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However, I believe Vampire will be MORE than the KS price for late-comers...

 Zweischneid wrote:

czakk wrote:


Reaper used the kickstarter to offer its customers a prepayment facility which is a type of investment used frequently to expand factories or mines. Google it and you will see lots of gold mines doing the same thing with hedge funds investing. Essentially you loan the company money and get repaid in product at a better price than market when the loan is due. Not all investments give you equity in a business.

Gold is not a consumer good. It is widely used throughout the world as a monetary exchange and is effectively a form of capital returns. There is a reason currencies have historically often been backed by gold reserves or pegged to a gold standard. In these cases (not frequently used anymore), the actual paper-bill one commonly describes as "money" was worth it because it was guaranteed in gold reserves. Gold is still traded and used as a hedge against currency inflation.

Plastic miniatures, on the other hand, are a classic consumer good. Hence, giving away your money for miniatures is the exact opposite of investment. The former is "consumption", the latter (investment) is "deferred consumption" on the prospect of getting "investment returns" that will increase your future ability to "consume".

If anything, Kickstarters should probably be seen as "negative" or "inverse" investment, since you are "paying" now but only receive your product down the line (say, in half a year). So the "value" you get for the money you spend today on consumer products (e.g. miniatures) that you don't get today is actually smaller by the amount of interest you could have earned by putting the money into an interest-earning account until the product was actually available for purchase right away.

If investments increase your future ability to "consume" (through capital returns), Kickstarters actually decrease your future ability to "consume" by the opportunity costs of forgone interest during the time you wait for your product.

Prepayment facilities are used for all sorts of commodities, it can be any sort of widget, shoe, bacon, etc... I only suggested gold because mining companies have a tenancy to crow about every deal they do (combination of marketing and much stricter disclosure rules) so they actually show up in a google search whereas everyone else in the world keeps their business dealings more private. Plastic minis are a commodity, there will be a retail market for them, and everyone pledging vampire and getting options is getting them at a price well below market price which allows a sale for a profit. If you don't believe me, wait until march and watch ebay.

As for a negative investment, just do some of that net present value / discounting economics hoodoo and you'll see that even though your dollars are tied up, they are still getting you a better 'deal' than investing them for a few months and then buying at full retail would get you.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Kickstarters actually decrease your future ability to "consume" by the opportunity costs of forgone interest during the time you wait for your product.

I don't really look as a reduction in my ability to consume. I saw it as a preorder, from a company with the experience and klout to deliver 100% of what they promised at a 75% discount. Speculating on the actually % here but Vampire investors with no other options paid .42 cent cost per model for the $100 they spent, because the normal cost of a bones mini is $2-3 I went low, hence 75% discount I arrived at. So with the extra $300 I saved on this buy I had no reservation taking a friend out to dinner, buying another Hot Toy, etc etc. The $100 I spent this month doesn't affect my entertainment budget at all in months September thru March when I get my big box of miniatures that I may or may not do anything at all with...because I kind of bought this on a whim.

I'm perfectly in line with the reason they wanted the money in the first place. I see reaper as established, but not living high on the hog. A friend and I were discussing this whole thing last night and he brought up that Reaper had been hurting over the last 3 years because WotC's line of prepainted minis to go with their D&D system had panned out very well and took some of Reaper's pie. To what extent? Speculation, but I didn't really have any problem at all dropping dime on Vampire + Options to help Reaper out. I figure they owe about 19000 backers stuff at one level or another, but after that they have moulds for years to come to provide cheap minis to gamers for the next twenty years. That's why I voted with my dolllars for Reaper. And they really hooked me up for my investment with them.

 Zweischneid wrote:


If anything, Kickstarters should probably be seen as "negative" or "inverse" investment, since you are "paying" now but only receive your product down the line (say, in half a year). So the "value" you get for the money you spend today on consumer products (e.g. miniatures) that you don't get today is actually smaller by the amount of interest you could have earned by putting the money into an interest-earning account until the product was actually available for purchase right away.

If investments increase your future ability to "consume" (through capital returns), Kickstarters actually decrease your future ability to "consume" by the opportunity costs of forgone interest during the time you wait for your product.

Not quite. I won't defend kickstarter as a true "investment" as you don't get stock. But this statement...

"So the "value" you get for the money you spend today on consumer products (e.g. miniatures) that you don't get today is actually smaller by the amount of interest you could have earned by putting the money into an interest-earning account until the product was actually available for purchase right away."

