ABFutRewards day bidding: buying FUT cards when the market floods
Why prices drop on Rivals and Squad Battles reward days, what to buy during the dip, and how to sell it back on Thursday.
FUT prices are not random. They follow the rewards calendar, because rewards are when tens of thousands of packs are opened within a few hours. Everything that comes out of those packs and is not wanted goes straight onto the transfer market, and the market cannot absorb it that fast.
The weekly rhythm
- Thursday morning (UK time): Division Rivals rewards. The biggest supply shock of the week. Prices sag for a few hours.
- Sunday morning: Squad Battles rewards. The same thing on a smaller scale.
- Thursday afternoon and evening: the buy-back. Everyone now has coins from selling their rewards, and they spend them upgrading their squad. Prices come back.
That gap between the morning dump and the afternoon spending is the trade.
What to buy in the dip
- Fodder, 83 to 88 rated. The cards SBCs eat. Demand for these never stops, and reward day is when they are cheapest.
- Duplicate golds people cannot use. Popular league cards that were pack filler for someone else.
- Anything you already track. A card whose normal price you know is a card whose dip you can recognise; a card you have never watched is a guess.
The Thursday flip
The mirror-image trade is to buy on Tuesday or Wednesday, when the market is quiet and nobody has coins, then list on Thursday when everyone does. It needs patience and coins sitting idle for two days, but it works on exactly the same mechanism: supply high and demand low, then demand high.
Running it in ABFut
- Set the filters the night before and start the scan in the morning. The window is hours, not days.
- Use bid, not buy-now. During a flood, auctions end below buy-now because there are more sellers than watchers.
- Turn on hands-free scanning so the scan keeps running while your phone is in your pocket — reward mornings are exactly when you do not want to sit holding the screen.
- Set the sell price to the card's normal price, not the reward-morning price. The price graph in the Market tab is where you read that number.
What can go wrong
A tradeable pack promo in the store changes everything: if EA sells packs whose contents can be sold, the flood lasts days instead of hours and the recovery may never come that week. Locked, untradeable packs do not have that effect. Check the store before you commit a large part of your coins.
ABFut automates searching, bidding and listing at prices you choose. It does not predict the market and it does not promise profit.
Questions people ask
When do FUT prices drop each week?
On reward days. Division Rivals rewards arrive Thursday morning UK time and Squad Battles rewards on Sunday morning; both flood the transfer market with pack contents and push prices down for a few hours before they recover.
What is a Thursday flip in FUT?
Buying cards on Tuesday or Wednesday when the market is quiet and coins are scarce, then selling them on Thursday when players receive Rivals rewards and spend the coins upgrading their squads.
What should I buy on rewards day?
Fodder rated roughly 83 to 88, which SBCs consume constantly, and duplicate gold cards from popular leagues. Buy by auction rather than buy-now, and set your sell price from the card's normal price rather than the reward-morning price.
Why did prices not recover after rewards?
Usually because there is a tradeable pack promo running in the store. Packs whose contents can be sold keep supply high for days. Packs that are untradeable do not have that effect.