Early Dungeons, Especially Issue 6
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:34 am 
 

I'll check one of my issues when I get home, John. I have a few copies of each of the first Dungeons.
Erm, maybe I better not admit that here..............


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Post Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:15 pm 
 

bclarkie wrote:

ScketreWhisp wrote:
 I'd prefer to see items go for what the market shows they will go for... yes I bid $63.00 on a Dungeon 1 ... but someone wanted it more than me and paid more... as they should have... Currently they are worth more... not $150+ in my book, but hey.. I won't argue if they go that high...


Since when do you get to the sole determiner of market value is and who put you to be the one in charge of making sure it stays that way????  You just proved my point from above about "protecting your investment".   Aside from that, until you adopted the "beat me or buy it" from hostile market attack in the last 6 months, Dungeon Magazine #1's were were regularly going for $30 to $35.  Only in the last 6 months have they been going for more than that. Must be purely coincidental....




Brian, my only defense here is what you yourself said...within the last six months prices on Dragon and Dungeon mags have risen dramatically. What, besides Doug's purchasing habits, has occured in that period?  The cancellation of the longest running gaming mags in the history of RPGS. Which IMO has had a far more direct influence on these prices than anything Doug is bidding.  Are back issues of Dragons harder to find?  No.  Should they be going up this much in price? Debatable.  In both cases the perception is that since the magazines have been cancelled, back issues are harder to find.



Like it or not, perceptions are reality in this case.  I can offer as evidence two very large ($200+) purchases of various Dragon and Dungeon mags within the last couple of months by collectors wishing to finish off parts of their magazine runs.  These are Dragon mags, mind you, that aren't anything special (post #50), just various numbers needed to fill holes. On top of that, I've had a huge amount of single issue Dragon magazine sales in that same period...again, except for a #23 and #30 all are unexceptional numbers just needed to fill holes.



As for the pre-#20 Dragon market (and, to a lesser extent, the pre #7 Dungeon market), what Doug bids is going to be immaterial...for many years, Dragon #1 was seriously undervalued (selling in the $150-$200 range) when it should have been going for more. That it's risen to the $250-$300+ range in the last few years isn't IMO a surprise.  Hell, the entire first year of Dragon is undervalued (again, IMO) and has been for years.  Sometimes, the market just catches up to the item.  Since Doug isn't bidding on other items (woodies, for example, or monos) why is the market for these shooting upwards?  MERP items?  DGUTS?  I could go on.



In the case of Dungeon, I think these have been SERIOUSLY undervalued forever.  Considering Dungeons 3 & 4 are probably the two hardest to find periodicals ever published by TSR in the last 20 years, I'm surprised they don't regularly sell for $50+.  1, 2, 5 should be right behind.  Don't be surprised if these prices start rising also in the months ahead as people begin to realize there will not be a CD rom collection (I really think a lot of people held off buying these over the years thinking someday there would be a collection like Dragon mag of these).  Prices for Dungeon #1 are going to be silly for awhile (people see the #1 issue and get crazy) but it's actually more common than any other issue published the first year (2-6), so it should level out once multiple copies start going up on Ebay.  



Anyway, I guess my point is one determined buyer can affect the market for a time, but soon the market either goes back to what it was, or stabilizes at what it should have been. Like Cougie and his H1  fixation no one buyer can keep up with the sheer volume of product.  Eventually the volume overwhelms the supposed manipultor and he either stops buying the product or loses money on sales (as we have seen Cougie do on H1s).  



I guess my point is I've seen attempts at price manipulation and they always backfire in the long run.  The market takes care of itself.  I remember Aneoth buying every white box available at one time, outbidding all opponents, until he had amassed 15+ of these babies.  The only effect was to cause MORE of these to appear on Ebay as owners wanted to take advantage of the sudden rise in price.  Now, Aneoth was purchasing the white boxes for research purposes, and he didn't resell them on ebay.  But the effect was the same, more demand and higher prices in the short run.



