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ORIGINS 2005 The 2005 Origins game convention was held in Columbus, Ohio on June 30- July 3. For the first time in several years, the majority of my time was spent gaming. I, of course, spent time in the game auction (more on that below) and several hours in the dealer area buying products and talking to my suppliers. However, I was able to spend several hours each day playing in board games, especially demos, and miniatures events. The change was great and gave me some exposure to some of the new games being released. The dealer area had the usual suspects of boardgame companies. Most of them had their new products which included Men of Iron and Under the Lily Banners by GMT, War Against Terror Lightning War by Decision Games, the reprinted ASL rulebook by MMP, Mediterranean: Desert War by Clash of Arms and Alsace: 1945 by Avalanche Press. However, I thought the game that got the most buzz was the reprinted Conquest of the Empire by Eagle Games. The game will not be officially released until early August, I hope, but Eagle was able to get an initial shipment of 100 copies of the game for Origins. It looked to me that they were pretty close to selling out. The game has the original rules from the Milton Bradley version which have been cleaned up and a completely new set of rules. I played the game twice with the new rules and loved it. Like normal, I am here to talk about the game auction. This year GAMA tried something completely different. Rather than have a game auction throughout the convention, they announced that there would only be an auction on Saturday evening. The concept was that only collectible items would be entered into the voice auction and that the more common items would be sold in an auction store similar to the concept developed by Frank Mentzer and used at the Weekend Warrior auctions at GenCon. In order to encourage this, the entry fee for voice auction items was set at $5.00, whereas items entered into the store were charged a fee between $.50 and $3.00 depending upon the asking price of the item. However, GAMA did decide to not charge a commission fee, so the entry cost was the only cost for the seller. I'd have to do the math again, but I believe that I calculated that this was an advantage to the seller if the selling price of an item in the auction was more than $30. This sounds good, but the biggest problem was that there was next to no promotion of the auction on the Origins web page or elsewhere. There was no mention at all of the auction until about 30 days prior to the convention, at which time a posting was posted on the web page describing the new format. However, most people that I talked to didn't know that the auction was going to happen, and many attendees at the convention didn't even know that the event was being held. The result was that the number of items entered for sale, both in the voice auction and the store, could not have been even close to 1,000 items. I'm guessing about 200 in the auction and maybe 3-400 in the store. The auction store opened on Thursday and ran until Saturday afternoon. There were about 15 tables set up and the sale items were spread out on them for customer viewing. As new items were brought in, they would be laid out on the tables. Since there were so few items, it was relatively easy to do a quick pass through them to see anything new that had been added. I stopped by between games several times to check things out, and I think that I bought four items total. An interesting concept that they used was to allow the seller to establish different levels of pricing for different days. So an item might have been listed for $20 for Thursday and Friday. If it had not sold by Saturday morning, the price was lowered to $15 and then finally $10 for Saturday afternoon. This was set strictly by the seller, but was not a requirement. As a buyer, you had to make a decision to purchase an item at the higher price or take a chance that it would still be available at a lower price on Saturday. The voice auction was held at 8:00pm on Saturday evening. The procedure was similar to last year where one person described the game which was then passed over to the licensed auctioneer who sold the item. The auctioneer was the same as last year, and he did a reasonable job. He still had some annoying procedures, like starting high in the bidding and going down until someone bid, and looking for people to actually bid as opposed to just holding up their bidder cards. I met him last year and talked to him again before the auction this year, and he is a nice guy, but it's just not the same as having game experts doing the actual selling. I should mention that I thought that Rick Wagner (sp?) did a great job of describing the items before they went to the auctioneer. Rick is a veteran gamer and handles the game auction at a convention in California. As I mentioned above, there were about 200 items sold in the voice auction. The auction started at 8:00pm and ran for about 3 hours. I didn't count the number of people in the audience, but it was probably around 50 or so with about 10 people doing most of the buying. There were some decent items for sale, but there were also some more common items that should have probably been in the store. I felt sorry for the sellers who paid their $5 to put an item in the auction, and then have it sell for $10-15 or in some cases not sell at all because their minimum of $20 wasn't reached. As usual, I recorded most of the sales, especially for the wargames. Following are many of the items with the highest sellers listed first.
