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Dear Trick: From the Vault – Exiled
This email came in on Monday from a fan who is upset by From the Vault: Exiled’s limited print and the effect that has on the market.
From the Vault: Exiled really makes me wonder what is going on with Wizards of the Coast. I have one store in Wausau Wisconsin that has the set available for sale. I live 20 miles away and I am disabled so I cannot drive. I got a friend to take time off from the work she was doing to drive me to the cardshop in Wausau.
I got there in the first few minutes after opening. The clerk told me I would get a pack and I was pumped. The FedEx did not get there yet but I was allowed to pay for the pack and pick it up later. I saw no problem with this arrangement so i said write up a sales receipt. The clerk did so but to my amazement the cost was 100 bucks a pack.
The store was getting 11 packs in and they wanted to screw me out of 65 buck to make money. Needless to say I declined to purchase the cards and left. The more I think about it the madder I become because something tells me they were not supposed to sell them for more then 3 buck, right? Anyway I am writing a buch of shows to see who talks about it and I also hope to win the exiled cards you are giving away. Keep up the good work
pissed off in Wisconsin
Jeff
Man do I feel your pain.
FTV: Exiled is one of those items that I am in awe of because it is the most clear example of Wizards printing money. It’s guaranteed to sell, and it’s such a limited commodity that it will be sure to draw higher than MSRP prices. And it targets a specific niche such that consumers will pay the price, whatever it is.
First off, your local store was not breaking any rules by selling at such a high mark up. Yes it sucks, but it’s only governed by the laws of economics. The bigger Magic vendors are already buying them from customers for around $100 each. That right there means that the vendor has to charge a high price or else they’re passing up free money, which is bad business.
Secondly, LGSs (local game stores) need to make money wherever they can. In so many times they’re pressed for cash and just barely surviving, a mom and pop game shop definitely needs the extra profit wherever they can get it. Should they charge the full price? Not unless their local customers can afford it. And apparently your shop felt that it could.
The other major issue with this thing is that Wizards didn’t really market it correctly. These aren’t an item like a new expansion set; this is a true Magic collectible. They might as well print commerorative coins etc. The whole From the Vault line of products is meant to be more of a limited item, akin to WOW’s loot cards, that purely exists to drive secondary the markets wild.
In the end the casual and competitive players end up getting the short end of the stick. Vendors end up alright, but also remember that they would much rather have the quantity of sales over the limited quality sales of such a high price item. Moving a hundred copies at $10 profit is much better than 11 copies at $60 profit.
I’m sorry that it’s happening, and if Wizards had asked me I would have told them to avoid it, but it’s going to keep happening as Wizards is finding the market more than willing to support such items. And that makes for good business.
All the best,
– Trick Jarrett
Editor of ManaNation.com, Patrick "Trick" Jarrett loves Magic. He's played it since 1995, he's written about it since 2003, and he's run ManaNation.com since 2007. He writes about and covers Magic: The Gathering for a living.| Useful Author Links | Last 4 posts |
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“First off, your local store was not breaking any rules by selling at such a high mark up. Yes it sucks, but it’s only governed by the laws of economics. The bigger Magic vendors are already buying them from customers for around $100 each. That right there means that the vendor has to charge a high price or else they’re passing up free money, which is bad business.”
I agree that mom and pop stores need the money to stay alive, but my problem with your first point is that there are other items such as…. lets say a video game console. There was a certain console which was very popular the last few years and sold out by x-mas. Now the secondary market being e-bay or craiglist had them going for triple the msrp. However no store in it’s right mind would charge more than msrp least there be riots. People had to wait in line, take a number, win a store lottery, ect., to get one from the stores. Why is it in the world of CCG that it is ok for a manufacture to set a price and the stores that sell them set their own prices? It’s because it is collectible? That seems like a weak excuse to hose the consumer. And I agree, it makes me mad as hell. I too passed on buying one for the same exact reason. That is not a functioning market. It is wrong on many levels and I hope Wizards hears this frustration and finds a way to fix it. Stores should not be allowed to double MSRP the day a product comes out, no matter how much they think their customer base will bear.
From the Vault: Exiled is a collection of 15 cards covering important bits of Magic’s history, printed using a special process to make them extra shiny, and a limited print-run to define the product for what it is – a special collector’s item. Please keep in mind that these cards have previously been printed in much larger quantities, and are obtainable for lower prices if you are looking for the pieces of cardboard to play with. While Wizards set the MSRP at $34.99, it was almost universally understood across the internet that the ‘S’ (Suggested) in MSRP was not likely going to be followed.
I could understand the uproar if this was a set of new, standard-playable cards that people needed to compete. It is not. With collectors going rabid over this product, what self-respecting business owner wouldn’t capitalize on supply and demand? How are shop owners supposed to separate people who genuinely want the set, and those who are buying them just to re-sell them to any number of the online stores that are buying them for $100. I happily paid $80 for FTV:E. In fact, I thanked the storeowner for selling it at such a reasonable price – he was still giving away money.
