TOPIC: Unfortunate Token Predator News

Brad wrote: maybe a "trusted token consultant" badge or pin could be put out to the people in the community we know we can trust so people can ask for advice.

It isn't a bad idea, but then either Jeff, or the community, will need to come up with rules of expected behavior, which would be possible but not easy IMO.

For example, if I offer somebody $35 for a Figurine of Power: Pixie, am I taking advantage of them? I have a whole pile of them and nobody buys them, so I think that it is a fair offer. If I do that for a Silver Nugget, or a Relic, then yes that's more obvious. But even with the Silver Nugget, "standard" buy prices for MtG is about 50% of retail price (from what I understand), so that would make a $50 offer for the Silver Nugget not out of the question. For me, I like to offer better buy rates than 50% for tokens that I know will sell just because it is a fun small community. But I'd bet Gaming Etc does basically 50%.

Perhaps it all comes down to what (I think) Lazlo said. The disclaimer. So perhaps this is not good:

"I'll pay you $60 for that Silver Nugget"

And perhaps this is OK:

"I'll pay you $60 for that Silver Nugget because I'm buying it to resell it, however if you were able to find a player who really wants that token you could get closer to $100 for it"

And this:

"Wow, that's an ultra-rare that you have there. I'll pay you $35 for that FoP Pixie; that price is fairly low because I have a lot of them in stock and it isn't a popular token. If you found a player who is looking for one then you might be able to get closer to $60 for it though. And BTW, if you pull other ultra-rare tokens come back to me because I might be able to offer significantly more money for some of the other ones."

(this is my standard method, although these are just examples)

jedibcg wrote: I have a minor issue with a poster with prices. I don't think Jeff wants to be in the business of set secondary market prices. A poster of explaining the rarity and saying get a second and/or third opinion I think would be better than saying this rarity is worth X dollars.

I agree. Before I started collecting I had no idea there was even different rarities. I thought the platinum tokens were the better ones, but it never made sense because looking at the platinum tokens they didn't seem all that great. I just went over to Gaming Etc at the end of each GenCon to cash in whatever I didn't want to save for my runs the next year. I remember being amazed that they paid me $40 for my 2013 treasure pulls (covered the cost of one of my runs!)... I still wonder what token(s) I lost.

jedibcg wrote: I have a minor issue with a poster with prices. I don't think Jeff wants to be in the business of set secondary market prices. A poster of explaining the rarity and saying get a second and/or third opinion I think would be better than saying this rarity is worth X dollars.

If it said something like URs are generally valued at 100. Then someone getting a pixie figurine snd being offered 50 is going to think they are being ripped off. Where if you want to buy a pixie for 90 please pm me.

I'd very much like to see simple to understand rarity posters around the treasure area or even storyscape. From anyone that's played a collectible game gets that higher the rarity higher the value, usually. Always exceptions but at least it's a better starting point for mental thoughts vs something with hard money values attached.

jedibcg wrote: I have a minor issue with a poster with prices. I don't think Jeff wants to be in the business of set secondary market prices. A poster of explaining the rarity and saying get a second and/or third opinion I think would be better than saying this rarity is worth X dollars.

If it said something like URs are generally valued at 100. Then someone getting a pixie figurine snd being offered 50 is going to think they are being ripped off. Where if you want to buy a pixie for 90 please pm me.

I think, from a manufacturing/reselling point of view. Jeff most assuredly shouldn't be involved in the secondary market. Doing so could have serious tax implications. If Jeff *officially* says that UR tokens are worth $100, then any inventory he has on hand is subject to be valued at that amount. Imagine how painful it could be to have the IRS do an inventory on all the legendary tokens produced for transmutes at market rates. Even a few hundred of them would be super, super, painful from an asset standpoint.

There isn't anything .. stopping .. Jeff from chiming in .. other than is being super messy, possibly expensive, and a huge conflict of interest

Beertram wrote: ...real COA's (I even felt guilty checking them every time through)

I hope no TD volunteer ever feels guilty for doing their job. I don't think there is any reason to feel guilty for checking tokens. Verifying tokens is not an accusation of cheating. If anyone ever gives you guff about checking their tokens, please get the CC or a director involved.

Druegar wrote:

Beertram wrote: ...real COA's (I even felt guilty checking them every time through)

I hope no TD volunteer ever feels guilty for doing their job. I don't think there is any reason to feel guilty for checking tokens. Verifying tokens is not an accusation of cheating. If anyone ever gives you guff about checking their tokens, please get the CC or a director involved.

I think we are putting some really good things in place. So it will help greatly

Personally I had no problem pulling out my treasure enhancing tokens to have them checked in the training room.

The trainers were very good and respectful... and it is the new rules.

