Love Your FLGS - It Loves You

Posts: 3999 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:04 am

Mars wrote:

I don't think that the FLGS is responsible for selling their old stuff off cheap but the stores in the Toronto area that deimos refers too charge $35-$40 for X1 and a minimum of $30 for a 1st edition hardcover. I have some bitterness for these particular stores as well. I talked with the person responsible for buying old rpg stuff and was told that they would buy my extra stuff for 50% of what they sell the books for. After lugging 4 boxes of stuff through the subway system to downtown Toronto they then decided to give me about $3 a book since I brought in so much stuff.

You took your stuff back home, right? Shocked

Posts: 3999 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:13 am

I would love to buy from my FLGS;

First, they do not run a consistent business and half the time I want to go there I find them closed in a pixie-like flare of randomness. They participated in Free RPG Day last year, but did not grok the concept of "Free." This year, they missed it entirely.

Second, game products in general have gone out of sight in price. Most of the time I do not even buy these products at Half Price Books, because half of way too much is still too much. As a rule of thumb, everything for 3.0/3.5 was priced at double its value.

Third, my FLGS simply cannot keep everything in stock. And everything is what I am used to choosing between online.

Fourth, more and more places that used to be in the FLGS category no longer offer the clubhouse-like experience of a place to game and meet with other gamers to talk about gaming with games. Most of them sell online instead.

Posts: 4545 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:25 am

Quote:

[quote="FormCritic"]I would love to buy from my FLGS;

First, they do not run a consistent business and half the time I want to go there I find them closed in a pixie-like flare of randomness. They participated in Free RPG Day last year, but did not grok the concept of "Free." This year, they missed it entirely.

Some might remember my posts about "The Worst Game Store of all Time" (I can't remember which thread it was in). Sadly, most of them seem to follow this trend, of "We don't have to run our store like a REAL business because....WE SELL GAMES!!! WEEEEEEE!" Rolling Eyes

Quote:

Second, game products in general have gone out of sight in price. Most of the time I do not even buy these products at Half Price Books, because half of way too much is still too much. As a rule of thumb, everything for 3.0/3.5 was priced at double its value.

Amen brother. I find myself passing up a LOT of goodies at HPB, because I'll wait for it to hit the discount shelf, or I won't get it at all. Just today, I saw a 3E module I though looked somewhat interesting (Red Hand of Doom, I believe). At HALF cover it was $12.50.....still too rich for my blood fora system I don't use. And don't even get me started on the Hardbacks....all the HPBs in Dallas/FW have SHELVES of the 3/3.5 stuff, which are still mind numbing in price. It's only frequent purges of the HB's at $1-$3 that keep them from completely overwhelming the entire store.

Quote:

Third, my FLGS simply cannot keep everything in stock. And everything is what I am used to choosing between online.

My FLGS does a fairly good job of stocking a variety of things, although I had to hound them to finally begin carrying DCC modules (which I collect), and recently, Castles and Crusades stuff.

Quote:

Fourth, more and more places that used to be in the FLGS category no longer offer the clubhouse-like experience of a place to game and meet with other gamers to talk about gaming with games. Most of them sell online instead.

So true. The FLGS cut their gaming room into about a quarter of what it was so they could display more merchandise; on top of that, anything but "current" games (the most recent D&D, for example, over early editions) is pretty much frowned upon because space is at a minimum now. You can't get anyone to talk 1E or 2E, or really anything but the latest D&D edition or stuff like Battletech or Warhammer minis. Too bad, really.

Mike B.

Posts: 1348 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:29 am

It is probably a good thing I don't have a HPB around me, with these stories. I'd likely become a reseller, and I just don't have the patience or desire for it. Smile

I am sorry if my OP came off as gloating or something... it was not my intent. I'd be happy to pick stuff up for other people, but I can never tell what will be there, or for how much, and, I don't always know when I'll go...

Posts: 710 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 6:46 am

I agree in full that there is a significant percentage of bad game stores (or bad also - selling - games stores Wink

) but the fact stays that if there are no game stores this industry ceases to exist. Skeptics are free to not believing me, but I work with manufacturers and I listen what they say especially deluging us with the various OP programs in existence. Perhaps companies are foolishly attempting to help dinosaurs survive (WE are the dinosaurs of course Razz

) wasting time, money and personnel or they know a thing or two about selling their products. But I must say that collectors of out of print RPG products are not exactly our target audience Rolling Eyes

(myself included...)...

