Boba Debt
Master Member
I have read a lot of complaints about the price MR is asking for the Boba Blaster which I believe is a fair price.
I don't understand why people can't wrap their head around the premise of RETAIL PRICES.
I'll try my best to explain it again.
Most Retailers that sell collectable type items use the standard 100% mark up on their item.
If it cost them $100 to buy it at wholesale, they try to sell it for $200. In the past this was needed to cover the operating costs of a brick and mortar store and have enough left over to make a living.
Now the company that produced the item obviously didn't pay $100 to have it made they have a profit margin as well, in the collectable market it can vary greatly between similar items but they can't vary their price because it would throw up red flags to the consumers.
For instance.
I am sure that the Luke's ANH saber cost more to produce then any of the machined sabers.
The Graflex based saber required stamp tooling which normally does not yield a decent profit unless you produce in the 10s of thousands
The machined sabers only required an engineer to write the code which can return a decent profit in quantities as low as a couple hundred.
However, MR could price one saber $375 and the other $2295, to the average person they look like the same type of product.
So MR had to pick a price point that the market could bare and make it work with in those constraints and it worked really well at first.
So what happened
In the new age of internet market anyone can be a retailer and buy items at wholesale and try sell them via eBay and other on line sources.
This has caused a lot of brick and mortar stores to lose a lot of money, they simply can not compete.
When an amateur seller gets in over his head he tends to dump whatever he has and doesn't care if he loses money, after all most of the people that sell on ebay do not use the income as their primary source of income.
This creates a false "bottom line" to the consumer base.
This is what happened to MR.
They were doing great with their first 3 releases, then came the Vader saber. It had several issues that caused me concern.
First, the wholesale price was not half of their retail price, it was $220 (plus shipping) and the selling price was $375 I believe.
Secondly they increased the edition number
It is my belief the increased edition number caused people to be less concerned about buying these right away, right away for an amateur is within the same month he bought received his stock, after all he has to make his credit card payment.
As the end of the month approached the amateurs decided they would dump their stock so they could make their payments.
Once that happened the "MARKET" knew just how low a seller would be willing to go.
The fiasco continued as more and more sellers dumped their inventory and the "bottom line" kept going down.
The final nail the coffin was when MR sold the Vader saber from their own web site for less then the wholesale price .
Now people realized that they could even get a deal from MR if they held out and experienced retailers knew they could not count on MR to balance out the market.
I personally held onto my stock hoping the price would re-bound but I eventually had to dump it at a great loss.
I tried to hang in their and I didn't cancel any of my pending orders with Marz and I lost a great deal of money, I was paying $240+ for the sabers (shipping included) but I was lucky if I could sell them for $200 on ebay and that was before the ebay and PayPal fees and sometimes it include the cost of shipping.
Now MR has had some releases that very profitable but for a guy like me I just didn't have the juice to wait it out.
Here is some more good info.
The average mark up for the Jewelry and Furniture industry is 800%
That gold bracelet or that recliner that that they sell for $799 cost them about $100
They also use a very effective sales trick.
They offer an item at a 50% discount but they increase the price to the above full retail.
For instance , they normally sell a recliner for $599 with free delivery ($500 profit margin) but they have a huge "Inventory Reduction Sale / Sorry no delivery available" and offer it at 50% off but the "new" retail price is $1000 ($200 above standard retail) so you get it for $500 and you think your getting a deal because you just paid $99 less then the price you saw it at a week before.
It's a good price but you could have gotten it for less, thrust me I know
I don't understand why people can't wrap their head around the premise of RETAIL PRICES.
I'll try my best to explain it again.
Most Retailers that sell collectable type items use the standard 100% mark up on their item.
If it cost them $100 to buy it at wholesale, they try to sell it for $200. In the past this was needed to cover the operating costs of a brick and mortar store and have enough left over to make a living.
Now the company that produced the item obviously didn't pay $100 to have it made they have a profit margin as well, in the collectable market it can vary greatly between similar items but they can't vary their price because it would throw up red flags to the consumers.
For instance.
I am sure that the Luke's ANH saber cost more to produce then any of the machined sabers.
The Graflex based saber required stamp tooling which normally does not yield a decent profit unless you produce in the 10s of thousands
The machined sabers only required an engineer to write the code which can return a decent profit in quantities as low as a couple hundred.
However, MR could price one saber $375 and the other $2295, to the average person they look like the same type of product.
So MR had to pick a price point that the market could bare and make it work with in those constraints and it worked really well at first.
So what happened
In the new age of internet market anyone can be a retailer and buy items at wholesale and try sell them via eBay and other on line sources.
This has caused a lot of brick and mortar stores to lose a lot of money, they simply can not compete.
When an amateur seller gets in over his head he tends to dump whatever he has and doesn't care if he loses money, after all most of the people that sell on ebay do not use the income as their primary source of income.
This creates a false "bottom line" to the consumer base.
This is what happened to MR.
They were doing great with their first 3 releases, then came the Vader saber. It had several issues that caused me concern.
First, the wholesale price was not half of their retail price, it was $220 (plus shipping) and the selling price was $375 I believe.
Secondly they increased the edition number
It is my belief the increased edition number caused people to be less concerned about buying these right away, right away for an amateur is within the same month he bought received his stock, after all he has to make his credit card payment.
As the end of the month approached the amateurs decided they would dump their stock so they could make their payments.
Once that happened the "MARKET" knew just how low a seller would be willing to go.
The fiasco continued as more and more sellers dumped their inventory and the "bottom line" kept going down.
The final nail the coffin was when MR sold the Vader saber from their own web site for less then the wholesale price .
Now people realized that they could even get a deal from MR if they held out and experienced retailers knew they could not count on MR to balance out the market.
I personally held onto my stock hoping the price would re-bound but I eventually had to dump it at a great loss.
I tried to hang in their and I didn't cancel any of my pending orders with Marz and I lost a great deal of money, I was paying $240+ for the sabers (shipping included) but I was lucky if I could sell them for $200 on ebay and that was before the ebay and PayPal fees and sometimes it include the cost of shipping.
Now MR has had some releases that very profitable but for a guy like me I just didn't have the juice to wait it out.
Here is some more good info.
The average mark up for the Jewelry and Furniture industry is 800%
That gold bracelet or that recliner that that they sell for $799 cost them about $100
They also use a very effective sales trick.
They offer an item at a 50% discount but they increase the price to the above full retail.
For instance , they normally sell a recliner for $599 with free delivery ($500 profit margin) but they have a huge "Inventory Reduction Sale / Sorry no delivery available" and offer it at 50% off but the "new" retail price is $1000 ($200 above standard retail) so you get it for $500 and you think your getting a deal because you just paid $99 less then the price you saw it at a week before.
It's a good price but you could have gotten it for less, thrust me I know
