Hello all. Slag's back with more Skyblock math, so you don't have to do it. Not that you probably would have anyway, but since I wanted to know for myself, I thought I'd share my work with you. The results surprised me very much.

Premise:
Sometime in the recent past, I switched from using my voter keys to selling them (and any other keys I came by). I watched the prices fluctuate slightly over time, and saw that I could not sell vote keys very well 1:1, but could not STOP people from buying them, even a hair cheaper, at 5:4, 4:3 etc. I then began thinking that I would like to know the payoff of vote keys, used by the primary user, as compared to selling them to a second user. Here is what I have found for the effective value of used crate keys, the amount you would make, on average, per key, if you were to spin and immediately sell the prizes.

Method:
I went to /warp crates and jotted down the item and percent chance of winning for each available crate: vote, common, rare, epic, and legendary. I then estimated the grass value for each prize worth more than about a tenth of a grass block. I did not include things like cobblestone, for which the value is so small it will not impact my calculations greatly, or like disguises, which cannot be traded and have no grass value. If I sell the item, I used my sale price. For some things, like pots, which I do not sell, I used the price MagikIsAMush sells for. For two items, a horse spawn egg and a guardian spawn egg, I asked KingJonSnow to help me with an estimate. Here is a list of values I used in these calculations (please note, I did not account for any bulk discounting, therefore, for such blocks as redstone which may be broken down into 9 pieces, the ratio remained true for the price):

Glass 7:1
Bottles o' enchanting 64:1
Lapis lazuli blocks 16:1
Redstone blocks 12:1
Iron ingots 4:1
Diamond pick 1:6 (because a silk pick sells for 6 grass at my store, and because I am able to enchant, and unenchant, at will to get a pick by only spending about 9 lapis pieces each on average to obtain silk. I considered the "wasted" lapis a moot point, and valued diamonds at their silk enchanted value)
Diamond 1:3
Vote keys 1:1
Common keys 1:2
Rare keys 1:16
Epic keys 1:190
Legendary keys 1:300
Rare pot: 1:18
Sea lanterns 96:1
Emerald 1:6
Horse spawn egg 1:10
God kit 33.592g
Spawner 1:35
Enchantment table 1:8
Epic pot 1:288
Beacon 1:224
Zombie head 1:768
Legendary pot: 1:36
Sponge 1:32
Guardian spawner 1:1900 (1.1 SC of grass)
Creeper head 1:176
Titan kit 35.26g
Totem of undying 1:36
Elytra 1:375
Dragon egg 1:672
Dragon head 1:1552

Results:
Taking into account the grass value and percent chance of winning, I calculated the effective worth of each type of key, in terms of what a person would make selling the won items for grass in the current economic situation. Here is what I found for the effective average value of keys:

Vote: 1.05g (user shop price 1g)
Common: 1.08g (user shop price 2g)
Rare: 9.11g (user shop price 16g)
Epic: 82.5g (user shop price 190g)
Legendary: 114.0g (user shop price 300g)

If math(s) is/are not your thing, please read this example:

If you bought 1,000 vote keys for 1 grass each, and spun all of them, then subsequently sold EVERY prize you were awarded, you would have spent 1,000g and wound up in the end with 1,050g. A very small profit, but nonetheless....

Conclusions:
Well, sheesh, first of all I won't be selling my vote keys anymore. Second, it was very surprising to me that a) common keys' effective worth is barely more than that of vote keys and b) that the effective value of the pricier keys is generally HALF of what they sell for in the open market. Of course, there are items only obtainable by the use of crate keys, so do what you wish with this information. Just know, that buying anything but a vote key at the current user shop prices is a losing transaction for you. This is why I don't gamble, lol. In a perfect economic system, the keys would naturally hover around their effective values, but if I were to guess, the prevalence of and enthusiasm over gambling on the server inflates the real prices significantly.

Caveats:
The prices I used in my calculations are subject to fluctuation. I may have used a price a bit different than what the market suggests is normal, either up or down. Ultimately, that shouldn't matter here, as the results I report here for the effective value versus the market value are so vastly different that unless I made some egregious mathematical errors (doubt it), factoring in 7:1 versus 6:1 glass or adding in the teeny grass value of 64 cobblestone isn't going to change this. Though, do note, that because I did not account for the marginal values of things like cobble, the effective rates for vote and common keys are slightly lower here than they actually are, but using the number of significant figures that I did, it should be a moot point.

Thank you all for reading, I hope this is informative to you.
Hugs,
Slag

Edit: I'm a jerk, thanks also to my fiance GaroldGarcia for punching in loads of numbers on the calculator while I read them off. Sped up the process a bunch. He's as much of a nerd as I am, y'all. My guy

 

love u two nerds

 

We love ya too, Luka. I hope our dweebdom is interesting to you.

 

wow o.o
I will now only sell my keys if I need grass really fast.

 

Perhaps, I'm not interested in checking your math. But as a relatively newer player, I'm not in the business of voiding things other than stone. These figures I have reported are quite (within fractions of a percent) close to their actual values if ALL won items were to be sold, assuming keys are valued as stated. Vote keys are worth much more than 1/3rd grass, if you don't throw things into the void.

 

Right-o, yeah... well, I'm glad I did the math and posted about the values, corroborated your hunch on rare key value.

 

Oh, I don’t think enough people read these, nor are many people going to care. SB is very heavy on the gambling, so the actual worth of a key is a moot point for most. This post will be informative to a very few, probably! I do not foresee a massive shift in key prices due to my little maths exercise.