I know there are many people out there that could afford it at $34.99 but not $80 or $100. I feel for you, and understand the frustration. However, please understand that collector’s items are worth what people will pay for them.
Ron: You make a good point, but the Wii is more analogous with a core Magic set or expansion, than FTV: Exiled. It would be better if Nintendo released a limited edition, special run, of some of Nintendo’s greatest hits – that would be something that the stores would raise the price for.
There are limited runs on games. There are pre-release specials that sell out all the time. Have you ever seen Best Buy raise the price of anything over MSRP? It just doesn’t happen outside of collectibles, no matter how rare something is. They only thing you can really compare it to is something like Beanie Babies or Hummel figures, and even those tend to shoot up AFTER the run is out. How about Wizards just works on pricing their products right. Just because Star City Games will offer a bill for one of these does not mean I am not getting ripped off by my local shop. Are they in the business of selling their products to online retailers? Since when are these shops wholesalers? If they open the box and then sell the individual cards I have no issue with that. But seeing a mark up on a brand new sealed product is a kick in the nuts, plain and simple.
Ron:
Best Buy is a big chain company. Big chain companies can afford to sell products at the MSRP (or lower) simply because they deal in volume. Big chain companies do not get products like FtV: Exiled to sell.
Look, I go into Best Buy a couple of times a month and what do I see there? There are still limited edition copies of Iron Man with the Tony Stark bust, selling for $20-30. But the fact is, a ‘limited edition’ run of a movie or video game is a much bigger run than what Wizards has produced in their ‘From the Vault’ series. When GTAIV came out you could get a limited edition copy of the game with a dufflebag and all sorts of perks for $100 — about $40 more than the basic game that I bought. And you could get it at any Game Stop, Target, WalMart, Best Buy or KMart you wandered into.
Of those stores, only Target and WalMart, in my experience, sell MtG product (I haven’t been to KMart in a long time — they might; GameStop and Best Buy still don’t). However, Target and WalMart sell three items: booster packs, preconstructed ‘intro’ packs, and gravity packs. Sometimes they might sell Duel Decks or maybe even fat packs. They do not get the special limited quantity products that small specialty gaming stores get. They don’t sell singles. They don’t host tournaments. And they don’t get From the Vault products.
The stores that do get these products, host these tournaments and sell singles, on the other hand, are the stores that need the money the most, and I don’t begrudge them that, personally. I also don’t have the money to spend on a FtV: Exiled box. But I wouldn’t be playing with those cards anyway. For one thing, they’re not Standard or Extended legal. For another, I’d have to buy FtV: Exiled boxes to get playsets of any of them (maybe only 3 in the case of Balance). If I had a set, I’d only have it to say I had it. It’d be a collector’s item and nothing more.
Saying you wouldn’t object if the store opened a pack of cards and then sold the cards at higher prices, what if the store bought the box of FtV: E at MSRP, then resold it at the hiked price? What’s the difference there?
Yeah, you have some very good points Jeremy. The issue is we are comparing apples to oranges, but we have no option because there are no other apples around. And I guess that is my main point. Wizards does have a very unique market, but at the same time they should also be keenly aware that shops are in the position to set their own prices. And that in turn will make consumers like me feel ripped off. The difference between single cards in a case and an unopened new release is that I am used to price fluctuations on single cards because they are “in the wild”. The shrink wrap has been opened and each card has been evaluated on a card by card basis. Right now the white M10 precon deck is going for 7-8 bucks more than the others, but if you buy an unopened display box you can get them for 40 bucks flat, or 10 a pop. The shrink wrap has not been opened and I as a consumer should be able to take advantage of that. Let shops set prices on single cards. And the truth is if Wizards would price these right then the shops wouldn’t be in the position of making money by sticking to their customers. And I would not feel burned. When it comes down to it that feeling is what it is all about. Don’t make the customer feel burned, even if the emotion is irrational.
Wizards pricing it higher would have actually only made it worse because now you’re raising the price for the store itself. They should have just left off MSRP instead of choosing some arbitrary starting point for the public-facing price.
Unfortunately there is no good way to make everyone happy on a limited run item like this, someone will always be left out :-/
– Trick
The fact is that stores only pay 14-17 bucks a piece for these. It’s just greedy to sell them for above MSRP. I commend those stores that stuck to MSRP. If everyone sold at MSRP then there wouldn’t be such a price hike.
