Most You've Spent and General Pricing Discussion

cudwieser

cudwieser

Student Council President
A two parter.

Firstly what was the most you've spent on a single anime (and what was the most you spent on a single purchase of anime)?

Secondly what is your opinions on the pricing of anime, especially on OOP anime and other significant or notable titles on the second hand market.

To begin two titles I have cost £100. Fist of the North Star (buck when large boxsets were £60+) and NGE Platinum TV series. Both were officially that price and given their rarity were unlikely to be cheaper. Most in a single order was £180 for a truck load from Rightstuf that included Angelic Layer, All purpose Cltural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku and Mouse. Saying all that the OOP market it a bit of a rough one with the average you'd pay being £50-£60 for a box set at the minute (I've paid near £80 for some sets). I'm curious to know how far you'd go to get a title you really want and your opinions on the state of play for second hand releases (given the down right absurd prices
(used to be Haruchi Suzumiya, but NGE Platinum is back up there now https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_st_price-desc-rank?keywords=anime&rh=n:283926,k:anime&qid=1488677007&sort=price-desc-rank . (Berserk is heading ebay's most optimistic pricing table anime in DVDs and Movies for DVD and Blu-ray Disc Players | eBay)).
 
Most spent on an anime : Fullmetal Alchemist Ultimate Edition £150

OOP anime is disgustingly overpriced if its something that was popular at any time. I can't buy Blood+ since I'd be looking at $200-300 for the old DVDs. I was lucky with Chibi Vampire Karin as UP1 still had a retail AUS copy left, which otherwsie I'd be stuck with only the $150-250 OOP US DVDs as a choice as the AUS DVD rarely appears anywhere.

In terms of pricing of new anime its what I expect. A niche market has a higher price since its catering to a lower amount of customers, but due to little choices we have we're find with spending more as its the norm (better than the single volumes days for sure)

The only good thing about OOP anime is your collection could be considered an investment if you ever wanted to sell a title as an OOP title of a little run will normally keep/increase in value over the years when new fans can't find the title.
 
The most I've probably spent on anime is with Sword Art Online. What happened was that I was under the assumption that Box Sets 3 & 4 would get a reprint as the first two did. Then suddenly Aniplex announced Box Set 3 was OOP and I panicked, because I wanted to own them compared to the UK & AU versions. I tried Anime Corner Store and they sold out, and after searching I was lucky enough to find a copy through Animeshumi, one of the legit sellers on eBay but at a high price (£150 instead of £75). The seller was nice enough to reduce the value so that I only had to pay £15.15 for customs. Box Sets 1, 2 & 4 were ordered at the same time through United Publications. So in the end I paid around £150 for Box 3 and £210 for the rest. The worst part was that months later Yuki Kajiura announced that OST 2 (the one included in Box 3) was actually defective due to the audio having incorrect pitch for most of the tracks, and Aniplex US wouldn't do any replacements. I really should have just waited for the standard volumes but the rest of the contents were nice enough.

Other titles I've spent a lot over:
Fate/Zero - £240
Kara no Kyoukai - £208 (then got a £35 refund a month later)
Monogatari series: Second Season - £140 (Neko White, Kabuki, Otori so far)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica - £170

Long story short, SAO and the Monogatari sets were just poor timing whatsoever. I ideally should have picked up the Monogatari sets when they first came out because it was way cheaper then.
 
£500 on UBW
Monogatari lets not add it all up.

Outside AoA/AoJ probably FMP £100

Scalpers like any product I despise if I sold my GL its OOP but wouldnt sell anywhere near the RRP
 
If total spent on a series includes all of the double dips and extras (e.g. event DVDs, soundtracks) then I've spent by far the most on Sengoku Basara, weirdly. If we are just talking in terms of western anime releases, then pretty sure Urusei Yatsura wins by default for me. No idea how much I spent as it was in singles bought over a long period from various places but I think we can safely estimate that it made Aniplex box sets nowadays look reasonable.

I have a lot of rare gems which sell for a lot on the used market but zero plans to sell any, so it's not really much of an investment. I occasionally get stung by the OOP situation but I have learnt to buy things I want quickly whenever possible to avoid the long term problems of missing out and having a gap too pricey to fill.

R
 
I bought the Maison Ikkoku Box Sets 1-8 on the used market back in 2011. I'd watched the series a year or so earlier and knew that if I could wrangle it that I would love to own the series in my collection. Around the summer of 2011 I noticed the sets on eBay had begun to appear less frequently so I found a decent auction with a week to go and went on one hell of a week try to essentially trade and deal my way to raising the funds. This included selling off most of my video game collection. The biggest contribution was a complete Gizmondo set which I shudder to think how much that might have been worth one day. Anyway I eventually raised the funds and used a US post box to get the DVDs to me after winning a tense auction. I think the final price was around $550 or something and it probably cost another $100 to send to me by the end of it all. But ultimately it was worth it and I love the sets and even should a Blu Ray come out sometime (fingers crossed) I doubt I would sell them.

