Wednesday 2 March 2011

Frugalnomics Lesson 2 - Shopping Around

If you play Warhammer (or even if you don’t) you’ll probably be aware that Orc and Goblin players are getting some treats from everyone’s favourite games company in the next couple of weeks.  Games Workshop have revealed a whole host of new models, alongside the obligatory magic cards and the new army book.  There’s been the usual criticism of price rises and sculpting quality (yawn), but I really like all the new bits and pieces.  I suppose that if all you have to complain about in your life is that some plastic models don’t look exactly like you’d hoped, then things can’t be that bad overall.  I’d certainly never overreact to something so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  Personally,   I like the idea of the new book (hardback, full colour and much longer) and can’t wait to get my hands on it.

But where from?  There’s plenty of places offering these items for sale but which offers the best value?  As part of your ongoing education in ‘Frugalnomics’ let’s have a look...

The first step in shopping around is to be clear on what you want buy, otherwise you may fall into the trap of spending more to make up to a free postage limit, or just get carried away with the excitement of it all and spend more than you’d planned.  Decide what you want and then stick to it!  For this exercise, we'll look at a typical Frugal gamer, lets call him ‘Percy’, who is an Orc and Goblin player.  Percy wants to buy the new orc and goblin army book, the aracnarok spider and a set of magic cards.  After a bit of looking around on the internet he chooses the following online stores (Total Wargamer, Maelstrom Games and Wayland Games) and compares them to his local Games Workshop (Please replace pounds sterling with crazy foreign equivalent as applicable.):


  Arachnarok Magic Cards Book P&P Total Saving
GW £ 36.00 £ 4.10 £ 22.50 £ 0.00 £ 62.60 £ 0.00
Wayland £ 28.80 £ 4.71 £ 18.00 £ 4.41 £ 55.92 £ 6.68
Maelstrom £ 32.40 £ 3.69 £ 20.25 £ 0.00 £ 56.34 £ 6.26
Total WG £ 30.60 £ 3.48 £ 18.00 £ 3.99 £ 56.07 £ 6.53
 
So, by looking at the table, Percy can see that Wayland Games is cheapest overall.  But he also notices that by buying the army book and aracnarok from Wayland Games and then buying the Magic Cards from his local GW next time he’s in town, he can increase his savings to over £7.  Good work Percy!

Next time you’re thinking about your next purchase, have a look around and compare prices, a little bit of time spent searching can save you pounds (or crazy overseas equivalent).

Class dismissed.

Please note that prices were correct at the time of writing this article, please check prices yourself before making any purchases!

6 comments:

BigLee said...

A good policy regardless of what you are buying. The internet has made shopping around easy but it seems many people still don't use it properly.

In tough economic times the little people (that's us folks) can't afford brand loyalty. We need to make our gaming expenditure stretch further than ever before.

Catweaseloz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Catweaseloz said...

It is brand loyalty. You're just getting it from a different retail source. wayland have just announced this http://tinyurl.com/4akd7dh which may affect your figures somewhat.

Anonymous said...

Wayland have got a free shipping voucher on at the minute. So the combined saving is over £10!

The Angry Lurker said...

Shopping around is definitely the way to go and last week when I purchased some West Wind Models from a third party company at a show I got a further 20% off the marked price.

Chaosheade said...

This is exactly what I did when pricing my future Tyranid army. I looked at the GW site and figured out what I wanted, then checked 3-4 other sites to figure out where to buy them to save the most money possible. The more places you check, the better you will do.

Another thing I did was sign up for all the different web retailers' newsletters so I could stay up to date on all their special offers. You would be shooting yourself in the foot to be comparing one company's discounted rate to another one's standard rate. Case in point: the previously mentioned free shipping deal from Wayland.

The more you know...