Over $100 Sellers Crystal Caste Megalodon Fossil Dice - $450 Acquire special tournament prize edition, everything wood, 5 in existence - $225 Campaign in North Africa by SPI, punched in big box - $200 Fire in the East, Scorched Earth & Urals by GDW, unpunched - $190 War in the Pacific by SPI, punched - $190 War in Europe by SPI, punched in flat trays - $150 Box of assorted ASL games including Beyond Valor, punched and mixed together - $140 Titan by AH, unpunched - $130 Civilization and Advanced Civilization by AH, both punched - $130 The Longest Day by AH, punched - $120 Highway to the Reich by SPI, 1st ed, punched in flat trays - $110 Dunkerque 1940 by SDC, unpunched - $100 U-Boat by AH, metal ships - $100 Heroquest by MB, parts mint - $100
Avalon Hill Circus Maximus, unpunched - $40 Circus Maximus, shrinkwrap - $40 Rail Baron, punched - $90 Conquistador, unpunched - $40 Starship Troopers, unpunched - $50! & $35 Civilization, punched - $45 Gettysburg with green back counters - $25 Squad Leader lot, punched - $35 Anzio, 1st ed., unpunched - $35 Struggle of Nations, unpunched - $20 France 1940, punched & unpunched counters - $20 Alexander, unpunched - $20 1914, punched & unpunched counters - $40 1776, punched & unpunched counters - $30 Kingmaker, punched & unpunched counters - $35 Arab-Israeli Wars, unpunched - $20
SPI Kursk, unpunched, box edition - $75 Mech War 2, punched in box - $50 Russian Civil War, punched - $50 Foxbat & Phantom, unpunched in box - $20 First World War, punched, no maps - $85 Wacht am Rhein, punched in flat trays - $80 John Carter, punched - $85 Star Force Trilogy, partially punched in flat tray - $45 Middle Earth, punched in flat tray - $35 After the Holocaust, punched - $50 Swords & Sorcery, punched - $25 Invasion America, punched in flat tray - $30 Next War, punched in box - $55 Nato Division Commander, punched in box - $80 Nato Division Commander, unpunched in box - $85 Empires of the Middle Ages, punched - $40 War in the Ice, punched - $30 Highway to the Reich, 2nd ed, punched in flat tray - $80 Strategy I, punched - $35
Other Publishers over $20 Axis & Allies by Nova, punched - $45 Skirmish by MB - $35 Samurai Swords by MB - $50 Serenissima by Eurogames - $40 Avalanche by GDW, punched - $50 Conquest of the Empire by MB - $50 Brandywine & Germantown by Clash of Arms - $40 Tractics by TSR, brown box - $80 Empire I by 3rd Millenium, unpunched - $25 Warlord Game by Robert Williams, punched - $55 The Great War by Rand - $30 Viva Espana by Battleline, unpunched - $50 5th Fleet by Victory, punched - $30 Imperium Romanum by West End, unpunched - $40 Elric by Chaosium, punched - $30 La Grande Armee by SPI/TSR, shrinkwrap - $30 Barbarossa by SPI/TSR, shrinkwrap - $35 Rebel Sabres by SPI/TSR, shrinkwrap - $40
I have documented many more of the sales, but these are the main ones. I would guess that about 10% of the items did not sell because they did not reach their reserve bid, usually of $20.
If you have any questions about the Origins auction, please feel free to contact me.
ORIGINS 2003 The Origins 2003 game convention was held in Columbus, Ohio
on June 26-29. For the first time
in quite awhile, it was not on the 4th of July weekend.
Announced attendance was over 12,000 which, I believe, set a new record,
and not being a holiday weekend probably helped.
It also seemed to me that more families were in attendance.
For instance, my wife attended for the first time ever, and she even did
a little bit of gaming. First of all, I’ll talk about the positive aspects of the convention. The dealer area is always the main plus for me. Most of the bigger gaming companies had their products represented, and they used the show to promote their new titles. GMT had a big booth manned by Andy Lewis and Tony Curtis, among others. They had the new games Sweden Fights On and Blue vs. Gray, along with their full line of products. Some of the games were being sold at slight discounts from the retail price. Also represented in the GMT booth was Art Lupinacci from L2 Design with their updated Streets of Stalingrad.
