That doesn't make sense. If stores are ordering 3-4 times previously then WotC just needs to print at least 2x as much. Not being able to keep up with printing demand makes no sense; it's not like their suppliers are already running at full capacity 24x7.
Demand for Zendikar is way up, because it's a remarkably better set than all of Alara block combined. Purposely making Alara bad has now shot WOTC in the foot, again, if they're truly relying on year-over-year projections to decide how much to print.
That doesn't make sense. If stores are ordering 3-4 times previously then WotC just needs to print at least 2x as much. Not being able to keep up with printing demand makes no sense; it's not like their suppliers are already running at full capacity 24x7.
WOTC's printers run a lot more then just magic. WOTC needs to order print runs months in advance just to make sure we get what they want printed. WOTC does not own the printers they just pay them to print this is why i think it is funny when people try to claim it only cost a pennie to print a card the avg non-foil runs about .10-.15c each to print. foils run about .25c each. When they run out they can not just start the printer back up they need to go to the printers and order more and it takes up to 3 months to get them depending on how busy the printers are.
Zendikar packs disappeared because of the "Priceless Treasures" situation. M10 disappeared because alot of new people were getting into it as well as the fact that there were really good cards.
To say that WoTC is incapable of providing a decent amount of cards for expansions without proof of from their production line records is fairly premature.
not necessarily as their order to the printer is no doubt already in and with a higher demand they will now have to go to the printer and do a second order run.
The issue here is that any product that wizards prints, it has to take out a loan for, because it can't shell out that much out of pocket money. It is then almost guaranteed to be able to pay back the loan and turn a profit. However it is really hard to get a loan right now because banks are scared of lending money, even to big corporate borrowers like hasbro. As a resault wizards is limited in how much they can print at a time. There are no 'intentional' shortages, this is just a sucky economy being bad for buisness and that is that.
Um, WOTC's owned by Hasbro. They don't have to take out loans to print Mtg, Hasbro's got plenty of revenue.
not necessarily as their order to the printer is no doubt already in and with a higher demand they will now have to go to the printer and do a second order run.
with a few months before the sets release its fairly easy to put in another order. its not like this thing is coming out tomorrow.
I live in brooklyn, and there are three different stores in new york that i go to. during M10, all three were out and couldn't get more for 2 weeks+. and with zen, there was a week or so when one of them was out and couldn't get more. stores online were totally sold out of m10. not mythical.
that said, i'd be shocked of there was a shortage of worldwake... there's not even that much hype about it yet.
Um, WOTC's owned by Hasbro. They don't have to take out loans to print Mtg, Hasbro's got plenty of revenue.
Actually its probably more like Hasbro had an audit of WOTC's processes and found that they overprinted the Shards block, and were therefore creating waste.
So I would think that Hasbro management attacked this situation with WOTC in a few steps :
Step number 1 : Reduce print runs
Step number 2 : Do whatever it takes to increase revenue and sell through of the product. (i.e. priceless treasures, and new cards in core set)
Step number 3 : Find a way do something with the overstock of Shards (that is why we are seeing the Foil shards sets coming next year).
Hasbro has deep pockets, but they also took a pounding this year. Everyone is tightening up their ships for rough waters.
We have ONE store that has tournaments at all in my area. We have haven't had a single zen draft since the release due to shortage, and its looking like we won't be having any even after Worldwake comes out. My store only gets like 3-4 boxes every freken shipment! It takes 2 boxes for a draft.. Also, manager says that its cause wizards is reducing what they're allowing to send to Canada simply because the US dollar is doing worse and they want people to buy US cards more and don't care about canada. ALSO, because online stores sell worldwide, they sell crates of the set to online stores and have none left for stores, reducing it even more. Wizards is just being stupid.
Is this some kind of ridiculous marketing strategy? Create shortage to be able to say the product is so successful that it keeps selling out and rise the hype? I hope that's not the case, it may only end training distributers to just ask for less product while increasing the RSPP cost at their stores to maintain the profit.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
Demand for Zendikar is way up, because it's a remarkably better set than all of Alara block combined. Purposely making Alara bad has now shot WOTC in the foot, again, if they're truly relying on year-over-year projections to decide how much to print.
With the exception of fetchlands, the best deck in Standard right now has no Zendikar cards.
