FIFA 10

UPDATE: The servers shut down for this game on December 6, 2011, so the traditional method of unlocking this achievement is now impossible. Fortunately, there is a non-cheating way to get the online achievements after the server shutdown, but it is cheap and has the potential to show up as acquired offline. Nonetheless, since it is an in-game glitch, it is not a bannable offense by Microsoft or TA. I won't go into detail about the process, I'll merely link to the thread that already describes it well:

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20...

Here is the original solution for preservation purposes. I believe a lot of these methods can still be used in FUT 2011, 2012, etc. although I've never played those.

This achievement requires that you open 500 packs from the FIFA Ultimate Team store, ranging anywhere from 500 coins to 7,500 coins each for normal packs, or even up to 15,000 coins each for some special limited offer packs. The bare minimum number of coins you will need (buying all standard bronze packs) is 250,000 (You don't need to START with 250k, as you will get many coins along the way for discarding cards, you will need a cumulative total of 250k by the 500th pack opened). You can gain coins by playing matches, or by smart trading in the marketplace. Playing matches only nets you a few hundred coins per match, however, so it is far more efficient to attempt to make coins by trades in the marketplace.

This can be an extremely fast and easy achievement if you have a lot of money on hand, either to 1) Buy coins off ebay (Currently going for around $6 for 50,000 coins at the time I write this (EDIT: Very hard to find coin auctions for this game now that FIFA 11 is out)) or 2) Buy packs with MSP (Packs range from 40-120 MSP, but generally the only type worth buying are the 120 MSP ones), hoping to get a good player, and auction him off in the FIFA marketplace for a lot of coins. There are some players in this game that can go for huge amounts of coins on the marketplace, ranging anywhere from 100,000-300,000 coins for currently available players, to over 1,000,000 coins for special editions of players that only are available in packs for a couple weeks, then are discontinued. Some people are lucky and get a great player worth a lot in only 30 premium gold packs, while others take hundreds before they get anything that great.

Another really fast way to get this is if you have a friend who plays this game who is already established. They likely have several hundred thousand coins, and if you can convince them to trade/give enough to you for the 500 packs for the achievement, by all means go for it. You might be able to convince them to do so in exchange for help boosting another game.

If you are like me, however, and refuse to spend money on something in a game that can be earned for free and don’t have a friend playing this already, don't fret. This is entirely achievable with a lot of time spent doing one or a combination of things to earn you coins. I couldn't find a half decent guide on earning coins easily anywhere, so all of the following tips are what I have personally found from experience.

UPDATE: Now that FIFA 11 is out and FUT11 has been announced for November, the FUT10 market has essentially died. this means prices have skyrocketed down, and it can be a lot harder to sell stuff than it used to be. All of the below methods still can work, but it just takes longer to sell things than it used to.

-The “Premium bronze pack” method
With this method, you buy bronze premium packs for 750 coins, and you can sell the contents to make your money back and more. You can sell bronze regular contracts for 150 each (set buy it now to 150. To get BIN to 150, you must first go up to 250, then hold down left until it lands on 150, before it hits the "-". Normally the lowest you can set it is 200, but if you use this method, you can get it down to 150 which is extremely helpful in getting cards sold fast). Rare bronze contracts go for 200, while rare morale cards I usually set at 200 base with BIN 350, and often they sell at the BIN price. All healing cards set at 300 base 350 BIN, except rare healing set at 350 base 450 BIN. Normal fitness cards are 150 base 200 BIN, while rare fitness cards you can set at 1250 Base 1750 BIN (fitness cards in general fluctuate prices often, so this is one you might want to check). Sell all non-rare bronze players you don't want at 150 each (except payers with high pace) - These you want to research before you sell, can go for 5k+), but I warn you that players can sometimes be hard to sell in general and can take 3-6 hours for someone to pick it up, so these can really clog your trade pile. You might be better off just discarding duplicates if your trade pile has limited space. The same advice goes for kits/badges. The only worthless cards you won't be able to sell here are stat boost cards (except pace ones, you can sell these for 150-200). You can discard non-pace state boost cards for 3 coins each.

