Acquiring Out of Print Games

There are several places / strategies for locating out of print items. I checked out the game inventory at a bunch of HPB locations. For months every time I would go into one of their stores I would check the board games area to see if something had shown up. I found a cheap copy of Race For the Galaxy and a shrink-wrapped copy of Takenoko and a number of other cool finds, but no Merlin’s Company to be found.

I checked out Craigslist. It seems like a stretch, but I was able to purchase a very inexpensive copy of Dixit that way. No dice.

And of course I checked sources like Amazon and eBay. Both had copies of the expansion, but for ridiculous prices. As I type this, Amazon has it listed but there are zero sellers. eBay has had a number of transactions over the past year. Here are the details.

Item: Shadows Over Camelot + Merlin’s Company (used)
Sale Date: October 7th, 2018
Price: $124.49 (includes shipping)

Item: Merlin’s Company (new)
Sale Date: September 19th, 2018
Price: $110.35

Item: Merlin’s Company (new)
Sale Date: September 16th, 2018
Price: $119.95

Item: Merlin’s Company (new)
Sale Date: September 16th, 2018
Price: $102.14

Item: Merlin’s Company (new)
Sale Date: September 16th, 2018
Price: $81.00

And it goes on from there. You can see the pattern. Oh, and the original list price for the expansion is only about $20! This is a situation that I like to call “stupid money” chasing HTF OOP items. I’m just not willing to be part of that crowd. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I had bid on some of those items, but never won. Earlier this year I was able to purchase a bundle that included a base game plus the special pre-painted miniatures for only $29! I sold the base game and kept the miniatures. That was really cool. 😎 But it doesn’t happen often.

I set up an eBay search / notification process so that when new copies of the expansion are listed, I get notified. Unfortunately I also have all of the emails from eBay directed to a dedicated folder, and I don’t always look at it every day. There were two listings that came up several months back that included a $60 “Buy It Now” option, which I would have taken in a heartbeat. I missed them both. 🙁

The search continued.