RE: $4.17 Per Booster Pack at Wal-Mart?!
Mameshiba said:
I see every reason to complain about this. Magic you get more cards and now they are a little cheaper than Pokemon cards. There really is no reason to push Pokemon card prices up by $.75. They aren't the cool e-Reader cards. It's not as popular as it was when it first came out. Idk Nintendo, maybe it's to make up for their bad sales report recently lol. Buying at places like Wal Mart or Target, is just more of a convenience. Getting groceries? Hm, kinda want just want a pack or two. And not every place in the world has an awesome card/comic shop (which they should ;A; ). But if you can find one, go buy at the smaller business. Most of the time, as everyone has mentioned, they are cheap and you are helping that little shop. c:
The prices have gone up for the reasons that the Pokémon TCG is ahead in the race against Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering and because the price of raw materials have gone up (namely paper). Nintendo can afford to charge more because demand has gone up, and its biggest rival in TCGs, Yu-Gi-Oh!, is already at that price.
If a company is struggling with sales, the last thing it's going to do is raise prices. When there's an increase in price, demand goes down, especially if the competitors' prices aren't going up with it (see Netflix for an example--until they reversed the fee increase, people canceled their subscriptions and went to Redbox, and ironically, Blockbuster instead). When you see something go up in price, it means the company that makes that product or runs that service is confident.
outofideas82 said:
Another thing I'd like to say, PLEASE buy from your local store whenever possible. I'm in the restaurant industry myself, but think about where you go to play every week, and if they sell the products your buying online or at a big box store. If it only costs a couple bucks more, and you have the money to spare, why not help the store that allows you to enjoy your league. The extent you go with this all depends on your income, etc (I'm not saying someone whos struggling should be spending an extra 30%+, but if your comfortable, pitch in and support your local businesses. Yea, being able to save $20-30 on a box online is great, but what good does it do for you when your local card store closes down because they don't have the sales they need to keep going?
If your store has a box at $140 and you've got a box online at $80 after shipping, why not try asking the manager/owner if there is any wiggle room on the price, and show them the price online? Chances are they may be able to meet you at $110 and you'll get the cards today rather than waiting.
There is, however, a difference between setting the prices to remain stable as a business and outright price-gouging because their customers are too loyal or don't know any better. That early-day $45 deck, for instance, was price-gouging, as I saw other small businesses sell it for $20 or less later on. Small businesses get that underdog type of sympathy, but that means particularly savvy and/or cunning small business owners can charge whatever they want from such people. It creates a local monopoly because that business doesn't have to be competitive, and any monopoly that isn't government-run (and some that are) is BAD for the consumer. For instance, when I was in Santa Cruz, I saw small businesses at their ugliest: One grocery store charged, say, 2 to 3 times the price per pound for apples as other grocery stores (including other locally run ones). The reason they could get away with it was that they projected this image in their appearance, layout, and advertising of them being this "good earth" type of place. People believed it, and they've since had this group of customers who don't buy groceries anywhere else. This became a popular thing to do, and so many other small businesses around that area have dramatically inflated prices because they, too, have their own loyal group of customers.
I'm not speaking against buying from small businesses--but that you, the customer, have to be as smart as the business owners, because they aren't necessarily morally better than the people running huge corporations. If you're going to shop among small and/or local businesses, you should do price comparisons too (and don't be afraid to say that if they ask what you're doing--they know they need to be competitive too, and their competitors' prices are valuable information), and buy from the place that has the lowest prices. However, once you find such a place, don't stop comparing prices, because small businesses are more likely to increase or decrease prices with demand: If you see that the price in the store you've found has gone up, check to see if some other store's prices have gone down accordingly.
Just going to one particular store is the worst thing to do for your wallet, because that makes you a loyal customer, and you create a situation like that grocery store I mentioned up there. If enough people do it, then that store has created a monopoly and can thus charge whatever they feel like rather than what their competitors are charging. This is not like, say, restaurants, where every small business has a slightly different product. (Not that those $17 garden salads in Santa Cruz didn't annoy me.) A pack or box of Pokémon cards is the same everywhere you go.