Other than that it's probably the total cost of the S1 AOA Sword Art Online sets. Also I imported Rahxephon on BD which was quite expensive, as was Oreimo S1 too. The Escaflowne CE from Funimation was also a small fortune in the end. One Piece Voyages or any Shonen show really adds up pretty fast. My NIS collection probably totals the price of a used car, man this thread is depressing lol.
 
For a single item probably either FMA UE or one of the Sentai CE's.

For a single order largest can see is when I spent $961 at Rightstuf. Mostly on Sentai BD's. Got 40 BD's in that order though.
 
I don't tend to spend an awful lot on any individual anime, especially if you measure on a per episode/per minute basis and account for any extras in the price. The exception would be She and Her Cat - Everything Flows -, I imported the Japanese release to get around 30 minutes of anime for probably £45 or so. I did also buy the first season of Hidamari Sketch three times, although I still didn't pay too much each time and probably less than £65 total.

I used to occasionally import releases from the USA in bulk, so I'd probably have spent some £200 or so on a pile of releases at once. That would have been when the currency was stronger and prices were lower though, so probably no more than £20-£25 per set with 10-13 episodes in each (and most likely less per set in some cases).

I tend to buy new copies of releases, I wouldn't spend a lot on a second hand release in most cases. There are some shows that I really want to own but I'm generally content to wait and hope that they get a good new release rather than spend a lot of money on them. I do like owning things but I'm aware of the possibility that they could stop working or that I could lose interest in them so I try to control my enthusiasm (which doesn't always work).

I think prices are often a bit above what I'd like these days, so I generally aim to try and buy things on sale or when the prices drop a bit. I'd rather pay that little bit more to still own the shows that I want, although I'm trying to be more selective in what I actually buy (again, this doesn't always work).
 
I honestly can't remember what the most I've spent on a single release was. Probably that Wolf's Rain Book of the Moon edition (but I still can't remember how much it cost when it was new) or the BGC kickstarter. I also have the NGE Platinum tin but I think I got it for a decent price, do people really pay that kind of money for it? I might consider selling...

New anime I think is currently priced about perfectly in the UK for what we get. You can generally get a full series for £30-£50 which is more than fair. I do occasionally buy second hand OOP stuff if the price is reasonable (though far less often than I did since I started pretty much exclusively buying Blu-ray) but if something is going for crazy money there are other ways to obtain it that I won't shy from using. Buying a second hand copy doesn't result in any money going to the original creators anyway, if it's re-released I'll buy it then to support the creators.
 
I would guess I spent around £280 in total on the anime of OreTwi? (all 6 volumes of the Japanese release + the English release)
Add in 12 light novel volumes and that's about £340 or so on the franchise as a whole.

YuuYuuYuu was more expensive per volume so about £270 or so for just the Japanese release's 6 volumes of that.

That's excluding customs, of course, as I don't remember what did or didn't get hit. And it's just an estimate as well.

Most I've spent on a single item... probably the CE of NagiAsu that MVM put out. That was about £80 or so, so more than any customs-hit YuuYuuYuu volumes would have been.

I spent a tad over £530 at MCM Expo in October last year, if that counts as a single order. Otherwise you're probably looking at not much over £100.

With regards to OOP stuff, I'd rather wait than pay absurd prices, and tend to pretend that sales that are over the cost that I'm prepared to pay for something don't exist. As I bought up basically every old series I had even the slightest passing interest in several years ago, and buy most of the past year's new stuff that I want at MCM each year, I haven't bought much second hand stuff recently.
 
I'm a cheapskate, I want my anime as cheap as possible, but I have been tempted to spend three figures... twice. One was last year for the FMA Ultimate, £110-ish (early bird plus percentage discount) the other was for Durarara!! on DVD, from Australia. After reading about Beez' release, I opted for the Siren discs which had the dub. Talk about buyer's remorse! They cost me £120 to import from Australia, they turned out to have Siren's subtitling issues, which subsequently wound up even worse on the Blu-ray. Speaking of which, the week that they were delivered, the Aniplex Blu-rays were announced. And by the time I got my hands on the corrected Anime Limited release, I had watched those DVDs a total of one time.

I don't often buy second hand, always too worried about damaged discs. Did it once to get a missing Bubblegum Crisis volume. That's a case of where the market sets the price, and you can'r really argue with it. Except for those price gougers who clear out the last hundred volumes of a release, only to drip them out on e-bay a year later at evil prices. Then there's RACS who cut out the price gougers and go straight for the exploit. Retail prices should always be RRP or less. Never more.
 
I spent £250 on Space Battleship Yamato 2199 box set. Normally I would never dream of spending this much on anime but I had the money and decided to go for it knowing that it I didnt get it at that moment I would probably not have the money to do so again at a later date. The only other JP set I would consider buying is the Last Exile Blu Ray box set though I do hope this will see a western release someday so I will wait.

