benjoshua wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:I came across a copy of DCC #51 Castle Whiterock for sale on eBay and decided to see how much it would sell for. It turns out that it sold for more than I thought it would and went into research mode on DCC module sale prices. It appears that early DCC modules have held their value overall and many of the rarer and bigger modules have gone up substantially. I bought DCC #51 for $49.00 and many sell for around $100.00 today. Anyway, most of you probably knew this, but it was a bit of a surprise for me.
Thunderdave wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:Attachment:IMG_3029.JPG
Thunderdave wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:Just so there's no hard feelings, here's my Goodman collection
benjoshua wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:A couple of weeks back, I get this in the mail:Cool. I like free stuff. Looking through this fourteen page catalogue, I was interested to read how much the DCC line has grown. I collected most of them until the covers turned white and 4th Edition after DCC number 52. I have read many of them and like the old-school vibe many present. What surprised me is how much the DCC line has become a collector's...... nightmare. There are reprints and foil covers and variant covers and foil covers and on and on. It describes the rarest DCC adventure ever, and no, it's not #3.5! I guess that begs the question, when does collecting become more important than the game that started the interest in collecting? And is that a problem? I realize I am asking a community seriously devoted to collecting so I apologize if it appears I am trolling. I am not. The catalogue emphasizes the artist covers and editions and collectibility more than the gaming goodness. I am not begrudging Goodman Games trying to make a living, but the commercialization feels beyond enterprising. Maybe I was hoping for more hobby hype. Maybe I don't understand company catalogues or gaming companies. I am curious if anyone else received the catalogue and what impression you had from looking at it.
benjoshua wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:Cool. I like free stuff. Looking through this fourteen page catalogue, I was interested to read how much the DCC line has grown. I collected most of them until the covers turned white and 4th Edition after DCC number 52. I have read many of them and like the old-school vibe many present. What surprised me is how much the DCC line has become a collector's...... nightmare. There are reprints and foil covers and variant covers and foil covers and on and on. It describes the rarest DCC adventure ever, and no, it's not #3.5! I guess that begs the question, when does collecting become more important than the game that started the interest in collecting? And is that a problem? I realize I am asking a community seriously devoted to collecting so I apologize if it appears I am trolling. I am not. The catalogue emphasizes the artist covers and editions and collectibility more than the gaming goodness. I am not begrudging Goodman Games trying to make a living, but the commercialization feels beyond enterprising. Maybe I was hoping for more hobby hype. Maybe I don't understand company catalogues or gaming companies. I am curious if anyone else received the catalogue and what impression you had from looking at it.
Thunderdave wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:I received one too. It came with some extra Kickstarter items recently. Brought a smile I like old-school Hobby Shop layout.I'm as committed a GG collector as there is I think. All the old 3E and DCC. All the crappy 4E. All the box sets and tourney mods. All the new digests. I collect because I like the products, really like the art, & Stroh is my favorite current rpg author. On the one hand, Goodman identifies the various printings with subtle but unmistakable changes - beyond foil/b&w/alternate art, an example of a would be different colors on the cover lettering To me, that makes collecting different printings fun. And pretty inexpensive.On the other hand, it bugs me when I go the extra mile to collect a limited release, only to see them in the bargain web-store at the end of the year. I'm thinking of the road-show event I organized to get a copy of Gliplerio's Gambit. Sure, fun times. But not a limited or exclusive item in the end.Finally, (on the third hand I suppose), I think it's ok a publisher is aware his products have a following and an aftermarket, and we all understand business: it's easier to sell three copies to one customer than find three customers. Still it's more fun when they don't point that stuff out. Just so there's no hard feelings, here's my Goodman collection Attachment:IMG_3029.JPG
