Відео

The perils of investing in printed card stock

Hey just wanted to say I think your videos are always interesting and if you keep consistent with them I think it'll work out.

curious how game stores are deciding to price their inventory, especially when so much of the the sales are online. are you guys prioritizing cash flow, like getting products out as fast as possible, or pricing where u think the market will end up and leaving it it be

I feel like Assassin's Creed is gonna tank, and Bloomburrow will be too under powered following MH3, sort of like OG Champion's of Kamigawa. There was a lot if interest in the art of that set, but once it was out all you heard was complaining that it was a weak set.

Nailed it

Love these shop talk vids. Thank you 👍

more videos please :)

I hear lots of gamestores talk about how yugioh is just dead inventory to them. Could you make a video expanding on why it just doesn’t get as much attention?

Phyrexia All will be one had near infinite supply of collectors for the longest time. The newer sets appear to have cut back on the collectors which is a complete improvement to making these cardboard squares closer to collectable. You showing the storage space/print cost difference makes it clear why they went that way.

Oh hai stranger 🤣

Have fun on your vacation!

Maybe GRG should fund a trip to Finland with someone local that can speak Finnish. :-)

What happened? A combination of things. 5 straight years of dogshit standard starting with Kaladesh caused me to just swear the format off entirely. Modern getting rotated every few years by some horseshit power creep horizons set coming out. The Commander-ification of every single store since 'Rona. I can't find a fucking store to play at that isn't hosting like 20 commander events per week and zero competitive events.

Love the update, I would love to hear more about what's taking you to Moldova and trip updates

No employees always feels like a nightmare to me. The best part of the store for me now is not having to be there all the time at the register.

Moldova finally getting their first Tourist dollars after all these years.

you need to make as much money as you can when you can make it man.

Long delays between videos...haven't seen that before XD Always good to catch up and glad life is keeping you busy.

Latvia mentioned. Inform when you're going there, can organize something.

Well, if you ever travel to Ontario in Canada, I'll show you around my tiny store. It'll take 10 seconds 😂

Picked up yugioh again after a decade without playing it. It’s a lot like learning a second language now 😂

Safe travels, Kevin. Glad all is well.

Enjoy your vacation and I have always loved prerelease kits ! Sweet lot !! Consistently inconsistent, haha. That was great !

Boom

planning to visit Transnistria too? I hear there are tensions between Moldova & their break away state Transnistria.

Some of the most valuable information for me comes from your channels

how on earth did you pick moldova

Business first. Glad to see all is well

First of all, I would like to say that I am sorry about your experience with that one customer. His behaviour was inexcusable and it seems like barring them from the store was a good move on your part. I likely would have done the same thing and maybe even sooner, so props to you for having to put up with them for so long. However, there are several innacuracies in this video that I would like to correct, mostly because a lot of people seem to share wrong information about Metazoo, often without even knowing that they are doing so. I'm not trying to argue that Metazoo really was on track to compete with MtG or run defense for Rudy & the speculators. I did not speculate on Metazoo nor do I respect those kinds of people. I do love the game though and played it competitively, which puts me in the 1% minority when it comes to the Metazoo audience. I do also have a decent amount of information to share, so let's get to it: 1:04 Regarding the artwork, I am also not a fan of it, although some pieces did grow on me over time. However, I was generally surprised by how many players (and by that I mean people like myself who did go to events and actually played the game) loved the pastel "style" of Metazoo when compared to most other TCGs, so I feel that I should point out that there was an audience for it, even if I don't include myself in it. 1:10 - 1:21 There is quite a bit to unpack here, but Metazoo plays fairly differently from Magic. It is closer in style to powerful old formats like Vintage, with extremely powerful wheel effects and other 1-of staples being run in most decks as an example, with slightly longer kill time. Having played both games at a competitive level, I feel like I can reliably assert that the actual gameplay is nothing like MtG. *However,* the very first set for Metazoo was notably awful to play with (with many effects similar to an Un-set from MtG) and really did turn off a lot of people as you pointed out. The game did not come onto its own until the second set, Nightfall, which drastically changed the dynamic of the game and actually made it fun. I should also point out that I do not find limited Metazoo to be a fun game, but playing with proper constructed decks very much is. 1:45 - 2:10 To my experience at least, the second set (Nightfall) actually sold extremely well and remains packed with high value cards. In fact, as of today, it is still one of the most valued metazoo set overall (if not the most), excluding speculative outliers like the Kickstarter boxes & 1st ed CN. That being said, the third set, Wilderness (the one that you are holding a precon deck from) was very poorly received and only contains a handful of real cards of value, so I can easily believe investors chased rudy promos 1 month after its release 😅 3:30 This seems just wrong, although I do not know if you are talking about people playing it in a general sense. If that is the case, then yeah, I think it is pretty obvious that Metazoo was not the most popular game out there 😅.There was an active competitive scene though, of which we have plenty of data on. The first official Metazoo tournament, the Water Tower, was intended for 160 players and actually saw a much larger audience. The last major tournament completed before the end of service announcement (Dark Tower) actually saw a turnout closer to 300 players who qualified and showed up, which I feel was pretty good for a niche competitive scene. There was also no shortage of unofficial player-run tournaments, some of which still run online to this day, three months after closure. 7:00 This is the first point that is flat wrong, on multiple fronts. Metazoo died shortly after its 7th set was released, not the 4th. And Metazoo's 4th set, UFO, was actually a large success due to the many chase cards and positive changes it brought to the game. Giving a quick reception breakdown of the main set releases, the game progressed like this: #1 Cryptid Nation (poor playability despite many staples) -> #2 Nightfall (high playability, fan favourite) -> #3 Wilderness (middling to poor reception) -> #4 UFO (high playability, fan favourite) -> #5 Seance (disaster due to mapping issues) -> #6 Native (great set with plenty of playable cards) -> #7 Kuromi (Disaster). 8:21 I think you are 100% in the right here, and the general overexpansion of Metazoo, alongside many poor business decisions, were largely responsible for its downfall. In regards to the actual audience of the game (both players and collectors), there was definitely not enough demand to justify that kind of printrun and overexpansion. 10:58 I will personally disagree here, but I do not think that there necessarily is a correct answer. The idea of a game centered around Cryptids definitely has a strong niche appeal, but whether or not it has enough to sustain a living TCG is another question entirely, especially in today's hypercompetitive market. Regardless, I find saying that Rudy was the main appeal with Metazoo disingenuous at best. Rudy certainly sold the game to a lot of investors, but I do not think I have ever met an actual player who ever cared about his promos. As an anecdotal example, I've met far more people who wanted to play petdecks based on their local cryptids that most people never heard about, or classics like the Mothman, Fresno Nightcrawlers, etc... 5:00 - 5:48 & 16:06 - end. This is a bit of a strange point and I feel like many people were under this misconception, but Metazoo only ever had an "Unlimited" style release once, for the very first set who had three editions (Kickstarter, 1st ed, 2nd ed). All other sets were actually closer to Pokemon's early sets, where they have a "first edition" label without a second edition ever existing. Well, that's about it! Sorry for the massive wall of text, with the actual community for the game being so small, I feel like most people end up unknowingly sharing wrong information and getting details mixed up. Other people who watch this video later might also appreciate the added details when information on the game becomes more and more obscure, who knows!