There is a solution and that is for anyone selling a Dragon #1 to forgo the effect Doug's buying habits have had on the market, bypass ebay, sell it here or on Dragonsfoot for a set price, and bar Doug from bidding.  Simple. Personally if I had the money right now I would be bidding against Doug on every single Dragon #1 and the price would REALLY be going up. It's a undervalued collectible (not as seriously undervalued as it was a year ago) and I think the top end hasn't been seen yet.  For anyone who thinks different I point to the woodie IO was selling in the classifieds that went somewhere north of five grand.....! Way more than I thought this item would ever reach.  Anyway, it's a helluva thing to be arguing about.  Let's let the free market take care of itself, everyone here is adults, and no one is forcing someone else to bid on a Dragon #1, overvalued or undervalued or not.



Mike B .


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Post Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:27 pm 
 

Deadlord39 wrote:So, back to Early Dungeons, especially #6.
I thoguht it was #6 that I had to hunt for back in the day, but I'm not sure. It might have been #7. I do remember #1's were fairly easy to get compared to even #2. I wonder if they ran off a huge amount of #1's and then tailored the runs to the amount purchased.


Yes...I would love to see print runs for the first issue. I think it might be the highest for any except for perhaps some of the early 3rd edition issues.  They were still selling them out of Paizo's store up until a few months ago.  Considering it was released 20 years ago, that is somewhat mind-boggling.

Not to mention the issue was included on a CD rom with a 3rd edition magazine (#86?).....it might be the most accessible Dungeon mag of all time!

My hard to finds were 3 & 4.  For some reason I never started buying Dungeon back in the day, only got on board issue 6-7.  I orderd the back issues I needed, but even then 3&4 were already sold out. Had to wait a few years later, until I got online, to find these babies.  In contrast, issues 7, 8, 9, 10 seem to pop up in auctions quite a bit, I wonder if they raised their print run during this time period.  There are definitely some issues quite a bit easier to find than others.

Mike B.

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Post Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:42 pm 
 

JohnGaunt wrote:No on-topic posts here!  Shoo!   :wink:

From a DM/player's perspective, does #6 have any worthwhile content for pre-2e (or pre-1e) D&D games?  How does it stack up against the other early issues?

From a collector's perspective, did any of the early issues have that print-run stat-block of so many copies printed, so many returned, etc.?  That would give a rough estimate of other early print runs.


JG I need to pull out my copies and check for the print run blocks....once I get a chance. I see 10,000 copies of Issue #2, and 34,000 copies of issue #15 listed on Jay Hafner's Dungeon Index.

#6 was definitely an above average issue.  Here is the info.  I apologize but I do not remember where I ran across this, it is the from the Complete Dungeon Index compiled by Jay Hafner:

After the Storm (8-10; N.Kopsinis & P.Goshtigian; 12p) A gold-laden shipwreck in a deadly boat.  The strangest things wash up on the beach sometimes.
White Death (4-7; R.Maxwell; 5p) One reason why they call it "the dead of winter.";
Bristanam's Cairn (8-12; J.Nephew; 6p)  A friendly little cottage and a dreadful secret.;
House of the Brothers (GREYHAWK; 6-10; M. Shipley)  Two huge opponents from the World of Greyhawk fantasy setting.;
Forbidden Mountain (4-7; L.Church; 8p) Dungeons and dimension warps.  A mad venture across the fourth dimension.;
Tortles of the Purple Sage (bD&D; 4-10 Merle and Jackie Rasmussen) A thousand miles of adventure.  Part 1 of an Expert-level quest into a hostile wilderness. (Pt.2 in issue #7)

House of the Brothers is a good adventure, by our very own FormCritic, I've run it at least twice and enjoyed it.  After the Storm and the others were all good.  Tortles is pt 1 of a two part basic D&D adventure, IMO one of the better expert D&D adventures ever published, very reminiscent of X1 Isle of Dread.

