On Jan 22, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Kristin Looney wrote:
Assume a $50 price tag. Who on this list is going to be really sad if they don't get the chance to buy a solid stash of odd colors? My vote is to turn them all into a run of fancy Treehouse sets...
I'll be pretty sad if I can't get any cool, one-of-a-kind colored solid stashes. I've been kicking myself for not bidding on the old- style solid Icehouse stashes that have been sold on eBay, some for a lot less than I would have been willing to pay for them ($13? I'd have paid at least $30!).
I still prefer a lot of the stash-based games to Treehouse (I haven't tried Martian Coasters yet--bad Rabbit! No carrot!), and those are the games where cool custom stashes already have a well-established cachet. The nice thing is that in a group of dedicated players, each person can bring their own cool, custom stash and have a unique game experience (of course, you usually only get enough people who are into Icehouse together at once at big cons like Origins, but I still like the idea). I'd really like a one-of-a-kind stash for playing games like Gnostica, Icehouse, Pikemen, Blam!, Torpedo, and IceTowers. Of course, I do always have the option of pieceniking to get a really personalized stash, but it would also be nice to buy the stackable plastic ones for games like IceTowers.
Anyhow, my vote goes for making a few more solid stashes, and selling most of the odd colors as Treehouse sets. You'll probably have to charge less that $50 for the treehouse sets, as they'll be a lot less exclusive than the solid stashes. Remember, as more of these are sold the price you can sell them for will probably go down a bit.
Finally, I'd like to encourage you to just sell any of the special Icehouse sets through your store instead of eBay. I haven't ever used eBay before, and so actually bidding on something would be a bit of pain, as I'd have to set up an account, figure out how bidding and payment work, and I'd have to worry about watching for the end of the auction and bidding right at the end, and I'm not really interested in going through the hassle. That's part of why I didn't end up bidding on the solid Icehouse stashed that were for sale. If you really want to do an auction, you could pretty easily just do a reverse auction on your store. Just set the price really high, and then reduce the price every day or week until it sells (or gets down to the minimum price you'd sell it for). Just make sure your system knows that there is only one in inventory, so two people can't order it at the same time.
Anyhow, these are just some suggestions, feel free to sell them however you want. I really ought to just stop being lazy and do some pieceniking already.