AW was a fluke, but even with other sets I had a lot more trouble getting all of the vet rares for something like Collateral Damage, Supernova and Origin that I ever have for sets from Avengers on.

My 'argument' was simply a response to nbperp who stated that the dollar amount made on HC was on the rise. Even if we assume that's correct (and I don't know if it is or isn't), part of that likely has to do with the dramatically increased price of boosters.

This is a joke, right? Meanwhile my venue is very happy to charge me $6 for the Hypertime (and Infinity Challenge, and Indy) boosters he still has in stock. If you want bulk, a casual look (on E-Bay) found a case (48 boosters) shipped for $85. That's less than $2 per booster.

It could also be that WK was producing smaller runs of sets at that higher price, creating product sellouts by not meeting the demand. A smaller run of inferior product at higher prices would inflate the profit margin quite a bit, mostly by taking a chunk out of the production costs.

A LOT of the sculpts in Arkham Asylum seem to be one-mold sculpts. Little things like that cut down on production side cost.

Based on what we know, it looks like it was probably both.

The process that WK used to determine set runs was very similar to many other game companies.

1 - Meet with reps from the distributors and lay out the upcoming product.
2 - Distributors gather data and place an order with WK for a certain amount of product (this is all months before it hits Previews or whatever)
3 - WK has print run ordered with factory. This print run will be at least the amount ordered plus some allowance. Here is where WK had "leeway" in which a set could be like Avengers and Justice League where there would be tons available or Crisis, where there would be a pretty quick sell out.

But the key here is that if retailers (as a whole - your individual retailer may be exceptional) communicated to their distributors better, so that distributors could communicate to WK better, then the order placed in step 2 would be larger, leading to the excess created in step 3 to probably be enough.

But when the initial orders to the distributors is enough to stock the shelves and doesn't account for what will be needed in the weeks/months following release, then the data WK gets is insufficient and the ultimate amount produced could easily be less than what's needed.

Deceptive arguments do not become you, Hair.

The booster price was $7.99 for Origin.

It went up to $9.99 for Avengers/JL. Mainly because of the fact, that, gee... we have 5 figures instead of 4 in the booster boxes. Go figure the price goes up, right?

The other $2 was probably from justifiable production cost increases. Since oil went up a LITTLE BIT in price during the time frame in question.

Exactly, and the company and fans just ate it up.