The Fonarow collection sold to Troll & Toad

[cgould42]

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/BIZ/805060301


It would be a lot of fun to dig though that collection

Cheers,
Curt

[tfm]

A 150K for 20K games? Boy did he get screwed!
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[scribe]

I don't know. I am sure there are quite a few things in there that will help the retailer cover his expenses pretty quick. But that guy that sold his collection is a seasoned auctioneer who seemed pretty satisfied with the deal. I am betting he wanted it to go away in one shot. I am curious if there isn't a collector out there who would have been happy to purchase it from him too. It is a great collection that would have maintained a collection pedigree. Sort of like when art work passes hands and eventually ends up in a museum with notation on who owned the work

Thanks for posting that article, Curt. Troll and Toad has 75 employees??? That is unbelievable! Do they playtest all of the games before selling them? I wonder how many employees Nobleknight has in comparison.
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[Mars]

The simple math is that 20,000 games for $150,000 is $7.50 a game. With the T&T selling formula that easily turns into $5 sale and $2.50 additional handling which is very obtainable for the cheap items like monopoly. This also makes all the rare items essentially all profit. Personally, I think Fonarow would have done better by selling it all on Ebay using a sell-it-for-me place that probably takes 30% of the saleprice.

When I was at Crazy Egor's, he mentioned that the first person to his booth each year at Gencon is the T&T guy who buys all the shrinkwrapped war games (Avalon Hill stuff, etc).

[tfm]

I think Mars is right on. If each game was sold for 9.99 that would be $200K. The bulk will probably be sold for $10-$15. The rest will be much higher. If that collection has all of the old wargames in it, then T&T should be able to triple their money, if not more. If the owner was simply trying to get everything out quickly, he could have listed lots of a hundred games each by type. If that's still too slow, I would have called around and got several different gaming resellers to visit and then take the best offer.
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[Mars]

[scribe]

150k is an awful lot for any small game retail business to come up with. I can't imagine there are a lot of suitors. Sure, any of us can manage selling things online, but it doesn't mean that Mr Fanarow is in position in his life to do such a thing. Again, he is a seasoned auctioneer. I have a difficult time thinking he wouldn't understand the stakes.

While I think T&T could realize a pretty big profit on the items, I haven't seen any mention of overhead. That article says 75 employees, which I still have a difficult time believing any game shop employing that many people. At an average of $18k per employee equals $1,350,000 in expenses. Then you have facilities/utilities, travel expenses, loan maintenance, etc, etc..

I'd really like to see that operation. They have to be basically in a small manufacturing type building if they are managing $5,000,000 in sales a year.
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[Rifter]

T&T mostly deals in MTG and those types of games. They always have reps and a booth at the big MTG events all over the world. I'm unsure if those people are actually full time employees but I'm sure that they constitute a large # of those 75 people "working" for T&T.
Kentucky is also a pretty cheap place to be based...

[tfm]

I've never dealt with them before. I did sign up for a want-list item. If they can deliver, then I'll add them to my source list.
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[Rifter]

High prices but they are pretty accurate about the conditions of what you're getting.

[Ralf Toth]

Hey Curt

that is a great article! Thanks for sharing.

The size of the deal is amazing. I have only seen this with comics before. Was anyone aware of the seller as a collector before? I wasn't and if I wasn't the only, then that's what I really find interesting. This guy shows up practically from nowhere with a gigantic collection of games which he seems to have amassed single-handedly. And that guy is not even a millionaire. He seems to be the archetypical "silent collector". There must be many more of them out there.
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[Mars]

[harami]

[Ralf Toth]

Ah, that eBay handle explains a lot. So no one can do without eBay these days it seems. And just how many people can slip off David's radar?
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[beasterbrook]

His weekend warrior page has a list of everything sold 2007 gencon auction which is an interesting read...

http://www.weekendwarrior.com/pastcons/Indy2007Files/AuctionItems.xls

Brette:)

[cgould42]

ICV2’s article on the subject included a short list of some of the rarer games from the collection.