Non-rare staff usually sell well at 300 (except managers - set those at 150), while rare trainers (once again, excluding managers) can almost always be sold for over a thousand (particularly head coaches). Rare bronze players are a crapshoot. Sometimes they will only sell for 150, other times they will sell for 1-2,000. This brings me to…

-The “Rare bronze players” method
With this method, you search for players who have a BIN set at 150 and buy all rare ones. You then re-auction those players off for 500 base, 1500 BIN price (or research what others are selling said card at if you want to be less lazy). Some people collect players trying to get them all, others need one to complete a club, other times people run their own personal tournaments (or enter official tournaments, for that matter) with rules such as “Bronze players only” so rare bronze players (particularly ones rated 64 overall or high pace) can go for a decent amount in the marketplace. Set the time on these for 3-6 hours if you find they aren't selling. Any that don’t sell after a couple relistings just lower the prices and eventually they will. Worst come to worst, relist it at 200 base 200 BIN. I have bought literally hundreds of cards off the marketplace and resold them, and I can count the number of cards I have lost money with on one hand (2, both due to me mistakenly thinking a 4-1-2-1-2 manager card was a player card - DON'T let yourself make this mistake), even factoring in the 5% commission reduction. Don't allow yourself to lose money on cards, even if it takes a few relistings.

-The “Gold contract” method
This is a really easy way to make money when starting off and you don’t have a whole lot of coins to buy things with. Search for Development – Gold – Contracts with a BIN of 200. Often, this search will come up with nothing. Other times, this search can come up with dozens of cards. You want to buy up everything you can at this price, PARTICULARLY scanning for any rare contracts and buying them before anything else. Both manager and player contracts sell well, but player contracts sell for slightly better in general, so that should be higher priority. After you have bought as many as you can, set regular gold contracts with a base price of 250 and a BIN of 400. Set the time for 1 hour. In my experience about half will sell for the BIN price, making you a nice easy profit. You can also simply relist for 300 BIN if you want really fast turnover in your trade pile for a quick 85 coin profit (5% of the sale price is taken by EA for everything sold at auction). Set rare gold contracts for a base 500 and BIN at 550-600. It can also be profitable by changing the base price in your search to 250 if you are having a hard time finding anything at 200. Another thing I like to do when nothing comes up in a gold search is search under the same parameters, except for silver contracts. You can sometimes find rare silver contracts with a BIN of 200, which you also want to buy. Rare silver contracts are actually better than normal gold contracts, so these can be listed for 450 base 500 BIN.

-The “Savvy trader” method
With this method, you simply search for all gold players. Find one that actually has bids on it in your price range, then click the right thumbstick over the player and find his club, nationality, and league. Search under these parameters to find all copies of this player being sold, and get a sense of how much he is going for. Then, search through all the auctions and find ones that have a particularly low price and add them to your watchlist, and bid when there is only 15 seconds left. Depending on the price range, you can buy cards anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of coins under the market price. You then want to relist the player for a BIN in the average/lowish BIN range you noticed that player going for in your earlier search for 6 hours. Eventually the player will sell, although it might take a few relistings. I’ve had my best luck overnight, as the average price for things is different depending on your time zone. You can often use time zones to your advantage by having an auction end during a time zone where prices are particularly high.

You can also use this method for basically any other card, not just players- (rare fitness cards, rare staff, and capacity stadiums are all areas I've done this with and have made hundreds of thousands of coins just focusing on this narrow area of buying/selling). However, players have more varied price ranges so as you gain coins, it isn’t going to be worth your while to buy a card for 500 and sell it for 800 anymore. Instead, you are going to want to buy a player for 6,000 and sell him for 10,000. As the market has died, you are going to have a hard time focusing on any one area of cards to sell as I used to do. You are going to have to have a diversified trade pile because the reduced number of cards being sold means good deals are harder to come by.

