Virtual Credit Cards

Well, steam has a 2 account per card number maximum. They will not lift it. This is a good thing I suppose, account security and all that. But, to trade between idle accounts you need activated (read paid) accounts. What to do?

Well, I've used two options,

Gift Cards/Prepaid Cards

Pros: 

• Quick
• easy to get. (7-11, Grocery store, Walmart, etc)
• easily disposed of when done

Cons: 

• Costs $14.95 at a minimum for the non rip-off issuers.
• Some 'value' gift cards (labeled as such) charge upwards of $3.95 PER FUCKING TRANSACTION TO USE. Which means if you spent $13.95 to preload $10, your ONE transaction for $5 at steam will cause a debit of $8.95 effectively screw you out of $1.15 you can never get back. Fuck these blood sucking leeches on society. DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY. (Well, I learned my lesson. I paid $14 for one account.. at least it had 2 crate #30s ready for me) Double check their fees BEFORE you plop down cash for these things. 
• Cost
• Cost. (I have this thing about companies charging me to spend my money)

If you have no other option, this is your best bet sadly. I lump prepaid visa's from places like Western Union in here. They cost a lot of money to use. Being poor and unable to do math tends to hurt your pocket book.

Multiple Bank Accounts

My best friend is a banker with Wells Fargo. They have extremely high quotes of 'solutions' to get. (Basically, every account they open, option they have, and other oddities in the banking work) Because of this, I ended up with a plethora of accounts opened in my name, all for free. It helps my friend, and now its helping me. Each bank account comes with its very own credit card, which I promptly used for activating TF2 accounts. Even if you don't have a friend in the banking industry that desperately needs 'solutions', your local banker will love you for making their job less stressful, make their quota, their bosses happy AND let them sleep at night. Trust me, I've heard some horror stories, help your banker out.

Pros:

• If your bank account is free, 99% of the time additional checking accounts are. Check first.
• Costs nothing extra. $0. No fees, no additional hidden bullshit. Free.
• Helps your friend/neighborhood banker keep their job. (This helps the PERSON, not the bank. Technically, the bank loses money by you doing this. Go 99%! =)

Cons:

• Slow. Cards tied to bank accounts take time to arrive. Upwards of 3 weeks in some cases.
• Needing to keep the account open for 3 months. (Or whatever the bank needs, ask your banker.) If you close your account early, they don't get credit, and this hurts them. In effect, you've wasted that persons time. Don't do that. (This is bad because your web banking/mobile banking apps can look like utter crap with 20 accounts.)
• Additional mail. I once received, I kid you not, 133 pieces of physical mail from Wells Fargo one day. I counted it. It made for a good laugh, and great fire place kindling, maybe its a Pro not a con?
• 
  

Well, neither of these work for me. Sure I'll continue using new bank accounts to help my friend out when he needs it, but to hell with Gift cards. I'm also impatient, and want my crap RIGHT NOW. (Now that I have 3 desktops running 10+ accounts simultaneously with Sandboxie, and soon to be more, my ready to premium account list has grown quite a bit. So what to do?

Enter Virtual Credit Cards.

Entropay.com

I was recommended this website by an old Eve friend of mine. Seems hes been using it to even further hide his meta gaming exploits (much further than I ever did, thats for sure) on eve for quite some time. Why? Its a cheap virtual credit card system that can 'spoof' or in laymens terms hide your true identity when buying stuff online. Its relatively cheap (4.95% loading fee from another CC, so @ $20 load, its only $1, not bad.) and you can generate numerous cards without hassle, since each card created only costs about 20 cents.

Pros:

• Cheap compared to gift cards
• Ability to quickly generate a plethora of card numbers to activate accounts.
• Buy Anonymously from steam. (Not a huge pro, they know your IP address and can reference it to other accounts logged in from there)
• Use the balance from other websites. (I've bought from several questionable sites using this now, I approve, especially since you can 'destroy' a virtual card basically instantly.
• Their Fee schedule (found here:  https://www.entropay.com/popups/terms.schedule.php) is on par with traditional US banks. Nothing outrageous if you don't get a plastic card. 

Cons:

• $6.00USD Account 'closure' fee. Fuckers.
• Dormant card fee. If you don't use your cards every 6 months, you'll be charged.
• Doesn't really put the fee schedule up front when you open and load your first account and card.
• Entropay is located and operated from the UK. Additional restrictions may apply based on your local laws. 

I've been using the service for a week now and have funneled quite a bit of money through them for everything from normal pure caffeine purchases, to idle accounts, and even my new shoes (comes tomorrow! Woohoo!) I highly recommend this, though long term remains to be seen, so far they're everything I could hope for.