Baneslayer Angel is at the top of the heap pricewise. Aside from fetches and maybe the clean Wrath reprint, how is Zen better than Alara?
I'll take Alara block over Zen block any day. Art. Flavor. Design. World. Power level. You name it.
ALSO, because online stores sell worldwide, they sell crates of the set to online stores and have none left for stores, reducing it even more. Wizards is just being stupid.
Forgive me if I misinterpret your statement, I believe you are saying WOTC is selling product directly to online stores? This is not the case, sans a few exceptions.
WOTC has a very strict policy that it only allows its Magic product to be sold to stores with brick and mortar locations, never to online only stores. SCG is a big example of this because they have a B&M location, but their main revenue is obviously made online. I'm not sure whom they order from and how not having worked in a store with such large volume before.
Anyway, as a retailer wanting to order WOTC from any distributor, you have to fill out a detailed form with the ditributor as well as provide photographs to prove you actually own a store front and are not just a web site. This was implemented because of online stores which suck up such a huge amount of market share by offering their product so much more cheaply since their overhead is much less than a B&M store, plus they probably can buy in larger volume.
This was causing many smaller B&M stores to close as I understand it, and so WOTC started the restrictions on their product. After all, it's being able to play the game that drives people to buy it, and if all the stores close and you have nowhere to play it, what good are those online shops doing you then? Not everyone can meet up around the kitchen table for a good brawl.
So bottom line, B&M stores can also have web stores, SCG does this. But you must own an actual store front to get product. WOTC does not sell to online only vendors. I don't know how all those ebay power sellers are getting product and such, but they are supposed to have real store fronts.
And this craziness since M10 came out makes me glad i'm not working on a Magic store anymore. This set shortage BS would have forced us to close by now due to not having any product to sell :/
The only other time we ever faced shortages on stock before M10 came out was 10th edition, because WOTC expected no one to buy it as no one bought core sets much previously. Even then, we only were unable to get it for maybe 3 weeks, and then they had plenty printed again after that, happy ending. The store owner I worked for said this hapened during Onslaught block for some reason, particularly with Legions. Some sort of distribution issue lead to long delays with no product on release.
While my post count probably won't earn me a lot of credibility. Let me state, however, that I do know what I'm talking about in this context. I worked for a very successful brick and mortar store in Ohio and I worked at Troll & Toad as an Executive Buyer for a couple of years. Though I'm gladly out of a career in the MTG business, I've been involved with Magic in one way or another since 1999.
So, my points are this:
There's no evidence that WotC is short printing any Magic product. I think it's the opposite, actually. My personal opinion is that more and more product is being siphoned to mass market retailers like Target and Wal-Mart and popularity is coming back to the game after a hiatus of many years.
You're foolish if you buy product direct from WotC instead of a national or regional distributor. It's more expensive, slower, and highly prone to allocations -- not to mention just flat horrible customer service. I only ever bought from them when I had to or when I was buying foreign boxes (not sure if they still do this?). Being a premier retailer, or whatever they call it nowadays, just isn't worth it.
Ensuring you have sufficient quantity to meet demand is, I hate to say it, a game in itself. A store must have good relationships with its distributors -- one primary and at least 5 secondary. You must understand the blackout periods; the demand and hotness of a set; when products are going out of print; and have a healthy dose of experience with supply and demand. And, if you're selling just Magic, Pokemon, YuGiOh, and supplies then you need to diverge more, unless your store is healthy in which case I won't argue.
There IS STILL product out there for sale at normal wholesale prices. If you're a store and you've run out then you don't know where to look. I'd suggest getting an account on dealernetb2b as a start. Distributors like The Edgeman, Southern Hobby, and Mad Al were my favorites at the time, with Dave & Adams as a "they'll have it but you'll have to pay for it relationship" (I really like D&A btw). And there are many many more, all more than willing to sell you product if you want it. Building your network is extremely important. People would be shocked if I could say some of the things I know about the game, distributors, retailers, and collectors.
If you do have to pay more than normal prices, then you can consider raising your price. But, if you're selling at $4 a pack, then keep it there. Even at $100 a box (which is full retail price right now), your margin is still good enough until the price comes back down. And it will.
Remember that every sealed Magic product goes up in value, even if sometimes they dip a little for a time (Unglued, Torment, and Portal come to mind). It's VERY safe to hedge with sealed Magic product. The smarter you are the more successful you'll be at it.