3 weeks no video? You guys ok? Say hi even if its a short. Catch you later.

Very nice. Honestly, I’m a Digimon player and I’d put my Numemon deck in the vending machine one.

Now I’m intrigued about storage space. I don’t play mtg. I’m a Digimon player but these boxes are fun.

Ultra pro eclipse matte or dragonshield hold up the best

Hey awesome deck boxes. I’ve seen those on cults 3d. If you are looking for any more to print I have some in that vein over on makerworld and cults. Id love to get your thoughts on them. Also I need info on the best way to paint these things. lol.

I adore it. Curious on how easy it is to get the cards out of the mug 🤔😁

Grg logo printed on the mug.

Looks good.

puppy!

As a game developer and store owner, you hit the nail on the head. I didn't go in heavy on Lorcana or Star Wars either. This is also why I have always put playability first in my own game, System Gate CCG. This was the first year that we really started to add any sort of collecability or bling into the game and I've been going strong since 2020!

Hey I'll buy some of them.

Can't believe that's an actual event

I’m just hoping they move the collectibility in the external IP universes beyond, and stop inflating their core playable sets. No serials in outlaws is a step in the right direction

Your making me tired just listening to ya be out of breath, nah bro don't go to the gym, just run a few blocks around your neighborhood daily and save your money for mtg cards only 😂

With great remorse, I had bought a Wilderness 1st edition box for $102 back in mid 2022 and I ended up selling it for $55 at the beginning of March of 2023. After taxes and fees, I lost about $60 total. It wasn't much of a loss, but It's only because I bought 1 box in hopes of profit, even though I didn't like it, and my desire to flip it during a hype is what caused my loss. I did make about $23-25k from a 5k Pokemon collection that had a lot of WOTC graded cards that I collected from 2017-2020. Shit got insane, real fast in October 2020.

I’m here for the butt

You know we’re here for the Kevin rambles and rants, no one else does it the same

They made them that big so it's harder to steal cus you can't pocket them at that size.

Collector boosters were the beginning of the slow slide into the eventual IP dump of the corpse of Magic the Gathering onto some horrible, emotional sap 5-10 years from now when they have devalued product, eroded customer trust and destroyed the secondary market to the point it is no longer worth it to buy, play, or hold MTG cards. Hasbro is a mosquito sucking the life out of this TCG. I am not ready to offload my collection quite yet, but I know I have to. Everything is secondary to WOTC's bottom line. They have no concern over preserving quality of game or value for customers. Only for their shareholders. It was a HELL of a run.

Magic is dead

There should be some 3D printed tags for staff and the trusted regulars to place on their FAV board game so new people coming in can have a place to start. :-)