TOPIC: Treasure Token Price Guide (v21)

dequils, would you be willing to go over how you compute the prices on the price chart?

Long ago I vaguely remember an execl sheet that might have been the root of the pricing guide, but I don't remember how the math works. The main question I have is how do you factor trades into the prices?

Another thing I've been wondering is if its known precisely how many of each token type have been printed. You said that "XX is the maximum number of EACH token that there are in circulation" but does that mean that there were XX of each token or that XX is that max that could have been printed but the real value is unknown?

Thanks for doing all the work on the pricing guide, it has been a lot of fun to read!

-Mike

Sure, I will try to answer your questions.

The issue of price ($) determination is pretty straight forward. Basically using the current print run as an anchor, the estimated GP value of each token in the current run gives an average GP value per bag divided by the cost per bag ($10) gives a $/GP ratio. This ratio is used to compute the $ value for all tokens. The important thing here is relative values of tokens, not necessarily absolute values because multiplying all of the GP values by 10 won't change the $ value, if that makes sense.

Factoring trades into relative GP value is somewhat of a pseudo-science. But if a trade comes in say for example a +1 longsword for Gauntlets, I look at numbers for each of the items individually to see where the least uncertainty is in terms of GP for item trade. In other words, say I have 4 GP trades for the Gauntlets and 1 for the longsword, then I might raise the +1 LS GP value slightly instead of lowering the Gauntlets value.

Finally, for the print run sizes of EACH token, I took the total number printed for each rarity and divided by 36 (the number of tokens in each rarity) and rounded up (thus a maximum). The numbers don't work out exactly and I don't think it was tracked exactly how many of each token was printed but the numbers do give you a pretty close estimate of how many of each token there are. Note that the number of Very Rares in the early print runs was much less relative to the other tokens.

But again, please keep in mind that these numbers are approximations and based on a subset of trades and thus might not be completely accurate once we get into the "Real World". I am sure some of the tokens will fluctuate in value at GenCon but this is a good starting point I think. The presence of "collectors" in TD, for example, is something that is extremely difficult to estimate and could have a profound impact on some of the prices.

I hope that answers your questions. If you have any more, please let me know.

-Douglas