darkSpyro

If I where to buy more of the same skylander card and scan them what would I get? Would it level the card at all?

Yes. Scanning in a duplicate card levels up the card in the game.

About how many, would it take to max out a skylander?

You can also grind XP on online battles, so if you use it regularly it'll get there, but I don't really know the XP you gain from a duplicate exactly.

You cant scan a card anymore once its past level 10, unless in theory a gold hologram.

You level up your skylanders by fighting, at most you could level them up to 10 by scanning duplicates. To be perfectly honest, not sure you can level up cards by scanning duplicates but I do not know for 100% sure. I think its plausible up to level 10. Personally I would rather let friends scan them than scan them for a level or two.

There is also an incentive to scan your epics or ultimates to get what are called magic tickets.

Magic Tickets got a FAQ on Activision Support the other day - the more you scan cards or buy gold, the more a meter for an assigned ticket fills up, and when you get it the next one rolls. Iirc you can get ultimates but you need to fill it up quite a few times.

about how many cards would it take to get to 10 then? Want to know if it would be worth it to buy extra Spitfire & Stealth Elf card packs on ebay.

Those Spitfire and Stealth Elf cards on ebay could already be scanned. A card can only be scanned once. Really it does not take a long time to level up Spitfire and Stealth elf to level 10, I would not think its worth the hassle, honestly.

Course, one bad thing about magic tickets for me is this. I have every one of my common, rare or epic cards at level 10. Thus, I can't even scan cards anymore unless an ultimate I do not have. So I could spend $400 on packs and unless I get the cards I needed directly, no magic tickets will be gathered by me as I can't scan epic cards anymore.

However, if someone started scanning cards early on, it would be more worthwhile.

For Spitfire, its 100 experience points to level the early levels and you get 20 experience points per battle I believe so its level 10 in 45 fights or something like that. Really not worth buying extra cards even if scanning duplicates would help. If you get them in packs, why not try. I can't scan my cards to try to know if you can level up a card under level 10 with a duplicate.

There are definitely good reasons to have your cards level 10 or more though. You get cool animated GIFs and you get coins back if you get them as a double in a virtual pack.

Well I was looking at still sealed promo packs (from superchargers starters) on ebay for $.99 each, was thinking it might give me a running start (also planning to buy the 2 battle packs). Tho it seems like (the extra promo packs) would not be worth the money, any other thoughts tho?

Just not seeing why having Spitfire and Stealth Elf level 10 at the expense of all your other cards is worth it. Sure, it would be good to have at least one Spitfire and Stealth Elf to have, but even if you could buy say 10 of those and scanning somehow allowed you to level it up to 10, it would just be those 2 cards out of your entire deck to reach level 10. Its not like a skylander is more powerful at level 10 or something. You want to work on your entire deck and that is eventually 300 cards to play with and level all 300 up.