Decision Games was also represented.
Callie Cummins and Ty Bomba were in the booth whenever I stopped by.
Chris was probably around too, but I didn’t see him.
They had the latest S&T (#216 with Asia Crossroads), Rebels and
Redcoats 3 and The Italian Front from the SPW World War I series.
In addition to an assortment of games from Decision and their Excalibur
Games line, they also were showing the Rio Grande Games products which took up
about one third of their table space. Other games publishers present included Clash of Arms,
Avalanche Press, Critical Hit, Omega Games, Sunset Games, Eagle Games and Euro
Games. All of them having a nice
selection of their products and their latest releases.
The biggest company conspicuous by their absence was Multi-Man
Publishing. So neither the ASL line
nor The Gamers line was represented in the dealer area, which was a
disappointment. There were several companies who had brought a good
selection of used and out of print games. The
main companies present being the old standby Crazy Egor and Noble Knight Games
from Janesville, Wisconsin. Both of
them had large well-stocked booths. Titan Games also had a good number of games available.
Unfortunately, their truck caught on fire in the parking lot on the first
day. No one was hurt, and their
inventory had already been unloaded, but the truck was totaled.
However, as a result, they had no way to get their games back to
Michigan. So they ran a 50% off
sale on everything in their booth. What
little was remaining Sunday afternoon was bought in a lot by another dealer. Another high point of the convention was the new War Room.
It allowed you, for one flat fee, to play in any of the war games that
were held in this room. These could
be scheduled games, if there were still openings, as well as impromptu pick-up
games. Several of the game
publishers sponsored games in the War Room, including some not yet released
titles. It took me quite awhile to find the room when I got to the
convention on Thursday. I asked
numerous staff and volunteers where the War Room was, but got several blank
stares, since they obviously didn’t know what I was talking about.
Finally, on about the 10th try, someone directed me to the far
north end of the convention center, well away from all other events. Whenever I had some free time, I wandered around the room
observing the games being played. I
even managed to play one game myself. Friday
morning I sat down to play Avalon Hill’s Caesar at Alesia, which I had not
played in over 10 years. Unfortunately,
after playing for about 6 hours and not even being done with the first day, I
had to quit in order to get to another commitment.
My Romans had been doing pretty well, but the Gauls were making a major
assault on my hard pressed legions and Vercingetorix was attempting a breakout.
Caesar was personally leading a reserve of several cohorts to try to stem
the tide. I think that he might
have succeeded in surrounding Vercingetorix, but it definitely would have been a
close thing. The War Room was a great idea, which seems likely to be
repeated next year. As most of you are aware, my primary activity at Origins is
the games auction. In the past, I
have spent 90% of my time at the convention either working in the auction as a
volunteer or sitting in the audience buying games. I’m not going to go through the whole history of what
happened to the auction this year, but at the last minute, when it looked like
the auction might not even happen, Marcus King and Titan Games volunteered to
run the event. Given the
circumstances, they did the best that they could.
They were handicapped by not having the computer systems or the
experienced staff that are possessed by The Weekend Warrior at their auctions. Also, they were apparently forced to hire a professional
auctioneer, who of course did not have the gaming knowledge that we have come to
expect at Origins and GenCon. Due to the threat of cancellation of the auction, and
probably many sellers’ fears as to how the auction would go, there was only a
fraction of the normal amount of games entered for sale.
I would say that at a normal auction, the items could have been sold in
about a half of a day. It was stretched out to a day and a half.
There were several nice items for sale, but not nearly what we have come
to expect. Normally, the Origins
game auction is one of my primary sources of new games for our inventory.
This year, I think that my purchases were limited to about 40 items, and
most of these were common games. Below you will find the sale prices of several items.
