TOPIC: To sell or not to sell...

Hi all,

I'd like to get advice from the old timers, or anyone else who has any thoughts.

I recently went through some of my extra/leftover tokens (as in not part of my "official" collection) and began sorting them to be turned into Trade Tokens.

This year, and mostly in the coming years, I'm anticipating having numerous extra tokens. So my question is, what to do with them?

Besides trading with you awesome people at Gen Con, here are some choices I'm considering.

1) Don't sell extras, continue to amass a large quantity of Trade Tokens (in preparation for Zombie Apocalypse?)
2) Sell on eBay
3) Build site & sell via an online store
4) Setup a "store" and sell on forum

What are the pros and cons (in your experience) with the potential choices? Do you have any other recommendations or advice?

Thanks guys, I look forward to hearing people's opinions!

Trent

What are your goals? Do you intend to make relics? Then tokens that are mulched for Aragonite, Elven bismuth or oil of enchantment are never "extra."

Do you hope to eventually make a legendary? Then you are going to need a lot of everything. Look at a few legendary recipes.

Will you at times seem to have way too much of a specific trade good? Just look at this years demand on mystic silk. Eventually your "surplus" will become maybe just enough.

Trent wrote: Hi all,

I'd like to get advice from the old timers, or anyone else who has any thoughts.

I recently went through some of my extra/leftover tokens (as in not part of my "official" collection) and began sorting them to be turned into Trade Tokens.

This year, and mostly in the coming years, I'm anticipating having numerous extra tokens. So my question is, what to do with them?

Besides trading with you awesome people at Gen Con, here are some choices I'm considering.

1) Don't sell extras, continue to amass a large quantity of Trade Tokens (in preparation for Zombie Apocalypse?)
2) Sell on eBay
3) Build site & sell via an online store
4) Setup a "store" and sell on forum

What are the pros and cons (in your experience) with the potential choices? Do you have any other recommendations or advice?

Thanks guys, I look forward to hearing people's opinions!

Trent

My experience in this area:

== Forum / eBay / Store ==

1. eBay is a great way to get business - of course you take a 10% hit on eBay for final value fees, plus 30 cents on things that don't sell, plus 2.9% (or whatever it is) from PayPal - which cuts way down on what you end up with.

2. If you have an online store, then you just pay the ~3% credit card processing fees - but you incur the expense of maintaining an online store.

3. Quite a good deal of business happens through the forums.

Every store seller uses the forums, most use eBay, only a few have online stores.

In the past 2 years or so I've done around:

50 transactions in my online store and around 25% of the revenue
110 transactions in the forums and around 43% of the revenue
330 transactions on eBay and around 31% of the revenue

I think you can certainly get away with Forum only, or Forum+eBay.

I do get a few customers on eBay and my online store who I don't think use the forums, but most do.

== Save or Mulch into Trade Goods ==

In my experience, a precious few tokens sell at any kind of premium to their trade item value - normally STR boosters, the random thing that can make a BiS build (Greater Mistletoe, Archer's Buckler, Ioun Stone Beryl Prism). So - you'll save a ton of storage space and transaction overhead if you mulch the bulk of them into trade goods.

On the flip side, if you intend to amass a comprehensive inventory so you can offer one stop shopping, that is a good reason to have a broad inventory. For example, I often buy things from Kirk because I know he'll have pretty much anything I could want.

So - this one is personal preference - although from my own vantage point of a not-comprehensive but still 3 digit inventory of tokens I think the time I spend managing inventory has to be a net loss - but I enjoy it as a hobby. If I were doing this to make money I'd transmute all but a few tokens just to not have to spend time dealing with them. I own about 200 Darkling Earcuff. That is probably around 195 more than I will ever sell to anyone to actually use in their build vs. turn into Philosopher's Stone.

== Recommendations or Advice ==

I think other sellers are better at this than me, but I lose quite a bit of money on my store - not just including the value of my labor, but actually out of pocket.

Business license and insurance, additional tax services at year end, shipping and supplies, website domain registration and hosting fees, all that stuff adds up fast.

On top of that, I am pretty happy (ecstatic actually) if I can get $5 of revenue out of a $8 token 10 pack in resale / trade item value. That's before eBay takes their 50 cents (plus 30 cents for each listing!) and PayPal their 10 cents.

The token market is incredibly thin - in many eBay auctions there are only 2 serious bidders (by which I mean if one of them hadn't shown up the 3rd highest bidder was at 1/2 or less of the 2nd highest). Prices swing around wildly because of this. New token printings or rulings can cause existing values to shift radically - and almost always downwards - in very short periods of time - losing 50-75% of their value.

My advice then is either be OK with losing money on running a store as a hobby that gives you entertainment value for your time, or go slowly in figuring out how you can make a profit.

Harlax wrote: What are your goals? Do you intend to make relics? Then tokens that are mulched for Aragonite, Elven bismuth or oil of enchantment are never "extra."

Do you hope to eventually make a legendary? Then you are going to need a lot of everything. Look at a few legendary recipes.

Will you at times seem to have way too much of a specific trade good? Just look at this years demand on mystic silk. Eventually your "surplus" will become maybe just enough.

