Grab Bag Young Unicorns – pricing?

[Matryoshka]

I honestly think part of the reason people are willing to pay crazy prices on eBay is because so few are even offered for re-sale. Less product- more demand, higher prices.

If 80 unicorns from the last candycorn batch went on eBay I have a hard time believing people would be bidding over $300 for each of them.
There are certainly people in the community who can afford to take so much out of their wage for a windstone- but it is difficult to tell how many when there are very few unis resold in comparison to being bought at store-price.

It’s also been brought up before but people are happy to pay more for a re-sell when they can see exactly what they’re getting.

[Kiya]

I actually do agree with you on some of these points. I think the average would stay between $250 – $350 even if the whole batch was sold on ebay, but there would be ones in both direction that go higher or lower. For people who don’t want to pay $300 (or whatever), they might get a pretty good deal.

However, 12 grab bag babies that were the least detailed from the last batch were put on ebay (that’s a pretty good chunk). Of those, only 2 sold for less than $300 and all went over $200. There isn’t a scarcity on grab bag unicorns either. There are TONS of those out there. The average price was $377 with a high of $605 and a low of $242.

The most recent baby batch sold for the same price as more detailed batches at $130. This is a 200+% increase from the last straight up natural batch which I believe started at $60.

So, again, I think the sales data supports the $300 price tag if it was landed on. Even bulk availability didn’t stop babies for going for almost $400 each AND if any youngs didn’t sell they could be moved to a broader audience on ebay.

And still – I have no input in pricing so this is purely theoretical 🙂

[etruscan]

I believe that this thread was started because some people are willing to scrimp and save to afford one, especially if they know roughly what the price will be. As somebody (Kiya ?) said, these are luxury items, so it will be an individual decision whether to go for them.

[Matryoshka]

12 out of roughly 200… about 6% isn’t really a good chunk.

[fatalbeauty]

So, again, I think the sales data supports the $300 price tag if it was landed on. Even bulk availability didn’t stop babies for going for almost $400 each AND if any youngs didn’t sell they could be moved to a broader audience on ebay.

And still – I have no input in pricing so this is purely theoretical 🙂

there has to be a stopping point somewhere, yes they can put the ones that don’t sell on ebay but that’s besides the point…eventually the price will be too high for the bulk of us and they won’t sell…some people will end up leaving or refusing to buy GBs again, etc….

4 things I'm looking for:
1. Mother Meerkat
2. production color Sitting Young Oriental dragons to be made in more colors besides VF, Brimstone would be awesome!
3. Female Griffin – Siamese with White
4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male Griffin

[Kiya]

So, again, I think the sales data supports the $300 price tag if it was landed on. Even bulk availability didn’t stop babies for going for almost $400 each AND if any youngs didn’t sell they could be moved to a broader audience on ebay.

And still – I have no input in pricing so this is purely theoretical 🙂

there has to be a stopping point somewhere, yes they can put the ones that don’t sell on ebay but that’s besides the point…eventually the price will be too high for the bulk of us and they won’t sell…some people will end up leaving or refusing to buy GBs again, etc….

They could also lift the 1/per person limit. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if 1 person buys 90 unicorns or 90 people do provided they sell.

Most of what Windstone does in terms of pricing is very kind to their customer base given the secondary market.

Again – I have nothing to do with pricing so my opinions won’t impact whatever price Windstone sets. My points are, and will continue to be:

1.) They would sell out at $300
2.) It’s not an unreasonable price given the market

These are my opinions, nothing more, nothing less. There would be, yes, a price point that could eventually be reached that would mean that the product did NOT sell out and at that point Windstone would need to revise their pricing strategy on grab bags (whatever price point this batch releases at).

However, since as far as we know the horn issue is no where near being solved, this is likely to be the last batch of grab bag youngs for a long time (if not the last batch period). Given there are only 2 prior batches that I recall, 90 more isn’t going to make the product particularly less scarce and the higher prices would likely continue to hold.

I can’t imagine the unicorns would be priced MORE than $300 (but again, I have no data beyond what is available on ebay history or the forum so I have no way of knowing this – it is speculation only).

So – perhaps to be safe if people planned and budgeted for $300 they could look forward to being pleasantly surprised by a lower price, rather than if they budget for less and are disappointed at a higher one.

[fatalbeauty]

They could also lift the 1/per person limit. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if 1 person buys 90 unicorns or 90 people do provided they sell.

Most of what Windstone does in terms of pricing is very kind to their customer base given the secondary market.

Again – I have nothing to do with pricing so my opinions won’t impact whatever price Windstone sets. My points are, and will continue to be:

1.) They would sell out at $300
2.) It’s not an unreasonable price given the market

These are my opinions, nothing more, nothing less. There would be, yes, a price point that could eventually be reached that would mean that the product did NOT sell out and at that point Windstone would need to revise their pricing strategy on grab bags (whatever price point this batch releases at).

However, since as far as we know the horn issue is no where near being solved, this is likely to be the last batch of grab bag youngs for a long time (if not the last batch period). Given there are only 2 prior batches that I recall, 90 more isn’t going to make the product particularly less scarce and the higher prices would likely continue to hold.