Zendikar and M10 were very hot because they're good sets. Unfortunately, this sets the bar very high on the next sets. Wait until you know more about World Wake before you allocate your order. A poopy set's sales will be lower and a hot set's sales will be higher. Know this. This shouldn't stop you from forming good relationships with your distributors in the meantime though.
Box prices going from $51-ish to $65-ish, combined with WotC's insistence that distributors not sell to certain online retailers, about 5 years ago really damaged the health of the game imo. Prices went up, set quality went down, and sales went down. Packs just weren't worth the $3.50 you had to charge for them. WotC had to do something to drive up the value in a $4 pack. Mythic rares were one thing, and Priceless Treasures might have been another. I think after 5 years WotC has finally fixed a lot of problems from 5 years ago. I'm really passionate about this point since it really affected me when I worked at T&T. Didn't stop us from selling sealed product though ... it just artificially and unnecessarily drove up the prices of boxes and packs since there were more middlemen involved. The value of the product has finally met these price increases, imo. We'll see if WotC can keep it up.
And for crying out loud, SELL SINGLES and trade for singles. Not just a few dozen cards, but a selection of everything. The more inventory you have the bigger it'll get, and it feeds itself and fuels sealed sales. I did the math once and determined that I had 10% cash into any single we sold. Selling singles does not make you dependent on the intricacies of selling sealed product, and the market is much more stable. A Black Lotus will always be a Black Lotus, no matter how good or bad the in-print sets are.
A healthy store is a store that always has stock, sells a wide variety of singles, has low prices, and a good reputation for friendliness. Gaming tables are optional if they're viable in your business, but a successful store definitely has some combination of the above.
Sorry this is a half rant. I live in the Seattle area and I've not found a single good store that sells Magic. Grrrr.
This being the third time in a row, I'm absolutely convinced that they're doing it on purpose. some how it seems they've found a way to profit from this. perhaps they see it like this: if players see supplies as limited they're more likely to buy in bulk early on.
I said it with Zen, and I'll say it again: This is to make sure that brick and mortar stores are more likely to have product they can sell at full retail without having to compete with (foolish) stores selling at a (tremendously deep) discount online. Our brick and mortar store has had zero problems getting their orders, but has seen greater in-store sales. However, the online deep discounters have consistently been unable to fulfill their deep discount sales, and have had to raise the price of their product to much more reasonable levels when they do finally get them in stock.
Look, these online stores, they aren't making money on this product. You know what they are doing? It is really quite obvious with any knowledge of economics. They are using Magic releases as short term, interest-free loans to generate revenue from the remainder of the products they provide. They sell huge quantities of Magic on preorder at no profit. Then, they use all that money to purchase (much) smaller quantities of disparate products to stock in their store which they proceed to sell at normal margins, to generate profit. Then, when the Magic set releases, they fulfill their obligations using the money they made in the interim on said disparate products (while keeping the profit), returning monies to anyone they had to due to allocations. Voila! They've just used an interest free loan!
I would imagine this infuriates WotC to no end, for a few reasons. Most importantly, these folks are devaluing Magic across the board. Of course, WotC is also not in the loan business, and I'm sure they don't appreciate their products being used in this manner (especially when it also devalues their product at the same time).
My venue has only drafted Zen once and it was the release. I have been pretty furious about it considering no one has ANY THING! We have 1 store in a 60 mile radius with zen in stock and it bumped its prices for zen to 100 a box.
All I can say about the shortages issue, is it pays to have good distributors to order from. And it also pays to put in your pre-order as a shop as early as the distributor will allow. We put in our order of m10 early enough to be able to get 120 boxes for our shop, I ended up being able to get 150 boxes total once the second print run became available within a month of the set's release. After the m10 issues were discovered, we were given an opportunity to put in our pre-orders for zendikar a week after m10 was released. We were able to get 150 boxes, and have since gotten another 75 boxes since then through our distributors and a small amount from secondary market sellers that we deal with on a regular basis that had some at a decent price.
