Power of the Prestige Album From a Dice Perspective

Update 11/17/2024 

The below analysis was written before Scopely made the albums gold-heavy and also took away useful vaults, replacing them with purple back vaults. Unless Scopely fixes those two issues, the best strategy is to not attempt to close your album, but instead only roll under favorable conditions. If you do this, your first album will probably close, but closer to the end of the season. You will get 15-20k dice on top of what you already had, and your account will be almost guaranteed to grow by 15-20k dice per season with no real effort on your part. It is a more boring way to grow dice for sure. 

If you try to close the album, you will be chasing cards and each one will cost a thousand dice here, four thousand there, and you will end up paying 50k dice for an album with sets worth 11k and a grand prize of 15k. This is a very good way to always be out of dice. 

Original Summary

In Monopoly GO the Prestige Album is the one you get once you complete the first album. It has more sticker sets than the first album had. It has all of the original sets, but each with a higher dice reward, plus it has new sets that have very large dice rewards.

I used to tell people that no matter how many dice I have, I will always spend down to zero (note: I never run out of dice anymore). Historically, that has always been true. Once my main account had 26k, and within a week or so, I had spent down to zero. I also claim, for better or for worse, that stickers are the most powerful currency (then dice, then stars, then cash). 

At the time of this writing, I have been playing fully for two sticker seasons. The first, Heartfelt Holidays, was basically a bust. I closed my first album, but did nothing with the second album, the Prestige Album. The Prestige Album, it turns out, is the money maker. 

For Monopoly Origins, the second season I played full time, I closed the first album, closed the Prestige album and pulled tons of dice out of the second prestige album. Once I was fully engaged with the Prestige albums, I never "spent down to zero dice" again during the season. 

So, I did an analysis of the relative values of the albums. Here it is: 

Monopoly Origins First Album

• 17,200 dice
• The total dice you earn from closing all the sets in Monopoly Origins Original Album was 17,200. 
• 15,000 dice
• You get 15,000 dice for closing the album. 
• 32,200 dice
• The value of the original album is a little over 32k.

Monopoly Origins First Prestige Album

• 51,125
• The total dice you earn from closing all of the sets in the Monopoly Prestige Album
• 20,000
• You get 20,000 dice for closing the first Prestige Album. 
• If you close the second album, you get 30,000 dice for that. 
• 71,125
• The value of the first prestige album is a little over 71k dice, which is well over twice the value of the first album. 
• The value of the second prestige album is 81,125k dice, because the grand prize goes from 20k to 30k. 
• The total value of the last six sets alone in the Prestige album is 30k, even if you do not close the album. This is roughly the total value of the entire original album when you do close it, and closing an album is difficult. Again, if you do not close the first album, then its value is capped at 17k dice, making the last six sets of the Prestige Album worth nearly twice the total value of the first album. 
• I found that my reckless spending down to zero stopped when I was well into the prestige albums. Too many dice were thrown at me. 

References:

• Monopoly Origins