Not so much the late 80's but very early 90's... tons of shrink boxed stuff.. I also really recall all the Battlemaster sets... I got like 40 of them (ran the gamut of stores in the area) at $8 or so... were great for making armies or reselling.

No I don't, this looks like one of those generational things I missed. After 1988 I quit D&D for Warhammer FRP, Cthulhu, & RuneQuest, so I guess I was part of the market shift which prompted the sales. There was a whole dark age of fandom for me from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. Basically mid-high school when I grew out of it, until my son was born & I had to re-enter kid culture. Now he's about to graduate high school, I stopped playing D&D with him at least a year ago, & we rarely go see movies these days. As Tolkien would put it, the Shadow has fallen once again.

Hi,

when Virgin Records shut down around 12 years ago (or so) we cleared them out of loads of modules at 49p.

Bought so many had to store them at work and bring them home in batches!

Cheers,
KAL

I, indeed, remember those days.  I also remember seeing modules packed together and re-shrinked for clearance in bundles, but you had no idea what modules were in the package, other than the two that were on the ends.  lol  It was like a secret grab-bag, almost.    I don't recall if I saw anything like that at Kay-Bee, though.  lol  I forget now where that was... was that something TSR actually did?  Was it maybe a thing a distrubutor was doing to unload stock?  Anyone know or remember?  Maybe Frank knows?

~Kat  ^_^

I do remember bowls of polyhedral dice sold at convenience stores next to the cash registers in the early 1990s, which always seemed like a bizarrely inappropriate marketing strategy. However in light of this thread, maybe it was all part of a larger effort to liquidate RPG product.

Katchoo wrote:I, indeed, remember those days.  I also remember seeing modules packed together and re-shrinked for clearance in bundles, but you had no idea what modules were in the package, other than the two that were on the ends.  lol  It was like a secret grab-bag, almost.  :)  I don't recall if I saw anything like that at Kay-Bee, though.  lol  I forget now where that was... was that something TSR actually did?  Was it maybe a thing a distrubutor was doing to unload stock?  Anyone know or remember?  Maybe Frank knows?

~Kat  ^_^

I'm nearly certain I saw some of the 10th Anniversary Combo Packs at Kay-Bee.  Could that be what you're thinking of?

TheHistorian wrote:

Katchoo wrote:I, indeed, remember those days.  I also remember seeing modules packed together and re-shrinked for clearance in bundles, but you had no idea what modules were in the package, other than the two that were on the ends.  lol  It was like a secret grab-bag, almost.  :)  I don't recall if I saw anything like that at Kay-Bee, though.  lol  I forget now where that was... was that something TSR actually did?  Was it maybe a thing a distrubutor was doing to unload stock?  Anyone know or remember?  Maybe Frank knows?

~Kat  ^_^

I'm nearly certain I saw some of the 10th Anniversary Combo Packs at Kay-Bee.  Could that be what you're thinking of?

Hmmm... I guess it could be.  Were they packaged so you couldn't see all of the contents?  That is what I remember making me laugh about them.

~Kat  ^_^

TheHistorian wrote:

Katchoo wrote:Hmmm... I guess it could be.  Were they packaged so you couldn't see all of the contents?  That is what I remember making me laugh about them.

Yes, but there was a yellow card that listed the contents: http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/10th.html

Oh yes!  I do remember those 10th Anniversary packs!  I never got any of them because I already owned all of those modules by then, though.  lol  I also got all of the hardcovers as they were released.  I remember my gaming store in Woodbridge, NJ carried those packs.  I'm guessing they are fairly rare at this point!

Anyway, that is very much like the packs I saw, but the ones I was mentioning before may have been packaged by the store or distributor or something... because there was no such thing as a table of contents.  lol

~Kat  ^_^

JasonZavoda wrote:

Katchoo wrote:Oh yes!  I do remember those 10th Anniversary packs!  I never got any of them because I already owned all of those modules by then, though.  lol  I also got all of the hardcovers as they were released.  I remember my gaming store in Woodbridge, NJ carried those packs.  I'm guessing they are fairly rare at this point!

Anyway, that is very much like the packs I saw, but the ones I was mentioning before may have been packaged by the store or distributor or something... because there was no such thing as a table of contents.  lol

~Kat  ^_^

Was that the gaming store in the mall at Woodbridge? I remember one of the guys working there was really into Tribes of Crane. I had a hard time finding a good gaming store in the 70's in central Jersey. There was a KB toy and hobby in the Brunswick Square Mall, and some hobby store in Old Bridge.

I remember the module liquidation over at Toy's R Us in East Brunswick, but they were selling them off in a cardboard display rack for about .50c each.

Yes... it was at the Woodbridge Mall... The Game Room.  It actually still exists, I believe!  lol  (Been a while since I was there, though.)  They are no longer a hobby and pool table store like they were, though... now they do pool tables as their main thing.  I remember the first time I went in there and saw that their gaming books and whatnot were basically gone and they expanded their pool table stock.  So sad.  I have been told that they have more board games again and other stuff, so maybe there is more of that kind of thing again... I'll have to visit to check it out sometime.  It was my go-to gaming store back when I got into the hobby.  They were about all there was around that I ever found in Central NJ too.  heh  (Oh... Tiny Tots [toy store] on Route 22 in Greenbrook had a good D&D section once upon.)

btw... there was a KayBee at that mall too where I remember getting some D&D goodies back in the day... along with the bookstores.    Amusingly, one of the bookstores with decent D&D stock was right across the way from the Game Room.  heh

Edit:  Ah... look what Google found for me... some current photos from The Game Room.  Looks like they have quite a bit of Warhammer stuff.
flickr.com/photos/thegameroomstorenj/se ... 990186307/

~Kat  ^_^