PitchCar is back. (If you're rich)

Just discovered that PitchCar is available again, and as good as ever! Except for that whole "price" thing.

When I bought my early sets around 2007 I paid $53 at GameSurplus, a discount online store that was kind of legendary for one-day delivery on the east coast, via UPS ground. As best I can tell Thor or Sarah was sitting at the laptop 24/7 and drove to the UPS store within an hour of your order. As luck would have it I threw the printed receipt in the game box one time, and I paid $53 for the base set. If I had had to guess I would have said $35, but it was significantly more.

I'll mention I purchased Fjords for $13.50 in the same order, to give you an idea of how much cheaper games were back them. It's been 18 years, but games have more than doubled in price during an era with 2% inflation as the norm. At the national inflation rate prices should have risen about 50%, but the death of online discount houses and MAPP pricing have gobbled up additional money.

Current retail for PitchCar's base set is $110.00, with GameNerdz offering it for $90. And c'mon, you at least need an Extension 2 to make the game hum, as it opens up the map in must-have ways. So you're about $150 to get in including shipping.

PitchCar is a mindless game, but oddly calls to you. It's not adversely affected by beer or even tequila, and it is quite possibly playable by all members of the family regardless of age including the cat. It comes with a rules sheet but I'm not sure it needs one. If you can't figure out what to do with PitchCar you are out of reach of any help anyone can provide.

But jeeze, not a lot of families looking to invest that much money for the game. This may be a Christmas gift for grandchildren and nieces and nephews now that I'm old and gray and am expected to hand out pricey gifts.

I have two base sets, an Extension 2 and an Extension 5. Tracks can get pretty crazy because Extension 2 takes all the symmetry out of the game. Crazy setups can occur and it's easy to create pinch points, places where there is only a one-inch gap to get your puck through as you cross other traffic going sideways to yours. If you haven't gotten a chance to try this one out it's worth finding a copy to give it a try. I love my Crokinole, but PitchCar may be the best flicking game ever just because of the sheer light-hearted seat-of-your-pants nature of it.

I was already interested but, damn, you really do sell the game here.

Having never played PitchCar and being awful at dexterity games, I'm going to pick up on your secondary thesis of cost. I haven't looked at broad-based numbers so it certainly may be the case that with the influx of both money and popularity, games as a general category have exceeded the rate of inflation by several multiples. This is absolutely true in the sphere of higher education, for example, in which the average cost of a term at Yale in 1975 was $2500, whereas today it's $90,000, an increase of almost 4000%. Average inflation over the past 50 years is 3.65%, resulting in an increase in prices of around 500% (i.e. consumer and durable goods may cost 5x what they cost 50 years ago, not the 36 multiplier of an education at Yale.)

Narrowing in to your time frame (18 years), the CPI indicates that goods might cost as much as 56% more today than they did in 2007, which means that if the producers had hewed to inflation, the base set you purchased would now cost about $83, which is a significant step away from the $110 they're charging. The question at hand would be: What are you getting in your base set that might increase the cost?

The reason I ask that is because I had this discussion on BGG a couple years back where people were bemoaning the "doubled" cost of one of the Tiny Epic games. I said they were misdirecting people by a) citing a price from 2014 for a different game in 2024 and b) automatically including the expansion as part of that new price, rather than comparing the base games to each other. You're kinda doing the same thing, but instead of automatically including an expansion that gives you more of the same and/or a different way to play, asserting that an Extension makes the game actually fun in the first place. Keep in mind that, having never played the game, I'm absolutely NOT questioning your judgment here. I'm just providing context.

My argument with that person boiled down to two things: basic inflation and what was being provided in the box. Despite it being my 2nd-favorite of the series, there's no debate to be had that the components for Tiny Epic Kingdoms (2014) are a significant step down from those of Tiny Epic Game of Thrones. (2024.) The former uses bog-standard meeples, map and faction cards without gloss or finish, artwork that's decent but not thrilling, and a few special d12s (with a flag in place of the '1'.) TEGoT, on the other hand, uses glossy finished map and faction cards, two full decks of cards with artwork of substantive detail, "meeple" pieces with a glossy finish and bright detail of house shields, and a pile of other tokens to indicate the Iron Throne and battles and yadda, yadda, yadda. In short, there's a ton more basic and better components packed into the GoT box. Visually and materially, it's definitely an upgrade, which is part of why GoT costs $30 when compared to TE Kingdoms' $16. But just the base inflation of the last decade would mean that TEK would now cost $25, rather than its original price for a, frankly, lesser package. So, that one case example doesn't really match the "games are outrageously expensive now" presentation but it is, of course, just one example.

We've all seen the reprints of classic stuff from the past with upgraded components and the consequent increase in price. A lot of people have pushed back against that, saying that all the chrome isn't "necessary" to play the game and they're right. It's not necessary any more than it is to play 40k with expensive models, rather than buttons, rocks, and coins. But it is an essential part of the experience to play 40k with cool models and- in the first comparison to come to mind -I do enjoy playing my copy of Ra from 25th Century Games more than I did the older version from alea that I once had, simply because of the minor improvements that they made to components and game aids. It's easier for new players to grok and it's easier to follow the value of some of the auctions and, thus, the proper timing for them if you really want to get there first. I don't regret that purchase at all even if it was more expensive than my purchase of the alea copy, even including inflation.

So, my only real question on the new copy of PitchCar is: What are you getting in the box that might account for the $27 over inflation increase in price? If there's something substantive, that might be your answer. If they're just taking advantage of its long absence from availability, then there's the other answer. No debate, however, that asking a family to throw down over $100 for the game likely has more impact than asking for $53 in 2007, not least because of current economic circumstances and the fact that the average increase in wages still lags behind inflation over that period as it largely has since... the mid-70s.

From the beginning, a single PitchCar box was more expensive than a normal family game. You do need the first expansion to see what it can do, and in my experience that always was common knowledge.

That said, PitchCar is awesome. Not necessarily better than a college education, but easily worth more than $90000. I own the first five sets and can't stop thinking about the loop since I saw it on ferti's website a couple of months ago. I won't buy it though since we only play about once a year and have more than enough.

Jackwraith wrote: So, my only real question on the new copy of PitchCar is: What are you getting in the box that might account for the $27 over inflation increase in price?

Looking at the parts list on GameNerdz it appears to be a straight reprint. I'd be surprised if the components are better quality because the old was quite rugged.

There's some caveats -- I purchased when online game stores gave substantial discounts. GameNerdz is as well, which means that MAPP pricing isn't a concern in this particular title. Also, it's a French game and if it's imported to the U.S. we may be looking at an exchange rate or tariff issue.

All that said, I'm looking at the cost to the customer regardless, and I don't think games as a broad category have followed the same rules as the rest of the economy. They seem to run higher. In this particular case there aren't any bronze minis added to the mix to justify a higher purchase price.

Sagrilarus wrote: JThis may be a Christmas gift for grandchildren and nieces and nephews now that I'm old and gray and am expected to hand out pricey gifts.

Members of this site have literally become grandparents during their sojourn here. I find that so bittersweet. Many of my games, including ones I've traded, are tied to specific moments in the lives of my children. I am holding onto Heroscape. I hope I live long enough to introduce grandchildren to great games.