“One of the gems that Fonarow purchased was the collection of Avalon Hill founder Charles S. Roberts, which provided some of the rarest games in the purchase including a 1952 version of Tactics, considered the first military board game, which Roberts reportedly assembled in his garage (in 1958 Avalon Hill issued the popular Tactics II military board game based on the original Tactics). Huston told ICv2 that he knows of only four copies of Tactics in good condition anywhere in the world (and the copy he purchased is still in its original shipping container and in superb condition). According to Huston many of these early board games match the rarest of Golden Age comics in scarcity, though not in price.

Other rarities included in the deal:
• JZ, the only private label game ever produced by Avalon Hill—it was given away as a premium by WJZ Channel 13 in Baltimore, Maryland
• The legendary 1968 Trafalgar game, designed and self-published by Roger Cormier (only 450 were ever produced)
• Up Against the Wall, Mother****er (sorry but that's the name of it) a 1969 game from SPI pitting “radicals” against “the administration” in a replay of the Columbia University takeover. It was designed by Jim Dunnigan (who was a history student at Columbia and already a skilled designer of historical games) and originally printed in the Columbia University student newspaper, though SPI did produce a few copies of the game for those who requested it.
In addition to the aforementioned rarities Fonarow’s collection also includes 40-50 “Playtest” copies of games, some of which have hand drawn maps and notes from the game creators.”

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12568.html

Cheers,
Curt

[tfm]

I ordered this from Troll & Toad:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dungeon-Master-Kit-35-2-The-Dwarven-Glory-2nd-print_W0QQitemZ270254545101QQihZ017QQcategoryZ2545QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The price was near-enough reasonable. When I got it the map sheets were missing. I sent it back and got my refund. No problem. What concerns me is that it appears to be back again, this time as a complete item. They offered to send me copies of the map sheets when I pointed out the error. I told them no. Should I think about ordering from them in the future, I will certainly ask if everything is original to the item.
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[serleran]

I bought what was called a 2nd print alpha OAD&D DMG; when I got it, it was a 6th+ print, which is very, very common. I sent it back, and was refunded.

Two days later, I got an email from eBay, where I'd bought it, and paid via PayPal (whom eBay owns...) that I had not paid and would have a "strike" if I did not.

Yeah... I'll never buy another thing from T&T. It could be a 1st print woody for a 5 cents. I don't care. I won't touch them.

Sell something like a high-interest item and have the nerve to say "don't have the time to check it; we use stock photos of everything" just strikes me as wrong. Oh well.

Others love them. Good for those people. I was burned and I know better than putting my hand back in the fire.

[Guy Fullerton]

I've found them sort of hit-and-miss.

I got a very reasonable offer (via email) from them to buy out 60 lbs worth of various AD&D, 3e D&D, and other misc games, which I happily accepted.

But then I tried to do a followup sale to one of their reps at a local convention for mostly Car Wars stuff, and the offer was a horrible and obvious low ball. I certainly expect their offers to be less than (about half) what I could make off eBay, and that's okay. It saves me a lot of time. But their low ball offer was really bad (less than a very conservative estimate based off their buy list!), and their explanation for it was even worse. And they weren't even interested in negotiating. So I sold the stuff on eBay and made 7x what they offered.

Everything I've bought from them has been just fine. A bit expensive, but I wanted the stuff right away, so I was expecting to pay a bit of a premium, and that was okay by me.

[tfm]

I didn't think it was possible, but I actually got a great deal from Troll&Toad:

You ordered the following items, which we will pack and ship to you after receiving your payment.

1 High Passage #1 (Classic Traveller) ( Very Fine Condition Softcover ) @ $17.10 = $17.10
Product Sub Total : $17.10
Shipping : $4.32
Tax : $0.00
Grand Total : $21.42

I opened the package with my eyes closed expecting the worst, but there it was, the genuine article!
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