Icon Flipping Guide

What is icon flipping?

Icon flipping is the most fun and effective flipping for me. When you already have millions of coins to trade with, you don’t want to see them just sitting on your account, and with icons you can move your coins better than with 50-200k special cards. 

Icons are effective to trade with because of their rarity. They are the rarest and most in demand meta cards all year long. This is the reason you see great fluctuations on them and they hold their prices better. Also, the daily content rarely hurts them (there are cases I’m gonna mention later), so it’s pretty safe to trade them daily.

The 59th minute

This is the beautiful place where I lived my life from January until March and flipped icons every single day. 

The idea of the 59th minute is to get at the first page of newly listed cards, that’s the place most deals can be found! You click next, next, next, next, next, all the way until you reach the page that has all the 59th minute listings. Basically, finding another 10-20k undercut on a 300k at a low point can turn into bigger profits once back at a peak! That’s why I love the 59th minute.

To make this the most efficient, you need to get to the 50th minute as fast as possible! In general you can say: Webapp > Companion app > Console

Console is the worst by far because of the menu lag. You only see prices individually, on Xbox you might be able to do 59th minute on console, but on Ps only with a really tight filter, like searching for fresh icons only inside a tight price range. But for the start of a new year, it should be doable until like January when we get a massive Icon supply through TOTY Pack openings. 

Companion app is way faster, but it’s really buggy and it takes time to buy the deal you found. I use it when I travel around but prefer the webapp much more! 

Webapp is the best. Its the fastest to get to the 59th minute, and you can buy the icon real quick.

Advantage compared to normal special flipping



Instead of searching cards one by one like with the normal flipping method, you can group the Icons together with the Icon League. That theoretically allows you to be able to flip all 100 Icons and each version of these with just 1 filter! That’s the magic behind Icon flipping, you have a bigger view on the market and can pick up deals faster. 

But 400 (or 200 Icons at the start of Fifa) are too many, so we use specific filters!

Icon Filters

  Under 500k Filter

I made probably 35 mill of my TP on icons last year, and I barely flipped an icon over 500k. When I started trading them, I started with icons between 150-350k, and I knew the buy price for almost every single one. Less taxes, less risks and higher ROI. Perfect for Icon beginner! You maybe see a few big deals on Gullit or Ronaldo but these are so rare that its not really worth looking for them. You can make more from consistent flips.

Basic Chemistry Style

That’s very effective on Thursday and also on promo weekends with Lightning Rounds! It basically shows you a higher % of the new packed cards/fresh cards as you don’t get any card with a chemistry style applied. Makes sniping easier and helps finding bigger undercuts! On top of that, fresh icons sell for a little bit because some people like clean records on the cards (my ranking for fresh Icon: Attackers > Midfielders > Defenders > Goalkeepers, you rarely get a high sell price for fresh GK Icons)

Position Filter - Defender/Midfielder/Attacker 

That’s the main filter I use. I just change the position and get to the 59th min way faster! My most used one filter: Min buy price 200k – Max buy price 400k and switch the position between midfielders and attackers.

59th Min Sniping Filter 

A filter many Icon trader know but don’t like to talk about. You set your max. bid at 150k-180k and the min. bin at 300-350k. This filter allows to find more crazy deals, especially during panic times. People with less trading knowledge like to list cards for min bid and then a massive undercut on the bin, this filter shows these faster! 

Basic first steps

Budget

I recommend starting with 1.5 mill at least and under <300k icons. Less tax, easier sells, and it’s safer, you can learn it pretty easier with these icons.

Patience

Icon flipping is not an easy thing to master and you have to be prepared to took some L-s in the learning process. You can minimize the L-s by paying attention to the day and current market points, also tracking the cards a lot, that will give you confidence! It’s a grind to master it, so you need to have the right mentality to it, you won’t make just bank without L-s!

Current market point

You always have to consider the current market for stuff like a new batch of Icon Swaps or start of a new promo! Weaver always writes icon part in the daily update, so you don’t have to read these on your own.

Tracking Prices 

I advise to start with the low budget ones, midfielders and attackers under 300k pick a couple that you like. Add the Icons to your transfer targets and see if they sell at the prices they are up, check every half hour or hour. Then you really know where they sell at! You can also watch the Futbin icon index, for example you see on Sunday the index is 66.5, then you wake up on Monday its 66.8, then you know you are good to go with your previous buy prices in general! 

Flipping between Monday and Wednesday

You can find deals all day, but if you don't have the time to look all day for a couple of minutes, icons are usually lower at 5-8pm UK time, you can find more deals then. On top, the risk between Monday to Wednesday is less than any other days, you can look for a WL sell off and get out at a high throughout the week. 

List high for Overnights

Due to Icons being so rare, the overnight sales can get really high! Don’t panic and list your cards at a low price, aim for the normal sell prices and you might get lucky!

Icons as Thursday Flip

As the year continues, Icons can also work as Thursday Flips. I wont recommend this for the first two or three months as the supply still overcomes the demand but after that you can see some results in good Thursday Flips with Icons. Especially if we get a situation like in Fifa 20 with Baby Icons going out of packs!

Thursday Rewards Dip

You can buy them from 8-10am uk time if you have leftover coins or something already sold overnight, icons have a slight dip, you can find 3-4 deals easily then they go high! 

Friday past 6pm 

Now, this is easily the most profitable flipping you can do imo, but there aren't always opportunities. When the first batch of headliners dropped, I bought 43 icons in 2 and a half hours, made 650k on them after tax. It was a new promo, people panicked a little and it was a really good team! 

A week ago, with the second batch of headliners, they were awful, and it was leaked, so there was 0 selloff when people saw there is 0 mid icon sbc, I picked up one deal, made 15k on it lol really good night.

With future stars, I didn't see panic before 6 like this since I trade icons so I was careful, but when I saw the team is not that great, I knew instantly I'm gonna go deep into flipping the icons. You don't need to know every icon in the game, I just know midfielders and attackers between 200-400k, but I memorized almost every single one buy prices for them.  (Reason)

When I bought the icons on Friday after 6pm, you don’t see the same fluctuations, there are crazy undercuts, I’m gonna show you 2 examples:

87 Gattuso was 288k by futbin, I picked up 2 for 260 and 265. 

Futbin shows he rose back to 303k, but I sold them for 305 and 310! I made 60k after tax in these 2 cards. Now let’s take a look at 88 Kluivert: 

Futbin shows the lowest he’s been was 230k, well I picked up 3 of them under 220, one for 200! I sold all of them over 250, another 60-70k on the 3 cards, they sold before I went to bed! 

Important to say here, as long as there's not content that makes them lose value, the rebound is very likely. People just love to panic and the buy back after 6pm is usually strong!

SBC Impact

Especially in the beginning of the game, good value SBCs can have an effect on meta cards. In the case of icons, they don’t seem to get hurt much by the new SBCs but its still happening. There are 2 perfect examples from last year:

Scream Pique killed many medium budget Icon CBs price and they haven’t rebounded that fast enough to make a good flip with them. The same happened with Overmars and Nedved when Moments Di Maria came out.

Icons are usually safer than any other cards in the game, but they aren’t 100% drop resistant sadly. If the new content is comparable with Icons, it can negatively impact the prices. 

Final thoughts

Icon flipping once understood, is imo the most effective and fun trading method in the game. I got addicted to it honestly. If you have any questions, you can @ me in the general chats, or just write me a DM so we can go through all of it and I’ll help you anyway I can!