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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jools" data-source="post: 5119204" data-attributes="member: 79607">Compared to the secondary market these beholders are really rather cheap, and lets face it, unless they are awful they are bound to go up in value (at least in the short term). What's really interesting about this release is what it tells us about WOTC's plans for DnD minis. The normal model for randomly distributed figures is that the premiums (beholders, mind flayers, dragons etc) are deliberately supplied in numbers much lower than their demand, keeping them rare and upping their secondary market value considerably. What this does for WOTC is up sales of boosters as people try to get these premiums, buying a whole heap of figures that they would't ordinarily have purchased. THIS is the true value of a beholder to WOTC.Now what's really odd is the fact that they are now just giving them away in one easy to get hold of package for a (comparatively speaking) very reasonable price. Its interesting to speculate about the reasons for this deviation from normal business practice. The obvious gut reaction is that this is possibly the end of DnD minis. If I were winding down the line the one thing I would suggest would be to cash in on the (deliberately and artificially created) demand for premium figures by releasing some box sets that give them exactly what they want. Sure, it would harm sales of future boosters (people aren't gonna burn through those boosters to get figure X if they can just get it in a non-random box set) but if things are coming to an end anyway, this doesn't really matter. Just cash in before the whole line is canned.To my mind, that is the most obvious scenario - but there are others of course. Perhaps (as some speculate), the line is in difficulty, and Wizards are uncertain whether it has a future or not. Perhaps they hope that sets like this could re-ignite a demand in DnD minis, coupled with a (hopefully) improved economy in the near future, regular service could be resumed. Its hard to say really, I'd certainly be interested to hear what you guys think.</blockquote>

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