Steve wrote: Jeff most assuredly shouldn't be involved in the secondary market. Doing so could have serious tax implications. If Jeff *officially* says that UR tokens are worth $100, then any inventory he has on hand is subject to be valued at that amount.

I agree, however not for tax reasons. The value of a business inventory is equal to the cost paid for that inventory, not its market value. Once you sell the inventory then you have income equal to the sale price minus the cost of that inventory. There aren't any particular tax implications to having a large value of inventory anyways, unless Illinois charges a tax on inventory value (which they might).

But again I agree Jeff is doing it just right. He sells the random packs at a fixed price and he lets the rest of us worry about (or have fun with!) the real value of the different tokens. I mean obviously he determines the value indirectly (based on what he charges for random packs), but not on a per-token basis.

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Beertram wrote: ...real COA's (I even felt guilty checking them every time through)

I hope no TD volunteer ever feels guilty for doing their job. I don't think there is any reason to feel guilty for checking tokens. Verifying tokens is not an accusation of cheating. If anyone ever gives you guff about checking their tokens, please get the CC or a director involved.

I think we are putting some really good things in place. So it will help greatly

In coaching when I saw TE's I told everyone they would have to be shown in the training room and I got zero complaints about that. Everyone seemed to be very understanding of the new process. One thing I heard from trainers is they would like some mark on the party card to indicate which players had TE's and needed to be checked in training. I think that is a good idea. I don't think coaches should write the total though, to avoid corrections needing to be made later. Just my opinion.

Back on topic a bit, I saw multiple (4 or 5) URs pulled by newbies from their 10-packs. I always pointed those out and gave a rough value. Everyone was surprised and wasn't aware of the rarity system and that purple text was only 1/100 chance. Even if TD doesn't want to provide "official" values (I can understand why) perhaps some signage showing that black=common, green=uncommon, red=rare, etc. would be helpful so at least they know that a purple should not be traded for a red.

One of those URs pulled was a Kilt by a guy who just happened to be wearing a kilt!

Jeff321 wrote: One of those URs pulled was a Kilt by a guy who just happened to be wearing a kilt!

That .. is what we refer to as .. fate.
Or drafty ..

If a rarity poster is desired, maybe for the transmute tiers a rough count of how many 10 packs would be no required could give an idea no of the difficulty to make without putting s specific price on. Doesn't help so much for the URs and runs the risk of scarring off potential collectors, but it's an option.

Mike Steele wrote: I'm curious, what approximate value did the coach give for each rarity? That's a tricky thing to do, since the range of values is pretty large. I do like the general idea though of giving players some idea of value, as most new players would probably be astonished at how much tokens could be worth.

I've been asked hundreds* of times "How much are Tokens worth?" and I've developed a super-simple formula which most newbies can remember.

=========
Say for a moment that Commons are worth a few cents each.
Then move the decimal point over every time you increase in rarity.

So....
Commons can be valued in pennies,
Uncommons in dimes,
Rares in dollars,
Ultra-rares in Tens of dollars,
Relics in Hundreds,
and Legendaries can be over $1000.
===========


This doesn't mean that any single common is worth no more than 9 cents... but you can generally express the price tag in cents.
Uncommons tend to be worth in the 10 cents - $1 range.
Rares you can buy or sell for $1-3... and some (like PoDD) are worth more like $10.
URs - (from current year, which is what Newbies will pull) - are up to $100.
etc.

Obviously this is just a very loose guide. I wouldn't want newbies to think that they can get several thousand dollars for a Legendary like Tamor's Bracers, or that they should sell their UR for a mere $30 .... but it gives them a starting place, and they don't need to memorize a lot of fluctuating values.

Then, if newbies want to sell some tokens, they know that they might loose a few pennies if they sell or trade their commons/uncommons without doing their research, but that they stand to loose $10-90 if they don't check around before selling an UR, and that - should they be lucky enough to draw a Relic or Legendary - they are taking a huge risk if they don't get a second (or third) opinion.

From that point, they can make their own judgement about how much risk they're comfortable with.


But if I had to pick just one bit of token-predator-prevention advice to give out in the Coaching room, it would be this:

cdsmith wrote: Be sure to get a second opinion if someone instantly offers you cash for a token you pull."

^^^^^^

Seriously. THIS. This is the kind of thing whichis obvious to anyone with common sense. But it's worth repeating for those who are Common-Sense-Challenged... or just feeling tired and bewildered after 2 hours in the dungeon!

If we have people on the XP/Treasure desk (especially ones who recognize when high-end tokens are pulled) it would be good to repeat this advice to those lucky adventurers.




*not an exaggeration, since I can get a dozen variants on this question daily. Vets who run token stores probably get asked it even more often.

Only doing a few runs each GC and being in the dungeon (as an AC) when I am on duty, I don't see much of this epilogue room and after. I'm glad there are so many volunteers and players trying to make sure newbies are treated fairly.