I have always had the opinion that nearly all the best 2nd edition AD&D adventures were ones published in Dungeon mag instead of "commercially". However it's easy to forget the adventures in Dungeon mag were 1st edition until issue 18, and there are a lot of pretty good ones in that first 3 years. Especially considering the way WOG was treated by the powers that be towards the last few years, the Greyhawk adventures run in Dungeon were quite good (and much better than tripe like Child's Play, Gargoyles, or Puppets...blech).

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Post Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:12 am 
 

Anyone else notice how miraculously that Dragon Magazine #1 suddenly dropped back down in price to what it was before about 6 or 7 months ago:




** expired/removed eBay auction **




Hmmm, I wonder why that is? :scratch:  Oh wait, nevermind, I know why....


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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:12 pm 
 

Yes I wonder why... hmm VG = $200.00 sounds a bit low.. Acaeum pricing shows a VG to be $180 (7 years ago !) ... with today's increases I'd say around $235-239 so you were  bit low...

I was selling NM for $389.00 which is right on mark for a NM in todays prices

Not sure of your point ;)

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:22 pm 
 

ScketreWhisp wrote:Yes I wonder why... hmm VG = $200.00 sounds a bit low.. Acaeum pricing shows a VG to be $180 (7 years ago !) ... with today's increases I'd say around $235-239 so you were  bit low...

I was selling NM for $389.00 which is right on mark for a NM in todays prices

Not sure of your point ;)


Except the prices on the site are not 7 years old, they were updated within the last year.

Aside from fact that I don't use the Acaeum scale for grading, I use my own set to grade.  On my scale of VG would equate to Fine and the magazine I listed would have been F+/VF- on the Acaeum scale. None of this really has anything to do with it all though, there really was only one common denominator missing from my auction and I guarantee that if it wasn't eliminated from it, it went for more than $239.

I also like how you somehow try to shoe horn in the "I was selling NM for $389.00 which is right on mark for a NM in todays prices".  :roll:  Lets start tracking the Dragon magazine #1 you don't bid on and we will see how long that $389 assertion holds.


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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:43 pm 
 

ScketreWhisp wrote:I think most will have to pay a premium for them as I'll bid close to what they should sell for not what someone thinks they are worth.



BTW, this may be the both most funny and contradictory statement I have ever read in a long long time.  I like how you leave yourself out of the "someone thinks" part of your very own statement. :roll:  It seems the only one who won't let the market "really" decide what they are worth is you.  I have an idea, lets see who is right. You cease from bidding on all Dragon #1's from now on for the next year and we'll all just see who is right about what the value of them "should be" (using your very own words).


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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:07 pm 
 

Here is the page I was referring to:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/rares.html

Updated Dec 1999

Make that almost 8 years ago ... I was wrong again... but I can admit it

Like it or not, Dragons are worth more, you don't have to believe it...

Doesn't matter if I want to pay more or someone else does...

I have paid more for some, and those that have bought some from me paid more... those are facts... people are paying more for Dragons ....

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:14 pm 
 

ScketreWhisp wrote:Here is the page I was referring to:

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/rares.html

Updated Dec 1999

Make that almost 8 years ago ... I was wrong again... but I can admit it


Since its obvious again you really don't know what you are talking about, let me clarify what "Updated 1999" means.  "Updated 1999" was the last time Scott made a modifiocation to the information detailing the item, whether thats prining information, scans or what not.  That however does not include the values on the site. We have been tracking values on an off for at least the last 3 years and despite your refusal to acknowledge it, Dragon #1 is inluded in  those values as well.

ScketreWhisp wrote:Like it or not, Dragons are worth more, you don't have to believe it...

Doesn't matter if I want to pay more or someone else does...

I have paid more for some, and those that have bought some from me paid more... those are facts... people are paying more for Dragons ....