Mister Yuk wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:benjoshua wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:A couple of weeks back, I get this in the mail:Cool. I like free stuff. Looking through this fourteen page catalogue, I was interested to read how much the DCC line has grown. I collected most of them until the covers turned white and 4th Edition after DCC number 52. I have read many of them and like the old-school vibe many present. What surprised me is how much the DCC line has become a collector's...... nightmare. There are reprints and foil covers and variant covers and foil covers and on and on. It describes the rarest DCC adventure ever, and no, it's not #3.5! I guess that begs the question, when does collecting become more important than the game that started the interest in collecting? And is that a problem? I realize I am asking a community seriously devoted to collecting so I apologize if it appears I am trolling. I am not. The catalogue emphasizes the artist covers and editions and collectibility more than the gaming goodness. I am not begrudging Goodman Games trying to make a living, but the commercialization feels beyond enterprising. Maybe I was hoping for more hobby hype. Maybe I don't understand company catalogues or gaming companies. I am curious if anyone else received the catalogue and what impression you had from looking at it. I hope you don't mind me weighing in on this, I've read a small amount of their products but don't own any. What I've read I thought they do have a pretty good product.I'll relate this to comics since it is what I know and I had a similar reaction to it. Like you I have no problem with a company making money. I always bought comics to read them. Obviously I would take care of what I purchased but it was always about what is inside. Some of my books would come out with multiple covers and/or retailer exclusive editions and the guy that I bought my books from would push that I should be interested in having them all or making sure I bought the rarest one. I had no problem with that, he's in the business to make money too. I wasn't that type of comic collector though, I'd pick the cover I liked the best and that would be the one I bought. The thing that would hurt a lot of people though were the retailer incentive books. Determined by the amount of pre-orders for a particular comic book, the comic store would get a number of exclusive and limited versions of the comic with their order. Could be 1 for 20 to 1 for 10,000, some of them were really rare. The intention of it was to convince comic shops to order big because incentive books would be sold by the Comic Store for anywhere from $10 to $200 each. Those really helped comic stores survive because their margins are pretty tight on new books, especially the smaller stores. Two problems though, those incentive books rarely held their value - hot for a few months maybe more, and then people would move on to the next hot book. Second and much worse, eventually the companies that made the incentives would go ahead and make a bunch more than the retailers could get and start selling them themselves. So what you thought was a really rare book that you paid $100 for, 3 months later you can buy the exact same book from the company for $10. But Comic companies are just wanting to sell their product and make money. On a regular edition comic book, they are probably making 50 cents per book or less and by selling the exclusive editions themselves - now they are getting $5 a book or more and most likely their customer is buying both editions.It sounds like Goodman is following this trend. With a limited amount of potential customers, if they can sell the same customer multiple editions of the same book with only the added costs of one or two pages of artwork, they can double their sales on an edition. Think about this too, if the insides are the same. You're running all of the interiors at once and then a few different setups for covers, very economical that way.I think the reality though is that if Goodman wasn't making a decent product, you'd lose interest. But since you like their product it doesn't matter much. What's bad for the collector that sees these special limited editions as some type of investment is that since people are buying multiple copies when they are being released, the market will be over saturated and they won't increase in value and more likely the opposite. Look at trading cards (baseball, etc), the companies that make them make all of the money, not the secondary market.
Blackmoor wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:A follow up to Mister Yuks comments about comics, I have a comic and game store (going on 30 years now) and the margins are actually quite good; we get a 55% off of retail discount from our supplier for most titles. The advent of the multiple covers has really increased sales, many customers now will buy the mass released book and one of there favorite covers so we are selling more books to the same people in general. One problem is that there are so many alternate covers we just cant keep up. We display the alternates each week (sometimes over 30 different titles get alternate covers of one or more variants) and sell them for $5 - $50 depending on there rarity. if these don't sell in 3 weeks they all get discounted to $5 and stuff into a special bin in the store, we have 3-4000 of these alternate variant covers in the store at any given time. Overall though sales have increased due to these variants.
Invincible Overlord wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:So back to your first question: When does collecting become more important than the game that started the interest in collecting? If you're still playing the game, then it doesn't... ever...
muaddib5 wrote in Dungeon Crawl Classics Questions/Opinions:I ended up getting out of comics collecting because of the shenanigans. Early '90's (I think) a new Batman title came out. The #1 issue came out in like seven different variant covers. But the killer was, the cover design was exactly the same and only the background color was changed. That was it, I was done, lol.
