To recap:
You have one minimum wage employee, 8 tables, 32 chairs, and fingers crossed for 32 Magic players willing to pay $6 each for a Standard format event with prizes that can total 77 booster packs without losing money.
Friday is here! 12 people show up and pay a total of $72 in entry fees. You forgot that that employee needed an hour to set up and an hour to clean up for a total of 5 hours, not 3, so $43.75 instead of $26.25. Hmm...that would only leave enough money for 13 packs as prizes. (Not figuring anything but your employee as a cost, which there are obviously more costs.) Well, you've kind of already promised at least a pack per person and only one additional pack for 1st place would suck! You decide to put 2 packs per person in the prize pool so you have 12 packs to split amongst the players who fared the best. So, now, the event that brought in $72 has cost you (at least) $94.15.
Week two is better you have 20 players who pay a total of $120. With 20 players though, you've found out that one employee is not enough if you end up with 32 or more players. Now that you've established how you pay out, 40 packs cost you $84 and the employee cost is still $43.75, for a total of $127.75. Still losing money. Oh, and you've lost two chairs to people who refuse to sit in chairs properly. There's gum under one of the tables and someone peed on the floor (in the bathroom, at least).
But, wait, single sales should be up, right? Yes and no. You wanted to be competitive so you priced everything using TCG low, now everything that everyone asks for is sold out and no one will trade any of it in because your trade-in value is too low. You ditch the idea of being the cheapest for singles and start pricing using TCG mid, so trade-in value is higher and some standard staples start trickling in.
It's weird, though, because it seems like most of the people spending money on singles don't even show up for your FNMs. And a lot of the people showing up for FNM don't seem to spend much on singles or packs.
Restocking one of your rare binders you find sleeves with prices ranging from $2 to $8 stuffed in the pouch in the back. It appears as though someone has stolen $40 worth of cards. Why would they leave the sleeves? Unfortunately, this person has decided that if they slip "overpriced" cards in a pack of commons, they're paying SOMETHING for the cards, so it's not really stealing. IT IS REALLY STEALING.
This post ends on a down note, just like Empire Strikes Back!
Stay tuned for part three.
*Disclaimer: The store depicted in this post is completely fictional. Any similarities to stores (living or dead) are completely coincidental. This post is not intended as a model to create a store, and is for educational purposes only.