If you are outside the US its a whole different story though and I for one cannot speak to that. Also another thing to keep in mind, is that most distributors allocate boxes based upon previous orders. So if you ordered a smaller number of boxes for say alara reborn, and you went to put in your order of m10 when it was discovered there was a shortage of supply vs. the high demand, you would probably only get allocated a similar number of boxes from what you ordered before. Also it pays to have a network of distributors, so if nothing else you can get some from each distributor to be able to get your full order in place between the lot of them. And yes, when demand increases as much as it has for new sets, as magic as a game continues to grow in popularity and reach across the globe there is going to be a transition time as wizards works to increase their ability to produce more product to try to get enough supply out there to meet the unexpectly increased demand. Also if you look all around the business world right now because of the global recession we were (and still are) having, most all businesses and manufacturers had cut back production to help reign in costs and try to make sure to be able to whether the storm without causing any major harm to their business in case the slowdown affected their sales as it did with many businesses. Also after the general dissapointment from a sales standpoint that was alara block, tacked onto everything else its not surprising that when you add the issues they had with the production disruption during the printing process for m10 that caused a delay and caused them to be behind in their printing schedule by 2-4 weeks at least, the increased demand has just exascerbated the problems.
Consider it the perfect storm for wizards. If it were any other business that wasnt restricted to a certain schedule of release that they HAVE to follow regardless of any issues they may have, it might be a different story. But because they do have to follow that release schedule they get out as much product as they can, as quickly as possible, hence the secondary and third print runs of m10 and what will likely be the same for zendikar (along with more m10 here soon as well).
As for worldwake, we were allotted 130 boxes based on our previous order for m10 and zendikar. If you know you are going to need a lot of boxes for the first month after the set is released, you just have to get them all up front and ride things out until the next print run, and then beyond that if you still need more, then go check out the secondary market. The secondary market has never run out of m10 boxes. Though they can certainly be more expensive (or were) when the shortage became known, but even now we can still get boxes of m10 from secondary sources if we needed it, or we can just wait with what we have until the next print run is released in about 2 weeks and get what we need then to stock up for a while.
All im saying if that if you have good dsitributors, order early enough, and make sure you dont pre-sell more than you will be able to get/will need for other things, then you should be fine.
EDIT: to the poster above me: Umm, you do realize that retail price for a booster box of magic is $140 or so right? If you are or were able to get boxes for $100 each from a local shop then you are darned lucky. $80-$90 box prices are only the norm when the set isnt in high demand. High demand will cause a raise in price because then people are willing to pay more for the product. When we found out about the shortages for m10 and zendikar we put all of our non-pre-order prices for boxes at pack price which was $140 for a box, and our customers have not complained and have been happy that we have not only been able to keep an endless supply of singles in stock but also a continuous supply of zendikar in stock since the release. If anyone is saying they simply cannot get the boxes and they are from the US, then the shop isnt trying hard enough, or is too stuck in their old models to be willing to pay more for a box and then charge more (or closer to retail as the case may be) to compensate for that.
i was able to buy 2 boxes at the release of zen from my local shop. we have also drafted on a weekly basis (12-20 players) since then and not once faced a zen shortage. out of the 15 or so gaming shops in the local area not one has ran out of zen. for those who cant find it, you might want to point the finger at your game shop and not wizards. keep in mind the shop owners have to pay for the product whether it sells or not and they may have put small orders in because the reccession put the fear in them. and it easier for them to blame the "bogeyman" instead of admiting they ordered less.
Except I'm friends with the shop owner and the employees and I know for a fact that he didn't get what he orderd. Since M10 he hasn't gotten nearly what he ordered (and the previous sets have all been enough to draft, and its monthly here not even weekly). Our store is just being screwed over entirely and the only other store I even know exists within driving distance is too far away to really get to on a regular basis (and they have shortages too apparently). ottawa and gatineau specifically (the wizard's tower and a Multizone). We simply don't get our orders (we didn't even get divine versus demonic. They were "sold out" before he could even order it.)
As for my complaint about online stores, i know wizard has a policy but it still happens and SCG still gets to do it. I'm pissed off cause I kinda like zen and need more of it for trading since I only get my cards via limited and that requires stores getting enough boxes that they can afford to do a draft while still having a box or two for singles and maybe one to sell at box price.
I'm sure they'll be enough Worldwake to go around. It's like 3 months until the sets pre-release. Making accusations that a set will have a shortage before it's even release will just drive everyone to go nuts on buying product. That's where shortages come from, people freaking out about there being any.
