Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at sales trends on Disney Lorcana, and the reaction to Wizards of the Coast’s change in WPN requirements.
It looks as if the bloom is off the Disney Lorcana rose. Restocks of Chapter 2 Rise of the Floodborn boosters hit store shelves this week and, based on the price drop for booster boxes online, some people ordered way too many of them. Prices for sealed booster boxes are hovering in the range of $140 to $150 per box with Chapter One booster boxes selling slightly higher at about $160.
We will have to see if the trend continues with the Chapter Three Into the Inklands set (see “Third ‘Disney Lorcana’ Set”). From the pricing I am seeing for pre-orders of Into the Inklands, it appears this pricing trend for Disney Lorcana will continue. We are going to see pricing significantly above Ravensburger’s MSRP for the initial release of a set followed by a drop of 40% in prices upon the receipt of a subsequent release of the set. Since we only see Troves and Gift Sets at the initial release, we are still seeing them selling for significantly above MSRP, but not decks and booster boxes.
Disney Lorcana does not appear to have the same level of demand stores saw for Pokemon when Pokemon profiteers bought everything on the shelf and were even planting tracking devices on trucks delivering Pokemon to big box stores (See “Midnight Hunt and Peak Pokemon TCG”). Pokemon has slowed down dramatically but we never have seen the level of demand for Disney Lorcana approach that of peak Pokemon when It was almost impossible to keep Pokemon product on the shelves. From personal experience, I have a few friends who are huge Disney fans but have never expressed any knowledge of Disney Lorcana which, at least from anecdotal evidence, indicates not as much demand for the cards among Disney fans as the industry had expected.
Wizards of the Coast announced a change to its WPN Premium Store program this week (See “Wizards of the Coast Will Pause Collection of WPN Premium POS Data”). Apparently as a response to a retailer survey earlier this quarter, Wizards announced that starting January 1, it would no longer require WPN Premium stores to submit POS data. WotC clarified that, since submission of POS data for a month has been required by the 7th of the following month, November was the last month for which data was required. Premium stores will not be required to submit POS data for the month of December.
While I can understand WotC wanting to get data on its sales from what it would arguably see as the best stores selling its products, this requirement also conflicted with its desire to recruit more stores into the WPN Premium program, as many stores interesting in acquiring Premium status were (perhaps remembering WotC’s aborted attempt to enter retail via its purchase of Washington’s GameKeeper chain of stores) loath to give the company access to financial sales information. Since this announcement, I have already read of at least a dozen stores considering pursuing WPN Premium status now that they do not have to share financial info. WotC has indicated it will look at other metrics to replace POS data but for now, if interested, it looks like a really good time to pursue WPN Premium status.
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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