Is just not a good reason for not investing in kickstarter.

The reaper kickstarter is offering product at around half-off in exchange for a 6 month wait. I don't know of many reliable investments that will double your money in 6 months. Thus, if you chose to invest your money, you would actually need an annual interest rate of 200% in order to earn enough interest to buy the product at the retail release price! The value lost over 6 months is negligible compared to the value gained by purchasing at a lower cost.

In the case of smaller kickstarters with less generous product discounts, you may be closer to the truth, but even then, consider a company like fanticide which is giving folks about a 20% discount (when free shipping is consdered) on their product in exchange for waiting one month. You're not going to find an interest rate that's going to give you 20% a month.

Compounding all this is the fact that many of these kickstarter projects wouldn't be available without the kickstarter, so not only do you get a product at below retail, you enable the purchase of a product that you might not otherwise be able to purchase at all.

Not trying to dissuade anyone from going Reaper.

It is without a doubt a might fine deal.

Going into Bones (and many other Kickstarters) can net you some very real savings.

If you consider that particular chunk of your disposable income "already spend" anyhow (dont think there is an economic term for that), than it's an attractive offer.

Hell, even if you own a store or small eBay business, and use it to "purchase stock" at this incredible discount.. go do it.

If you just like the company and want to fund a worthy cause (Romney & Reaper 2012!!! hurray!!), knock yourself out.

I got myself a Vampire Pledge too.


But it is not an investment. Really, it isn't.

One of the kickstarters I did made a comment that the amount of money they were receiving required some legal advice on how to claim it. He said that depending on what lawyer he talked to the money was considered an investment or a retail purchase. My guess is the IRS is going to sniffing all around kickstarter looking for ways to take a chunk of the money.

 Zweischneid wrote:
But it is not an investment. Really, it isn't.

Sure it is. It's like a savings bond for gamers. It returns 400% of your investment in seven months.

That's kind of true. It doesn't return 400% of your investment, but it does return minis worth that retail for that amount.

The legal definition of a security (an investment) is extraordinarily broad and inclusive because the courts have attempted to use securities legislation to protect regular folks from scams and swindles. Hawaii market center and Howey are the the places you would start looking for a definition but it's pretty much any money spent / pooled at a risk with the expectation of a benefit and no direct
control over the operations of the business.

Coupled with timing rules and American tax anti avoidance rules (economic substance over legal form), a lot of kickstarters could easily fall foul of a revenue agent in a bad mood or securities regulator with a hate on for hipsters. The Aussies are already looking into regulating crowd funding.

Not really relevant to reaper though...

 Zweischneid wrote:

Hell, even if you own a store or small eBay business, and use it to "purchase stock" at this incredible discount.. go do it.

...

But it is not an investment. Really, it isn't.

If a store purchases stock, then it definitely is an investment. Pretty much the original definition of one, actually.

All the others, I agree.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Hell, even if you own a store or small eBay business, and use it to "purchase stock" at this incredible discount.. go do it.

...

But it is not an investment. Really, it isn't.

If a store purchases stock, then it definitely is an investment. Pretty much the original definition of one, actually.

All the others, I agree.

I concur, for all that's worth

Hmm interesting point from frozenwastes.

I'll grant that even at a great discount, buying for personal use is, as Zweischneid wrote, not an investment.

However...

If you are getting the reaper kickstarter for the purposes of reselling you can be pretty sure that with a retail roughly 200% of your initial outlay, you can undercut that and sell on the second hand market for 150% of your outlay, there by making a 50% profit.

If that is true and you are purchasing for reselling, does not that qualify as an investment?

Yes it would. The same as any other merchant throughout history that buys at one price and sells at another.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Yes it would. The same as any other merchant throughout history that buys at one price and sells at another.

To support the notion of an investment, consider how similar the pledge in a kickstarter is to a bond issue. A bond is, in broadest terms, and IOU with interest, but if a bond issue fails, that is, in this case, insufficient funds are generated, all bonds are negated because the purpose of the bond issue fails.

Consider a sale of municipal bonds where, if there is sufficient interest in supporting the venture, a greater return will be guaranteed. This doesn't generally happen, of course, with municipal bonds, because they only sell a fixed amount.

