I was able to open a wholesale account.
Economics forum
Posted on Nov. 3, 2013, 12:05 a.m. by fzebib
So, I am a business owner - I won't get into much detail but I have access to a brick and mortar store. I was curious. I spent the last week trying to open a wholesale account to see how much distributors are getting boxes for. I am confident this is one of the "larger" distributors ( I did not get it from wizards) and the price actually REALLY surprised me. A booster box of Ravnica, GTC, DMZ, ,M14,and Theros are all sold to me @ 80.44. I was actually expecting lower then that. How the heck are people selling them online for 89.99(M14, Ebay) with free shipping? Also, the "maximum" amount of discount if I bought a -TON- from this company would drop the price to 72 dollars. I guess then MAYBE it's worth it? Does anyone have any thoughts/opinions on this? I sincerely thought the price range was 1.85~ per pack at wholesale. The things you learn! I'm interested to see what everyone has to say. :)
It's actually one of the more prominent distributors. A local game store told me they used that primarily. Insanity.
November 3, 2013 12:19 a.m.
I think the reason is because they have the "MSRP" sitting at 144, which makes sense. @ 4.00 a pack, that's how much it would come out to per box.
November 3, 2013 12:20 a.m.
Most store sell at discount if you shoot for a whole box, which if you buy a lot of packs is well worth it.
November 3, 2013 2:54 a.m.
theres a store in Albany NY that sells their boxes are $139.99, while in my area they go down to $100-110, (or $90 if youre me), but i guess they sell a ton at $140, kinda the here and now to waiting for shipping or driving an hour
November 3, 2013 9:59 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #7
I think several of you are misunderstanding something critical. We're talking about distributors who supply game stores, NOT game stores themselves. The price you see at your LGS is the final product price after going from WOTC to the distributor and from the distributor to the LGS.
November 3, 2013 1:57 p.m.
Exactly. Which is why I am in shock.. it's actually really high.
November 3, 2013 2:07 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #9
Do you have a way to check some other distributors' prices? Again, I'm not an expert on this particular subject, but that figure seems quite distorted to me.
November 3, 2013 2:08 p.m.
The only way to check prices is get the account open, which consists of sending in a good amount of business information. I am going to apply to another one that most LGS use, but I have a feeling the prices won't be that much different. Maybe it's the supply from Wizards that makes the biggest difference?
November 3, 2013 2:15 p.m.
Bobgalarneau says... #11
Actualy, 80$ a box looks like a good price. It still gives the store more than 10% profit on boxes and 60-70% on boosters.
Lets compare this to your local grocery store, how much do you think they do on beer or chips? Not sure they get to 15% profit.....
November 3, 2013 2:22 p.m.
Hey, I'd buy the boxes off you at $90 each. Because I'm in Australia, and the cheapest I can get them is $150, and legally sealed boxes cannot be sent over seas. But, you rip off the plastic, i'll buy the box XD
(Okay, I wont really, I don't have money for that, but it's a cool idea)
November 3, 2013 2:45 p.m.
that price is pretty normal for distributors. My area has 6 major LGS's (each with FNM from 30-120) and they've stated opely their distributor prices are 66-80 depending on set and quantity ordered. sale to customers on theros ranges from 90-119 with tax depending on the shop.
November 4, 2013 1:29 p.m.
The thing to remember is that there's no such thing as a "Booster Box" as a customer. There is no MSRP on a booster box, because it isn't an individual object WOTC sells to be resold. The contents of a booster box are "36 booster packs" and at 4 dollars per pack, that's 144.00 so the 80 dollar quote on a box is actually quite reasonable.
Most LGSs I've ever been to offer nothing cheaper than 3 for 10 on boosters, which is still 120 dollars per box. Offering a booster box at 90ish dollars is a very marginal gain, but it's importantly a) not a loss and b) in the case of eBay, another successful transaction, building positive feedback and seller score which makes everything else they sell become marginally more valuable as well.
November 4, 2013 1:56 p.m.
From what I understand, after a store has established itself with a distributor, they can get more product for a better price, but it takes years.
November 4, 2013 2:02 p.m.
Korombos, specifically with this dealer the maximum you can drop the boxes to would be 72 dollars. The discount stays "quarterly" and you have to spend in excess of 20k+. That's pretty insane, I think.
November 4, 2013 4:31 p.m.
that is just one distributor, they run a loyalty business, where they on average will (use of bad language) the LGS and only give them a tenth of what they order, or just not bring them anything. This also does not help to perpetuate prices on items causing an unjust demand, driving prices to an exorbitant level.
November 6, 2013 5:45 a.m.
