Behind the Counter

Well, we are just two weeks away from a huge convention season starting with Origins, in Columbus, Ohio - July 5-8th! Yea!

Origins is always my favorite convention of the year. The staff of GAMA are so easy to work with, and the convention is always packed with gamers from far and wide who come to game, shop, sell games, and trade stuff. It is a great time for any gamer, and certainly a fabulous time for a vendor!

This year - having just sold titangames.com URL and the inventory associated there with, we are attending the convention as 3FREEgames - and kicking off my new company - TheGamePirate.com

More next month about thegamepirate.com (please, be sure to pronounce the M).

For now, let me tell you a bit about what goes into preparation for such a convention. First, we have a 20x30 space. That is 600 square feet of games, and that takes 4 loads of our big orange cube truck to take to, and load up our Origins booth. We start in early June taking truckloads to Columbus, and putting them into storage units. 2 10x20 storage units, stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall - and we top this off with one more truck load on the day of the con. That is a lot of games.

To get these games, we buy out closing retail stores all year long, and put the games into boxes to await our trip to Origins. We need approximately 600 large cases of games to pull this off. So, we have to buy all the time - every day - year round - with Origins in mind!

This month alone, we have bought out store inventories from stores in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin - and this weekend, we are buying up a store from Virginia. 100% of this inventory goes to Origins with us. Meaning - we are taking a lot of inventory that has not been offered at any other con before. We also do buy-outs of overstock and overprinted games. This month, we received 11 skids of such product, and most of this is going to Origins, as well.

Manpower: To man a booth that size takes 8 people. We'd prefer to do it with 9. This means my wife, I, all three kids, an employee and some nephews will all be working the booth at Origins. Fun, huh?

Sales Tax: Yes, we do file sales tax with Ohio for this convention. It would be both foolish, and illegal not to. This means my accountant gets a work out, and we get the state tax license from Ohio, file the taxes, and get to argue with some customers each year - who are shocked (shock I say!) To have to pay sales tax. But, the rules is the rules, and we play by them, usually - and always with regards to sales tax, that is for sure! (Yes, I know not everyone does - but we do.)

We will be leaving for Origins on Monday, and returning on Sunday (late!). It takes 20 hours of work to set up our booth - so we get to Columbus Monday night, and start out booth layout and bringing in the stuff early on Tuesday. We get it all there on Tuesday, and finish setup sometime late Wednesday.

Selling stuff - Origins is one of the three big cons of the year for us. The other two are GenCon and DragonCon. (We are missing DragonCon this year, but it is still a fabulous convention!)

We will sell about 4,000 pounds of games at Origins. Not bad for a weekend, huh?

We also hope to buy about 2000 pounds of games at Origins - and we hang banners and signs that say we are buying all games!!

Some Cool Things About Origins:

Origins has plenty of RPG stuff going on, lots of Magic and other card games too - plus plenty of miniatures games, wargames, boardgames and other events in gaming - including Larps, poker events, often chess tournaments, and more. I really love the variety of stuff going on at Origins. There is a great really huge auction at Origins! Great stuff there! You can meet a lot of people at Origins - at past Origins I have met for the first time: Gary Gygax, Don Perrin, Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis, Dave Arneson, Larry Elmore, and many other game industry luminaries and celebrities. Origins is ran by the Game Manufacturers Association - a non profit organization, whose membership include people like Rick Loomis, Jamie Chambers and Will Niebling. This is a great organization, which runs a great convention, and I really cannot say enough nice things about the staff or board members.

So - if I have not convinced you yet - come to Origins, shop the hall, play a LOT of games, learn a lot of new games, see new releases, and have a literal TON of fun.

I mean - are you a gamer, or what?

Marcus King
TheGamePirate
Owner - Titan Games Retail Store
Owner - 3FREEgames.com

637 Capital Ave Sw
Battle Creek, MI 49015
269-963-3773
titangamesinc at aol dot com