What are "Trading Cards" and what is the use of them ?

[Ton]

In my Steam inventory there are a number of Trading Cards, but it is not clear to me what I can do with them. I suppose that you can "trade" them, but what can I do with them myself ?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I am not a gamer, except for TPA of course.

 

[Bowflex]

I saw somebody post about trading cards and I was thinking the same thing. I don't have steam yet but I was looking to get it so it would probably benefit me to know some of these things. Wonder if it comes with the crappy gum, too!

 

[Xanija]

Steam Trading cards don't have real practical purpose. You can collect them, once you have all of a set, you can combine them, get some XP in Steam and get some background picture for your profile as well as a special chat icons. Oh, and you get a discount voucher for a game. Usually stuff that has been on sale already or doesn't sell a lot. Getting levels in Steam will enable a few more features for your profile and you can have a bigger friend list.

You can also receive booster packs for games and the chances to get them increase with every 10 levels.

All in all nothing really important, but if you like something like that, it's a nice feature. Of course you can trade cards with other players as well as you can buy/sell them on the steam market. Cards for TBA are currently worth about 70 ct.

 

[Biff]

Ask google,
http://steamcommunity.com/tradingcards/faq

took me less than 5 seconds .. just saying

 

[Deltaechoe]

Trading cards are for collectors, they're purely aesthetic and serve no real practical purpose beyond being a collectible. People do buy them in the marketplace and i've made about 20 or so USD selling a few things on the marketplace. It's not much money but it does buy me lunch or dinner every now and then.

 

[JPelter]

Trading cards are for collectors, they're purely aesthetic and serve no real practical purpose beyond being a collectible. People do buy them in the marketplace and i've made about 20 or so USD selling a few things on the marketplace. It's not much money but it does buy me lunch or dinner every now and then.

There are some very minor practical uses for the cards actually. Leveling up via crafting game badges from the cards will give you small increases to the friends list maximum amount, and a few new steam profile options. It's a very very minor thing though since most people will never come close to capping their friends list anyway.

 

[gypsyshred]

One thing you can do is sell them on the Steam market. TPA has some of the highest valued cards I've seen, you can get like a buck a pop from them.

 

[Retron]

After buying the season packs I had plenty of cards but not quite enough for a set. I bought the one card I was missing (having sold off my duplicates), created the badge and got a Star Trek background. I sold that for £6. Not bad for a minute's work!