Discussion about White Box Values • Page 2 • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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Discussion about White Box Values
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Busman
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:36 pm

Agreed with the general sentiment. Everything IS up, overall. Commons, OCEs, etc. I think this will have almost no impact on rares, though, as people probably weren't exposed to things like orange B3s, etc.

There may be a few more collectors spawned out of Gary's death, which will have a longer term impact, but overall, I expect this will be a short-lived cycle of nostalgia that we are experiencing.

There is no other reasonable explanation for a 4-5 fold increase nearly overnight on OCEs and a 20-100% increase on other common goods.

I'm considering selling my whitebox now and rebuying down the road.

bclarkie
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:41 pm

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:Basically, it strikes me as strange that, on balance, one would seek the OCE as the first thing to buy when one starts up a collection. Rather, the change in OCE prices must be part of a general price increase, and/or a price increase more focused on the rares that we've been seeing over the last while.

OCE= "Original Collectors Edition". Also, its the first set of RPG rules. EVER. Yeah, I can see where people would find that a strange and hard place to start off a collection. JFC, I am a moron, no more feeding from me though.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

Gnat the Beggar
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:49 pm

bclarkie wrote:
OCE= "Original Collectors Edition". Also, its the first set of RPG rules. EVER. Yeah, I can see where people would find that a strange and hard place to start off a collection. JFC, I am a moron, no more feeding from me though.

lol

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bclarkie
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:55 pm

By the way, I snatched this from the Interesting Items on Ebay thread as its certainly pertinent (plus the most recent one with the extra Chainmail):

zdaddyo wrote:6th printing whiteys from this year (excluding shipping):

1/08 111.00
1/13 75.33
1/18 132.50
1/22 100.00
1/28 150.05
1/29 82.00
2/03 78.92
2/06 76.00
2/09 109.50
2/13 79.50
2/17 77.52
3/05 203.50
3/08 205.36
3/11 500.00
3/12 230.37
3/16 250.00
3/17 525.00(The actual auction total was for $575, so I am subtracting $50 to compensate for the Chainmail which is more than what its likely effect on the auction was)

EGG passed away on 3/4/2008. The Average OCE set prior to the 4th (condition not taken into account and I am sure if this list is 100% comprehensive) was $97.48 ($1072.32/11). The average OCE price since EGGs passing has been $316.04 ($1896.23/6) or in other words a roughly a 308% increase. Yeah, its a strange and weird coincidence.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

bclarkie
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:03 pm

Last point that I'd also thought I'd address here rather than the Interesting Items on Ebay thread:

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:The Acaeum does a good job at surveying the previous prices, and it's very useful in that historical perspective. But it's nothing more than that -- old news.

Since none of us on the VB has a crystal ball handy to us, we can only use the time honored tradition of using the past performance of items to gauge the current value of them and base our predictions for the future. Anything else would be pure spectulation, unless of course you have an extra crystal ball handy you could lend us to help predict the current and future values of these items.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

Gnat the Beggar
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:21 pm

bclarkie wrote:................unless of course you have an extra crystal ball handy you could lend us to help predict the current and future values of these items.

PM me with your mailing address and send me a check for 19,019.95 and I shall send you one.

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Sea-to-sky-games
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:28 pm

Yeah those were the numbers I was thinking of, hence the 500% increase was a bit high. Anyways, the sample is small so it may end up higher than 500% in the future.. but now it seems a lot less than that.

Still, as X and others have posited, I think this is more about a general price increase, than something specific to OCE.

Since none of us on the VB has a crystal ball handy to us, we can only use the time honored tradition of using the past performance of items to gauge the current value of them and base our predictions for the future. Anything else would be pure spectulation, unless of course you have an extra crystal ball handy you could lend us to help predict the current and future values of these items.

My point was simply that, in this hobby at least, past values have little or no bearing on what the item is or should be worth. The only alternative I've offered is that people should bid what they think it is worth.. to them... because anything else is pure guess work.

bclarkie
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:55 pm

Aneoth wrote:
PM me with your mailing address and send me a check for 19,019.95 and I shall send you one.

I am not sure if that total will fit into the VBs budget of $0. :wink:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

Blackmoor
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:12 pm

Looks like many auctions featuring the original hardcovers have gone crazy as well. What about the recent popularity of the 1st print DMG!!

Gary's death is having an effect on the prices of this old stuff, there is no doubt about that.

