FUT 15 Winter Upgrades Predictions

FUT 15 Winter Upgrades are right around the corner, likely taking place in February and early March. I've seen a lot of threads asking about winter upgrades and which cards are affected and which will not be, so I wanted to look back to last year and see what really happened.

Please note that no one actually knows if EA will apply the same logic as detailed below to how they treat UP/IF cards this year. What follows are some quick historical facts to help guide your decisions for buying/investing assuming they apply upgrades the same way:

1. Last year was the first year that IFs received a commensurate upgrade to that of the NIF. That is to say that an already-released IF card for a player whose NIF received a 1-point upgrade was also upgraded by 1 point. As an example:

Arturo Vidal started the year as an 85-rated card,

Vidal then earned an 86-rated IF in TOTW 19

He then received a 1-point winter upgrade, so his UP NIF was now an 86-rated card. The 85-rated card was removed from packs and could no longer be pulled.

His 86-rated IF card was also raised 1-point to make it an 87-rated IF

2. Existing NIF cards in the market/teams were not upgraded. When the upgraded cards were released, it was no longer possible to pull then non-UP cards in packs.

3. IF upgrades only occurred if the NIF upgrade stayed in the same "quality" band (Gold/Silver/Bronze). This is a little confusing, but here's how it worked:

Andros Townsend started as a 72-rated silver NIF, earned a 73-rated silver IF in TOTW 5, was upgraded to a 74-rated silver NIF, so his IF was also raised to a 74-rated silver IF with better stats than his upgraded NIF

On the other hand, Ross Barkley started as a 72-rated silver NIF, earned a 73-rated silver IF in TOTW 15, but was upgraded to a 77-rated GOLD NIF. As a result, his IF card remained a 73-rated silver and was not upgraded to gold (78?), nor a higher-rated silver (74?). I would expect that if he had earned any additional IFs, they would have been gold.

4. Regardless of IFs, if a player is upgraded to a higher quality band, his non-UP card may still be valuable, and may become more valuable once it is removed from packs. As an example from last year:

Jese Rodriguez began last year with a 72-rated silver NIF at Striker and was upgraded to a 76-rated gold NIF at Left Mid. His silver NIF remained very valuable due in part to the quality (silver), being a premium position (ST), and rarity (no longer being available in packs). This is an edge case, but an interesting one.

5. Upgraded NIF cards were worth a premium upon release, not unlike an IF card.

When selling, make sure you don't list an upgraded card for what the non-UP card is selling for, especially in the first weeks after release

When buying, make sure that you're looking at the correct card so you don't purchase a non-UP card for the UP price

With the above in mind, I have a few thoughts:

If you have a NIF of a player, an upgrade did not help you. It did hurt the value of your non-UP NIF as the UP NIF was wroth more and pushed the pricing down. If last year is a guide, no change will happen to your NIF other than that it will be worth a little less for sales purposes.

If you have a Gold IF for a player, an upgrade could only help you last year, and would do the same this year.

If you have a Silver or Bronze IF that's near the upper limit of the quality band it's issued in (74 or 64, respectively), an upgrade may not have helped you if it put the NIF in the next-highest level. As an example for this year if last year is a guide:

70-rated silver Nabil Fekir may get an upgrade, but if you're holding his 73-rated silver IF, you'd better hope that upgrade is no higher than 4 points so he ends up like Andros Townsend and not like Ross Barkley.

tl;dr - Upgrades didn't affect NIFs' stats, upgrades did affect IFs' stats, IFs in lower quality bands than the UP were not upgraded, and non-upgraded NIFs with upgrades to higher quality bands may retain/grow in value.