The local shop has an infamous pile of plastic known as the Dollar Bin. Basically, bulk stuff just migrates to it, mostly CUR pieces, and if players want to dig through it to find figures and then look for the matching cards in a couple of long boxes, then, boom, a buck later, and it's theirs.

Granted, cards might or might not exist, as sometimes kids just want a cheap Batman toy and parents don't care about the game, or folks might bulk out figures without cards, for instance. Them's the breaks.

Sometimes, folks can find great stuff. Sometimes, it's yet another leftover Cypher.

It's a bit of an eyesore, but it does occasionally get a little business for the shop, and it is, admittedly, a way to dump stuff that would otherwise clog up a closet or nightstand.

So, does your shop have a Dollar Bin or equivalent?

If so, what price(s) does your venue set? More or less than a buck (or whatever your local base currency is: pound, rupee, gold coin, steel piece, Gold Crown, teeth, whatever)? Is there a "bulk rate" incentive?

If so, most importantly, does the concept work for your shop or not?

One local shop used to do this, when HeroClix was popular. For most of that time, the price was IIRC $0.25 per figure.

This was really clumsy, first because of flight stands, later because of cards. There was never a guarantee of a figure having a matched card (or vice versa). If the customer has to do sorting and searching, it seems absurd to me to price figures at more than $0.25. The only reason I can think to charge more is if the shop was incredibly tight on space and somehow wanted to NOT have players loading up table space with a bunch of figures.

I feel like the HeroClix brand has longed moved past the point where most of any release has any sort of value. The last time it was possible to reliably get value from most of any given set (by figure) was in the days of 4-figure boosters and 48-booster cases.

I've seen stores try to make their own "blind grab bags", but unless you needed a bag, the contents were the junkiest of the junk. New players were better served by just asking for extra figures.

My local store has this but its more like a "$2.99 bin", which amounts to mostly CUR pieces from old sets. It just sits there week after week.

To be fair despite dedicating decent shelf space to the sale of sealed Heroclix, the store doesn't support the game, and none of the staff know anything about it.

If the store or anyone involved in the store had even slight interest in the game, theyd probably be moderately more successful in moving singles.

I love your shop's dollar bin. It's always worth a browse. Our shop doesn't have a dollar bin, nor do they even try to sell lower priced items. They sell sealed product and then have a small display cabinet for super rares, primes, chases, expensive pieces.

I think dollar bins and even like cheap pre-made starting teams are great for new players. And would even be fun for a fun format where players have $10 to build a team with out of the dollar bin.

Also, with legacy cards, dollar bins are almost gold mines.

Yes. 1 shop has a dollar bin that gets refilled with the previous set when the new set releases and another shop I go to has a "Dollar" bin that we just throw are extras in that the players are free to pick threw or new players can grab for cheap, its kinda like a take a penny, leave a penny.

Thanks for the replies so far, folks!

My store that I run has three bins and a singles case

The bins are:

Commons: 50 cents each -or- 15 for $5
Uncommons: $1 each -or- 15 for $10
Rares: $3 each -or- 4 for $10

Singles case has a mixture of things from the last two years of the game and a few select older things.

I get all kinds of business out of our bulk bins. I get people that play HeroClix, people that just like cool minis, and people that use them for RPGs. Either way, I sell a ton of minis.

Dang, this unlocked some good memories.

When Heroclix was still young and everywhere, I remember my local collectibles store in the mall (it moved to a strip mall later) had a dollar bin of Heroclix. That's how I got my Indyclix of The Darkness, and I was over the moon about it, even though it was just a rookie.

When I got back into Heroclix in 2014, I had NO idea how much had changed. When I went to that now-in-a-strip-mall store, they had a HUGE bin of Heroclix pieces, something like 10 figures in a zip-lock bag for a buck. I think I bought all of it, or at least nearly all of it, as the clerk had given me the impression that the game had died, and this was all that was left.

So after sorting hundreds of new figures, I suddenly discovered that carded figures existed, which blew my mind. None of it made sense, but I had to know more. That now-in-a-strip-mall store also had dollar bins of carded figures located elsewhere in the store, and I bought a handful of those, plus a Fast Forces kit (which back then contained all the elements necessary for play), and have been going strong since then.

The current stores I frequent don't have dollar bins, and now I think they really should.

My shop doesn’t do secondary market stuff with clix, they only sell sealed product. That being said, most of the group has more than enough clix and if there’s a CUR you want, you can pretty much just ask and it’s nearly guaranteed someone will have a spare one that they’ll just give you.

A <2-year-old Uncommon, with card, for only $1. What a bargain!

I didn't think this thread would get this many hits!

Cool!

Anyone else?

My son greatly appreciated SLVRSR4's bins and shelf.

He came along to a constructed event he didn't have a team for but pieced enough together from the bins to place 3rd out of 8 (beat my carefully constructed team!).

When I'm travelling I always look for stores with bins to rummage through to fill an odd hole in my collection. Much more rewarding than just buying a sealed product and more satisfying than buying a figure directly online. I try to imagine it as asynchronous trading.

All the shops I've played at have a "free box" full of CUR

I love the dollar bin or even a singles display. I always search for one when checking out a new store. It's a great way for me to catch up on sets I missed or grab some extra figures for modding. If a store has one I am going to return more often.

yes. Comic Carnival in Indianapolis has a $1 bin as far as I can remember and they would make sure you got the card that went with the figure. Some may be $2 or $3 depending on rarity but as far as I remember most were $1. And there are usually discounted boosters from older sets.