Cryer from the Castle 11/25

This week's new releases and events.

Black Friday Specials

 Black Friday Weekend Specials while quantities last

Buy 5 bagged and boarded comics from the back issue room, get 5 free

Spend $10 on Pokemon, get a promo Pikachu card. Spend $50, get the card and a Pokemon binder. Spend $100 and get the card, binder and a Pokemon playmat. Spend $200 and get all three and a Pokemon tablemat. Limited quantities

Buy any new hardback D&D book and get a D&D logo dice bag

Buy $50 worth of Magic and get a set of 3 30th Anniversary promo cards. Buy $100 and get the cards and a Magic promo pack. Buy $200 and get the cards, promo pack and a foil promo pack.

Cadia Stands Astra Militarium Army Set for Warhammer 40,000 on sale

Black Friday

 Tomorrow: Open at 8 a.m. Please wear a mask

GW Black Templars on Sale

All in stock Pokemon booster boxes $124.99

Buy $30 of magic and get a magic Promo Pack

Get 3 stamps on your Castle Card and get a Sirius Dice

Bagged and Boarded Comics in the Back issue Room, buy 1, get one at Half off

5:30 D&D No available seats but we do have space in Monday's game

Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday

 Open 4 p.m. -9 p.m.  Thanksgiving and at 8 a.m. Black Friday.  All Bagged and Boarded back issues Buy One get one at half off. All in stock Pokemon Booster boxes $124.99, For every 3 Stamps on a Castle Card earned on Magic purchases, get a random promo pack. For every 3 stamps earned on anything on your Castle Card, get a random pull from the Sirius Dice box.  All while quantities last.

Sunday Of Black Friday weekend

 Tomorrow: Open at Noon Please wear a mask. We will happily deliver to the parking lot or in Carbondale ($50 minimum please)

New Blood Bowl releases

New Blood Angel Codex and figures

Force of Will Epic of the Dragon Lord Pre-release sets available $25 each for 1-3 $20 each for 4 or more.

Get one discount coupon envelope with 2 stamps on your Castle Card. Limit one envelope per customer per day

All bagged and boarded back issue comics, buy one get one Free.

In stock Magic Collectors boosters Buy one, get one at Half off.

Buy a copy of King of Tokyo or King of New York, get a promo item of your choice.

Weekend Specials

 Bring in 10 non-perishable food items and get a free pack of dice

Buy a copy of King of Tokyo or King of New York and get your choice of a promotional item for the game. Bring in a copy you have already purchased and get a promo card.

Magic Collector Boosters buy one, get one at half off

Regularly priced Bagged and boarded back issues, buy one get one free 

New Blood Bowl on sale

Epic of the Dragon King pre-release kits available

Get 2 stamps on a Castle Card, receive a Castle Perilous Games & Books Surprise Discount Envelope.

Black Friday Weekend

 All bagged and boarded comics are buy one get one Free

All Magic Collector boosters are Buy 1 get one at Half off

New Blood Bowl releases

Epic of the Dragon King pre-release kits for Force of Will  1-3 kits $25 each  4 or more $20 each

Get a CP Discount coupon envelope with 2 stamps on your Castle Card. Limit one envelope per day.

Black Friday Discount Envelopes

 The store will open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. We will start giving away the Black Friday Discount envelopes while quantities last. Earn 2 stamps on a Castle Card, get an envelope containing a discount from 5 to 25% off. The catch is, the envelope is sealed and you have to open it before us at the time of purchase to take advantage of it. 

We will also have the new Blood Bowl rules, rulebook , Necromantic Horror team and Spike Journal as well as the new Force of Will set available for purchase and buy one get one free on all bagged and boarded comics from the back issue room.

Black Friday Discount Envelopes

 Doors will open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and then regular hours the rest of the weekend. We have 100 Black Friday Weekend Discount Envelopes to give away. Get two stamps on a Castle Card and get a discount envelope. Only one discount envelope per customer per day and only good while the 100 we have last. Discounts range from 5% to 25% and do stack with a Preferred Customer Card.

 How much is the discount? It is a surprise. You open the envelope after we have totaled your purchase and apply the discount to the total. Envelopes opened before the purchase are void. If you make a mail purchase and request one, we will include a discount envelope while they remain in stock. Discounts are good on in-stock merchandise from Nov.26 through Dec. 31.

Black Friday

Well, Black Friday sales were great but not awesome. We did noticeably better than we would on a regular Friday but not as good as sales for the first few hours indicated we would. Will probably rethink opening early next year unless we come up with some really great idea to get people in the door two hours earlier than normal. Maybe some sort of giveaway to the first 20 people through the door.

MAP announcements

Several game companies have made announcements regarding MAP (minimum advertising pricing) for Black Friday. The most notable is Asmodee  which announced it would lift MAP, allowing companies to advertise lower prices on Asmodee products during the Black Friday sales period. Iello and Games Workshop have said there will be no suspension of their MAP  during the period

Black Friday Specials

These specials are good from 4 p.m. Thanksgiving day until 9 p.m. November 27. Quantities may be limited:

AEG Black Box (5 copies) and Boss Monster 2 Limited Edition (4 copies)

Magic Booster Bundles (8 bundles) $10 to $25

Games Workshop Age of Sigmar (7 copies) $65

Discontinued GW paints:  Buy one, get one free.