-The “Discard gold players” method
This sounds almost like some sort of joke. Why would you discard a gold player!? As it turns out, you get 300 coins minimum for discarding a normal gold player and 550 coins minimum for discarding a rare gold player. The number of coins you get goes up slightly depending on the rating of the player. You get about 50 extra coins by discarding an 80 rated player vs. a 75 rated player, for instance. Thus, if you bid 250 coins on a gold player and win, you are guaranteed to make at least 50 coins by discarding him. You really have to do this in mass quantities to get a decent amount of coins, however, and sometimes people will bid 300 coins on a 77 rated player only to make about 6 coins by discarding, which really isn’t worth it at all and is frustrating. I institute an unwritten rule of never outbidding someone to 300 coins unless the player is at least an 80 overall, so I sort of treat it as a first come first serve to whoever can bid 250 coins on a player. I would ask that anyone using this method after reading this do the same, so this remains a viable method to gain coins. The downside to this is there will always be the select few that outbid you to 300 just to gain a few coins by discarding, and the fact that this takes a lot of coins to start with because there’s going to be a ton of players you have bid on at once which don’t return to your coin stash until the player expires and you discard. Thus, the only time I ever really use this method is right before I go to bed I’ll bid on 50-100 cards (Update post-market crash: You won't find nearly this many players to bid on anymore) and then check on them in the morning and discard any I’ve won, which can range from very few to a bunch depending on who tries to outbid you while you’re asleep. You can easily make 100 coins per card (plus no EA tax when you discard!) if the market is quieter than usual and you don’t have people outbidding you on 80+ players. The other plus to this is that there is absolutely no risk - you are guaranteed to get a certain number of coins instead of hoping the price of a certain card doesn't drop before you can sell it.

General tips:

-EA takes a 5% commission on any proceeds from an auction. Thus, nickel-and-diming auctions are going to pay off a lot less as you buy more expensive things (you will break even selling something you bought for 9,500 for 10,000)

-Always have a BIN price, unless you absolutely cannot find something to compare the card to. Always do research on a card’s price before you list it for sale by searching for similar cards. People hate waiting, so they will often pay much higher prices for something with a BIN price than waiting for an auction to wait and having the possibility of competing with someone for the card they want.

-Once you start selling cards worth 10-20k, set your BIN price to something ending in 950 (For the same reason stuff is $1.99 - The marketers have done all the research, folks. For some reason, we get duped into thinking things are cheaper than they actually are by saving a penny (or in our case, a measly 50 coins)). Also it sometimes helps to set the BIN price a couple thousand above your base price, People will think "ooh, I'm going to save 2,000 coins if I bid on this!", nevermind the fact that your BIN price is ridiculous. This has drawbacks, however, in that you risk losing potential BIN buyers, which I find are the majority of my expensive player buyers, so you may decide against this tactic.

-Market prices change over time. I searched online for prices for particular players, and found some really outdated stuff that was no longer even close to accurate. You might be reading this a week from when I wrote it, or you might be reading this a year from now. Prices will almost certainly have changed if you are in the latter category. If this is the case, you will have to do your own research in the marketplace to find what prices things sell for. The above methods should still work in a general fashion, however.

-Most auctions you want to set at 1 hour, unless you are auctioning an expensive player. 99% of all bids occur within 10 minutes of the auction ending.

-Sometimes, without warning, EA does a "special" on a particular pack of cards. In my experience these only last an hour or two. This can advantage you in two ways. First, of course, you can buy packs at the reduced price. They had premium gold packs for 3750 coins on more than one occasion, and I also read they had premium bronze packs for 375 coins at one point, both great deals. The second way this can benefit you is that when EA does do such specials, trade prices temporarily go WAY DOWN because people are buying up as many packs as possible before the time runs out, setting a very low BIN price to free up their trade pile. I've seen over 20 pages of cards doing the "Gold contract" method above during one of these. For the past several weeks at the time of writing this, both bronze and silver “jumbo” packs have been permanently available, which is a better deal than premiums since you get an extra rare.

-Players sell for more, often much more, at better formations. 4-1-2-1-2, 4-4-2, and 4-3-3 to name the most popular ones. I made 13k on a player once by buying him at the average market price, then reselling him for 13k higher than that because he was 4-1-2-1-2. (This was back when 4-1-2-1-2 cards were only 10k, as well, so even if I had bought the formation card I would have made money).

-Keep in mind that you are going to have to play 100 matches minimum for the "Win 25 tournaments" achievement", which even if you play the worst tournament 25 times, will net you about 300 coins per match on average depending on your skill and your squad (plus 400 coins for winning the tournament). This works out to be around 40,000 coins right there, so if you are going for the least amount of time spent in this game, you may want to work on that first (although getting a decent squad helps tremendously in winning these games).

-There is no visible counter that keeps track of how many packs you have opened, but you can of course manually keep track after the 100 pack achievement pops. I had opened so many at one point that I was really worried this had glitched on me, since I hadn’t kept track. When I got to that point, it was only about 15-20 more packs before this achievement popped.