This also may trigger a load of new colectors as well! Call me crazy but I started with few items many years ago and now have thousands. Gary's death may trigger a new age in D&D collecting.

Games can get you through times of no money but money can not get you through times of no games!!

Busman
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:13 pm

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:Yeah those were the numbers I was thinking of, hence the 500% increase was a bit high. Anyways, the sample is small so it may end up higher than 500% in the future.. but now it seems a lot less than that.

Still, as X and others have posited, I think this is more about a general price increase, than something specific to OCE.

My point was simply that, in this hobby at least, past values have little or no bearing on what the item is or should be worth. The only alternative I've offered is that people should bid what they think it is worth.. to them... because anything else is pure guess work.

Why are you resistant to the idea that this is probably a temporary increase due to the increased exposure of D&D because of Gary's death and subsequent massive media coverage of that event?

If that's not true, please say so, because that's how it seems you are coming across.

Badmike
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:48 pm

This might be a sort of "perfect storm" of collecting....while I think the majority of price increases are related to EGG's passing, regular items with no long term collectible value (B2's, 1st edition hardbacks,) were slowly rising. I sold out of EVERY COPY of the Idol cover 1st edition PHB a week before Gary died. Likewise ordinary letter modules had been selling quite well since Christmas, I'm also out of S1's and S3's which happened before EGG died.

I do think EGG's death is the primary factor. As to the OCE in particular, this seems to be just rare enough to peak a casual collector's interest, but not rare (expensive) enough to price itself out of the casual fan's hands if it's the only item he wants to buy to satiate his nostalgia. So while there was a slow uptick of prices already rolling, EGG's death "pushed it up to Eleven" so to speak, hastening the cycle and bringing in a lot of otherwise casual or even totally previously uninterested collectors.

As Busman said, the canny collector might think about unloading some goodies now, and repurchasing them when the demand falls a bit. I will say I'm taking that advice for myself, I'm hoping this Gencon is the peak of the cycle, and will fall after that. And as King said, having lived through, participated in, and profited from the last comic boom/bust cycle in the early 90s, I find enough similarities to think he's got something there also.

A prime cog in the presence of this cycle is whether or not ORDINARY, HIGHLY PRINTED, and TYPICALLY LOW VALUE ITEMS are also profitting from the attention. In this case, clearly it's so. Along with the record prices paid for items like Orange B3s and DMG Beta prints, we are finding B2s, 1st edition hardbacks, and other "non-rares" benefitting from the attention.While I won't begrudge a orange B3 or Woodie going for three grand, a B2 at $20 raises my eyebrows.

My totally unsolicited advice? Dump all your commons at as high a price as you can manage. See if you can sell a true rare for something approaching highway robbery. Within a year you may be able to buy it all back for half of what you got...

BTW if this advice proves wrong I'm reserving the right to go back and edit the HELL out of it in a year's time...... :wink:

Mike B.

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sauromatian
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:26 pm

As collectibles, RPGs still have a long way to go. How many titles go for $1000+, maybe half a dozen at most? Maybe a few dozen go for $100+? I can go down the street to a comics or used book store & find as many copies of such expensive titles as there are expensive RPG titles altogether. Going to an actual antique store would yield many, many more. Whatever the short-term fluctuations may be, the inevitable direction of collectible RPG prices is up.

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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:38 pm

Well, sure ... that almost goes without saying. The hobby itself is very young (mid-1970s) and the collectible aspect of it is even younger. Those OCE's didn't begin life as collectibles, for example.

Comics, sports cards, books, records (the LP kind and 45s) ... hell, even Hot Wheels ... are all older and more established than our little niche. I think it's just beginning to take shape, actually; we should all make a note to check back in 2024 when the woodgrains turn 50 years old. Then we'll have some history.

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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:13 pm

sauromatian wrote:Whatever the short-term fluctuations may be, the inevitable direction of collectible RPG prices is up.

I think is probably a better question of debate. How much farther can the hobby be pushed up? With most of rares, we see the same half dozen people bidding the $1000+. Even on the $100+ rares, there really isn't all that many contending bidders. Is the amount of collector willing to pay the bid bucks growing or will the price drop once they get the copies they are after?

Is the new group of D20 players going to become collectors and will they collect earlier editions of D&D or just D20?

