Yup! That is who I bought it from. It almost seemed too good to be true, but given the price point, I decided to grab one.
Is it possible they are running at even / small loss for taxation reasons?
I’m not familiar with US tax regulations, but in Aus it can be quite beneficial to run a business in the red.
Running a business at a loss would allow the ability to write that loss off and pay less in taxes on profits elsewhere the way the US tax code works. Making money and paying taxes on that money as opposed to losing it*always* results in more money though even factoring the “benefits” of losses.
*disclaimer* On very small scales in very obscure situations that could be beneficial for certain individuals creating a net gain in net profit considering their entire tax situation. That only really comes into play with subsidy cliffs for various entitlement programs and I am 99.9999% sure that isn’t the case here.
Somehow they must, after paying all their fees and their bills, be making some kind of a profit on this. It just turns what I thought I knew on its head about pricing that distributors are able to offer. They really must get great discounts on shipping and pay their employees quite little.
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Maybe they are a distributor ( i have no idea what a distr pays a box or pallet) with a kind of “daughter company” attached to them.
I know some who do in other sectors of bussines… so the mother company sells to daughter co with no or little “profit” + vat, every company can reduct VAT so thats not a cost and the bookkeeping is in order. Then the daughter company sells on Ebay for min marging…
A economic recently said that we getting in an economy where micro transactions are really important! the big profit on 1 item isnt the thing anymore, more like a buck or 5/10 profit times many more sold items. the market doesnt sit on product anymore for a big profit, what comes in today was already sold yesterday with micro profit.
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whats better? sell 10 box a day with 30/40 bucks profit or sell 100 with 5 /10 bucks profit
This was my thought as well. I assume they are offsetting something, or even offloading inventory to free up cash. Either way it is very odd to say the least. There are other businesses with comparable volume and they are paying $77-78 per box, so I have no idea how this works out for them.
I would be over the moon if I could sell a box for $5-10 profit.
Offloading inventory doesn’t work in this case though… as they were at ~$80 on the guardians rising preorders. Taking a loss on inventory you don’t even have in hand can’t really make sense under any circumstance I can think of.
Unless they took on a huge preorder that they had already paid for and needed to liquidate before a bankruptcy or something crazy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Well i still hit the 10 EUR goal so, im a happy camper XD
sportsandmore is back with the $80 pre-order boxes:
It even came priority last time!
Insanity… I gotta call my distribs and see if I can get down to $75 a box because clearly this place is clearly paying like $65 or something.
And the better part is, if i use the code c5oz at checkout (available to australian ebay/paypal account) i get 5% off so the booster boxes are $76!!
With 2% credit card rewards and 1% eBay bucks I can lower my price point to $77.60 shipped to my door. (Distributors charge 2% for using cc, so that is a wash in that case) That is cheaper than I pay at my distributor and I do 4 figures weekly through them. I am going to send them an e-mail with a link and screenshot and ask them why I should buy from them over buying from eBay.
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I have not heard any business under $70’s. Even businesses buying 3-4,000 cases.
Nor have I, but $79.99 shipped they can’t be shipping priority for less than $5 (and even that is a stretch) and their eBay fees cannot be less than $5 (again a stretch). Paypal fees are $2.50+.
They have to be making money… “Loss leader” doesn’t apply here on single item free shipping eBay item, nor does clearing out stale inventory as it is a preorder. There is no other option than them buying at ~$65 give or take a few bucks unless I am missing it.
Take it with a grain of salt, but for what it’s worth when the original sun moon boxes were on sale for $80 from this seller, someone posted the deal on reddit and a commenter said that seller was located near where they live and the user was pretty sure they also deal with illegal drugs and stuff. So it’s possible they are taking some sort of loss but there’s more behind the scenes. I doubt they’re getting boxes for 65.
But of course, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet (arthur.jpg)
@tcghistory that is a pretty steep accusation and not surprising to hear that it originated over at reddit. I doubt that is what is going on; I think there are better and more efficient ways than Pokemon cards to launder money.
@smpratte I talked to my distributor and I will paraphrase here what he said. I e-mailed him the link to the listing and he said that typically in cases like this it is a “front” for a distributor to sell directly to the public (which they normally can’t do). They find a local and willing store to list the item at fire sale prices. The store really never buys or takes ownership of the boxes so they aren’t really buying them at ~$65. They simply make a small fee for doing this. Incentive for the store is obviously monetary. Incentive for the distributor is higher volume, razor thin margins or break even at best, but it keeps their volume up which helps with pricing through Pokemon. Same way large volume store get better prices through distribs, I am sure higher volume distribs get better prices through Pokemon. Another distributor incentive is freeing up cash before the release as it is sometimes hard for distribs to come up with all the money for their large preorders when Magic/Yugioh/Pokemon preorders hit all near each other. As with many stores, distribs work on very small margins as well.
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We are up to at least 4 unique sellers offering sub $80 boxes shipped to your door now.
3 showing in that link as “sportsandmore” has apparently sold out.
Searched a bit further in the link you send @gottaketchumall
And well… this can’t be real:
www.ebay.com/itm/POKEMON-TCG-SUN-MOON-BURNING-SHADOWS-BOOSTER-FACTORY-SEALED-BOX-ENGLISH-/152613459782?hash=item2388789746:g:wRwAAOSwbopZXcgc
Yeah that is a case of no feedback in the past year, someone’s account got hacked. This is just someone trying to grab a few bucks and run. No items will ship on this likely. Or it will be Chinese fakes if anything does ship.
Is there more downward pressure on prices right now for new booster boxes? Wonder what might be triggering that.
@smpratte talks about a big part of it in a few of his videos on Youtube. Oversaturation and lots of competition + very high print runs leads to ridiculously low, fairly unhealthy prices. My comment above talked about how there is some shady distributor-store relations going on where distribs are selling prereleases to the public through a store intermediary who never really takes ownership. A way for a store to make a few bucks per item and the distribs to get money up front before having to pay Pokemon for the product.