/\ /\ This. /\ /\

You can never go wrong with Trade goods.

Mulch everything that would not appeal to someone building a BiS red character. You could post character builds here or on eBay to move those tokens.

Step one: why? Trying to make money? (You won't. I tell new potential sellers that all the time, but so far I think about zero of them, plus or minus none, believed me.) Make friends? (Sure, but not if you try too hard to make money )

When I started selling I could break even. Now, there's so much competition from people who don't care if they lose money that it doesn't make sense, unless you want to lose money, too.

eBay is constantly changing the rules. The more they try to attract buyers, the more they drive away sellers. Guess they're looking for that sweet spot. I think of them as a way to bring people to my website, where prices are lower. Everyone gets a business card, but many keep buying from eBay. If you're a huge power seller or a onesy-twosy hobby seller they're fine. Small to medium sellers - I don't recommend. But some people do eBay who don't forum, so there's that.

Websites can be cheap ($150/yr) if you like fiddling with them and do all your own maintenance. But that's hours a month, much more when new collections come out.

There are collectors who like getting certain old tokens: Set Builders, Duck Hoarders, etc. They're in the minority. Most old non-URs aren't worth much, but there are exceptions like Defender pieces and healing. There are a few others, but almost anything reprinted in the last few years is basically mulchable. (Yes, with some exceptions. I'd keep anything "of the Ogre" but that's just because I have plenty of Silk.)

So one approach would be: list all your old stuff and post it on the forum. Sell or trade what you can, and when you can't stand it anymore mulch the rest. I'm assuming you're not in a rush to make a relic.

When you mail in, try very hard to fill up a large Priority flat rate box, and use PayPal's multi-order shipping tool to get the best rate. That's the most cost effective way. And read the "how to mail stuff" article under the transmutation section, and crate up your tokens that way.

Matthew and Brad are both very on-point here. I think I agree with everything they said.

If I could go back before TD Tavern and the associated time, expenses, etc, I'd seriously consider a much simpler approach. Buy one $8k pack every year for myself. Keep what I want. Transmute most of the commons/uncommons/rares into trade goods (and get as much condensed as I can). Then trade/sell any trade goods and URs that I don't want/need. Perhaps I'd do two $8k packs per year just to (almost) guarantee I get a Golden Ticket each year.

On reflection, we're mostly talking about buying and reselling new tokens. You're talking about dealing with your existing collection.

You MIGHT not lose money buying whole collections and parting them out.

I'd still try selling the individuals from 2013-ish and before to collectors, and mulch just about everything from 2014 and later (see the yearbooks in the Resources section to see how to tell them apart.)

Commons and uncommons are all mulchable, with very rare exception (e.g. Archers Buckler, Footman Set) Rares have more exceptions. Commons have none that I can think of.

But it's time vs money. The more time you're willing to spend and the more patient you are, the more you'll get.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Duck Hoarders

I find that hilarious when read out of context.

IMO, go with "the much simpler approach" that Kirk suggested above.

Buy only what you need, save some to trade with for stuff you want but didn't get. Mulch the rest and stockpile for Relics and Legendries. You won't have extras or if you do, you'll likely spend them in a year or so. But if you want sell off or trade off the extras to balance out the trade tokens you're shy on.

I would add,
Slowly build out 10 good characters so you can flip out classes incase you get bored with one and this will keep you evolved and flexible.

Harlax wrote: What are your goals? Do you intend to make relics? Then tokens that are mulched for Aragonite, Elven bismuth or oil of enchantment are never "extra."

Do you hope to eventually make a legendary? Then you are going to need a lot of everything. Look at a few legendary recipes.

Will you at times seem to have way too much of a specific trade good? Just look at this years demand on mystic silk. Eventually your "surplus" will become maybe just enough.

My number one goal will always be to have fun, no matter what I do with my "extra" tokens. For the options I mentioned; my own store, eBay, the forums, etc., whichever one I do, I want it to be an additional fun thing to enjoy besides my collection and actually running the dungeon.



And yes, I think I will make relics and maybe a legendary, but I'm just now starting to realize how many tokens are needed, so perhaps the word "extra" isn't the right word!

Trent wrote:

Harlax wrote: What are your goals? Do you intend to make relics? Then tokens that are mulched for Aragonite, Elven bismuth or oil of enchantment are never "extra."

Do you hope to eventually make a legendary? Then you are going to need a lot of everything. Look at a few legendary recipes.

Will you at times seem to have way too much of a specific trade good? Just look at this years demand on mystic silk. Eventually your "surplus" will become maybe just enough.

My number one goal will always be to have fun, no matter what I do with my "extra" tokens. For the options I mentioned; my own store, eBay, the forums, etc., whichever one I do, I want it to be an additional fun thing to enjoy besides my collection and actually running the dungeon.



And yes, I think I will make relics and maybe a legendary, but I'm just now starting to realize how many tokens are needed, so perhaps the word "extra" isn't the right word!

I'm sure others have done the math before, but my guess is you can pretty much burn up a full $8k order worth of trade goods making each relic and legendary each year.