The discussion was originated based on assumptions that pricing wouldn’t go up either this year or in the near future. I don’t know with certainty that prices are doing up but would expect it. Jeff has said that TD wouldn’t be able to operate without token sales - it’s where their profits come from.
Because of my work, I have helped companies set up supply chain relationships for Chinese mfg relationships. Increases in domestic pricing because of what has been happening for the past three years is increasingly common now. Even with currency devaluations, net increase in supply chain costs is up pretty dramatically.
Typically, manufacturing costs are substantially less than the rest of your supply chain. Just shipping means plant to cargo ship, the cargo ship, then by truck from Los Angeles (most likely). Traditionally non-manufacturing supply chain costs are 50% of your final product costs. Lastly, keep in mind not every token made and shipped sells. I would be surprised if TD’s gross profit (before pay of any staff, local facilities, etc) per 1,000,000 tokens is better than 50%. Then you pay corporate staff , taxes, and related costs and you have a business that likely has single digit NOI margins if the cost per token to manufacture was only 5 cents per. This year has been absolutely brutal for offshore manufacturing. I hope Jeff has contracts that would let him avoid it short term but I wouldn’t be surprised if a good portion of it isn’t protected.
Examples of goods not going up in price are usually products that have changed or where dramatic changes have happened in supply chain efficiency that benefits them. TV costs haven’t gone up due to technology changes that apply better when you produce 50 million $500 units. Those benefits apply when you have many billions of dollars in play. TD does less than $10M/year in revenue. They don’t get US lobbying to exempt them from various tariffs or taxes nor could pressure a manufacturer to reduce costs ala Hasbro. TD’s tokens likely are a spec run that is done in a week. Products that have remained, mostly, the same have gone up in costs. Howmuch is a can of Coke today? How about your car? The same model Toyota has gone up 25% in 10 years. Core inflation rates are 1.8% - your dollar is worth almost 2% less every year it ages. Arguing the average cost of goods has not gone up in the past 10 years just isn’t true. It would be nice but it just isn’t true.
At some point, TD should increase token prices and we shouldn’t be surprised or offended if it did. The super-condensed orders do help TD’s economics for $8k orders but I’m not sure what percent of the $8ks are those.
Separately, I would recommend that if they did go up, have it applies to the orders that cannibalize the more profitable smaller orders first. The smallest orders tend to apply to newer players - encouraging those grows the game. That leaves the best area for change at the $8k orders. We’ve all seen a significant number of people who used to do $250 orders move to pyps in $8k auctions.
Matt - your misunderstood what I was saying. It is a fact that the number of $8k auctions has gone up several hundred percent.. Many of the newer people doing $8k orders as auctions acknowledge they do it because the typical auction results in free or very low cost benefits for who runs them. Most auctions generate more than $8k in revenue without selling even 90% of the tokens. You’ve said so yourself. I did 2 last year and ended up quite a bit ahead of the actual costs. An auction today can earn $1k in profits (or similar value in goods not sold). Yes, some do not do as well but a lot of that is timing. Notice we’ve had an auction running constantly without more than a 2 week gap for a year now. That isn’t because TD players can’t do math.
So, we know people can run auctions at a profit and doing so costs TD money in reducing the pool of people buying at $250 and $1k orders. The $1k orders might actually be more impacted by $8k orders with teeth going for $50 now and AG pins going for $20. It is half the cost to get the $1k order and get most of it’s components - for another $100, you could get virtually everything in a $1k order.
My thought is best path for TD would be to try and make the economics similar between each type of order. The $8ks would support an increase by $1k pretty clearly and, possibly $2k without it stopping auctions, etc..
As for the bet, yes, I wouldn’t bet on the 10 packs or $250 orders going up in price - those are designed for newer players - Jeff definitely gets that this hobby depends on ongoing growth. The one place where there is room for increases without hampering growth would be the $8k orders. Alternately, new products could be created but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t have substantial investment costs. Maybe VIP access or something like that but that’s pretty limited and would really only apply to GenCon. I’d wager that $8k orders go up this year or next year.
It’s just speculation at this point. If there is a price increase, it is more than understandable. True Dungeon isn’t Hasbro - it’s a small business run as a passion rather than big money. We should keep that in mind.
Fred
