Flugelhorn.

There are enough business books written about pricing products in an open market, but in essence it boils down to this...

Do not start with the price it costs you to make it, that is a loosing battle and will lead you to either losses or lost opportunities. Instead, determine what the perceived value of your product is to your potential customer base, then determine if you can profitably supply that product at or near that median perceived value. If the answer is yes, proceed. If the answer is no, don't do it.

I am worried that you are using recent sales of "SR" dice at around $12 as your only market research to justify a SR price of $12. In essence this is a fallacy as the situations are not the same. Namely, when you sell a specific pair of dice for $12 your customer you are doing 3 things:

First, you are directly targeting a customer with this desire to own this product and has a perceived value at or above $12. In your blind booster format, you are no longer targeting that customer, but a larger pool of buyers. Therefore, your median perceived value likely has declined, as auctions tend to be won by the person with the highest perceived value.

Second, your direct sale via an auction isn't much of an impulse purchase. Your customer has time to think about this purchase alone. In your booster model, you are hoping the majority of your sales are derived from the impulse market as I can't imagine most customers making a trip specifically to pick these up. Therefore, your model has a lower value.

Lastly, and most importantly, your auction didn't involve any randomness. Your auction customer who paid $12 didn't value your dice at $12. Likely, without him knowing it, he valued your dice at something under $12, and valued the fact that he was indeed going to get the dice he wanted for an additional amount that brought his combined perceived value to, or above, $12. Thus it was a good value for him. Your booster model inserts a randomness factor that would take away that premium your customer paid for the auction dice. Thus, it is likely that the same customer would be willing to play less for the same dice.

I hope that helps somehow.

Did he just say Fluggen-klingen-kien?

It might not be encouraging advice, but it is good advice all the same.

Tom, you are a very smart guy and I very much enjoy reading these type of insightful posts from you.

Chi, just to clarrify, I am not saying not to do it. I am saying I wouldn't advise basing your pricing model off of a few auction sales for what SR dice are worth in a "known" auction environment.

If you can make it work at a more realistic price point, then do it. I would be the first one backing you up. Remember, I haven't done any market research. For all I know the product would have a perceived value of $12, or $18, but using an auction for your basis seems shaky at best.

Also remember, everyone said Steve Jobs couldn't sell the original iPod for $399 as it seemed like an insanely high price and there were no fair comps at the time. We all know how that worked out. In some cases you need to create a market where one didn't exist before. Is this something you can do?

That's not where I parked my CAR!

As a quick aside from the dice conversation, is it my job to name my successor in naming the next thread, or does Sox do that? I just ask as it could be as early as tonight that we'll need another one.

Talk to y'all later. Gotta go start getting ready for our IG2 event tonight. Wish me luck in judging and Tom in playing, and I'll be back later to share some of my observations about the games. Won't be back on until about 11pm probably.

Ugh...that sucks. Glad you have some way of reaching the wenz though! heh

It made my jaw drop when I realized the guy that uttered this sentence is the same guy that plays an ex-Army Range in Justified.

Good luck to you both! Fun times!

Good luck to both of you. I'm sure things will go quite well tonight for you guys.

I second this logic.

Tom,

I wasn't actually using my old auction to price the dice, and that thought didn't really cross my mind. Thanks for pointing it out, as it interesting that I arrived at a similar price two ways.

I have been asking several people with various perspectives on the issue, and in a nutshell this is what I have been advised to do:

Sell non-blind pairs
Sell fully blind completely random boosters
Keep every booster the same price
Make multiple rarity of boosters at different price levels
Sell pairs of dice for $13
Sell individual dice for $1

As you can see, this cannot be done. The current model is what I consider the best mix of all of them, though. I have two basic kinds of boosters: non-blind pairs and 2/5 blind boosters. Of the 2/3 blind boosters, I have common and uncommon boosters. The commons get you the pair of commons you want plus another guaranteed pair. Similarly, the UC boosters will get you the UC pair you want plus a better chance at the rarer dice. I like those ideas for the boosters, but people complained they were too expensive (others said they were adequately priced). It isn't too bad if you pull a pair of Rares, but when you get 2 Common pairs it is a bit of a bummer (I know I can change that, and believe me, I have played with this idea a lot over the past few weeks).

As far as this pricing goes, this was my thought process:

I need to charge sell the dice at $1 each to the stores who will then need to sell them at $2 each. This is both the most I think people will pay for them on average (from asking a lot of people) and is around the minimum I need to get an adequate profit to stay afloat if my figures are correct (and it has been very difficult to get some of the figures, so I am working on educated estimates).

Knowing that the average MSRP needs to stay at $2, I started the Common Booster at $5 to keep those dice $1 each. I knew the Common Pair had to be cheaper than that, or no one would buy them. Similarly, I needed to keep the UC Booster more expensive than the UC Pair, but considering that there are 4x the SR dice in the UC over the C, I don't think that price jump is too much.

The prices for the Pairs were built off the prices for the Boosters. I wanted to keep them at a linear progression, so they went 4, 7, 10, 13 (adding 3 each time). If I lower the Common, I must raise the SR. To lower the SR, I must raise the Common, but I cannot raise it without raising the Common Booster. Sure, I could start the Common Booster at $7, raise the Common Pair to $5 and lower all the rest accordingly, but that will either make the SR pair almost the same price as the UC Booster, or it will make the UC Booster almost the same price as the Common Booster.

It is common for pairs of dice to go for $13 here on the Realms, but those dice are made in much less quantities than I will (if I can get off the ground). My dice will be much more readily available than those dice, which will drastically lower the price people will be willing to pay, which is another reason why I want to stick with the $2 per average. This is why I am floating ideas around here, to try to gauge what buyers will really be willing to pay.

Also, for the record, all of the individual pair packs will be non-blind. I will not charge $13 for a pair of random SR dice. The buyer will know what he is getting.

You get to name the successor, or more aptly namer, of the next thread. So choose wisely my friend, in the honor of Sox, myself, Miraclo, and yourself.

Rob did very well tonight. The event went off smoothly and a good time was had by all.

I, on the other hand, am an idiot. My Darkseid team lost in the first round 86-75 in a game I had no business loosing. My opponent had a team of 7 figures, of which 4 had stealth. A very odd build for this map. I set up my team in a corner and had the gamma bomb on his side. He quickly moved over to my side, but behind blocking terrain or in hindering for stealth. My Renegades would put up blocking terrain after each of my turns, so he couldn't hit me. I got in about 4 shots with Darkseid. 2 were hits for 6-8 damage each, but oddly none of them were killing shots. The other 2 were misses on attacks of 5 or less (with PC too)! I caught him on one where he short clicked his Silver Banshee figure. By the time Rob notified us of 5 minutes left, my opponent had slow played it enough that the gamma bomb still hadn't gone off! Since time was running out I used the boom tube power to go after some of his damaged figures with Storm and took out 2 lower point figures. He then needed an 11 to hit Storm by 5 from Ursa....and hit it twice after I prob'ed him with Roulette. He cleaned up Storm with his next action.

In the end he only got Storm and I got two figures for 75 points. Magically, four other of his figures were all on their last clicks. I still need to look them up to see how long their dials are, but I find this very hard to believe. Darkseid doing 6-8 damage with PSB should have killed off most figures.

Edit: Yep, I got cheated. Star Boy only has 5 clicks of life. Silver Banshee only has 8 clicks, which I know I gave Talbot a power action to boost Darkseid's damage to an 8 to ensure I got rid of the pulsewave. Doorman only has 6 clicks. All three of these he said were on their last clicks after being hit with 6-8 clicks of PSB.