Pre-order Declines

 

. I have noticed , and have seen confirming comments from other stores, a noticeable drop-off in preorders of booster boxes, especially draft. Our pre-orders on draft boxes have dropped to nil and our pre-orders on set and collector boosters of new sets of Magic the Gathering have dropped by 80%. I am not sure how much essentially making pre-release weekend into release weekend has to do with this, but it does not appear to have helped. Online sellers cutting the price on booster boxes to $10 to $20 over costs does not help, although, since most online sells appear to adhere to the restriction that they cannot sell until the official release date, that does give brick and mortar stores a bit of a leg up. I am not sure if a week’s delay in receiving product outweighs the extra $40 to $80 the customer pays instore for a booster box. I have read of some stores eschewing the sale of booster boxes altogether, preferring to sell Magic by the pack, which offers a better margin, albeit with a bit more labor and smaller sales. A few stores have even said they opted to drop Magic and other TCGs altogether, preferring to shift their focus to other non-collectible games that generally require much less effort to sell.. if you are going to sell TCGs, and make that your focus, you must invest in a decent singles selection, play space and organized play, all of which cost extra money. Magic has gone through a slump like this before. Of course, there were not so many variations of Magic  for retailers to consider.