Here, we're buying something akin (note, a pledge in a kickstarter is not technically a bond) to a bond; we pay X amount now, with the promise that we will receive a greater value later, the current funds being used for a particular purpose.

Reaper has essentially held a bond issue: to what purpose? Fund the transition from metal to plastic of miniature production.

For money invested, there is a guaranteed return, guaranteed on the faith of the company, like any other private bond. The investors don't receive cash, but merchandise equivalent value. Investors receive payout on a timetable (albeit a loose one), with very definite amounts. While most municipal/corporate bonds are not structured in this way, there is no particular legal barrier to it as a form of contract.

Heh, as investments go, I would say Reaper is probably more likely to deliver on this bond then, say, Greece.

But to be honest, this entire discussion is entirely academic and largely semantic. If someone considers it an investment, it has many similar features. If you want to consider it a pre-order, more power to you.

While it is a largely academic issue, you convinced me. I could definitely see thinking about it as a bond/debenture for goods rather than money.

Not to interrupt the Econ 101 debate but I thought people might find this website interesting.


http://greg.botch.com/bones/table.html


It lists, in spreadsheet format, all of the miniatures available through the kickstarter, along with information like the sculptor, the price in metal (if it's already available), and some better pictures.

It was a useful tool when I was trying to explain to my wife why I spent $180 on miniatures when I don't even play fantasy.

 Unix wrote:

Not to interrupt the Econ 101 debate but I thought people might find this website interesting.


http://greg.botch.com/bones/table.html


It lists, in spreadsheet format, all of the miniatures available through the kickstarter, along with information like the sculptor, the price in metal (if it's already available), and some better pictures.

It was a useful tool when I was trying to explain to my wife why I spent $180 on miniatures when I don't even play fantasy.

That is a nice, on topic link - thanks!

We need more on topic stuff here in this thread...

I know the bones models will cost less then the metal models but has there been any other kickstarter that give this much of a great value for the pledge level? Even if the bones models cost 50% of what the medal model costs thats still $500+ worth of models for $100. Wanted to use the phrase return on investment but figured with all the econ / investment / capital discuss that would be a poor choice of words

Just in case any of you were doing Bones exchanges with folks who are not local, here's the Vampire deal pic divided into 5 PDF pages, divided and numbered. Makes it easier to do a figure draw by chat. We did this last night and it took about 2 hours.

 ironicsilence wrote:
Even if the bones models cost 50% of what the medal model costs thats still $500+ worth of models for $100. Wanted to use the phrase return on investment but figured with all the econ / investment / capital discuss that would be a poor choice of words

I'm not going to address the econ thing anymore, but I would address the value statement. It's worth noting that bones typically cost 1/3-1/5 the cost of comparable metal models with individual foot models costing 1.50 to 2 bucks each, smaller figs (alot of these in this draw) go for around 60 cents each, and larger for more. If you were comparing what the bones on offer would go for retail then it's probably more accurate to say you're getting about $350-$400 worth of models for $100.

Still a great deal though.

After checking the list, I find that I am a huge Sandra Garrity fan, especially when she sculpts giant monsters!

 Alpharius wrote:
After checking the list, I find that I am a huge Sandra Garrity fan, especially when she sculpts giant monsters!

When you have an hour or so to do nothing productive, you should have a look through their catalog:

http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/garrity/release

Sandra has been a favorite sculptor of mine for years, and although she may not do quite as dynamic of figures as often as some sculptors - her style is more along the lines of what you would see from the various Fantasy artists from the 1980s and 1990s (Elmore, Caldwell, Parkinson, Easley...).

 Alpharius wrote:
After checking the list, I find that I am a huge Sandra Garrity fan, especially when she sculpts giant monsters!

I concur. I especially like her hydra. I also found that I like most of Werner Klocke and Julie Guthrie's sculpts.

The one thing I wish that was included in the list was the year the metal equivalent was released. It's funny because as I'm looking through everything there's a number of sculpts that strike me as a little outdated, but it occurs to me that they may well have been sculpted a decade ago. For example, the skeletal spearmen and necropolis zombie which were both originally released in 2007. Maybe not a decade, but their age is showing.

I've only skimmed the "Econ" posts, but has anyone brought up that if even a quarter of the folks who pledged vampire put some of their models up for sale the month after getting them, then in March/April there will be a flood of 4000ish lots of Bones. Supply and demand will kick in and prices won't be that great for sellers.