@MrKnify That post didn't really make much sense, I'm confused. Also, the high demand for some products resulting in high prices has nothing to do with distributors screwing LGSs, or even Wizards 'screwing' distributors, and everything to do with Wizards making a deliberately small print run of some products, which isn't large enough to meet the demand.
November 6, 2013 7:19 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #19
@MrKnify: A lot of your posts in the Economics forum give me the impression that you're bitter about having to pay money to play the game.
Inherent in the function and design of collectible games are the demand for cards and the cost of acquiring them. I'm wondering what you think qualifies as "unjust" pricing. And there's never any such thing as "unjust" demand. That's the equivalent of saying other people aren't allowed to want things.
November 6, 2013 12:43 p.m.
I just don't understand why WOTC, who claims to make no accounting for the secondary market when making production decisions beyond the Reserve List, would literally throw money into a hole by underprinting something with demonstrated primary-market demand. Do you honestly think that increasing production of say, FTV:20 by an order of magnitude would actually make people quit magic?
Or more pointedly: Is the theory that you can also play Magic as an economic game by buying product you have no intention of using, to resell at a profit something that SHOULD be considered worth protecting by Wizards? And if they stopped acting in that manner, do you think the overall income of WOTC would decline?
November 6, 2013 12:51 p.m.
GoblinsInc says... #21
I assume this is USD? As in, wholesalers in the Uunited States?
November 6, 2013 1:32 p.m.
I think they do limited print runs in order to create "experiences" and hype. I also think that the premium products (FTV, Commander's Arsenal, SDCC planeswalkers) might not be profitable if they took them to full-scale production. These are basically publicity stunts. Done well, they go gangbusters. Done badly, they are shelfwarmers. If we're lucky, they will parley the success of stunts into larger-production-run products (like Commander 2013.)
November 6, 2013 1:38 p.m.
Do you honestly think that FTV:20 wouldn't have sold out if they made five times as many? ten times as many? a hundred times as many?
November 6, 2013 2:17 p.m.
That's correct. I am pretty willing to help people get decent prices if they do want boxes ( if it's even possible, you can just get it off eBay I suppose) but I wouldn't re-sell the boxes or anything. Dunno, just an idea to be thrown out there.
November 6, 2013 3:37 p.m.
so @fzebib are you going to sell commander 2013 boxes to everyone on tappedout.net?
November 6, 2013 4:16 p.m.
@Devonin I am not in the nitty gritty of the business, but these things do not often scale up cleanly. Printing 100x more might cost 500x more and eat the profit margin to death. If FTV msrp'd at $125 (to balance printing costs) and they printed that much more, they night NOT have all sold...
November 6, 2013 5:38 p.m.
There is pretty much no world where mass producing MORE of a thing costs MORE money per unit. That is the fundamental purpose of mass production. I do printing all the time, printing more of something is always cheaper than printing less.
The fact that FTV:20 was selling in stores for in many cass 500%-1000% more than MSRP says to me that WOTC absolutely wasted a chance to make more money. Even doubling the size of the print run would have instantly sold out. They could probably have gone to 4-6x the volume with absolutely no problems.
November 6, 2013 5:52 p.m.
It depends on if you're running longer print runs or buying more machines. If you don't own the printing operations, can your contractors handle such an increased load? If you need to hire new contractors, what's the cost in new quality control ant training, etc. What's the capital outlay for such an undertaking? What's the risk?
Remember WotC is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro may be dictating just what resources WotC has for such projects.
November 6, 2013 6:29 p.m.
I've also done printing, fabrication and other industry related manufacturing.
More is less. if you make more it costs you less.
November 6, 2013 7:11 p.m.
Since they added 33% more cards, they "couldve" uppsed the msrp 33% to account for the "extra costs"
either way, FTV is still abundant in many stores ive seen and all over ebay. my LGS by college has over 6 cases, and at home they have a a couple cases, giving 1 free FTV20 out for all events with over 32 players, and 4 cases of modern masters.
different distributors are different and have different supplies
November 6, 2013 7:22 p.m.
@Korombos The print run for something like FTV is a TINY TINY Percentage of the size of a print run for something like say...Theros. To suggest that they lack the capacity to produce something like "twice as many FTV:20s" is absolutely ludicrous.
When your MSRP is being increased by 500%, you have under-produced your product. You will never be able to convince me otherwise, especially with patently absurd things.
November 6, 2013 8:58 p.m.
If people want things I could check the prices and mention it to them. I have never played commander and dont know a thing about it, so..
Epochalyptik says... #2
I don't deal with distributors, but that seems like an enormous rip.
November 3, 2013 12:15 a.m.