Khans of Tarkir, the most recent Magic: The Gathering set, is a problem for my small shoppe. If you buy a full box of packs and open them all you tend to get your money back in spades. Judging by last week's draft, had we opened it instead of drafting: 6 Fetch Lands (60-75$), 1 foil Fetc ($45), 1 Sorin Planeswalker ($20) comprised part of the box, which is $120 minimum, not counting all the other rares that may have been a buck or more. Arguably, that was a great box of cards, but typically just coming in and buying 3 packs, there's pretty good odds of getting $14 and getting 2 more packs, thus beginning the cycle of trades over again as we give out half credit for cards.
This is just how Magic works though, it isn't inherently bad for my store, as it turns what was once a 20% margin off the pack into a 50% margin off the cards, so perhaps closer to 35% after the wash of transactions occur. It's an interesting issue though, as all MTG stores survive off singles as far as I can tell, but to maintain a level of singles necessary to stay open you need a shitload of packs in the store.
Strangely AQ survives off a little bit of everything, so to order in a bunch of packs/boxes of Magic cards requires me to not get in preorders for folks that pop in once a month. It requires giving up money in the future for money every day. No matter the weather, or slowness of events we run, Magic will continuously sell every single day without fail. So we walk the line, carry a little bit, but not too much. The second we're off the ground running, it'll be obvious to regulars; as we'll have every Standard block of packs in stock, as well as a booster box on hand for those who want it, not to mention a full wall of sleeves and deck boxes to compliment them.
I've recently been watching Derium's CCG channel, which is both entertaining and elucidating in its' store's daily operations. It's fun to see the little things a store like my own does during the day and how much volume they must move. They've got a constant web presence from their #Cardshoplife videos and more, but it's especially necessary because of their reliance on eBay and TCGPlayer to have an impressive web presence. AQ does well on TCGPlayer, but ultimately until we have more packs to just open and sell, it'll never quite be at its peak. A store like Derium's appears to open a few cases (6 Booster Boxes per case, 36 packs per box) every week, which is ideally where I'd like to be. It just takes that little extra a month to maintain that level of stock. I think AQ will get there, but in the meantime, learning from the best seems like the way to go at the moment.
So what does all this mean? When times are slow we latch onto Magic as lifeblood to survive because it's volatile yet consistent in its' results. To maintain board games in the shoppe we need board gamers to buy more, or at least preorder more; but that isn't easy either. Board gaming companies are notorious for changing street dates, delivering only a few copies per store, and simply being unreliable. Who would want to preorder the next big thing in board games if it wasn't guaranteed to be at a certain date? Magic and D&D have hard street dates that typically never breaks, so when you preorder a box you know the exact date you'll get it and preordering that is doable because of confidence. In the meantime, I'll continue to take in cards for games, for packs and for more of the same because it's a way to get over the bumps in the road that the industry has put up.
