Pricing Policy

No Matching, No “gouging”

MSRP is Our Standard

Most manufacturers in our industry have a defined MSRP – the price they believe best represents the value of the product they've created.

We use MSRP as our primary guide for pricing an item.  For items that are currently in print, and are intended to remain in print, we commit to never pricing above MSRP.  That means if a $39.99 game or other product is extremely hot and going for two or three times that price online, you'll find it in our shoppe for $39.99.

Some recent examples include products like Frosthaven, which had spiked as high as $400.00 online, but was sold for no more than $160.00 (the original MSRP) in our shoppe throughout the initial release.

Out of Print Items

If an item goes out of print with no reprint expected, we commit to keeping our existing stock at MSRP for in-store sales until the product has been out of print for at least one year.  In some cases, it may be necessary to raise our online prices sooner, to avoid a rapid sellout.

After that year, we may raise our prices, but even then, if we can reasonably keep it at MSRP, we will.  

What's reasonable?  We've found in some cases, if we price an out-of-print item at MSRP, we get a bit of a run on the shoppe, often from other store owners.  They purchase the product and then immediately sell it at a higher price to their own guests.  On the one hand,  that's fine, because we still earn our profit on the product.  However, it creates a poor experience for our guests if the product disappears from our shelves and then reappears nearby at twice the price.  In those cases, it's often better for everyone to raise the price a bit to prevent an immediate sell through.

Direct Imports

In some situations, products are simply not readily available in the U.S, and we bring them in by working directly with publishers across the world.  In some of these cases, keeping the product at MSRP is impractical due to the cost of acquiring the game.  

For imports we bring in, we strive to ensure the cost in our shoppe is lower than the cost a person might pay if they were to purchase it directly from the publisher and have it shipped directly to our zip code.

As an example, Discordia, from Iron Games is unavailable in US Distribution as of this writing.  The game has a listed MSRP of $79.99, but is regularly selling on their site for €54.99.  Shipping to our address is an additional €50.00 so the typical price to order the game would be $113.88.   Our in-shoppe price is $80.00, which is actually pretty close to the advertised MSRP.  For the Magna Carta expansion, shipping would be €18.50 on the direct sales price of €25.99.  MSRP is $39.99, the price with shipping to a customer in our zip code is $47.17, and our price is $45.00. 

Highly Limited Collectible Games

While we strive to keep everying at MSRP, there are some products that make that impossible.  These are typically single print run items in the collectible space – like Pokémon premium sets.

As mentioned in the Out of Print Items section above, listing these items at MSRP causes an unnatural run on the product, leaving our local guests without the items they're searching for.

To address those issues, we've instituted our Local Player Program.  This allows us to meet the needs of our local community while still allowing newer guests to take advantage of below-market pricing.

The Vault

There are cases where we will intentionally buy additional product to save for a special ocassion in the future. These are often collectible or single printrun products that we think will be cool to bring out in a year or two.  In those cases, we purchase a few extra copies, and immediately store the extras in our Vault.

Every once in a while we bring a few older items out of the vault, and put them back in the store for sale, or use them as an incentive for a charitable auction.

Vaulted items, having been out of print for at least a year, may be priced higher than MSRP, based on the market at the time.  We do not sell these at full market price – we will typically be between 20-30% lower than market at the time we bring them back into the shoppe.

The Bottom Line

Basically, our goal is to provide quality products to our guests.  We price them to respect the value of the products, offer a rewards program to help our guests earn discounts along the way, and never increase our prices to take advantage of temporary shortages in the market.

We recognize that we will not always be the cheapest place to shop for your hobby needs.  We will, however, always be transparent about our prices and do everything we can to make your time with us worth your while.