Grizabella said:
Oh my gosh, Simsy! Doesn't he know that Tarot decks are twice as expensive in Australia as they are here?
Most common, in-print decks will cost you around $35 off the shelf.
When I buy from TG, the listed prices are a bit less (but much more than half, usually) but the currency conversion makes them similar or even higher. Then there's freight. I don't mind, though - I don't know a single physical shop here where I can wander in and browse on their shelves amongst thousands of decks, and which have six of the cards helpfully pulled out of the shrink-wrapping so that I can see more of the art than I can on a sealed box in a local shop.
And I find if I don't buy decks one by one but save my money (and my desire) and buy three, four or even five in a single hit, yes, the freight costs go up, but it still works out cheaper than having them freighted separately.
And you get to choose between so many decks.
And you get to see several of the cards, impossible in sealed mint-condition decks.
I still *do* like to buy the odd deck from Gnostic Forest - after all, I was one of their regular Tarotistas for many years and I'm fond of the place and the people - but in recent years she seems to have developed a distressing tendency to cover her divination shelves with Angel, Fairy, Angel, Dragon, Angel, Rainbow, Angel Dolphin, Angel and Doreen Virtue decks. I have a weak immune system - there's a limit to the amount I can take of glitter, pastel rainbow colours, translucent wings, white togas and complete lack of acknowledgement that life can at times be difficult and challenging.
The amusing thing is, this appears to be a lucid commercial decision: of the partnership, the daughter reads with a battered Morgan-Greer, and the mother with one of the darker-hued Thoths (it's no longer in a box so I can't tell you, sorry). Every time I get an international parcel, starting way-back-when, when I first lost my virginity getting the Tarocchi del Vetrate, I've taken my new acquisitions in, and there's been much oo-ing and ah-ing, but when I suggest they may like to stock them, they say "it's not commercial".
<sigh>
If I had to run a similar business there'd definitely be a place for repeat-sellers, but I'd also have a catalogue of serious decks as well, decks with street cred. One of each of 10 or 15 titles on the shelf, and when one sells, rather than replacing it with the same deck, buying another *good* deck to replace it with so that the window-shoppers and occasional customers get to know they can rely on the place to stock Interesting Things.
Fantasy-land. For now, perhaps.