If Fetches Secret Lair were a renewable supply set, at which cost do you think it would provide the largest profit?
I wanted to know what most players think about it and their justifications.
Posted May 28, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC
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It's really hard to figure that out since we dont know the cost of printing cards or what WotC pays for shipping on products like these.
If we take the fact that most bulk rares hover around 45-85 cents, assume that the cost to print cards is slightly lower than that, guesstimate the price of the box-thats-too-big, and add in shipping costs: we'll probably get a value around 20-30 dollars.
Fetchlands aren't cards for non-enfranchised players, but they are cards needed for competitive play. So this product eliminates a huge chunk of their playerbase and wont sell as well as fat packs or booster products. WotC needs to recoup that loss somehow, so a 150% markup isnt unreasonable. This brings the price to a nice 50-75 dollar range.
That is my super uninformed guess as to what the product would cost if it wasn't priced at secondary market values.
If you're talking about speculation for these premium cards: IDK, go play the stock market or something. Fetchlands are part of the Reserve list 2.0 and are probably a safe bet, despite having their price artifically inflated. Your profit margins are terrible though, and you would make more money through actual investments in non-niche sectors like the stock market or the housing market.
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I wanted to see 2 things:
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Players opinions;
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Serious answers like this one.
Thank you
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TBH: I would probably pay for multiples of this set if it was 50-100 dollars, and I would probably buy 1 if it was the 165 price point. 300+ for 5 cards, even if they are 5 really good cards, is not worth it. I'd rather buy several commander decks, or foil out my existing ones.
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Its not hard to roughly figure out how much boxes cost. Stores get boxes from distributors for ~$80. So the distributor is taking a cut, lets call it 10% (its probably higher) that means the distributor gets it from wotc at $72. Your typical markup if you are producing a product is like 100% so that puts our guesstimate at $36 which if you take into account all the logistics involved in shipping heavy stuff like paper sounds about right to me.
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Since the secret lair is direct to FLGSs' would you agree with my 20-30 estimate, or would you go higher
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If they have their printing process for them optimized I think its safe that its probably around the same. While they are a lot lighter and less expensive to ship they do have "premium" packaging which has to cost something. Although it has little to no R&D to recoup so I could see the number being even lower.
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I always see people mentioning that fetches are required to have some or any chance of competing at higher levels in certain formats. pardon the very stupid question but what if wizards were to ban fetches in said formats ie. modern legacy and so on?
sure, everyone who caved in and got fetches for those specific formats would get screwed over but everyone else who'd like to try the format but is artificially held back as they don't have the money to invest into fetches would be at an advantage right?
again, very hypothetical and super unlikely but I'm just wondering if that were to solve any of our current problems. it seems to be working for pioneer after all
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I should preface this before we go further: I dont play modern, legacy, or any other eternal format at a competitive level. I play EDH, and according to my play group we play at a higher powerlevel than some.
The biggest thing about fetchlands is that they basically allow you to have perfect mana at all times, while still being able to maintain tempo. This means you dont need to take a turn off to play bad tap lands when you can just search for your needed colors whenever.
Another important but overlooked aspect is deck thinning. Fetchlands count as 1.1 or 1.2 lands in your deck. It's barely an advantage, but they still give you one.
I don't know what would happen if we banned fetchlands in modern, but I'd assume that snowoko decks would rise to the top in legacy.
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yea I know the advantages to having fetchlands. but if nobody were to play them nobody would have the advantage over the other one just by having more money than their opponent.
some multicolour builds would probably end up being quite a bit worse because you can't mana fix as well but that's wouldn't be too much of a problem would it?
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The issue is that the price that would maximize profits off of sales of this product and the price that would maximize profit over the lifetime of the entire game are different things.
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How can we know for sure? We can wildly speculate, but it may be the case just as much as it may not.
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You're the one who made the, "speculate about effective pricing," thread.
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Wanted to see players opinions and in depth analyses.
This is the former, not the later.
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$50. About what the other secret lairs cost. And get rid of the box. Literally nobody cares about it.
If it had been ~$50, I and a lot of people I know would have bought at least two sets. Instead, my local shop has three at $350+ that nobody wants. That’s ~$395 WotC made versus the easy thousands they could have made not to mention the goodwill they could have fostered. Some economists...
Edit: sometimes I wonder if there are legit WotC shills on this sub who downvote anything that sounds like reason.
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There very probably is, shilling on social media is standard practice these days.
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The Fetch Lair is okay to be $400. It is the "normal" and non-premium editions that should be dirt cheap. Since the latter is not the case, people are rallying against the existence of the former.
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Should they be dirty cheap or that's just what players want?
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Both from a GameDesign and UserSatisfaction perspective. Not from a ShortTermShareholderRevenue perspective.
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Why from game design perspective? I get it would be good, but that's different than should.
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Having the format be accessable is a requirement for gameplay. In this scenario, this means financially accessable.
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I also am not sure if making fetches dirty cheap means that much of a return in the long term.
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return in the long term
I never said anything about financial returns in the long term.
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3 options: to maximize profit. Commission them for preorder with delivery 6 months later.
shitty art normal frame fetches at 30$/set for 5
120$ for 5 full art nicer fetches
1000$ for a single cross brand anime style japanese mega premium full art fetch with whacky foiling and a shard of an alpha black lotus inside.
Can't tell how serious and how non-serious this answer is.
See you thought you wanted the normal fetches, but now you're thinking about that lotus shard anime fetch.
No, I just wanted to see if anyone would sell me a fetch for 5 dollars since they cost the same to print as a 5 dollar note.
How much more is it to print a $20 or $100 bill than a $5 one? (Extra security measures in them?)