Is it common to buy or sell upgrade cards?

The most demanded? And the most expensive ones ?

I have no idea about this

No. Everything is fixed content, so FFG stuff has next to no secondary market.

The most expensive card would be C-3PO, which goes for around ~$30, when you can find it. There are many players that bought the Tantive but only ever use C-3PO and R2-D2 on a regular basis, so if somebody is going to break apart the Tantive, they're going to charge top dollar for the main attraction.

This is from someone that worked at a game store for 2 years. The X-Wing upgrade market is small, a few sellers on ebay and Team Covenant because FFG kinda already has the singles market cornered with their LCG model and makes it difficult to profit from splitting up their expansions. If you want a Predator card, well you can buy it from FFG (via a store) for $15. You might get a TIE Defender and some other upgrades you didn't necessarily want along with it, but you're guaranteed to get a Predator card.

As a retailer, I know that you (the customer) know that you can get the Predator card you want by buying the Defender expansion from me for $15, which I paid about $8 for. I also know that demand for the Predator upgrade far outweighs the demand for any other component of the Defender Expansion, including the ship itself, meaning that if I break it apart and sell it piece-by-piece, I will mostly only be selling Predator cards and nothing else. This would force me to charge pretty close to the cost of the expansion for the Predator card to not lose money, because opening the expansion, sorting the pieces and listing each piece is more expensive (time is money) then just hanging the thing on the wall and selling it as is. Why do all that work when I know players will just by the expansion to get the cards they want and that I can make a nice profit by just selling the expansion as it is?

Thanks Tvboy. Buy a 90$ ship to own.two cards. Juno bait, I.see

Thanks Tvboy. Buy a 90$ ship to own.two cards. Juno bait, I.see

Depends on what two cards. Unlike c3p0, there are 4 advanced titles and 4 atc in the raider, so you will likely be able to pick those up secondhand more easily I would think

No thanks. I will buy huge ships in 2016, after Armada when wave 2 hit the stores. But I will buy the Raider, not gold plated cards to solve a design failure

There's a Couple of trade groups on facebook depending on where you live.

There's usually cards for sale or trade there

Usually alternate art is the Biger market though.

Team covenant used to sell individual cards as well- not sure if they still do.

There is almost no secondary market for X-Wing cards especially if you compare it to the markets for things from random packaging. Tvboy does a great job explaining why as the cards are 'easy' to find and in most cases pretty reasonable.

If you think about how much does the secondary market charge for those extremely important cards/minis that are often seen in championship lists? I can recall an awful lot of them cost more than the random package price to get them would have assuming you were luck enough to pull the right piece. If you want a copy of Predator all you need to do is get the Defender expansion where if upgrades were assigned using a random method you would likely end up paying that same amount just for the card.

I'll give you that the huge ships, and even Aces packs, can throw things off when you NEED a card from them to make a ship effective but then those things usually include multiple copies. In the case of C-3PO and R2-D2 I hate to inform you but those are not ESSENTIAL to things although they can certainly be very nice to have; in many ways FFG is rewarding people who bought the CC with those cards. When the Raider comes out I can see one of two things happening: Either some of those Advanced Upgrades make it to a secondary market because a "standard" player will probably just use half of them to cover the Advanced he has and the new one he gets OR the popularity of the Advanced is going to increase a hundred times and they will become hard to find.

Yeah it's not like magic or dem pokkymons where you buy a few hundred boosters and part it out the list of high demand cards is short and no one's going to buy a falcon without the engine upgrade.

I sold $35 bucks of magic cards yesterday for cash. Happy. =)

Also got some .25cent uncommons for the decks i keep. Super happy.

I will note that for many of the more popular upgrade cards, FFG has put them in multiple packs. For instance:

Advance Sensors used to be Lambda only. Then the E-Wing included it.

PTL used to be A-Wing only. Then Imperial Aces had it.

Engine upgrade is being included in one of the Wave 7 ships.

Same with Predator.

Stealth Device? Was Slave 1. Now its in the M3-A kit as well.

I'm not sure if we should expect C3P0 to make it into other packs- I don't think we've seen unique crew with more than one ship. But I wouldn't be shocked by it, either. I can't think there are too many people who are willing to plunk down $90 for a CR-90 for 1 card who don't love the game enough to want the CR-90 on its own merits.

Check out ebay. There are a couple sellers that sell individual cards. Also, Team Covenant sells individual cards.

There is a small market for the reselling of upgrade cards. I think the primary reason for this is lack of demand. Everyone would like a C3PO card but almost everyone rather than buy it just proxies it. Proxy is what kills the secondary market.