Normally my limit would be around £60-£70 on a box set and those would be few & far between. Ultimate editions tend to be out of my price range and I don't tend to buy OOP titles as most would be on DVD though the american Ah My Goddess sets have tempted me.
 
The most I spent on a single show was the OOP AoA Madoka Magica Limited Editions at £350, not including the films. Madoka Magica is a series that is incredibly special to me. Not only was it the first anime I watched that wasn't aimed at children, it's also my all time favourite anime, and in my eyes, is the bar that all anime should be held to. I will say that £350 is a ludicrous amount of money for 12 episodes, and if you were to call me totally insane for spending that much, I'd probably be in agreement, but to me, those sets are pretty much priceless. I'd certainly not recommend that people start spending that kind of money on anime sets, I know I'd be pretty reluctant to again, but it was totally worth it for me.

I imagine my AoA Monogatari sets would add up to a similar amount, but I bought them all separate and several of them used, so it might not be as expensive as I think.
 
Just Passing Through said:
Then there's RACS who cut out the price gougers and go straight for the exploit. Retail prices should always be RRP or less. Never more.
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What do you mean RACS who go straight for the exploit?


Looking back at my collection it strikes me I may have undervalued what I spent. Excel Saga was a parts deal that was roughly £20 a volume which would put me at £120 approx for that one series (definately worth it). I dread to think what it would cost to replace with BD's (so I'll stick to DVD's for now).

I have to agree with Just Passin Through that prices should be RRP or less (or at least no more that twice the RRP) especially if you wish to sell. It seems evident that the gougers are marking themselves out of the market which makes no sense (keep imagining Martin Schkreli and his Wu Tang Klan fetish :)). I'll ask if you were to sell your rarest (or dearest) anime, what would you honestly sell it for? I'd put my NGE Platinum up for £150 at the most (offers over £80).
 
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Would seem daft to me to sell any non-essential first world luxury item for anything less than what the highest bidder will pay for it. If you under value someone else is only going to buy and sell it on for more, you might as well get the best price you can.
 
ayase said:
Would seem daft to me to sell any non-essential first world luxury item for anything less than what the highest bidder will pay for it. If you under value someone else is only going to buy and sell it on for more, you might as well get the best price you can.
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I think its meant to be bad if a retailer does it as they should be sticking to RRP
 
ayase said:
Would seem daft to me to sell any non-essential first world luxury item for anything less than what the highest bidder will pay for it. If you under value someone else is only going to buy and sell it on for more, you might as well get the best price you can.
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and if no one can afford it or is willing to buy it. It's one thing to sell something everyone uses or needs (Mr Schkreli again) at a higher price, but given the fact that we are dealing in luxury (and a niche one at that) demand tends to wax and wane spectacularly to the point that sellers will make hideous loss if the market changes and they aren't willing to sell at an affordable price. The whole 'holdout' mentality is a deletarious one when it comes to things like anime. If anime had only been the reserve of the rich then it might be another story again, but it isn't and the market depends on affordability and flexability. The margins for anime are tight and always have been. This is why the number of anime retailers is small and specialist retailers even smaller. The private market is no different. What we are facing are opportunists with little or no care for the market.

P.S I've heard of Rob. Never knew he was a schiester though.
 
I don't really spend huge amounts, I guess the most I've spent in a show would be Code Geass Akito the Exiled from Japan (which is kinda silly considering it was a blind buy and I've still not watched it....), while I dunno the exact number it must be around £180, although I did get 2 parts pretty cheap on eBay (£10 and like £20 I think). It could be the Persona 3 movies I imported but again I don't actually know what I paid for all 4, I guess about £160ish. I've probably spent a fair chunk on Bleach too (how depressing) but having got the first 10 series for like £50 I don't think it would pass those two. No idea what the most I have spent at one time would be but I doubt it's over £200 tbh.

As for the second hand market, I use it from time to time, I've seen some silly prices (like the ones you posted) but I always assume no one is actually buying at that price.....
 
Lambadelta said:
I think its meant to be bad if a retailer does it as they should be sticking to RRP
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Yeah, I was referring to selling on second hand products as per cudwieser's comments.

That said, there's actually no legal obligation for retailers of new products to stick to RRP. Just as they can discount they can put their prices up, but the market tends to sort that out anyway since people will just buy from elsewhere.

cudwieser said:
the market depends on affordability and flexability. The margins for anime are tight and always have been. This is why the number of anime retailers is small and specialist retailers even smaller. The private market is no different. What we are facing are opportunists with little or no care for the market.
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Should that actually bother people though? It's supply and demand - I agree there's no point trying to sell something for more than people are willing to pay and having it sit on Amazon oe eBay for years, but you're not going to bring prices down across the board by being generous and charging less either. There's a market price for everything so someone's ultimately going to make that money, it might as well be you. If you sell something for £50 rather than the £100 market price, the smart thing for anyone watching to do would be to buy it and immediately make themselves £50 which you could have had.
 
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