Auction this Saturday

A few minor notes on things:

Our auction will be this Saturday. It will feature a lot of Ding & Dent stuff (about 16 big boxes) as well as stuff customers want to bring and sell. We'll have a full list of Ding & Dent stuff here on Wednesday. I'm also going to use this opportunity to have a sales table of overstock and clearance items. I'll also be selling my Dresden Files book collection (the new book comes out today!).

eBay. Speaking of auctions, Canadians are winning most of my toy auctions. Yeah for Canada! Maybe my son will sneak across the border one day to get a job and bring over the family. How's that for some election day pessimism?

Death and Politics

Death. First, a cool article on how death and dying works in 4th Edition D&D. The problem was with the "negative ten and you're dead" rule in the game. Like many things that got fixed, it didn't scale well in past editions. You were dead at negative ten if you had 10 hit points or 500 hit points, and the tougher you are, the more lethal the game became. It's not uncommon for high level characters to not only die, but to die a lot, to be at such a high negative hit point total that you need a math major to figure out how dead they really are. That's the negative ten effect.

Politics: Just an observation that I'm for Obama, but if I had to chose between Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I'm not sure what I would do. All the McCain positions that make conservative Republicans wince are what draws me to him. Common sense solutions for immigration, campaign finance reform, even the Iraq War. He's pandered to the religious right, true, but nobody's perfect. I've got Clinton fatigue and she isn't even elected yet. That her policies are almost indistinguishable from Obama makes me wonder if supporting Obama is more about personality. Then I remember the cadre of Republicans that would get their way if McCain is elected. Creepy.

Ogres Painted!

After four months, I finally finished painting my Ogre Kingdoms army. They're all flocked and varnished and officially done. This is a full 2,000 point army, capable of around 2,500 points if I decked them out with all the options. My next project will be the new 40K demon army coming out in May.

Magic Tournament

As of Monday morning, we sold through our 30-day supply, except for one box of boosters. Here are photos from the 28-person tournament:

Samtastic

I just got back from my local mall and about 15 stores have closed since I was there last. Most appear to sell clothing and accessories, along with a Sun Coast store; that entire chain went out of business last year. Even stranger, a Wal-Mart has opened as an anchor stores. The Wal-Mart opened last April, which tells you how often I go mall shopping. I did a little research and there was concern before they opened that the Wal-Mart could hurt the stores in the mall. Ya think? This is the Hilltop Mall in Richmond.

Oh yeah, and Alvin and the Chipmunks is as wretched as you probably imagined. Even my two-year old wanted to walk out of that one today. Also bad in media this weekend: The "Angel" series, spinoff from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was such a ripoff of the Dresden Files that it was almost embarrassing.

Ebay Update. For the first time since I've started using eBay, I'm getting more interest from outside the US than inside. Canadians, especially are bidding on items and asking me shipping costs. The US dollar and Canadian dollar are at parity, so the US is a buyers market if you can get the international customers to notice.

The Gathering

Our release tournament for Morningtide went off wonderfully today, with 28 participants. I should have photos later this weekend. It was brought to my attention by Michael that my estimate of seating in the game center is based on board games, so seating 50+ works with board games, but we're limited to about 36 card game participants. I may have to buy some smaller "reserve" tables in case we exceed our capacity in the future. We're also going to have someone build storage under the miniatures tables to allow us additional room for tables. I resisted this move, but I can't argue with more table space. Oh yeah, and our 30-day supply of Magic should run dry by Monday. These are the problems you want to have.

The Trifecta

January was one heck of a tough month and I'm glad to put it behind me. Between the sluggish economy, the newness of the store in Concord and it just being January, it's been a trying month with very slow sales (despite a 72% increase from last January). I had planned for this, but I was hoping we had dodged the usual startup problems.

That being said, the new Magic set, Morningtide, was released today with spectacular, much needed sales. Our 30-day supply, what we sold in the first thirty days of the Lorwyn release, was half sold through by this afternoon. Wizards of the Coast has been advertising for a week and we added our TV spot to their schedule as best we could. We sent flyers to our entire customer base advertising our Saturday tournament, so they know it was coming. It also didn't hurt that the two competing card shops closed down between the last release and this one. We've picked up a lot of their sales and their Friday Night Magic group. I'm curious to see what happens tomorrow with our Morningtide release tournament. I'm hoping for a large crowd.

I made a decision this week to hold the line on shrinking margins. Companies that reduce their margin will have their product prices increased to cover the difference. I started with Paizo and Slugfest this week, after they reduced their discount. Rackham was really the first company I boosted, after their margin dipped below 40%. I'm at the point where I honestly don't care if these mid-tier manufacturers and publishers dry up and blow away in the wind. In other words, I'm willing to risk losing sales and dropping product lines in order to survive as a business.

There's the usual talk of how the game trade is in trouble in the game store forums. One observation I always make but don't share is that these complaints usually come from retailers in rust belt states with bad local economies. These stores also seem to be diversified outside of the game trade, making me wonder if diversification makes sense still. In fact, most voices on the topic could be characterized as something other than game store owners: comic book store owners, entertainment store owners, or even card shop owners if that's the only game product they sell. I do have to agree with them that there seems to be a new "economy of scale" that allows larger stores to be more successful. Or maybe it's that initial success eventually results in a larger store?

Oh yeah, and my excitement wained a bit when I learned that the D&D 4 Keep on Shadowfell adventure was pushed back to late May from April. Sigh.