...and bad web/DB devs. Yea, it's a thread about my own crass consumerism, but I wanted to gloat a little about an experience with Troll & Toad. Wargamers will understand....

So, new year's eve was kind of quiet here. Wife crashed out early and I was sitting around randomly wandering the web and watching the (mostly terrible) Dynamite 2010 MMA/kickboxing fights from Tokyo on HDNet.

Decided to swing by Troll and Toad's site to see what their "year end blow-out sale" was all about. Turns out it was more of a blow-out than they expected because they had many (many) of their OOP games listed at *their cost* instead of their normal T&T 3x market value price. This wasn't an advertised element of the sale...

In fact, this really had to be a blip in their system because here's what I found:

Bloody April (SPI GBACW series "detergent box" version), punched/verified complete $50; unpunched $70. Normally this is $125+ on ebay and $200 on T&T.

Terrible Swift Sword (detergent box): $30 punched. Fetches the same prices as Bloody April if not higher.

Drive on Washington (GBACW slim-box) $30 unpunched [though it turned out to have a ripped/tape-fixed map]. Usually $60 on ebay.

There were others. I was mostly out of money, but I've been hunting around for a deal on Bloody April for a while and that price for TSS is just stupid, so, yea, I snapped them up.

By the next morning, Bloody April was back to $200 unpunched, $150 punched. I can't believe that this was a deliberate "sale" on T&Ts part, but, to their credit, they honored the prices--mostly, I suspect, because the billing system and the order slips that head to the warehouse go to 2 different systems.

It pays to check T&T at times. But, this also means I have a flatpack version of Terrible Swift Sword (GBACW Gettysburg) without the flatpacks [though I could dig a pair up if you want] available for sale or trade. I bought this on ebay a month ago for $60 and considered it to be a hell of a deal. Well, my $30 boxed version was a better deal, so this one can go. Any offers (I'm partial to gift cards actually) welcomed....

Ah ha ha ha! That's fun! Wish I would have known, I would be willing to buy that copy of FULL METAL PLANETE they trot out at every convention for $50...it's stickered $400. ADVANCED CIV, 1830...they have some high dollar items. Still don't know who's going to pay $200 for DUNE though.

Still, my favorite T&T story was when they sent people "undercover" to the Atlanta Game Factory booth to spy on our prices (and probably to ascertain why no one was at their booth and I was literally handing lines of people people four and five big-box games at a time. The lady that works there had a pen and notepad, writing down our prices. I went over their later on, and they had marked their prices down with a sharpie to compete with ours...and they were STILL higher!

You, Sir, are my Man of the Month.

Well thank you Billy, I appreciate that. Do I get a better parking space? A couple of chips "under the table"? Dogmatix, scram, you didn't win nothin'.

That's great fortune Dogmatix, I'm jealous. So, hands up all those who will be celebrating New Year 2011 on T&Ts website.

Shit, I'm sorry I didn't post this earlier - I watch those fuckers like a hawk and just 2 days ago ordered '81 Axis and Allies for $26.99.

Another good place to get Scuh-Reeemin deals is www.shopgoodwill.com. I've gotten Heroscape 100$ sets for 10$, I got AH's Rise and Decline of the Third Reich (3rd Ed, IIRC) for 5$...and it was shrinked.

A little late to tell us that, no? ;)

It honestly didn't cross my mind to post it until the games arrived yesterday. I do actually feel a bit bad for not doing so since it would have been *beautiful* to have a dozen folks pound through their OOP stock; and I really wish I had done some more hunting though as there were a few others that came to mind later. Full Metal Planete would have been a prime example of a game I would never buy at anything approaching "market rate," let alone T&T rate. I also regret not buying the unpunched copy of Jackson at the Crossroads/Battle of Corinth they had $75. I was actually holding off a day on that one to use the "ebay bucks" certificate I had coming on 1 January. I just couldn't wait on the others though because I knew in my gut that the prices on Bloody April and TSS just had to be typos. Jackson/Corinth seemed sort of reasonable...until I saw it back at $150 the next morning.

(I had a similar issue crop up a couple of weeks ago when I found an unpunched copy of Avalon Hill's IDF for $40 on their ebay store--it wasn't listed in their t&t.com store at all and they had 3 other copies ranging in price from $60 for beat to hell to $140 for unpunched; I think they actually screwed up and underpriced it by $100 when they put it up on ebay.)

Funny part was that it certainly wasn't everything as the copy of SPI's Minuteman that I'd had my eye on was the same $70 for a punched flatpack copy it's been for months.

Shopgoodwill isn't bad, though the quality of the sale depends greatly on the actual goodwill store the item is coming from. Some have a habit of calling punched wargames "complete" if the box has any counters at all in it. But, it's a seriously under-watched site, so there are deals to be had for sure.

I think they honored the prices because legally they have to. Not sure what state they are phyiscally in but here you have to sell the item for the price marked (unless the price marked is completely unreasonable).

Michael Barnes wrote:


You fucking dick and then bullshit! Wallenstein is mine!