For Sale

20th July 2021

I'm in Woking at the Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

The second and final game of the evening was For Sale; time for some property flipping and stressful auctioning action.

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What's in a game?
For Sale is a card game and comes with 2 types of cards.

• Property cards: There are 30 property cards, unsurprisingly numbered from 1-30.
• Currency cards: There are also 30 currency cards, these sort of represent the money in the game's property market and are worth from $2,000 to $15,000, increasing in increments of $1,000 with 2 of each, along with 2 cards worth $0.
• Coins: Standard card tokens that represent $1,000 or $2,000

It's no surprise that quality of the the cards and coin tokens are pretty standard and as you'd expect them.
Artwork on the property cards is pretty good, colourfully depicting 30 different properties ranging from a lowly cardboard box for the 1 card to an orbiting space station for the 30 card. The currency cards all identically depict cheques of various values
​There's not much else to say here.

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How's it play?
Setup

• ​Shuffle the property cards into a face-down deck, depending on the number of players, some cards will need to be blindly discarded.
• Shuffle the currency deck into a face-down deck, as with property cards, an identical number of currency will need to be blindly discarded.
• Dole out coins to each player, the exact amount will also depend on the number of players.

On to play
For Sale is played over 2 phases, in the 1st, players use their money to buy properties and in the 2nd, they use these to get currency cards, essentially flipping the properties for profit.
Phase 1: Buying properties.

• From the property deck, draw a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up in the playing area.
• Players now bid on these properties in an open auction, although players should keep the number of coins they possess secret from other players.
  The starting player begins with an opening bid of their choice.
  Players that follow must put in a higher bid or pass.
  When a player passes, half of the money they bid (Rounded down.) is returned to them and they acquire the lowest valued card from the currently available selection.
  This bidding and passing continues until only one player remains, who pays their full bid for the last card - which will naturally be the highest valued property.
  Now deal another set of cards and start the bidding again.
  ​This continues until all the property cards have been acquired.

That's it for phase 1.
Phase 2: Flipping those properties.

• From the currency deck, deal a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up into the playing area. I guess these cards sort of represent the buyer's demand for properties and the money they're willing to shell out on them.
  Players now bid in order to sell their properties to these buyers, however, this takes the form of a blind auction. Each player now chooses a property from those they acquired in phase 1 and plays it face-down.
  All properties are simultaneously revealed. The highest valued property will acquire the highest valued currency card for its player, i.e. the nicest property attracts the richest buyer. The 2nd highest valued property acquires the 2nd highest valued currency card and so on until all the currency cards have been acquired.
  Deal another set of cards and continue blind-bidding on them until all currency cards have been acquired.

That's both phases done.

Endgame
​Players tally the values of all the currency cards they acquired and any coins that were unspent from phase 1.
Highest score wins.

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Overall
​For Sale is a simple game to play, it features two types of auctioning that're easy to understand, however there are a couple of curveballs that that affect the game's dynamic.
Firstly in phase 1; which is an open auction, there's the rule that states when a player passes, they only get half their bid back and the lowest valued card. It means the classic play of trying to run up someone else's bid is a risky proposition, you may well end up running yourself up for a very low value card as well. Even the act of initially bidding may cost a player more than they want to spend, it's something player's need to think about.
All the property cards drawn have to be acquired by players and it may not seem like it, but sometimes a lower valued card can end up generating more profit. Why? Because the value of a card does not necessarily dictate its worth.

This brings me to phase 2; the blind auction. This is where player's sell their properties to get profit, however the profits that players can potentially generate will contextually change from round to round and depends on the currency cards drawn. No matter how much you paid for a property card, when you use it, it will only generate income according to the currently drawn currency cards.
This is where players have to start watching what other players will do and know when to push high or low valued property.

If a $15,000 currency card had been drawn and you know another player has the 30 point property card, you know they're going to play it - it guarantees them the $15,000 card, so is it a good time for you to use a high value card? On the other hand, the 2nd highest might be worth it, or it might be not.
Conversely; in some circumstances, the lowest value cards can have great worth, if all the currency cards drawn are high value, it can be a good time to play lower value cards, remember it's all about profit not value.
A 30 point property card that costs $8,000 and nets a $15,000 currency card, generates a profit of $7,000.
If 1 point property that cost 0 because somebody passed and took it for free is used to get a $8,000 property, then that's $8,000 profit!
This example is extreme and doesn't realistically occur too often, but the principal is sound; if demand is high (Multiple high value currency cards are drawn.), then it's time to push your lowest value properties for maximum profit; capitalism at its finest!
Conversely, if there are fewer high value currency cards out there, playing a high value property at the right time will outbid other players and score the maximum profit.

All this makes For Sale a very situational, essentially contextually-driven game about managing the game's inherent unpredictability and adapting when it's called for. It becomes about not only knowing when to play which cards, but also watching what properties other players have and trying to predict their strategies, which can profoundly effect yours.

I have love/hate relationship with auction games, the unpredictably always worries me and For Sale is more unpredictable than most in my opinion.
Even so, it's an enjoyable game and definitely worth a try, if you're a fan of auction games, you should really try it.