Sea-to-sky-games
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:35 pm

I think is probably a better question of debate. How much farther can the hobby be pushed up? With most of rares, we see the same half dozen people bidding the $1000+. Even on the $100+ rares, there really isn't all that many contending bidders. Is the amount of collector willing to pay the bid bucks growing or will the price drop once they get the copies they are after?

Is the new group of D20 players going to become collectors and will they collect earlier editions of D&D or just D20?

I think Mike brought this up earlier and is the central question. I think there are reasons -- many found in this thread -- for it to go way up and way down.

I think in the next 5 years, though, the trend will be upwards on net. In 10 years, it is much more uncertain whether people will still care about this stuff... Do people collect for life? Do they generally collect, hold on to it for 5 years, then get rid of it? Is collection turnover less than a year? Forget historical prices.. I think we need to start gathering demographical data or something

Badmike
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:54 pm

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:

I think Mike brought this up earlier and is the central question. I think there are reasons -- many found in this thread -- for it to go way up and way down.

I think in the next 5 years, though, the trend will be upwards on net. In 10 years, it is much more uncertain whether people will still care about this stuff... Do people collect for life? Do they generally collect, hold on to it for 5 years, then get rid of it? Is collection turnover less than a year? Forget historical prices.. I think we need to start gathering demographical data or something

To add to this, in the last 25 years we've become a nation of hoarders. What effect this will have on our hobby, who knows. But for example comics....these were basically throw away (or in the case from 1940-1945, recycled) items that were thought of having no intrinsic value. It was probably 30 years until people actually even thought they might be worth something. Records were used and scratched up, to be replaced as soon as they were unusable....sports cards weren't seriously collected until the last half of the century....

Whereas, from the beginning, our little niche has developed a mentality that if you don't play it, stuff it in a box, store it in mommy and daddy's attic, so you can pull it out again in 20 years and sell it on ebay. Remember when our dads told us stories about their sports card collections/comic books/GIJoes/whatever that their moms threw IN THE TRASH when they left home? Do moms even throw anything away anymore? Everyone I know has a storage unit filled to the top with stuff they don't want, or they bring it to Goodwill, or Half Price Books, to be endlessly recycled. We've become a nation obsessed with our past, and I think this has kept a lot fo debris associated with RPGs alive and well as compared to other hobbies.

How this effects our hobby, I don't know. I think it will be VERY instructive in the next five years or so to see how many of these forgotten hoards are brought to light with the death of EGG and other reminders of past games that bring ex-gamers to search their parent's basements and attics for their old goodies. Collectors call it the "Twenty year rule".....people generally begin gettng nostalgic for a past guilty pleasure 20 years after leaving home, when most of them are in their late 30s, and think about reaquiring some of these items from their youth. A lot of 80's gamers are hitting that 20 year mark, what kind of effect they have on the hobby remains to be seen.

Mike B.

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sauromatian
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Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:54 am

Sea-to-sky-games wrote:demographical data or something

Allow me to add some color to these forward-looking statements. The prime movers of nostalgia are the people who remember the stuff themselves, but it doesn't stop there. There are the people who remember the people who remember it, e.g. buying an antique which reminds you of grandma's house.

There's the 20-year cycle of retro-hip, so that KISS was revived in the 90s while 80s hair metal or acid house is revived today. Teenagers into that might be 'remembering' from before they were born. D&D has already achieved such status in this decade, we'll see if the 70s-shaggy-barbarian look can keep going for another.

Every decade has produced enduring cadres of fans; there are always people into 50s stuff, or 30s stuff or whatever. The big difference between us & the D&D nostalgia buyer of the future is that we're the purists. We're like the guy on Antiques Roadshow rambling on over DMG 1st print distinctions. Everyone else will be the uncomprehending numbskulls on the other side who just think it looks cool.

Hence, if you want to collect for the broader future market, think beyond what we purists like. Imagine a nostalgia consumer who will never even play D&D, but likes things which evoke an era or style. They'll buy Fiend Folio because the githyanki looks like the Iron Maiden mascot, JG Citadel of Fire because of the horrible Farah Fawcett back cover, or T&T City of Terrors because the dude with the mustache looks like he should be driving a TransAm.

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Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:14 am

sauromatian wrote:
Teenagers into that might be 'remembering' from before they were born.

This is why I'm seeing loads of 11/12 year olds wearing Nirvana Nevermind t shirts themn?!

You can never have too much of something you didn't need in the first place.

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