fine. But lets just say youre looking for all WRs rated 90-95, early in the MUT season there may only by 5 WR with that rating. If you sort Buy It Now from low to high, you will only see the price of the least expensive WR, youre missing out on other snipes. A 95 overall WR may come on the block for 70k, that normally sells for 150k, but since you have Buy It Now set from low to high you will only see that shitty 90 overall WR that is going for 50k. You just missed a snipe. So how do you sort the AH? Were going to use the Newest option, sorted with the newest cards up top, and the older cards on the bottom. This is the best way to snipe a category that may contain several different items or players.
Back to the Bankroll
So now that we understand the basics, we can head out to the block and work the AH. A veteran can go out on the block with 50k and turn it into 150k in a couple of hours, but you dont want to go in with just 50k if youre new to the game, 80-100k is a better bet. Hell you can do well with 30k, but youll have more down time and may miss a snipe or two because your bankroll is tied up into a card on the block. Dont panic sell, understand the market prices, look up the card on MUThead, and then sell it. Remember theres a 10% tax on all sales, so understand your breakeven point. Dont invest 50k into a card that only sells for 57k, you made almost nothing and tied up your bankroll because you didnt factor in the tax.
But what do we snipe, we still dont know where to go?
Programs and packs go hand in hand. Every couple of days EA releases new packs, and bundles. Today they released Flashback packs, with some Flashback toppers. A topper is an individual pack that contains whatever EA wants it to contain. Today its two flashback items. A flashback player is a player that returns to his glory days, though Im not sure Nick Foles should be part of this group. Just goes to show you what a good coach Chip is! You need several collectibles and a badge to create a Flashback player. The packs that EA releases influences the market, you need to check the Store every day or so and see what packs are out, or you can check reddit/mut
So what happened to the market?
Well you had a flood of Flashback items on the AH, but EA also gave us a Solo Challenge that nets us a Flashback Badge. You cant create a Flashback Player without the Badge, and you cant buy the Badge. EA gave one out to everyone today. This Badge had everyone rushing to buy Collectibles to create players, so instead of a large supply of Flashback Collectibles on the Market you had the opposite. The market ate up all the supply, collectibles started to rise. That was a good profit opportunity if you got in early. This is how you work the AH, anticipate a change in the trend due to artificially created scenarios, EA can help you, and they can also fuck you. Just need to be on the right side of a trade.
So collectible prices shot up, Flashback Players must have gone up in Price!
Wrong. Take a look at one of the better receivers in the game, Keenan Allen.
http://www.muthead.com/17/players/prices/16013-keenan-allen/playstation-4/sales
Look at how the price just tanks. Before Flashbacks were out, he was about 80k, today he was down to as little as 60k. The collectibles to do the set went up, the players price went down. Snipe the collectibles, buy the player with proceeds, just like I said earlier. It will never fail you. Keep that in my mind when EA releases legend packs this weekend. Everyone loves Legend Packs, they contain the best players in the game for the most part.
Theres so much more to cover, but thats a good primer. If you have questions, I probably have answers.
Here are some snipes. Not my own.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenUltimateTeam/comments/4zjb2e/dez_snipe/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenUltimateTeam/comments/4zlknm/sniped_this_beast/
Also going to link to Ashwin's Quick Reddit Guide. Learned a lot from watching him stream, and then combined his ideas with investment approaches which I may get into at a later date. Truth be told ashwin's system is good if you have time, but it requires time. Investment style flipping leaves you vulnerable to an EA Ass fucking.