Most of these were sold during the collectors’ section, which was held
early Friday evening. Avalon HillC&O/B&O - $60 Verdict - $27.50 Mangagement - $20 Nieuchess - $22.50 Gunslinger - $40 Civil War - $25 U-Boat (metal) - $55 1914 - $30 Dispatcher (poor condition) - $30 SPILost Battles (flat tray, unpunched) - $65 Napoleon at War Quad (flat tray, shrinkwrap) - $45 Battle of Moscow (flat tray, unpunched) - $45 1812 (flat tray, unpunched) - $75 Bloody April (Zocchi version) - $80 Grande Armee (flat tray, unpunched) - $30 Normandy (colored box, unpunched) - $30 After the Holcaust (unpunched) - $50 Agincourt (punched) - $30 Star Force Alpha-Centauri (Designer’s Edition, unpunched) - $30 Lee Moves North (flat tray, unpunched) - $35 Diplomacy (Waddington version, shrinkwrap) - $60 Battle of the Factories (Nova) - $40 Fire on the Volga (Nova) - $65 Fortress America (Milton Bradley) - $45 & $50 Conquest of the Empire (Milton Bradley) - $80 PT109 (Milton Bradley) - $55 Talisman (Games Workshop, 2nd edition) - $60 Space Crusader (Games Workshop) - $40 Sinking of the Titanic (Ideal) - $35 Kingmaker (Ariel, unpunched) - $35 Red Star/White Eagle (GDW) - $60 Robo Rally and Crash & Burn (shrinkwrap) - $70 Advanced Heroquest & Terror of the Dark (Games Workshop) - $65 Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (Games Workshop, mint
condition) - $50 Normally, we have the Crème de la Crème at the end of the
collectors’ auction. We didn’t
have that this year, so instead I’ll now list the five highest selling items
in the collectors’ auction (if I took the correct notes). The Top 5Dinosaur Fossil Dice Set from Crystal Caste - $475 Campaign for North Africa (Zocchi version) - $165 Dark Tower (Milton Bradley) - $155 The Conquerors (SPI, shrinkwrapped flat tray) - $100 1812 (SPI, shrinkwrapped flat tray) - $90 As you can see, the selection is somewhat limited, and I
had to go down pretty far in price to come up with the top five items.
The one advantage to the limited auction this year is that it gave me
some time to actually do some gaming for a change. From what I have heard so far, space will not be a problem
at next year’s Origins. As a
result, there is a good chance that the auction will get it’s own room.
I have also heard that there will be some special items auctioned off by
celebrities. Should be interesting.
It would be great to get The Weekend Warrior running the auction again
next year, but I doubt that will happen. Overall, we had a great time at Origins and look forward to Origins 2004 again in Columbus.
ORIGINS 2002 The Origins game convention was once again held in Columbus, Ohio this year at the Columbus convention center during the weekend of July 4-7. This year, and for several years to come, the convention was run by GAMA instead of Wizards of the Coast. In general, I think that things went smoother this year than in years past, but there were a few problem areas that came up, which I am sure will be rectified as GAMA continues to run the event. I am not going to go into a description of my activities at Origins. If you read the report for last year, it is pretty much the same thing. I spent all of my time in the auction room (either working or bidding on games) and in the dealer area meeting with some of my suppliers. I did no gaming at all this year (not even the traditional Acquire game), but that is strictly my fault because there was plenty of opportunity to game in either scheduled events or in open gaming. Mainly, I want to report on the Origins Game Auction. There were about 3,000 items entered this year, which seemed a little less than last year, especially in the wargames area. Wargames was still the highest volume area, but the quality was probably a little under that of last year. Also, there seemed to be much more family type games this year. Role Playing, card games and miniatures were significantly less than the two categories above. In general, I felt that the prices bid were similar to those of last year. The only area that I would notice a significant difference was for magazine games. S&T's were definitely higher than in the past. For instance, I purchased several S&T's in the ancient series (Roman Civil War, Trajan, etc.) last year, all unpunched for less than $10 each. This year those same issues were selling for around $20. Also, Command magazines with unpunched games seemed to have gone up in value, probably because of XTR going our to business. There are other titles that have gone up or down in value (the latter being the case for Divine Right, probably because of the reprinted edition), but, in general, prices seemed in line with last year.
I took extensive notes at the auction of game sale prices, especially in the SPI section and the collectibles section on Friday evening. Below, I have listed most of the games that sold in these segments of the auction. I might have missed a few if my mind was wandering, but the majority of those items are listed here.