A MSRP of 60 would have been fine by me. But more than twice msrp on day of release is messed up. Star City Games offering 100 bucks cash didn’t help the stores either. They feel forced to match at least as close as they can to that price. But who losses in this? Not Wizards and not the stores. Us, the customers. If Wizards also hadn’t hyped it, set a price which I save up for, and then come day of release I am stuck with cash in hand but short… how am I supposed to plan purchases? Set aside the amount I think it is going to be and then hope for the best? Will I have do the same for the Sliver deck which I am planning on getting in November? That is a limited run too. I am left with a very bad taste for the future of buying these limited runs.
What’s the point of an MSRP if that isn’t the price of the product on the day of its release?
I’m not sure where the fault lies, but there surely is a problem here. The fact that Wizards touted this as a limited edition in the first place prohibits them from printing any more, which is the only thing I can think of that would help solve the problem. Then again, its limited availability is what makes it attractive to some people.
I’ve been doing this since just after Legends “advertised” release. After 15 years WoTC is still screwing with the players and the little people… I had though with the smaller sets this year they were over that.
The issue is who the retailer works for… being comic/game RESELLERS makes this sticky times like this because loyalties get confused. Are they selling to weekly customers or to collectors? My opinion is that WoTC should have shipped the packs but bumped up wholesale price to $50-$60 on the invoice, after all THEY are only getting to sell these once so why sell for so little? They went to lengths to tie these to the FNM circuit so they could be given out as prizes for tournaments and such… not to have them end up on ebay.
Frankly, the whole thing was a stunt. Everybody knew one was coming from last year. They released a tiny press release in May with only a few weeks to order and they cut out stores normal channels… meaning many couldn’t order it at all. I went to my regular retailer (sold the game since it came out) the week it was announced and they couldn’t say if they were high enough up the “food chain” to score one. Then WotC spent a whole week marketing the thing on the website only to release pittance at Gencon.
This kind of thing I always took as a “middle finger” to the average guy dropping $$$ every week keeping the stores open, when WoTC and Retailers pull these stunts, it keeps us little people in our place looking up while the “big boys” play with the cool toys. This is what upsets the regular customers saving up their $40-$60 bucks for a one-shot deal… and makes them question the $50-$100 per month they spend on a silly game.
This has nothing to do with WoTC screwing players. This is about WoTC giving the stores a bone. Comic/Card stores don’t have much profit to begin with. (Most dont, many are making over 75% of their profit in online volume sales, not in-store sales, which doesn’t count) They know the need for a crack fix is high in MTG players and will run with that. Not every store sold them at $100+. Some stores held tournaments for them, others marked them up, others sold on ebay, and a select few sold them.(My local retailer sold at MSRP, even gave me personally a loyal customer discount, sadly only got one :P I wasn’t so lucky for Dragons though) Even at $100+ per, every store I know of is sold out. (If they arent, they BOUGHT them at 80+ from their customers)
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Simple as that. Guess what, next year theres going to be another one. And the year after that, and the year after that… Be prepared to pay a premium on, *gasp* premium products!
As a collector myself, I wish wizards had more products like this. I absolutely relish the idea of having something that someone else doesn’t. I know, I’m a douche. But you know what? You can get all of these cards somewhere else. And you’ll pay about the same price. How pissed would all of you been if they made a million of these? The secondary market for every one of these cards would have tanked. Everyone who paid 75 bucks for their berserk and it was worth trash all of the sudden would have be raging. Just ask all of the poke-parents who bought a 100 dollar charizard back in the day.
And honestly, if you really wanted the foily ones, then you’re a collector too. It’s expensive to be a collector, get used to it.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And anyone who wanted to get a boxed set of 200 dollars worth of cards for msrp is just asking for a free lunch. Mad at your local game store for not being an exception? go ahead, boycott them. better yet, open your own store and show them how to run things! oh wait, there’s no money in that. that’s why you don’t have “national chain game stores” because it’s one of the roughest industries in the world to make money in. You think the extra 65 bucks a box is helping to keep the lights on? At best, it’s helping to keep stinky gamer bathrooms cleaned. God knows they need it.
I think that most of the people defending the stores here are correct to say that this is a very good way for WOTC to reward stores that host tournaments / premier retailers.
On the flipside, the people who are upset that they can’t get a copy at near retail have a very good reason to be upset. In many ways, WOTC has betrayed their loyal customers by not increasing the print run. I think a good middle ground would be for WOTC to allow people to register on their web site to purchase one of these, and for it to be distributed to their store for purchase at near retail, with the rest being sold at whatever the store deems necessary.
I agree with the posters complaining abot MSRP also i think stores and wizards will benefit from just selling this as normal item, kinda like old turnament packs. I desagree the limited print run is what makes this special in fact its what will make them sell less, artifacts go in every single deck and old artifacts are just plain nuts as EDH, cube players are always on the look out for them wizards has missed out on the casual market again by catering to scalp colecting vendors.
Its very sad when a company can’t remain true to it’s costumer in price maters. I for one will ignore stores selling this itmes at 100$ on the day of the release and will instead give my money to whoever sticks to the stated price.