There definitely exists the one store here and there that has a ton of product. For example, the store I went to for the Zen release held the event for 30ish people, held the pre-release for 30ish people, and then was able to sell boxes on release day for 108 each. It's a huge contrast when compared to the store in my town that still hasn't received any product and the other store nearby that didn't have enough packs to sell after the release/pre-release.
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:symw::symr: Boros Bushwhacker T2 :symu::symb::symg: Vial Affinity Legacy
MTGO: :symu::symw: U/W Control Block Vamps Block Vamps T2
WOTC's printers run a lot more then just magic. WOTC needs to order print runs months in advance just to make sure we get what they want printed. WOTC does not own the printers they just pay them to print this is why i think it is funny when people try to claim it only cost a pennie to print a card the avg non-foil runs about .10-.15c each to print. foils run about .25c each. When they run out they can not just start the printer back up they need to go to the printers and order more and it takes up to 3 months to get them depending on how busy the printers are.
To say that WoTC is incapable of providing a decent amount of cards for expansions without proof of from their production line records is fairly premature.
Um, WOTC's owned by Hasbro. They don't have to take out loans to print Mtg, Hasbro's got plenty of revenue.
with a few months before the sets release its fairly easy to put in another order. its not like this thing is coming out tomorrow.
im sure hasbro can tell them how much of a product to make too though
this would suck if it was true
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Did you go to THE STAND.
Actually its probably more like Hasbro had an audit of WOTC's processes and found that they overprinted the Shards block, and were therefore creating waste.
So I would think that Hasbro management attacked this situation with WOTC in a few steps :
Step number 1 : Reduce print runs
Step number 2 : Do whatever it takes to increase revenue and sell through of the product. (i.e. priceless treasures, and new cards in core set)
Step number 3 : Find a way do something with the overstock of Shards (that is why we are seeing the Foil shards sets coming next year).
Hasbro has deep pockets, but they also took a pounding this year. Everyone is tightening up their ships for rough waters.
Norn Queen of Hive Fleet Pesc
Monster Hunter Lover!
With the exception of fetchlands, the best deck in Standard right now has no Zendikar cards.
Baneslayer Angel is at the top of the heap pricewise. Aside from fetches and maybe the clean Wrath reprint, how is Zen better than Alara?
I'll take Alara block over Zen block any day. Art. Flavor. Design. World. Power level. You name it.
Forgive me if I misinterpret your statement, I believe you are saying WOTC is selling product directly to online stores? This is not the case, sans a few exceptions.
WOTC has a very strict policy that it only allows its Magic product to be sold to stores with brick and mortar locations, never to online only stores. SCG is a big example of this because they have a B&M location, but their main revenue is obviously made online. I'm not sure whom they order from and how not having worked in a store with such large volume before.
Anyway, as a retailer wanting to order WOTC from any distributor, you have to fill out a detailed form with the ditributor as well as provide photographs to prove you actually own a store front and are not just a web site. This was implemented because of online stores which suck up such a huge amount of market share by offering their product so much more cheaply since their overhead is much less than a B&M store, plus they probably can buy in larger volume.
This was causing many smaller B&M stores to close as I understand it, and so WOTC started the restrictions on their product. After all, it's being able to play the game that drives people to buy it, and if all the stores close and you have nowhere to play it, what good are those online shops doing you then? Not everyone can meet up around the kitchen table for a good brawl.
So bottom line, B&M stores can also have web stores, SCG does this. But you must own an actual store front to get product. WOTC does not sell to online only vendors. I don't know how all those ebay power sellers are getting product and such, but they are supposed to have real store fronts.
And this craziness since M10 came out makes me glad i'm not working on a Magic store anymore. This set shortage BS would have forced us to close by now due to not having any product to sell :/
The only other time we ever faced shortages on stock before M10 came out was 10th edition, because WOTC expected no one to buy it as no one bought core sets much previously. Even then, we only were unable to get it for maybe 3 weeks, and then they had plenty printed again after that, happy ending. The store owner I worked for said this hapened during Onslaught block for some reason, particularly with Legions. Some sort of distribution issue lead to long delays with no product on release.
Clan MTGSalivation :: Trade Thread
"In another life, in another dream,
By a different name,
Gave it all away for a memory and a quiet lie.
But I felt the face of a cold tonight,
Still don't know the score,
But I know the pain of leaving everything very far behind.
And if I could cry,
And if I could live,
What truth I did then take me there,
Heaven Goodbye."