Yu Gi Oh, Magic and Pokemon $1 rares, 50 cent uncommons and 10 commons:  Buy 1 get one free (Boxes only, no cards in binders)

DVDs  Buy one, get one of lesser value at half off

Graphic novels and manga, buy one get one of lesser value at half off (New releases not included)

Pathfinder RPG materials Buy one get one of lesser value at half off (New Releases not included)

Used RPGs and boardgames:  Buy One get one of lesser value at half off

DiceMaster Boosters Buy 1 get 1 free

HeroClix  Gravity Feed Packs  Buy 1 Get one Free

Mayfair Games Boardgames Buy 1 get 1 at half off (excepting Catan and Supplements)

Busiest Shopping Days of the Year

So, if you are a customer wanting to know when to avoid the crowds, or a store owner needing to plan staffing (hopefully you have already done that), here, in order are the busiest shopping days of 2014;

Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving)

December 20^th the Saturday before Christmas

December 13^th

December 6^th (the3^rd Saturday before Christmas)

December 26^th  (Boxing Day in Britain)

December 21^st  (the Sunday before Christmas)

November 28^th Small Business Saturday

December 19^th  (the Friday before Christmas)

December 14^th  (two Sundays before Christmas)

December 11^th  (two Fridays before Christmas)

Incidentally, if you plan on ordering anything, best to get those orders in soon. The average order last year took about nine days to arrive, according to Direct Marking Magazine, meaning any orders put in after about the 15 of December  have a better than even chance of not arriving by Christmas Even (unless, of course, you wish to spend more for speedy delivery). If you look for items much after that date, your Friendly Local Game Store will be your best bet for making sure you get that particular present.

Black Friday

As we did last year, we will open at 5  a.m. on Black Friday (that's the Friday after Thanksgiving for those who missed the hoopla), with the front two tables packed full of merchandise including booster displays of Magic and Yu Gi Oh, Pathfinder and D&D books, assorted graphic novels, Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle items and more.
  Each hour discounts on the items on the tables will progressively drop according to the following schedule:

5 a.m. to 6 a.m.  10% off

6 a.m. to 7 a.m.  20 off

7 a.m. to 8 a.m. 30% off

8 a.m. to 9 a.m. 40% off

9 a.m. to 10 a..m. 50% off

Yes the discounts are lower earlier in the day, but you have a much better selection.  You can wait until the 50% off hour rolls around but we will likely have sold out of the best stuff.  We will also have a few unannounced sales that will only last for an hour but you will have to be at the store to take advantage of them.

We will also have toasted bagels and cream cheese for those who haven't had breakfast yet.

Black Friday, the Failure

We’ve had pretty good luck running Black Friday events in the past, opening at 5 or 6 in the morning with a table of specials and a discount schedule that gets smaller as the morning wears on. We also serve breakfast: toasted bagels with cream cheese and hot apple cider from a local orchard. Typically, we don’t have huge crowds but have three to six people browsing and spending money at any given time during the event. Sales usually run about 25 to 50 percent above a typical Friday. This time, we tried something different which failed quite thoroughly and will serve as a valuable object lesson for next year’s planning.




A couple of times a year (the store anniversary and Halloween) we host a party for our customers, the focal point of which is the distribution of over a thousand dollars worth of prizes through drawings. Customers get tickets through doing various things such as purchases, bringing in cans of food, coming in costume, etc and the drawings pull in a large number of excited people, especially since they have to be present to win (we don’t want to keep track of who won what) and are accompanied by significantly higher than normal sales. Based on this, for Black Friday, we decided to do another drawing and tie ticket distribution to time of day and amount purchased, along with other ways to earn tickets. As I said, based on past experience and customer enthusiasm and chatter about the event, I thought this was a great idea, especially since we had hot cider and bagels. Boy, was I wrong.

The day certainly started well. I arrived a bit before 6, got the bagels and cider ready and welcomed the first customers at a few minutes after 6. That should have been my first clue. In past years, we have had people lined up outside the door when we opened. The first customer spent a goodly amount and then, I got what should have been my second clue, when he passed on receiving any drawing tickets, saying he wouldn’t be there for the drawing. Second customer bought a pack of Magic 2012 and a few common cards and left. Then nothing but the sound of crickets for three more hours. The only person to set foot through the door until regular opening time at 10 a.m. was a guy who stops in to pick up a copy of the free student newspaper and he just complained that the students hadn’t put one out on a day when the students had all left for the holiday.

Does this sour me on the idea of running Black Friday events? Of course not. This was an experiment that failed. From what I have heard, other stores did incredibly well. Albany, New York’s Zombie Planet posted on their Facebook page that Black Friday broke sales records and St. Louis’s Star Clipper also posted about huge crowds.


Lesson learned. Customers will come out for discounts, premiums and specials, not for hot cider and extra drawing entries. Planning for next year began today.