Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, columnist Scott Thorne compares the selloff of Into the Inklands to the glut of Magic: The Gathering – Fallen Empires back in the 1990s.
As of this writing, tariffs have been imposed on China of an additional 10%, and 25% tariffs were imposed on products from Canada and Mexico; but then the tariffs on products from the latter two countries have been rolled back for a month on those products covered under the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (which the tariffs would violate anyway), but the President claims there is a state of emergency allowing him to negate the terms of the agreement. We shall see what happens in another month.
I’m seeing sealed booster boxes of Disney Lorcana:Into the Inklands (see “Fourth ‘Disney Lorcana’ Set“) selling for as low as $30 at some bargain outlets. From what I have heard, Ravensburger heard complaints about the scarcity of First Chapter and Rise of the Floodborn booster boxes and decided to give players (and stores) what they had asked for: an Into the Inklands print run sufficiently large enough that no orders would need allocations. Stores apparently did not believe this and played the allocation game. Some stores put in large orders with the expectation allocations would occur, so the store would receive some number close to the quantity wanted.
Instead, stores got just what they ordered and either had to pay on receipt, or if they have good credit, on 30-day terms. Given the amount of Into the Inklands hitting the market, supply and demand says the industry will see drastic price cuts to move the product, below cost in many cases, merely to recover some of the money invested in the set.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of what happened with the release of Magic: The Gathering Fallen Empires, which was the seventh set released. For several years in the 90s, stores and customers had been pressuring Wizards of the Coast to increase its print runs of Magic as demand seemed inexhaustible. Stores were even pressuring Wizards of the Coast to utilize other printers that might produce a lower quality card product than WotC offered. The Dark set sold out immediately, and customers were clamoring for more. Much like Into the Inklands, stores were inflating their order quantities, expected to get allocated down a number approximately what they thought they could sell.
WotC then announced it expected to print sufficient quantities of Fallen Empires to meet all demand and for stores to take this into consideration when placing orders as they could expect to get the entire quantity ordered. However, since WotC had promised this on the previous two sets and demand had still far exceeded supply, stores took this statement with several grains of salt and put in orders for Fallen Empires at levels like what they had ordered on The Dark.
Unfortunately for those stores, this time WotC spoke the truth and Fallen Empires flooded into stores. By this time, other retail locations had noticed how well Magic was selling and I saw packs available for sale in bars and convenience stores. The amount of supply, along with the lack of rare cards in the set (only different levels of common and uncommon cards), coupled with the fact that distributors expected stores to take their entire order, meant a glut of product hitting the market and corresponding price cuts to move product, so much so that, for years after the release, it was still possible to find sealed booster boxes of Fallen Empires for far less than retail. I am seeing a repeat of this with Into the Inklands.
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