-Heaven's Not Enough, by Steve Conte
So, my points are this:
There's no evidence that WotC is short printing any Magic product. I think it's the opposite, actually. My personal opinion is that more and more product is being siphoned to mass market retailers like Target and Wal-Mart and popularity is coming back to the game after a hiatus of many years.
You're foolish if you buy product direct from WotC instead of a national or regional distributor. It's more expensive, slower, and highly prone to allocations -- not to mention just flat horrible customer service. I only ever bought from them when I had to or when I was buying foreign boxes (not sure if they still do this?). Being a premier retailer, or whatever they call it nowadays, just isn't worth it.
Ensuring you have sufficient quantity to meet demand is, I hate to say it, a game in itself. A store must have good relationships with its distributors -- one primary and at least 5 secondary. You must understand the blackout periods; the demand and hotness of a set; when products are going out of print; and have a healthy dose of experience with supply and demand. And, if you're selling just Magic, Pokemon, YuGiOh, and supplies then you need to diverge more, unless your store is healthy in which case I won't argue.
There IS STILL product out there for sale at normal wholesale prices. If you're a store and you've run out then you don't know where to look. I'd suggest getting an account on dealernetb2b as a start. Distributors like The Edgeman, Southern Hobby, and Mad Al were my favorites at the time, with Dave & Adams as a "they'll have it but you'll have to pay for it relationship" (I really like D&A btw). And there are many many more, all more than willing to sell you product if you want it. Building your network is extremely important. People would be shocked if I could say some of the things I know about the game, distributors, retailers, and collectors.
If you do have to pay more than normal prices, then you can consider raising your price. But, if you're selling at $4 a pack, then keep it there. Even at $100 a box (which is full retail price right now), your margin is still good enough until the price comes back down. And it will.
Remember that every sealed Magic product goes up in value, even if sometimes they dip a little for a time (Unglued, Torment, and Portal come to mind). It's VERY safe to hedge with sealed Magic product. The smarter you are the more successful you'll be at it.
Zendikar and M10 were very hot because they're good sets. Unfortunately, this sets the bar very high on the next sets. Wait until you know more about World Wake before you allocate your order. A poopy set's sales will be lower and a hot set's sales will be higher. Know this. This shouldn't stop you from forming good relationships with your distributors in the meantime though.
Box prices going from $51-ish to $65-ish, combined with WotC's insistence that distributors not sell to certain online retailers, about 5 years ago really damaged the health of the game imo. Prices went up, set quality went down, and sales went down. Packs just weren't worth the $3.50 you had to charge for them. WotC had to do something to drive up the value in a $4 pack. Mythic rares were one thing, and Priceless Treasures might have been another. I think after 5 years WotC has finally fixed a lot of problems from 5 years ago. I'm really passionate about this point since it really affected me when I worked at T&T. Didn't stop us from selling sealed product though ... it just artificially and unnecessarily drove up the prices of boxes and packs since there were more middlemen involved. The value of the product has finally met these price increases, imo. We'll see if WotC can keep it up.
And for crying out loud, SELL SINGLES and trade for singles. Not just a few dozen cards, but a selection of everything. The more inventory you have the bigger it'll get, and it feeds itself and fuels sealed sales. I did the math once and determined that I had 10% cash into any single we sold. Selling singles does not make you dependent on the intricacies of selling sealed product, and the market is much more stable. A Black Lotus will always be a Black Lotus, no matter how good or bad the in-print sets are.
A healthy store is a store that always has stock, sells a wide variety of singles, has low prices, and a good reputation for friendliness. Gaming tables are optional if they're viable in your business, but a successful store definitely has some combination of the above.
Sorry this is a half rant. I live in the Seattle area and I've not found a single good store that sells Magic. Grrrr.
Putting myself up for a lot of criticism,
Matt Julius.
I said it with Zen, and I'll say it again: This is to make sure that brick and mortar stores are more likely to have product they can sell at full retail without having to compete with (foolish) stores selling at a (tremendously deep) discount online. Our brick and mortar store has had zero problems getting their orders, but has seen greater in-store sales. However, the online deep discounters have consistently been unable to fulfill their deep discount sales, and have had to raise the price of their product to much more reasonable levels when they do finally get them in stock.
