Not Cool

[blackfire100]

http://www.anycraze.com/CustomerLetter.asp

What is up with this?

[GraueEminenz]

Hi !
Will this affect european business, too ? Opinions Ralph, Ralf ? If so that's damn stupid ...  local stores in Germany are as rare as Summer Hurricane is. For example there is none mentionable in about 150km radius around Würzburg. WotC should encourage Amigo to create more stores rather than retracting licenses  >:(
Just look at other European cities that are equally big (or even smaller) like Odense, Kopenhagen (Denmark). I loved
these Stores there -, they were wonderful. Found nothing comparable here in my region yet. :'(
I wish I'd live in Paris ... (extracting from your posts, dragsamou)
Thanx for listing to my complaints
Greetings
Jan
PS: A little bit OT , sorry that.

[Muldoon]

I think this will mainly affect you americans who are used to paying $60-80 for newer booster boxes, here in Sweden they cost around $120-$140 in stores with the current dollar conversion...
Am I getting this wrong, or have anycraze bought boxes at the cost distributors buy them and then just sold them online like a retailer? If they have, I'm not upset with this at all, they gain huge profits at the expense of stores who buy them from distributors at a much higher price.
I could have gotten it wrong though, but anyway :P

[blackfire100]

There is a petition on Anycraze about taking some people off the list. I was #882 the complain.

[house_atreides]

Hi

this sort-of already happens in the UK.
However, the price of boosters is kept high because of a "gentlemans agreement" that we have with WOTC,
which means that shops can compete on pricing.

Note that Decipher have had this policy for years.

Cheers,
Karen

[Raven_Fire]

What is up with this?

Maybe they want to stop internet based companies from undercutting the physical card shops and putting them out of business?

[rick21n]

Maybe they want to stop internet based companies from undercutting the physical card shops and putting them out of business?

We Have A Winner... Too many little card shops can't keep up with online retailers that do nothing other then sell product.  Your local shop is where you play tournaments at and WOTC is puching for them to be able to stay in business to sell and promote the product.  I see very little problem in forcing the Internet Retailers to Raise the price a little to make them compete more in a local market.

- Rick

[silver.paladin]

My personal opinion, is that I am in favor of this move by WoTC, though it is a double-sided opinion.

I, as a collector, like to leave things along, because it allows me, as a lower-income collector to be more easily able to afford the cards that I want.

However, I see the bigger picture being that the smaller stores being shut out and eventually closed down by these larger virtual stores - virtual whether or not the store actual exists in that they sell a lot of product online rather than in real life.

There have been so many small stores closed in the Calgary area here in the last 5 years, that it is not as easy to buy cards now.  There are only about 6 stores in this city of 1 million population that still sell cards, when there used to be a store in every major mall - one major mall even used to have 3 stores in it, and now has none.

[Swamp_Thing]

We used to have about 8 comic and hobby shops within a 25 mile radius of where I live and now we are down to a single store, but they still don't get the kind of business they deserve.  Hopefully with the summer coming and this change by WotC, business will pick up.

[bigfatkitty]

How will this affect stores like Star City who also sell on the internet?   >:(

This is where I normally get my boxes online.  I did notice they have again increased their prices since the last sets price increase.  But it's only $84.

[Muldoon]

$84 for a box is insanely cheap, even back in the urza days boxes costed 850-900 SEK here, which equals 110-120 dollars...
I already lost my local store, so if this really helps the stores I'm just happy.

[Gryfalia]

Was reading one of their forums..

What these people are forgetting is that on-line shops killed their local stores that were run by the 'good guys' who gave good prices, good deals and places to play.  This only left the stores that dabbled in Magic as a secondary sales market and jacked singles prices through the roof.

Not that it was the 'fault' of the on-line stores, they were just doing their business too.  But I don't mind WotC helping out the brick and mortar stores.  Heck, get most of my cards through drafting anyway..;-)

Gryfalia

[mintcollector]

One glaring point being overlooked here is that there are many online retailers who do not do box sales, but singles sales.  This implies that they get their boxes, opens packs so singles can be made available to the public.  My interpretation of this letter hits them as well.  This means that companies like CollectMart, Alpha Beta Unlimited, etc will have much higher prices to contend with.  The days of cheaper singles online may also go the way of the dinosaur.  

This could really suck!

[Ralph Herold]

GraueEminenz: Do not worry about off-topic, this is really interesting enough to be part of the News board. As for the matter at hand, I tend to say let us wait what happens. From my point of view, there are too many factors and parties involved to foresee the outcome at the moment.

[bigfatkitty]

$84 for a box is insanely cheap, even back in the urza days boxes costed 850-900 SEK here, which equals 110-120 dollars...
I already lost my local store, so if this really helps the stores I'm just happy.

I agree $84 is still cheap, but I still compare it to $66 a year ago.