After using the above methods, I have only been playing FIFA Ultimate Team about a week and already have over 100,000 coins as well as another 100,000 coins worth of cards. I’ve also opened over 100 packs by now too, about 15-20 of those premium gold. (Update: I now have the achievement and my net worth is now well over a million after a couple months or so of playing this, although that's partly due to getting lucky in a couple packs - Almost all of that is in players though, so please don't message me for coins).

Finally, I must say that FIFA Ultimate Team is actually really fun, and would recommend against buying coins just to get the achievement, as you will be missing out on the fun of mixing and matching players from different clubs to try and make an “ultimate” team of your own. My club name is Oregon State FC (Established June 10) in case you see me around. Good luck!

edit - the servers are now closed as of the 6th of december 2011 making this achievement unobtainable



This Is extremely easy and can be done in about 3 days, me and my buddy Sparrow Donna found this out. What you need to do is get a buddy and go onto any online tournament ( the higher the tournament bonus the better ) both search in the same tournament, nobody plays them so you should find each other every time. Stop once one of you gets to the final. Then when you start up the next game the person in the final will score 2 goals, then when the game gets to the 10 minute mark the player who isn't in the final will quit, the player in the final will receive the coins for winning the final and still be in the final, so continue to play and quit till you have enough coins then split the coins between the two of you by auctioning a player for however much money you need and have your partner buy it. We got about 3100 coins each game we played and got the achievement very quickly. If you hurry there is still time to get it before the servers close.

Coins needed to get this achievement depend on what type of packs you want to buy: The cheaper ones are the bronze ones (500 coins each). Actually you don't have to collect 250,000 coins in order to buy 500 packs, thats because you can't save every card you get from this packs (once piles are full), so, you can discard them once you buy a pack, or anytime (even if piles are empty). If you discard a full pack you'll get back around 150 coins, sometimes more if you get a silver player, also, sometimes you'll get a special card which grant you 200 or 1000 coins, that makes the real price lower for a pack. I got this achievement with only 169,000 coins

If you are tired of playing so many matches, maybe this guide could help you out a bit.

It might seem at first glance that this is a complicated guide but actually it is not. Just tried to explain in detail for those new player who are not used to UTeam yet, so, experienced players will realize that this is really easy. Let's start.

You will need two accounts, from now on your account will be YouAcc and the second account will be OptAc. OptAc has to have access to LIVE but it doesn't need to have a gold subscription. Unlike other marketplace content, UTeam is fully unlocked only for the user account which purchased it, but no worries, you can use it as a demo with OptAcc and will be functional for this guide purposes

I will list several steps below but actually you don't have to follow them in that order, In the end I will list a couple of methods you can use by following combinations of these steps

1) Log in with OptAcc account

2) Start Ultimate Team mode: You will be rewarded with a new team.
a) Select Squad option listed in the menu.
b) Once you're in the squad screen press X on any player (Actions) a popup will appear, select the option to send him into the trade pile
c) Repeat the previous step for each of the 22 players remaining
d) Return to main menu
e) Select Trading option -> Trade Pile from the menu
f) Set up every player for sale for about 1 hour: Starting Price=150, Buy Now Price=200
g) Return to main menu
h) Exit Ultimate Team Mode

3) Log in with YouAcc account and Start Ultimate Team mode

4) Select Trading -> Search
*Note before Next Step: I Will assume all the players are Bronze Level
a) Use filters for your search: Level=Bronze, Min Price=150, Max Price=150, Buy Now Min Price=200 and Buy Now Max Price=200 and start searching
b) Look for the players that OptAcc has for sale (Because of the filters and 1 hour bid time you should be able to find them into the first pages) and buy them.
c) Look around and keep buying (from OptAcc) until you have counted 22 or 23 players, I said 22 because sometimes 1 player is lost in limbo and you will never find him, if so, dont waste your time!!
d) When you have finished buying try to return to main menu, a new screen will be displayed, send every player into the trade pile and count them, you should have 22/23
e) Return to main menu
f) Select Trading -> Trade Pile
* Note before next step: Every transaction that you make will have a 5% tax
g) Set up one player for sale for about 1 hour:
- Starting Price = any(Lower than Buy now Price) <-From Now on called "StAmnt",
- Buy Now Price: according to the number of players you counted on step "d". For example, if you counted 22 players then 22*200=4400 then, 4400*.05(tax) = 220 and finally 4400-220=4180 (its the same if you just:4400*.95) <- From now on called "TotAmnt", at this point, OptAcc should have 4180 coins, so, Buy now Price should be 4150 <- From Now On called "BuyAmnt"

