As the holiday season approaches, I leave you with my best annual board game purchasing advice: Don’t buy board games from Amazon!
- The money you spend could be going to your friendly local game store or an friendly online game store, both of which are probably struggling.
- Amazon doesn’t know how to pack games securely. There is a very good chance that if you buy a game from Amazon, the box will arrive dented from shipping damage. You can usually ask them to replace it, but if you’re buying a gift you probably want more reliability.
- Though Amazon sometimes has the lowest price available, that isn’t always true! Board Game Atlas, a growing board game encyclopedia, has a fantastic service that tracks the real-time price of a given game across most online retailers. If you’re a savvy shopper, you can save money and still support small businesses.
- Amazon’s quality control for its sellers has gone down significantly, which means you can actually find fraudulent printings of some games on the website. That’s bad news for the developers, who don’t get paid for that copy, and bad news for you, who is now stuck with a crappier copy.
For the most part, any other retailer listed by Board Game Atlas will be a good bet. But if you’d rather shop by website rather than by game, here are a few good places to look:
- Boardlandia.com
- Gamenerdz.com
- Coolstuffinc.com
- Miniaturemarket.com
- Cardhaus.com
Meanwhile, if you prefer to shop in person, the Game Manufacturers Association has a “Friendly local game store locator” to find the best places to shop near you.