Lorwyn Eclipsed looks fun, but...
A few days ago I got a set of Tarkir and Bloomburrow commander precons in. I broke them all down and listed the singles this weekend so I had over 60 orders to pull and fill today. Took 3 hours to sort and pack them. That's only about $200 worth of sales, minus shipping, minus fees. Womp womp. You can see why I'm winding down the card shop aspect of the store for now.
But this morning they showed the preview bit for Lorwyn Eclipsed which comes out in a few weeks. I think I have a collector and a draft night kit coming for it. I did not buy a case of play this time. It looks alright. Nothing crazy. Shock lands will do well. The fancy paper cutout treatments might do alright as well.
I take it the main characters of Magic will show up in the Strixhaven and Reality Fracture sets later. Was really hoping for you know, a Jace or Liliana or something. Doesn't matter, the majority of people don't have extra spending money for this kinda of stuff anymore. Nearly every restaurant and retail store around here is hurting for sales while having to increase their prices at the same time.
That's the issue. People who want to support local businesses but thanks to inflation and tariffs on supplies and ingredients can't afford to do so often enough to keep the business going. You'll see comments like "$20 for ___ is big city prices!" not knowing that it's an extra ten dollars more expensive in the "big city". I keep up with independent restaurants and such from Austin and they will post prices once in a while, and like, yeah a burger is going to be expensive when the meat and veggies are more expensive.
But locals publicly telling you that the service or product you offer isn't worth the cost of supplies for you to do/make it is a massive red flag. I don't see this year getting better with prices and such for stores. Walmart and Amazon can sell you the same item at the same price but they get crazy bulk prices a local shop can only dream about. Then the shops get yelled at for not having Walmart and Amazon prices. "It's not worth that much because Amazon says so!"
So if I'm out here buying cards as cheap as I can, as close to distro as I can and just breaking even then I have to back off. People don't have money right now and they won't suddenly have more money later. Some cards are cheap, yes, but if you really have no money you aren't playing card games you are playing free-to-play mobile or desktop stuff. (I can't get distro without a physical shop and I can't afford a physical shop unless I can make profit online first.)
The goal is/was to make Hardcopy Collectibles a physical comic book and game store. But, watching how things are going, games are all moving to digital. Music and movies are already digital, opening a used cd/dvd store would be like taking out a loan at the bank then dumping the money into a fire. It was a cute idea but every year that goes by I feel like I'm dodging a bullet by keeping things small and online.
Oh well.