SPI GamesAtlantic Wall (punched) - $135(1 game in 2 boxes), and $91 Great War in the East (punched) - $60 and $63 Year of the Rat (flat tray, unpunched) - $28 Terrible Swift Sword (2 flat trays, unpunched) - $56 Musket & Pike (punched) - $24 Descent on Crete (punched) - $40 Battle of Stalingrad (bookcase box, unpunched) - $42 Wellington’s Victory (2 flat trays, punched) - $24 War in the East (1st edition, punched) - $40 Invasion America (flat tray, punched) - $30 Highway to the Reich (flat tray, punched) - $88 Crimean War Quad (flat tray, punched) - $32 Russian Civil War (box, punched) - $50 Agincourt (box, unpunched) - $40 The Next War (big box, some counter fallout) - $52 Nato Division Commander (big box, punched) - $45 After the Holocaust (box, punched) – $40 Kursk (box, Goldburg edition, unpunched) - $73 Great Medieval Battles Quad (box, punched) - $50 The Conquerors (flat tray, punched) - $72 Operation Typhoon (box, punched) - $50 Gondor (folio, punched) - $38 Sauron (folio, punched) - $54 Empires of the Middle Ages (box, unpunched) - $82 War
in Europe (big box, unpunched) - $170
Dan Barnett during the collectibles segment of the auction, with the EverReady Bunny behind him. Collectibles
Avalon Hill Games
Blood Royale (Games Workshop, punched) - $50 Conquest of the Empire (MB) – 4 copies from $63 to $105 Kingmaker (Ariel, punched) - $50 and $85 Kingmaker (Ariel, unpunched) - $105 Campaign of Atlanta (Guidon, punched) - $20 Bloody 110 (The Gamers, unpunched) - $80 Kings & Things (Games Workshop, punched) - $75 Dark Tower (MB, working tower) - $94 Operation Crusader (GDW, unpunched) - $72 La Bataille de Moscowa (Martial Enterprises, punched) - $54 War of Wizards (TSR) - $22 Metamorphisis Alpha (TSR, 1st edition) - $26 Alien Space (Lou Zocchi) - $24 Cromwell (SDC, unpunched) - $34 Siege (Jorgensen, FFG) - $34 Gamma World (TSR) - $38 Raiders & Traders (Chaosium, unpunched) - $45 Alexander (Guidon, box missing cover sheet, punched) - $42 Battle of the Factories & Fire on the Volga (sold together, Nova, punched) - $100 Malaya & Burma (Hobby Japan, punched) - $44 Pacific Fleet (Hobby Japan, unpunched) - $70 Russian Campaign (Jedko, shrinkwrap) - $42 Royal Navy (Quarterdeck, part punched) - $34 B-17 Queen of the Skies (On Target, punched) - $30 Decline & Fall (Donnelly, punched) - $46 Normandy with Upgrade Kit (Poultron Press, counters cut & mounted) - $135 Conflict (Parker Brothers, 1940 edition) - $90 Little Big Horn (TSR, punched) - $45 Kaiserschlacht (unpunched) - $40 Mage Knight (special signed set) - $350 Talisman (3rd edition with expansions) - $350 Command Magazine (Issues 1-41 plus 6 additional issues, all with games, unpunched) - $470
Crème
de la Crème
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Callie
Cummins working at the Decision Games booth.
Ty Bomba in
the Decision Games booth.
A few
of the wargames stacks.
Frank & Dan about to begin the auction.
Cry, Acquire, Stratego Legends and the soon to be released Cosmic
Encounter. There is a photo of this to the right. Sorry that it is
not a little clearer. The game looks interesting and should be officially
released by October. They also were promoting their new
Star Wars game, but they only had a box lid to show. Supposedly, they will
have demonstrations at GenCon. They were again doing surveys to get an
idea on people's interests and gaming habits. If there are any plans to
rerelease any of the Avalon Hill wargame titles, there was no mention of it.
The Gamers released a couple of new games, Sicily: Triumph & Folly and This
Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga. Demonstration games were held
on these, as well as the Roman chariot race game Circus Minimus. They
seemed to be doing quite well on sales, especially of the recent games such as
Aspern-Essling and Drive on Paris. With the lighting, I had a terrible
time trying to get a good picture of their booth.