Funny how the auction for Dragon #1 that I listed didn't flow along with your claims.  The only facts that anyone needs to accept is that you have made a hostile and agressive move on the market for early Dragons and everyone else is and will be worse off for it.


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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:37 pm 
 

Ok, if those prices are updated prices... then a NM runs about $300.00 according to that price... and that price was posted BEFORE the Dragon Magazine line was discontinued...

$389.00 is a 23% markup ($300/.77) ... that's not a huge markup for a magazine that has been out of print for over 3 decades and is now perceived as more valuable since the entire publication is forever gone.

I didn't know buying magazines could be "hostile" ???

I will bid on and/or buy every Dragon #1 I see anywhere I find it. I will pay up to whatever price I feel they are worth ... you don't see me selling any online at the moment, so what does it matter what I pay for them...

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:43 pm 
 

ScketreWhisp wrote:$389.00 is a 23% markup ($300/.77)


Actually 29 2/3%; A 23% markup would equal 369.
$300/.77 does in fact equal 389.6103896, but what's proportional for one number is not proportional for another.

  

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:05 pm 
 

In the Retail and Financial world you discuss markups in Gross Profit...

$389.00 is a 23% gross profit over a $300.00 cost

When purchasing items, if you are told to sell the item at a 20% Gross profit, you divide by .80 you do not multiply by 1.20

Since I work in that world, when I "markup" an item, I do it this way

300 / .77 (a 23% gross margin or markup) = $389.61 ... I dropped it down to $389.00 even

In any event, it's not a huge markup based on the perceived rarity since they stopped publishing the magazine

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:41 pm 
 

ScketreWhisp wrote:
I will bid on and/or buy every Dragon #1 I see anywhere I find it. I will pay up to whatever price I feel they are worth ... you don't see me selling any online at the moment, so what does it matter what I pay for them...


Umm, no you won't.  See the above auction I posted as proof.

And again, how exactly are you different then Dave Whitfield? Oh thats right you're not really any different at all. I mean, you spell a little bit better, but thats really it.

ScketreWhisp wrote:Ok, if those prices are updated prices... then a NM runs about $300.00 according to that price... and that price was posted BEFORE the Dragon Magazine line was discontinued...



Umm, just a quick FYI, maybe you didn't get this note yet, but Dragon Magazine #1 has been OOP print for well over 30 years now.  I am not really sure how the line being discontinued in print has even one iota to do with the rarity or percieved value of #1.   Please teach me, oh wise one.


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Last edited by bclarkie on Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
  

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:05 pm 
 

I'll take one off your hands, if you want. ;)


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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:13 pm 
 

serleran wrote:I'll take one off your hands, if you want. ;)


If you are willing to pay his price, I would sell you my personal copy shipping included and I can guarantee its in better shape.

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:36 pm 
 

bclarkie wrote:
Umm, just a quick FYI, maybe you didn't get this note yet, but Dragon Magazine #1 has been OOP print for well over 30 years now.  I am not really sure how the line being discontinued in print has even one iota to do with the rarity or percieved value of #1.   Please teach me, oh wise one.


Well, perception is quite a bit....

When Dragon and Dungeon magazine announced their cancellations, I have many Dragon mag sales, including two large sales of over $200 each consisting of random Dragons in the #50-#300 range.  Whether true or not, collectors sometimes are spurred to action by cancellations of certain series or lines of games in the thought that they will become harder to find in the future. Considering my Dragon mag sales were downright sickly until the announcement, I consider this more than coincidence.  Personally I think it just got people thinking "wow, I can actually finish the run now", and they looked to fill in any holes they had in the collection.  

Ergo, #1 has become harder to find in the short term because not only are the regular collectors looking for it, but the casual collector is also focused on it right now.  Demand should die down once the attention wanes off the cancellation announcements...

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Post Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:42 pm 
 

If you are willing to pay


Please note the word take in my statement. ;) I would not pay 10% a woodgrain for a magazine, ever. I might pay 5%, though.


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