Interesting. You can become an after the fact backer for a bit more money.

From the comments on the KS page:

Creator Bryan Stiltz about 1 hour ago

As far as people who didn't back (ie, someone who was not one of the 17,744 backers) they WILL be able to add new accounts at the pledge manager, but at a higher price than a backer paid - for example, a Vampire to them will be $150, and Options will be 20% Higher (Nethyrmaul will be $30, for example).

Tim

 Unix wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
After checking the list, I find that I am a huge Sandra Garrity fan, especially when she sculpts giant monsters!

I concur. I especially like her hydra. I also found that I like most of Werner Klocke and Julie Guthrie's sculpts.

The one thing I wish that was included in the list was the year the metal equivalent was released. It's funny because as I'm looking through everything there's a number of sculpts that strike me as a little outdated, but it occurs to me that they may well have been sculpted a decade ago. For example, the skeletal spearmen and necropolis zombie which were both originally released in 2007. Maybe not a decade, but their age is showing.

Make sure you get to the original release for the sculpture and not the release for that material or packaging of the sculpture.

The skeletons are over a decade old - and sculpted by their accountant/owner (not that that makes it any more or less...just saying Ed isn't one of their front line sculptors). You can see them on page 28 of their 2000 Holiday Catalog:

https://www.reapermini.com/pdf/CW/Reaper_2000_Holiday%20Catalog.pdf

I can't remember if the zombies are new new or new old off the top of my head though. There are a lot to keep track of. Some of it goes to the age, others are the preference of their customers. A lot of figure painters tend to prefer the portrait poses over something which is more active.

@bbb Eh thems the breaks. I expect that to happen with all of the kickstarters that are physical game centeric and it's something I hope the businesses take into account. The key thing to remember with bones though is the cost is so low to the Vampire level that even if they sold those models at 50 cents per they are still making a profit.

If someone walked up to you with a model that you tough looked cool and said you could have it for 50 cents, would you buy it? (assuming you actually had change on you lol)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

timd wrote:


As far as people who didn't back (ie, someone who was not one of the 17,744 backers) they WILL be able to add new accounts at the pledge manager, but at a higher price than a backer paid - for example, a Vampire to them will be $150, and Options will be 20% Higher (Nethyrmaul will be $30, for example).

Tim

Not gonna lie, this bugs me.

timd wrote:

Interesting. You can become an after the fact backer for a bit more money.

From the comments on the KS page:

Creator Bryan Stiltz about 1 hour ago

As far as people who didn't back (ie, someone who was not one of the 17,744 backers) they WILL be able to add new accounts at the pledge manager, but at a higher price than a backer paid - for example, a Vampire to them will be $150, and Options will be 20% Higher (Nethyrmaul will be $30, for example).

Tim

yeah and I believe that would be money that goes directly to reaper as kickstarter wouldnt get to take a cut....I doubt they will ever release the number but I'd like to know what the real dollar amount will be once everything is all said and done

Why would it matter if other people could get in on the deal for more than you paid?

 BlueDagger wrote:
@bbb Eh thems the breaks. I expect that to happen with all of the kickstarters that are physical game centeric and it's something I hope the businesses take into account. The key thing to remember with bones though is the cost is so low to the Vampire level that even if they sold those models at 50 cents per they are still making a profit.

If someone walked up to you with a model that you tough looked cool and said you could have it for 50 cents, would you buy it? (assuming you actually had change on you lol)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

timd wrote:


As far as people who didn't back (ie, someone who was not one of the 17,744 backers) they WILL be able to add new accounts at the pledge manager, but at a higher price than a backer paid - for example, a Vampire to them will be $150, and Options will be 20% Higher (Nethyrmaul will be $30, for example).

Tim

Not gonna lie, this bugs me.

I think this is a good way to handle it...

A lot of Reaper fans never knew about the KS till it was over (so many folk never go online etc) and will want to be part of it. Blocking them would upset the fan base.

If they were just allowed to jump in the KS backers would be justifiably mad (all the benefit, none of the stress)

So Reaper are letting them in but for 50% more to grab vampire, or 20% more if they just want the added options...... The KS backers clearly got the best deal, and Reaper gets to sell more stuff to fans who may want in. Everybody comes off ahead

Also don't forget that the Kickstarter website became useless towards the end. So this would be a way to still get in, but with a penalty for trying to wait for the last minute.