Disney Lorcana Launch Marred by Price Gouging by Game Stores

Disney Lorcana's launch is set back by high prices from game stores.

By Christian Hoffer

Disney Lorcana's launch is being hurt by high markups by local game stores. Last week, Ravensburger officially launched Disney Lorcana, the highly-awaited trading card game featuring Disney characters. As part of its launch plans, Ravensburger gave independent game stores a two-week exclusivity window before officially releasing the game in mass retail stores like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. However, some game stores chose to take advantage of this exclusivity window by charging their customers a significant mark-up from MSRP. While booster packs have a MSRP of $6 a pack, the average market price for a pack on TCGPlayer.com, a popular card marketplace, is $15. The Illumineer's Trove product, which is supposed to have an MSRP of $49.99, has an average market price of $113, while the Gift Set, with a MSRP of $29.99, has an average market price of $63.99. Many of the sellers on TCGPlayer are "certified hobby stores," meaning they have a retail store and likely are selling the stock from their shelves.

Several Disney Lorcana Facebook groups, the Disney Lorcana Reddit page, and and two Disney Lorcana Discord groups have numerous reports of local game stores selling Disney Lorcana at significant mark-ups. For their part, retailers are defending the price hikes by noting the heavy allocations they experienced from their initial order, with stores receiving only a fraction of their initial orders. However, retailers have been told that they'll be receiving a second wave of shipments in September and are seemingly taking advantage of the lack of competition from mass retailers who traditionally sell their prices at close to the MSRP. 

While mass retailers aren't supposed to start selling stock until September 1st, at least some Walmarts have "broken" their embargo by putting out stock early. Reports that some Walmarts in Florida, Idaho, South Carolina, and Louisiana have Disney Lorcana product for sale, although this is likely due to internal error. Most mass retailers rely on third party vendors to stock trading cards, and it doesn't appear that the early sales are widespread. 

Related:

What Is Disney Lorcana?

In Disney Lorcana, players race to be the first to collect 20 Lore, which they do by sending characters summoned from their deck off on quests. When characters are questing, they can be challenged by opposing characters, which can leave them damaged or banished from play. Players summon cards and pay for actions and items using cards in their inkwell. Players can commit one card per turn to their inkwell, where it becomes a reusable resource for the remainder of the turn. The game includes three kinds of characters – Storyborn characters pulled directly from various Disney movies and properties, Dreamborn characters with new traits and characteristics, and mysterious Floodborn characters who can be summoned at a lower cost if a player has a character of the same name already in play. 

Disney Lorcana is currently for sale at game stores, with mass retailers set to sell the game beginning on September 1st.

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