I can’t imagine the unicorns would be priced MORE than $300 (but again, I have no data beyond what is available on ebay history or the forum so I have no way of knowing this – it is speculation only).

So – perhaps to be safe if people planned and budgeted for $300 they could look forward to being pleasantly surprised by a lower price, rather than if they budget for less and are disappointed at a higher one.

I for one do not believe they would sell out at $300 for the reasons I’ve stated several times now, that is a lot of money for most of us…I realize others have plenty of money to drop on Windstones but most of us do not, there will be plenty of us selling other Windstones to pay for a normal priced one….and again, there will be plenty of us that won’t or can’t buy them…

and I don’t think removing the limit is the answer, we all know there’s people who can buy them but again, so what? wouldn’t Windstone prefer to make the bulk of their customers happy rather than catering to the richer ones?

4 things I'm looking for:
1. Mother Meerkat
2. production color Sitting Young Oriental dragons to be made in more colors besides VF, Brimstone would be awesome!
3. Female Griffin – Siamese with White
4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male Griffin

[Kiya]

With a batch of 90 (keep in mind batches of double this size have sold out swiftly) there are going to be quite a few people who miss out. So I don’t think the bulk of customers will be happy with a small batch regardless. 🙂

Any Windstone at any price will be out of the price range for some. I’m not sure I can swing $300 myself for a young. I’m more of a dragon collector so it might not be worth that much to me. But, I am willing to wager that across all the people registered to the forum who purchase, they will be able to sell a batch of 90 for $300.

And, again, I don’t price these, so you may be concerned over nothing. I don’t know what Melody or John has in mind!

[Sikek]

I have no idea what they’re worth or if they’ll sell, if they’re around those prices I’m out lol XD
It’s not that I can’t afford them, I just can’t justify spending $300 on a uni that I’m not sure how much I’ll like the colour. I would spend that money on a test-paint on Ebay.

I understand both sides of the argument though, the value of Grab bags these days seems to be a very tricky business =)

[Matryoshka]

I think there is just some over-exaggeration about what percentage of people in this community can actually afford $300 on a grab bag. There are of course some people who can and will- but already we’ve seen a few people mention they can’t if this happens to be the new store price.

I consider myself on a good salary with very few bills to pay and no mortgage- still I can’t justify $300 out of my pay for a grabbag either. $300 is a lot of money! Especially when I may not even get a design I like. I don’t think it’s wise limit a customer base.

[Kiya]

We DO also have to keep in mind that many of the people who purchase never post to the forum at all. In a batch of 200 unicorns, only about 35-50 of them were shown on the forum. So that’s around 75% of the unicorns that we have no idea where they ended up.

So – the actively posting forum members only represent about 25%-ish of the unicorn purchasing audience. Say, 50% of those 25% say they wouldn’t buy a $300 unicorn. That’s only 12.5% of the total potential purchasers.

Say instead that we assume 50% of the total unicorn audience (posting and non-posting) aren’t willing to spend $300.

By that argument, in a batch of 200 potential unicorn purchasers, that leaves us with 100 people who ARE willing to pay $300 (assuming the 200 GBBs were purchased 1/per person and that those 200 purchasers represented our TOTAL population of unicorn collectors).

So, even at $300, in a batch of 90, we’d have 10 willing purchasers who were left without unicorns if 50% of the people interested in unicorns were willing to pay that price.

Also – there are people who did not get one from even the batch of 200, so some of them might be eager to buy a young.

There are a LOT of factors going in to determining if a batch priced at $300 would sell. I still think evidence supports that they WOULD sell.

Again, I don’t set prices or have input on prices so my opinions don’t really matter. It’s just an interesting exercise in market analysis.

[etruscan]

I also think that they would sell at $300, just not as quickly.

[Matryoshka]

But that’s just putting words into the non-posting buyers mouths that some of them would be happy spending $300. We have 0 evidence at all for any of them spending that amount.

90 may be able to sell for $300- noone knows unless we actually get confirmation of people willing to pay $300.
The current price of baby GB unis is a BIG difference to $300. I and obviously 200 others can afford $130, but $300 is different and just too much of a money risk for me.

If there are 90 people willing to pay that, that is good for windstone. For the rest of us buyers its just another product out of reach and windstones market shrinks.

[Kiya]

I’m not sure how Windstone’s market would shrink as a result. If these were babies and were going to be produced again soon, then yes – they should keep the price at a point a large base of people could afford in order to maintain their sell-ability.

But these are possibly the last run of GBYs for the foreseeable future. The last batch before this was September 2011 if I’m reading the store updates right. So, that means, IMO, these are scarce, a lot of forum members have never had a chance at them before, and they don’t have to keep pricing at a long-term sustainable point.

As for putting words in the mouth of non-posting forum members – I don’t think I am. I’m doing what researchers often do – applying trends you see in vocal purchasers and assuming a similar percentage remains true for non-vocal purchasers. Yes, there’s always guess work to it and a margin for error, but since not every customer is going to give you their opinion, most business have to make SOME assumptions. 🙂

And still – for all we know, Windstone might price these at much less than $300 and be perfectly happy! No one who actually DOES have input on the price has chimed in. 🙂

[Matryoshka]

That is true but comparing $130 and $300 makes it not very reliable research. The difference in value is more than double.

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