Make The Most Of Your Latinum

by Simon Plumbe

Being a Star Trek fan can be great fun, but it can prove frustrating for those on a relatively low budget who want to keep up with Star Trek merchandise. With so many items available, it can be difficult to afford to stay on top of even a couple of product ranges, let alone buy everything released. However, there are a few things you can do to make your money stretch that much further, and still build up an impressive collection of merchandise to boot...

One area that Trek fans everywhere tend to spend money on is videos. With videos costing at least £12.99 a tape, it is well worth spending time to shop around. While most retailers will stick to the RRP, there are some that tend to offer tapes at reduced prices. Also, if you are in no hurry to keep up to date with videos, stores will often have clearance sales with recent tapes available for as little as £5.99, although these are usually limited to previous seasons. At the moment, there are also a growing number of DS9 and Voyager videos appearing in clearance book stores for £2.99 each - a great way to fill in some gaps in your collection.

In many cases, retailers are keen to clear out all their VHS stocks, knowing full well that their sale value will drop to almost nothing once the DVDs are released and with Deep Space Nine due to hit DVD in February 2003, that could be the ideal time to pick up some incredible bargains if you are still using VHS.

For Star Trek books and novels, for a long time it was nigh on impossible to get books cheaply without looking to the second hand market, partially due to the Net Books Agreement which prevented books from being sold below their cover price in the UK (which was there to protect small book stores and to allow them to compete equally with the larger chain stores). However, for the last few years, there has been a growing market for discount book stores and many of these stock a range of older Star Trek novels and large format books at some great prices, often saving more than 50% on the cover price. Granted, the choice on offer is somewhat limited, but if you only buy the occasional novel, then this is a great way to boost your collection.

At the same time, every year, the range of Star Trek calendars from Pocket Books seems to grow in popularity, but even here there is an opportunity to save money. Here, it all depends on whether you want the calendars to use as a calendar, or if you are just interested in it as a Star Trek collectible. If the latter applies, then if you are willing to wait until around January or February, you'll find most SF stores reducing their prices significantly. The longer you wait, the more the prices will drop. A perfect example I found a few years ago was when I managed to pick up several calendars in the 1997 range in June of that year for just 50p each!

Magazines also offer opportunities for some bargain buys. With a lot of major newsagents and supermarkets, they will often reserve magazines for customers. For whatever reason, some of these are never collected and the stores are left with old magazines that are now out of date. These will usually end up in reduced sections where you can pick up a lot of titles for less than half their original price. For a long time, while I was collecting the Star Trek Fact Files, I waited until issues appeared in this way and I was able to pick up about 20-30 assorted issues over a period of time for around 50p each!

Trading cards are another minefield for fans. While they may seem initially inexpensive, if you work out just how many packs you'd really need to buy to get a complete set, you'd never think about buying them again. Unless you are desperate to collect the full sets (including all the sub-sets and chase cards) you would be better off going to a specific trading card dealer, most of whom will will sell pre-sorted full sets of the basic cards for around £10 each. Single chase cards can be purchased separately to complete your set if you wish, but you'll be able to get the full basic set for the cost of half a dozen packs.

Alternatively, if you buy the cards by the box, you should be able to get yourself a full set of the basic cards, several chase cards, plus enough spares to make almost two complete spare sets that you could sell to friends or possibly trade-in to a dealer. It's not a cheap way of doing things, but it works. I bought a box of the Star Trek Season Two cards from a dealer a few years ago for about £50 and as well as a basic set and most of the main sub-set, I also got several foil chase cards (that dealers were selling for around £5 a card), plus TWO autograph cards worth about £30 each! Not a bad deal, really!

Naturally, the same principle could be applied to those of you who collect CCGs - rather than buying an endless supply of booster packs, by purchasing pre-sorted sets of common and uncommon cards at relatively affordable prices, you are then just left with the rare cards that you could pick up as and when you can afford them.

Then we have the never ending range of Star Trek games for the PC and consoles. Despite the appeal to Star Trek fans, most game stores will reduce titles once they have been available for a few months, or they end up into special deals where you can get discounts for buying more than one game. It's safe to say that over the years, I've seen pretty much every Star Trek game ever released be reduced in price this way and you could save vast sums if you don't want to buy games as soon as they are released. Alternatively, if you wait six months to a year after they are first released, many get re-released on budget labels or in compilations so if you don't mind, it can be worth holding out...

Finally, try to make use of online auction sites like eBay - you'd be amazed at the range of merchandise you can pick up at great prices. In many cases, if you leave bidding to the last minute you can get all sorts of wornderful items at great prices (even the items we have been selling on eBay have sold for significantly less than market value for Star Trek collectibles). One of the best deals I have made included a bundle of about 30 pieces of software for just £10!! Even with the postage costs, it's still a bargain!

Well, I'm sure you can think of other ways of saving money when adding to you Star Trek merchandise collection - these are just a few of the more obvious ways to save a few pounds. Just remember, whether you pay the full price for your collection or get everything at bargain basement prices, enjoy your hobby!