Look, these online stores, they aren't making money on this product. You know what they are doing? It is really quite obvious with any knowledge of economics. They are using Magic releases as short term, interest-free loans to generate revenue from the remainder of the products they provide. They sell huge quantities of Magic on preorder at no profit. Then, they use all that money to purchase (much) smaller quantities of disparate products to stock in their store which they proceed to sell at normal margins, to generate profit. Then, when the Magic set releases, they fulfill their obligations using the money they made in the interim on said disparate products (while keeping the profit), returning monies to anyone they had to due to allocations. Voila! They've just used an interest free loan!
I would imagine this infuriates WotC to no end, for a few reasons. Most importantly, these folks are devaluing Magic across the board. Of course, WotC is also not in the loan business, and I'm sure they don't appreciate their products being used in this manner (especially when it also devalues their product at the same time).
I bought a box of Zendikar a week after it was released for a hundred bucks. The store had many more to sell at the same price.
Bush says mission accomplished
May 1st 2011:
Obama gets the mission accomplished
If you are outside the US its a whole different story though and I for one cannot speak to that. Also another thing to keep in mind, is that most distributors allocate boxes based upon previous orders. So if you ordered a smaller number of boxes for say alara reborn, and you went to put in your order of m10 when it was discovered there was a shortage of supply vs. the high demand, you would probably only get allocated a similar number of boxes from what you ordered before. Also it pays to have a network of distributors, so if nothing else you can get some from each distributor to be able to get your full order in place between the lot of them. And yes, when demand increases as much as it has for new sets, as magic as a game continues to grow in popularity and reach across the globe there is going to be a transition time as wizards works to increase their ability to produce more product to try to get enough supply out there to meet the unexpectly increased demand. Also if you look all around the business world right now because of the global recession we were (and still are) having, most all businesses and manufacturers had cut back production to help reign in costs and try to make sure to be able to whether the storm without causing any major harm to their business in case the slowdown affected their sales as it did with many businesses. Also after the general dissapointment from a sales standpoint that was alara block, tacked onto everything else its not surprising that when you add the issues they had with the production disruption during the printing process for m10 that caused a delay and caused them to be behind in their printing schedule by 2-4 weeks at least, the increased demand has just exascerbated the problems.
Consider it the perfect storm for wizards. If it were any other business that wasnt restricted to a certain schedule of release that they HAVE to follow regardless of any issues they may have, it might be a different story. But because they do have to follow that release schedule they get out as much product as they can, as quickly as possible, hence the secondary and third print runs of m10 and what will likely be the same for zendikar (along with more m10 here soon as well).
As for worldwake, we were allotted 130 boxes based on our previous order for m10 and zendikar. If you know you are going to need a lot of boxes for the first month after the set is released, you just have to get them all up front and ride things out until the next print run, and then beyond that if you still need more, then go check out the secondary market. The secondary market has never run out of m10 boxes. Though they can certainly be more expensive (or were) when the shortage became known, but even now we can still get boxes of m10 from secondary sources if we needed it, or we can just wait with what we have until the next print run is released in about 2 weeks and get what we need then to stock up for a while.
All im saying if that if you have good dsitributors, order early enough, and make sure you dont pre-sell more than you will be able to get/will need for other things, then you should be fine.
EDIT: to the poster above me: Umm, you do realize that retail price for a booster box of magic is $140 or so right? If you are or were able to get boxes for $100 each from a local shop then you are darned lucky. $80-$90 box prices are only the norm when the set isnt in high demand. High demand will cause a raise in price because then people are willing to pay more for the product. When we found out about the shortages for m10 and zendikar we put all of our non-pre-order prices for boxes at pack price which was $140 for a box, and our customers have not complained and have been happy that we have not only been able to keep an endless supply of singles in stock but also a continuous supply of zendikar in stock since the release. If anyone is saying they simply cannot get the boxes and they are from the US, then the shop isnt trying hard enough, or is too stuck in their old models to be willing to pay more for a box and then charge more (or closer to retail as the case may be) to compensate for that.
As for my complaint about online stores, i know wizard has a policy but it still happens and SCG still gets to do it. I'm pissed off cause I kinda like zen and need more of it for trading since I only get my cards via limited and that requires stores getting enough boxes that they can afford to do a draft while still having a box or two for singles and maybe one to sell at box price.
Norn Queen of Hive Fleet Pesc
Monster Hunter Lover!