Author Topic: And The Most Expensive Expansion Is... (Read 4490 times)

Whaleyland · « **on:** April 10, 2014, 03:27:06 PM »

So, I have been wanting to crunch some numbers for a while now, and decided it was time. Which expansion is the most expansive per tile (all other factors such as wood pieces or cardboard tokens ignored)? To do this, I used the official published prices of every salable Carcassonne expansion with tiles (no Phantom, no Spielbox or RGG promos) and gridded the whole thing out. I used the original German Euro prices rather than the US prices, though it would be interesting to see if there is a difference between the two. I was a bit surprised by the findings:

The cheapest per tile expansion is, naturally, the base game, where you get 72 tiles for a measly 0.24 Euro each. The cheapest expansion is Count, King & Consort where 34 tiles cost 0.32 Euro each.

On the upper end of things, the most expansive full expansion is The Catapult, which costs 1.00 Euro per tile, a bit much for a terrible expansion. Even more expansive, though, is the promo expansion The School, which costs 1.50 Euro per tile (and there's only two!), though I guess you get a large transparameeple in this.

Remember none of these numbers take into account wood pieces, cloth bags, extra cardboard components, or promo books. This just analyzes the expansions for the amount of tiles they contain, which is really the primary reason why people buy most of these, let's be honest here.

Check below for a comparison to US prices to find a few similarities and a few differences.

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=696.0

kettlefish · « **Reply #1 on:** April 10, 2014, 04:07:57 PM »

Hi whaleyland,
I don't see the picture.
I see only a place holder for a picture... $:-\$

Whaleyland · « **Reply #2 on:** April 10, 2014, 04:27:27 PM »

Not sure why the picture's not loading for you. I'll change the file format to .jpg. It's currently .tiff.

After posting the previous image, I decided to expand the study to US releases of expansions, and found that the cheapest expansion expanded to tie Carcassonne with Wheel of Fortune. This was done more by increasing the cost of Carcassonne than decreasing the cost of WoF. I forgot to highlight the cheapest expansion, and that is Count, King & Robber, which comes in at $0.53 a tile.

The most expensive expansions tied between Abbey & Mayor and Bridges, Castles & Bazaars. This isn't too surprising since both expansions only have 12 tiles. Catapult is the slightest bit better off (ignore the number in the graph, I mistyped the number of tiles in Catapult) because Rio Grande sold it for $0.49 less than Z-Man is selling its expansions for. If Z-Man ever sells the expansion, it will likely tie with the other two expansions.

Stats for a number of expansions are missing because they are not sold individually by Z-Man and I couldn't find the old retail prices by RGG for early expansions.

Fun times!