Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (
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<jnewquist@difsol.com> wrote in message news:1109275526.619085.95100@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Frederick Scott wrote:
>> > Ok... what was *your* point then?
....
>> > That you couldn't find them? You can.
>>
>> Sure. Obviously. But...
>>
>> > That you had to pay $10 for two of them (three in the case of the
>> > Baali starter, which has two copies of Maureen) - less per vamp
>> > if you buy them in bulk from TheLasombra or Potomac?
>>
>> Bingo.
>
> Alright. I'm more upset that (to use the example given above) that I
> can't even *find* an Ur-Shulgi, and if I did, he'd go for $12-16. When
> this came up the first time (correct me if I'm wrong), you made the
> comparison between starter-only and ultra-rare cards. Well, they're
> *cheaper* and *easier to find* than that.
Apples to oranges. Final Nights was expansion that took place years
ago - and during the comparable period of time, you _could_ find
Ur-Shulgi during the comparable periord of time. Also, you're using
a type of card whose manner of printing (R1s in an expansion where
most rare slot cards were R2s) that I also complained about at the
time. (So at least point to Hungry Coyote or something else. Then
I'll just say, "Apples to oranges.")
>> > Well, okay, but most of us
....
>> A) I'm not certain that "most of (you)" are OK with it. I certainly
>> got some agreement when I originally raised the issue.
>
> Ok, sure. And a lot of people ignored it, too. Is it okay if I assume
> that the majority of people who stay silent on an issue don't feel too
> strongly about it?
Nope. Nor that they don't feel it's wrong, either. It could also mean
they don't care to post about their feelings or that they didn't notice it
or that they agree with me and find no reason to make a, "Me, too." post
which is generally against netiquette. You don't know what it means (and
neither do I, granted). Don't pretend you do.
> Okay... maybe they aren't thinking it through very well because it
> doesn't bother them? Because they're a lot easier to find (and, in
> extreme cases, much cheaper) than *actual* hard-to-find cards?
Perhaps. But that was never exactly my issue - not the way you're
framing it.
>> Anyway, that they can't be found on EBAY demonstrates something
>> profound about the nature of these cards that's more clear than
>> if I just explained it in words. Essentially that buying precons
>> is a bad deal for players.
>
> Except that we also can't find a bunch of other things on Ebay. It
> doesn't explain that buying those cards was a bad deal for players.
Ah, you want me to explain that now, too? You can ask. In fact,
it's an excellent question and I'm glad you're curious.
It's a bad deal for players because there are too many cards that too
few players actually need in precons overall. It's all well and good
to state that precons "are for newer players" and reprint a bunch of
staple cards that WW is (apparently) assuming they need. But if
you're going to print a very small number of cards that BOTH newer
and older players need in precons, you've created this huge, awkward
sore thumb of a rarity situation. There's like 85 or 86 cards only
the newbies want and 3 or 4 cards everybody wants - and the package is
priced pretty much on par with booster packs (per card, that is) which
contain 11 cards out of 11 that everybody want.
There may also be other issues. Too many bad old overly common cards
that newbies could just get from older players for the asking. (How
many Open Grates do I need?
) Not enough newer players exist to
buy these things at all - so I can't trade the Dreams I get in my
precon for another copy of The Book of Going Forth. Who knows? I only
know the reasons are sufficient that precons will not support a singles
market and that's bad.
> It's simple supply and demand. WW has (implicitly) guaranteed a
> near-infinite supply of these cards.
It _is_ "simple supply and demand", agreed. But the fact that WW
seems willing to reprint them is a misunderstanding of supply and
demand. They still cost money. The singles market for booster
rares doesn't care whether WW will reprint a booster or not. It
cares whether the customer can get his single by some other means.
The service the singles dealers provide is breaking open packs and
selling individual cards that a player would otherwise require a
larger sum of money to find. This works perfectly well with
precons, too - or would if the precon packs contained a sufficient
number of sellable cards.
> Funny enough, if the starters were *more* expensive, it might become
> more profitable to break them up, because it would become prohibitive
> to get 4x Rabbat (or whoever) a $15 per starter, but not to spend $8
> each on them singly.
Nope. Although Rabbats would be worth more money then, the other cards
in the pack would not support a seller receiving any profit for the
price he'd have to pay for the packs. You're going the wrong direction.
If the starters were _less_ expensive, you might create a singles
market eventually.
>> There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong or different about precons that
>> inherently makes them unworth pursing this activity except for
>> one thing: the cards they contain are not worth obtaining for the
>> price they're sold for. If they were, singles selling from them
>> on EBAY would work just fine and you'd see sellers doing that.
>
> Untrue. The cards don't have to be less than $10 worth to make this a
> less-profitable venture. Example: suppose that I can open a box of
> boosters for (say) $65 and sell the singles for (say) $100. Unless I
> can make a $40 box of starters sell for about $61.50 (and bring that
> income in just as fast) I can't make *as much* of a profit as I could
> by investing in boosters, even if the cards are worth $55 as singles
> (or $65 but don't sell fast enough to be worth it).
It's not exactly clear what you're getting at but it sounds like you're
suggesting the only factor worth considering is what is the _most_
profitable venture a singles seller could spend his time working at.
True, but only to a point. For one thing, you saturate your market
for a single service at some point and have the incentive to diversify.
That's why singles sellers generally don't stop at just cards from a
single game or even a single expansion from that single game that
happens to be the most profitable one. They diversify to whatever
extent makes the most sense given the time they have. The fact that
they pass up precons entirely all the time says something very bad
about precons.
>> The fact that it doesn't happen on EBAY proves there's no market
>> for them. The fact that there's no market proves, well, "most
>> of us" disagree with you - apparently.
>
> No, it proves there's no *secondary* market for them.
But you've shown no credible reason why there should be no secondary
market for them. I think you just assume there's some other reason
because it's never occurred to you to think about it.
> If there were *no
> market* for them, WW wouldn't be able to sell the starters.
Actually, are you even sure WW sells precons at a profit? They may
very well be considered to be an item that they need to sell to
get new players into the game - like spending money supporting a
tournament organization and giving out demo decks for free. I
don't know one way or another but I wouldn't assume WW is selling
many starters - even with the starter-only cards.
> There would be no strong secondary market for *any* cards if WW printed
> the exact same cards, but instead of putting them in boosters, split
> them up into small 30-card sets and made each set available in a box
> that gave you 1 of each rare, 3 of each uncommon, and 7 of each common.
I don't think that's necessarily true. It all depends on what the other
cards in the packages were and whether they would likely to be needed,
in absense of the rare card, by certain players. If they weren't then
there'd be no secondary market for the same reason there's no secondary
market for existing precons. (Hey! Same conditions, same result - how
'bout that?!?) But that's not the only thing way you can package cards.
I do agree that sorting randomized cards is another service singles
dealers provide and one that's only relevant to booster packs, but I
think it's far less important than you believe.
Fred
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