TOPIC: 2020 Token Order - 1/4 Supercondensed Offering

Restructuring the offering and will be posting under a new listing.

I would urge us not to do any 2020 auctions until pricing, etc becomes official. I know the pricing doesn't change often but it definitely makes sense for it to go up for $8K orders considering how badly they are canabalizing the $250 orders.

We also don't know what will be included in the $8K orders this year yet (nor even what will be in the $2K orders).

Personally, I'd be shocked if we don't see price increases. These haven't gone up in more than 5 years and both their direct costs have gone up and we've badly cut into the $250 order market (essentially, only a small fraction of forum users actually do $250 orders now since PYPs are only going for $100-$110 - with rares at $1 each and trade goods being relatively cheap - why would you ever do a $250 order?) The amount of auctions, in counting forum posts for them, have gone up by more than 5 fold in as many years (depending on how you count it, we're likely seeing 10 times as many auctions as we did in 2014).

I've done 2 auctions myself. I get why they are being done but we should also look out for TD. Their profits come, almost exclusively, from token sales. With the trade tensions, Chinese suppliers are raising costs to help offset losses they see coming. Even with the boardgame and video game tariffs delayed, costs are still going up. Meanwhile, we're cannibalizing the smaller orders with this many auctions. I would support Jeff passing the increased costs to us since most companies operate at low margins and deserve to be profitable.

I recommend holding off until 2020 offerings and pricing becomes official.

Fred

That large of an increase has the potential to significantly change token sales and would have resulted in the forum auctions all failing.

I suspect increasing the pricing to $10K wouldn't hurt the auctions that much. We might lose 20% of them as PYP costs would need to get into to $150 range but that loss in auction sales would be made up for by those same PYP buyers just getting $250 orders like they used to.

The math supports adjusting the $8K offering to around $12K to get to where PYP's are at about $200 and would make players consider a $250 order instead. That might be a bit much initially but $10K is pretty reasonable (it just means PYP's would need to go up by $50 to off-set the increase).

More than anything, Jeff's costs have to be going up. We dodged a bullet on the tariffs not being applied to gaming yet - by itself, that would have increased token costs for Jeff by 20% - something we'd have to eat since very few businesses can handle a 20% erosion of gross revenue without losing money. Come January, don't be surprised to see those tariffs come up again, though. The only reason they didn't happen this time around was because it would have crushed US Christmas sales and cost Trump any shot of re-election.

Fred

Haven't seen any auction that has come close to $9K plus let alone $11K plus.

Once it is tried, good or bad, there is no going back.

I would liquidate what I have if prices supported an overnight 25% increase and move on to a different hobby. 50% would be even sweeter.

Raising GenCon tickets 25% or 50% would liven up the discussion.

I think it depends entirely on specifics.

Many people have a set amount they will spend as a max, and and that's all they will spend.

The auctions fail as often as they succeed, and the only new "chase" things are 6th teeth and PYPs, particularly with rares being taken out of most relic recipes.

A 25% price increase should hit all levels too. The $250 should become $312.50. The 1K would become $1250, the 2K would be $2500. Changing only the 8K is unlikely to make much of a difference, and certainly doesnt seem fair.

Most, if not all, of the people I consolidate orders have a max to spend. This is the majority of the money brought in too.

Going to start a thread for discussions on tokens cost increases.

Fred K wrote: I suspect increasing the pricing to $10K wouldn't hurt the auctions that much. We might lose 20% of them as PYP costs would need to get into to $150 range but that loss in auction sales would be made up for by those same PYP buyers just getting $250 orders like they used to.

The math supports adjusting the $8K offering to around $12K to get to where PYP's are at about $200 and would make players consider a $250 order instead. That might be a bit much initially but $10K is pretty reasonable (it just means PYP's would need to go up by $50 to off-set the increase).

More than anything, Jeff's costs have to be going up. We dodged a bullet on the tariffs not being applied to gaming yet - by itself, that would have increased token costs for Jeff by 20% - something we'd have to eat since very few businesses can handle a 20% erosion of gross revenue without losing money. Come January, don't be surprised to see those tariffs come up again, though. The only reason they didn't happen this time around was because it would have crushed US Christmas sales and cost Trump any shot of re-election.

Fred

Don’t confuse increasing number of token auctions with increasing demand - they are primarily just displacing an older method of selling PyPs where aggregators would sell PyPs at $100 each, and mainly hold onto/sell the trade goods another way through their stores.

There were years where a single aggregator did ~8 8k orders worth if memory serves. I’ve definitely done 3 or 4 in a single years.

I’m not saying demand isn’t up - just that counting the number of 8k auctions is not going to tell you much about it since they are a relatively new phenomenon - 3 years old maybe?