(TFT) Re: TFT: Pricing

["Brett Slocum" <slocum@skypoint.com>]

From: "Dave Seagraves" <dseagraves@austin.rr.com>
>    Long ago I read a book about the auto sales business written by a
>    former
> used car salesman.  He proposed a scenario to illustrate this point: Buy a
> brand new car at retail price, then come back an hour later and try to
> sell it right back to them at the same price!  They'll laugh at you and
> only offer you the /wholesale/ value of the vehicle, and this is true at
> any other car lot as well.
>    Another example: Take ten random paperback books in mint condition and
> add up their cover prices.  Then take them to Half-Price Books and try to
> sell them.  Certainly you'll get less than half of the total cover price
> for them.
>    (By the way, I arrived at wholesale prices being a quarter of retail
>    from
> Diablo the computer game.  Griswold the Blacksmith will sell you a sword
> for 10,000 gold, then buy it right back from you for only 2500.  I thought
> that sounded about right so I adopted it for my campaign.)

Your last two examples are for *used* items (regardless of condition, Half-
Price Books considers all books coming in to be used). Under those 
circumstances, I think that 1/4 of new retail value is a reasonable number. In 
the used car example, I think you'll find that the wholesale value of the car is 
considerably higher than 25% of Blue Book. More like half to 60%. This is 
because the 'retail' price of a used car already entails 'used'. 

My rule of thumb is retail for used durable items is 50% of new retail, and 
that wholesale is 50% of retail, new or used.

If you jigger these values with Merchant, you can get a little more, but not a 
lot -- maybe 15% extra.

You might also put a random Demand factor in. If demand is very high, then 
retail will also be higher.


---
Brett Slocum  --  slocum@skypoint.com  --  ICQ #13032903
Home page: http://www.skypoint.com/~slocum/
"Ah'm yer pa, Luke." -- if James Earl Ray was the voice of Darth Vader
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