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Gold Card Talk Member
Picture of Graham
posted
Having seen that Cryptozoic's print run for the first series of Gotham was 334 cases, I was wondering if this is the norm now? It seems a bit on the low side which may account for the scarcity of boxes (or sky-high prices) of them. Any thoughts?
 
Posts: 3804 | Location: United Kingdom | Registered: April 21, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Diamond Card Talk Member
Picture of Raven
posted Hide Post
I think so, but I don't necessarily see the wisdom in it.

Assuming 12 boxes per case, your figure comes out to a total of 4,008 boxes. While we have had mainstream products with 9,000 boxes, we have also had them at 3,000. Indeed Breygent puts out titles where we have premium box/pack totals that basically make for a custom ordered product.

I can't speak for Crypto, but my own assumption would be that they were hedging their bet. Gotham was a new title and they don't know how well it will sell, so they make less of it. Also card companies appear to be overly concerned with the secondary market because they are trying to sell out to authorized distributors. They want to short product so that it will hold or increase the SRP value for their dealers, who also need to get additional card incentives to make up for any short fall should the boxes have to be discounted off of SRP.

Why I say that I don't see the wisdom in it is because, if you do have a big hit and everyone wants it, you have not made enough product. If you make 4,000 boxes and you could have sold 7,000, you have made a big mistake. The dealers might get the benefit of selling at a higher price, but the card maker does not.

Now it's possible that the card maker couldn't get enough hits together to make more boxes, but that is something to be considered before picking up the license. I don't like scarce product. I don't like product that is sold out before collectors even know what was in it. If it's a niche product I can see it, but if its a major maker with a major title I think they should make enough so that they don't have to allocate as soon as the orders start coming in. In their efforts to reduce losses on dogs, they are also reducing their own profits when they have winners.
 
Posts: 10370 | Location: New York | Registered: November 20, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Diamond Card Talk Member
Picture of hammer
posted Hide Post
I reckon they printed on the safe side. They also lost the Camren Bicondova auto's which turned up late.
 
Posts: 12152 | Location: England | Registered: September 16, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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