Michael Barnes wrote:
The reality of it is that Dune has NEVER been exceptionally valuable or rare. There's ALWAYS copies in circulation, and although the prices can swing anywhere north of $50 but south of $100, we're not talking about a $200, $300 game here. Never have been. It's hardly as rare as something like Up Front, Borderlands, or even Magic Realm.
It's almsot kind of a myth that Dune is "hard to find". Sure, in a world without Ebay, BGG, or F:AT it might be...or if you're holding out for a $5 thrift copy.
Ironically, it's probably about as easy to buy a copy of Dune as it is to buy a copy of Rex.
Yea, although I think you understate it a bit. I'd found that it's closer to unexpanded Up Front--north of $80/south of $150, particularly for those Sting/movie cover editions, were pretty common prices for a very clean copy for a goodly long time. Those cards just don't hold up to repeated play particularly well. Between the rise of Artscow [since you can get fully expanded decks--including not just the The General stuff, but also the odd shit like the cards that were included as an insert in the short-lived "VIP Gaming" magazine-- with a much better look to 'em for all of ~$12] and the general 30% haircut most OOP wargame/AT prices took at about the same time the housing bubble burst, it was pretty easy to find $40-$50 copies in perfectly passable condition.
If I were still looking, I'd wait until the early autumn for Dune-hunting. I'd bet that there's going to be a price spike right now thanks to the intarwebs bitching about Rex, followed by a glut of copies getting dumped on the market to take advantage of it. It will probably crash back to $40-$50 in the summer as those copies clog up ebay and everyone overbid the copies that hit in April, May and June (unless, or course, FFG rushes out an expansion around then to "fix" things that reminds everyone how much "it's not Dune" again). It'll make another run at the end of the year simply because ebay prices spike in general between Halloween and New Years. By this time next year, $50 copies will be the norm again...