5) [Optional]: If your trade pile is not fully complete and you have unwanted players in your squads you can send them into the trade pile [Optional]
a) Set up for sale 85% of your trade pile players Starting Price=150, buy Now Price=400, for about 3 hours
b) Set up for sale 15% of your trade pile players Starting Price=150, buy Now Price=350, for about 3 hours
c) Return to main menu
d) Exit Ultimate Team Mode

6) Select Trading -> Search
a) You will notice that this account now have "TotAmnt" coins
*Note before Next Step: I Will assume all the players are Bronze Level
b) Use filters for your search: Level=Bronze, Min Price= "StAmnt", Max Price="StAmnt", Buy Now Min Price="BuyAmnt" and Buy Now Max Price="BuyAmnt" and start searching
c) Look for the player that YouAcc has for sale and buy him. At this point, YouAcc has recovered the coins used to buy 22/23 players by buying back just one player
d) Return to main menu
e) Select Club option listed in the menu
f) Select the option to delete your team, that will make you to return to the Arena

7) Start Ultimate Team mode: You will be rewarded with a new team again.
a) Select Squad option listed in the menu.
b) Once you're in the squad screen: press X on any player (Actions) a popup will appear, select the option Apply..., a new screen with two cards will appear, press X again an select Discard option and accept to discard it. Do the same with the second card
c) Select any player and press X. Select Discard option and accept to discard him
d) Repeat the step above until you have discarded the whole team
e) Return to main menu: Notice that by discarding the whole team you have earned around 390-420 coins <- From now on "DiscAmnt", usually you'll get more than 400 coins but some others you won't, thats why you put on sale some players for 350 coins
f) Select Trading -> Search
g) Use filters for your search: Level=Bronze, Min Price=150, Max Price=150, Buy Now Min Price="DiscAmnt" and Buy Now Max Price="DiscAmnt" and start searching
h) Look for one of the players that YouAcc is selling and buy him.
i) Return to main menu
j) Select Club option listed in the menu
k) Select the option to delete your team, that will make you to return to the Arena
l) Repeat from first step "7)" until you have all the players from YouAcc

8) Select Trading option -> Store
a) Buy a pack (Bronze ones recommended)
b) Press X on any player (Actions) a popup will appear, select the option to send him into the trade pile
c) Repeat the previous step for each player you have gotten
d) It is up to you to decide what to do with the remaing cards
e) Repeat from step "a)" until the trade pile is fully complete (or stop whenever you decide)
f) Return to main menu

Before using any method below you're gonna need to have some coins and/or players, I suggest you to play 2 or 3 tournaments first, you could choose the easiest one

Method 1: Steps: 1,2,3,4,5,1,6,7

With this you will be able to collect coins without using the ones you have, let's do some math
YouAcc = -4400 (22 players bought from OptAcc)
YouAcc = +4150 (1 player bought by OptAcc)
YouAcc = +11600 (29 players bought by OptAcc)
Tot = 11350 coins
Tot = 11350*.95(5% tax) = 10782 coins

Method 2: Steps: 3,8,5,1,7

With this method you will be able to collect coins using the ones you have to buy packs
YouAcc = -4000 (Is an approximation of the coins you need to buy bronze packs and fully complete your trade pile)
YouAcc = +12000(30 players bought by OptAcc)
Tot = 8000 coins
Tot = 8000*.95 (5% tax) = 7600 coins

Now, Buying 1 player reggardless of the price will take you about 2.5min each
So, we have then
Time = 30*2.5 = 75min

Finally:
Method 1: Around 10782 coins in about 75 min
Method 2: Around 7600 coins in about 75 min

Although it seems that Method 2 is at a disadvantage, actually it isn't. The decrease of coins is because you already bought packs, whilst, with the first method you didn't.

As you could see, anyway it is gonna take a long time to collect money and this is QUITE BORING too, but surely it is faster than playing a tournament in about 75mins to get around 2000 coins(the easiest one)

Before finishing let me give you some tip

* Take advantage of your second, third, fourth,.... user accounts. Set up players for sale, so other players can buy them while you're sleeping, working, studing, and so on. I used to do this and, while sleeping, collected around 2000 coins every single night
* Set up the Buy now price for cheap, 300 coins is ok for bronze players
* Transfer collected coins to your main account (YouAcc)