Hey folks,
Trying to keep things (me) from drifting off into the timeless aether. I can’t tell you how much I miss seeing people in person.
First off…as a fellow owner of a game store, I need to say something about Gamestop’s decision to stay open with the argument that we were “essential” businesses. NO!…No, no, no, no, stop complaining you utter irresponsible whiners, NO! Ok, look, I understand the panic of wondering if your business can survive this kind of thing. I get those feelings too. But if someone came up to me today and said that my folks were sick and the only way to keep them alive was to close the store for a month or two, I wouldn’t even think about it. So if we need to get bored out of our skin in order to keep this from spreading to even one unnecessary grandma or grandpa, then we’re doing it, even if it puts the business at risk.
Having said that, we are gonna try and do some things to both help folks from getting too stir crazy and to see if we can find some rent money under the cushions. We are doing “knock up” business…basically knock on the door if the light are on or call before you come and we can come out to the curb. Since we can’t have people do browsing, what we can do is bring stuff to the door. So that means Specific games if we have them in stock or the next batch of our mystery loot bags. The bags are $60-tax included, and have between $80-120 retail worth of games.
Just to be very clear about the nature of these bags. They are currently the vast majority of our business, and even that like a 10th of our normal business. We really appreciate the concern for our survival and will need the help, IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT. For those customers who are struggling too, reach out to us. The other purpose of the loot bags are to give us a chance to keep from going stir crazy without the mental bad side effects that can creep in with too much screen/phone time. If you are in $$ trouble too, reach out to me. I’m going to put together some bags for our customers who are hurting too, and for those, pay what you can, and if that is nothing, talk to me. Normally we’d all be helping each other out, but in this instance, I’m the one with unopened, uncontaminated stuff. The one cavet in that if you can’t afford $$, just pay it back in kindness. And this isn’t true for most of my customers but I gotta say this anyway, I’ll only have a limited number of the kindness bags, so make sure they are there for folks who need ’em. We need to count on each other right now, so small does of do the right thing go a long way.
I’m also working on variations to the loot bags. These will include:
- Magic Loot bags for sealed fun.-
- Silver Chaos Loot Bags: $50 (12 random packs—good for 2 person 6 pack sealed, or 3 people 4 pack mini sealed.) Plus mystery bonus $50-80 value
- Gold Chaos Loot bag: $100 (A pair of random prerelease kits and a mystery bundle. Plus a mystery extra magic goody.) $120-160 in value.
- Platinum Chaos Loot bag: $200 ( A booster box, fat pack, two prerelease kits, and an extra surprise worth at least $50)$230-270 in value.
- Diamond Chaos Loot bag: $500 ( A booster box, one of the Analogy sets, Archenemy, 4 prerelease kits, 4 brawl decks and a Conspiracy booster box, and whatever else I decide to toss in.) $550-800 value
And for D&D folks, we got all the basic books back in stock, have the new book in now. and are putting together a set of painting loot bags. These will be $60 and include mini figs to practice on and dedicated D&D paint sets.
Give us a call before you come over to see if we (I’m) around. I’ll be in during the day on Saturday and Sunday with the exception of when I go take the pooch to the dog park. Other then that, I’ll be in the store a lot doing various long ignored jobs. It feels super weird to not be having regular store hours…I worked very hard to take those hours as a promise from me to you guys, but we live in strange times at the moments.
BTW…here is a story that I wrote about that first shelter in place week.