If you live on the other side of the world (like me), Actually attending a Botcon will probably never happen. Sure I'd luv to experience a Botcon in person but the costs just to get there... ($1500 flights + $500 accomodation & I haven't even bought any figures yet... ) Well, You get the picture. Therefore, I've gotta have a great eye for a bargain. Of all the Botcon figures released over the years, All I've been interested in are the ones fitting into the Classics theme. The Henkei Seekers have been a blessing for me & since then, All I've wanted has been Alpha Trion, Huffer & Elita One (all since obtained). Years of Ebaying experience does wonders when it comes to spotting a great deal - & the right time to buy
I'm not too sure about that. Putting together a large successful convention is expensive. Where do you think the money is coming from? Hasbro - Not much if anything Collectors Club Membership - For 6 issues of work and a free figure, not much extra money leftover for only $40 Other Sponsors - probably SOME, but not much... Convention Exclusives - I would think MOST. Lets assume a standard $10 figure gets made by hasbro for $4 (+ profit for hasbro, retails, other = $10). Because of low quantities the convention orders, it probably costs more, lets say $7. Now, for instance with the sweeps, you have 3 deluxes, which is $21 total. Transporting costs to the convention, plus labor and coloring time for them lets say drives it to $25 for the set. They were only asking for about twice that much. Which means they were only making $25*1000 = $25000 for that one set. Granted there were three sets and the botcon primus package as well. But do you know HOW MUCH a convention costs to put together? The time, labor, equipment, rentals, etc is VERY expensive. If you start saying that the sweep set should have cost $35 then they are cutting their profit from $25 to $10 - that is down 60%! Meaning, most of their bread-and-butter profit would go down 60%! They would have to downsize the convention drastically in order to deal with those numbers. I think most of us would agree we don't want that. Granted I am totally pulling these numbers out of a hat and I have no clue what anything costs, but I don't think their prices are totally off-the-charts. I think they are reasonable for what they need to make. Just because they might be high for US doesn't make it reasonable for THEM. I don't see them rolling around in money 'scamming us' out of ours. If you guys want more staff at botcon to help with the lines, Brian has to pay them. If you want an online submission system it definitely WON'T happen if Brian has no capital to play with. I think you get my point...
Agreed. See my new thread about Razorclaw & Elita 1 coming to the Transformersclub.com store! So hopefully prices will drop now.
The prices are crazy on ebay but I have to give props to Funpub. Everyone who attended the con was pleasantly suprised at the retail prices. And they made a whole bunch of the anniversary set (Razorclaw, Elita One) for 2006/2007 people. 3 seekers = $49 = $16.33 per seeker (versus $13 for a deluxe now or $16 for the Hasbrotoyshop SE) Elita One = $23, Skyquake = $26 (less then importing a Japanese mass release deluxe) Banzaitron = $46, Razorclaw = $53 (less then importing a Japanese mass release voyager)
This. After spending nearly 5 hours in line to pick up my boxsets and exclusives, not to mention all the up front cost for the trip itself, I'm glad I was able to turn a profit on selling the souvenirs. This will never change. There will always be exclusives for events like Botcon and SDCC for one simple reason, it gets people to show up. The sweeps set are sold out and that price will most likely continue to rise If the Banzai-tron set is sold out that price will most likely stay high. As for the razorclaw sets, I doubt FP will put them on the club store for the $79 they charged those who attended Botcon. The going price on ebay right now is about $110 and my guess is the club store will mark it up to $99. However once they sell out all bets are off.
Yeah I got an extra set to defray the costs of the trip. I plan on waiting for some of the others to be sold off on ebay before I bother posting mine, though I may loose some money as fan fever dies down. Prices are set by what people are willing to pay, and frankly as everyone else is saying even if you pay double for the sets you are still probably getting off cheaper than if you actually went to botcon. So if anyone wants to pay me a grand Ill send out my extra set right away..free shipping!
plus you gotta factor in the cost of the free attendee figure...they are giving away a free toy and still have to pay hasbro for that manufacturing and product run and shipping the item to FP also....
It varies a lot by what the characters are, this year's set wasn't huge on top-name characters other than Scourge and the Sweeps. I think I'm done trying to piecemeal toys I want from the box set off eBay. Next year I'm ordering a nonattendee set the day it goes on sale and will decide later which toys from it I want to keep (there's always been at least a couple out of each year's set). The attendee bonus and the souvenir toys if I want any, I will still have to win on eBay.