Posts: 145 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:35 am

Well, the two stores I mentioned earlier seem to be doing okay. I don't know this for sure, but they've been around for awhile and I always see people in there buying stuff when I go. I do note some things in relation to Badmikes post that they are probably doing right, in addition to having good people working there:

The one game store I would call more slick and "modern." It's run by some guys that have published some games themselves. They have mostly newer stuff on the shelves. Almost Zero OOP. They deal alot in CCGs and Warhammer stuff. They also have computers set up on a lan so you can do multiplayer video games. They seem to run alot of tournaments, mostly warhammer and heroclix. I don't know what "heroclix" is but it seems to appeal to the younger set, like the CCGs. They have recently opened a comic store area on the second floor.

They other store is less modern, more "Homey." It's run by a nice lady who lets her cats roam the store. She stocks the newer stuff, but also has a pretty big selection of older and OOP games and books, and she takes these in trade for credit so there's always interesting new things coming in. The place is also a new and used bookstore, mostly SCI-FI, fantasy and romance paperbacks and she takes these in for credit also. She has regular book signings by SCI-FI and Fantasy authors at the store.

Both stores have gaming areas set up and people seem to be running games there all the time.

I think the two different business models seem to be working. Also, since they both fill a different sort of niche, they seem to be able to co-exist and both do well in the same area.

Posts: 216 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 6:43 pm

In retrospect I think I misspoke when called the FLGS an FLGS - there wasn't anything really "favorite" about it. The owner is an irascible old prick who'll rip you off at the drop of a hat on buying collections, when I gamed there (as I found out after I took my group "home"), we were the favored group - because we'd watch the dumb punks who gamed back there alongside us (that was the assumption, anyway) and stop them from stealing or wrecking the place up.

No, my truly favorite local gaming store wasn't a gaming store at all - or rather, they weren't gaming stores. Best Used Books and Legible Leftovers. I daresay I got more stuff there than at Acme Comics: at Legible, I picked up a couple of pastel modules, the 4th section of the Greyhawk map from Paizo (for free!) my true 1st DMG and MMs, many copies of other books as well...Best had an occasionally nice selection, too; I just missed the collection of boxed Grenadier minis someone dropped off, one day. Never held too much nostalgia for those. I'd rather play with Reapers' stuff and old AD&D rules. Smile

Sadly, both stores are now gone. Sad

Posts: 710 · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:10 am

Agent Cooper wrote:

They other store is less modern, more "Homey." It's run by a nice lady who lets her cats roam the store. She stocks the newer stuff, but also has a pretty big selection of older and OOP games and books, and she takes these in trade for credit so there's always interesting new things coming in. The place is also a new and used bookstore, mostly SCI-FI, fantasy and romance paperbacks and she takes these in for credit also. She has regular book signings by SCI-FI and Fantasy authors at the store.

This is a store I'd really love to visit Very Happy

Posts: 145 · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:14 am

Alexander1968 wrote:

This is a store I'd really love to visit Very Happy

Well, if you ever find yourself in upstate NY, drop in and have a look:

http://www.fof.net/

And just to be fair, here's the site of the other "modern" game store. They are good place to visit too:

http://edenstudios.net/zombieplanet/

Very Happy

Posts: 710 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:26 pm

Agent Cooper wrote:

Well, if you ever find yourself in upstate NY, drop in and have a look:

http://www.fof.net/

And just to be fair, here's the site of the other "modern" game store. They are good place to visit too:

http://edenstudios.net/zombieplanet/

Very Happy

Thanks for the tip, but it seems quite difficult for me being in the American continent to begin with Wink

Posts: 2339 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:44 pm

FormCritic wrote:

You took your stuff back home, right? Shocked

At that point I wasn't about to start lugging it all back - I was dead tired. It took me about an hour and a half to get it all to the store. My trolley broke and for a fair distance I had to move one box at a time, 10 feet at time down the sidewalk. In total it was well over 100 pounds of stuff. Most of it was the stuff I probably couldn't sell but had accumulated for years. Lots of 1st and 2nd edition hardcovers in poor shape or with writing inside, extras of common modules, etc.

I ended up with a couple hundred in store credit. Since it was my first time to the store, I did surprisingly manage to find a couple items that were underpriced - shrink wrapped H1 for $20 (since their repriced $100 sticker had fallen off).

Posts: 3999 · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:20 pm

Mars wrote:

shrink wrapped H1 for $20 (since their repriced $100 sticker had fallen off).

So, there was some small justice. PDT_Armataz_01_34

Posts: 226 · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 7:12 pm

Believe it or not, we have a pretty good locally owned game store here in Boise. They sell board games and new RPG material but no old out of print stuff (though I did get some Planescape box sets that they found in inventory).

I try and support them as much as I can and pay full retail for items that I can get cheaper online. In turn they have various game events in their large back room. Hopefully they will be around for a long time.

Posts: 45 · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 1:02 am

Hello,

Going to Las Vegas next week... any FLGS's in town? Anything hobby-related to recommend?

Cheers,
David