Looking for SFB dice

Finman · Post by **Finman** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:30 pm

Now that I'm getting back into the SFU with federation Commander, I am nostalgic for some of the old SFB dice I used to have waaaayy back in my Volume I/II/III SFB days. (These were the once with a symbol instead of one of the pips - there were different color dice for each faction. Like these:)

To that end, I'm looking to acquire several sets of these dice if anyone has them. (Klingon, Romulan, Lyran, Gorn, Orion (?), ISC, Federation) Please let me know. I have a ton of trade items, plus cash via PayPal.

Thanks,
Finman

Sean Xor · Post by **Sean Xor** » Mon Apr 14, 2014 12:36 am

Is there any way those can get made again? I would totally buy them.

DNordeen · Post by **DNordeen** » Mon Apr 14, 2014 1:14 am

I'm constantly trolling ebay for these dice

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:15 am

The next best thing are colored dice from Dollar Tree.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 3:42 pm

Those were made by TFG 20 years ago. They didn't sell wortha darn and we used up the barrel of them TFG left behind in boxed games, running out of them 8 years ago.

I have no idea who made them or who could make something like them now, but if you guys find me a source that would make a reasonable quantity I will get a quote. The problem is that I have never found a source that didn't want to make like 10 Bazillions of them as a minimum order, which is too much money to invest in something we already know won't sell in any quantity and we'd end up using them as regular dice in boxed games, and regular dice cost 1/5 as much.

werdegast · Post by **werdegast** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 4:47 pm

http://crystalcaste.com/custom.htm has very good prices.

From their site:

16mm 6-sided dice
25 dice: $1.00
26 - 99 dice: $0.75
500-999 dice: $0.42
100 - 199 dice: $0.60
200-499 dice: $0.50
1000+ dice: Ask us!

Post by **Steve Cole** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:48 pm

Those are good retail price, but not so good wholesale. We couldn't get anybody to pay 50c a die for those and I'm not seeing a potential market. The hand labor invovled in filling orders would mean we lost money on every die we sold.

But, it's something to look into, sometime. I have tons of things I could do if I had one more spare day. But do you really want me to delay every product on my plate (FC TacMan, ACTASF 1.2, Fighter Ops 2014, CL49, Fed Admiral) for every idea that comes along?

DNordeen · Post by **DNordeen** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 2:53 am

werdegast · Post by **werdegast** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 3:47 am

True. Custom Dice should be last on the list.

FC TacMan on top

Finman · Post by **Finman** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 4:57 am

Thanks everyone for weighing in. (And thank you werdegast for the link to Crystalcaste - I'll look into that. I'll also see if I can troll for some decent artwork to put on the dice should I go that route.)

Steve Cole - Though it would be nice to see the dice again, I completely understand where you guys are coming from on the business side. Please focus on the profitable items, and the nostalgic fans will find another way for dice acquisition.

Back on topic - does anyone actually have sets of these that they are willing to trade / sell?

Finman

Post by **Steve Cole** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 3:01 pm

The graphics for the kind of dice TFG did aren't that hard to do. In theory somebody could send me a Wednesday request and I could whip up one of them and give Crystal Cast permission to sell the dice to anyone. WAIT, not sure that's legal under the Paramount contract. Nope, it's not. Shucks.

I'd love to do any product but look at the scale of the thing.

Say you were going to recreate the TFG first series dice. Two Feds (arrowhead and ship), two Klingon, two romulan.

That's six dice. To get let's say 25 sets is 25 x $1 x 6 = $150.

Not bad until you remember we couldn't sell these things for half of that cost.

Say you could get 1000 for 0.36. Thats $360, times six. Even that is a lot of money to invest on something that will cost us more than 0.14 to pull and ship.

Say I could work up something and buy 10 sets of three dice, costing the company $30 and an hour of my time. Would anybody pay $5 for the set of three?

MRUAcct · Post by **MRUAcct** » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:26 pm

UPDATED:

Dice sold to SFB collector.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Tue Jul 17, 2018 7:08 pm

Thousands were sold. Maybe 10,000 of each. We ended up using them in games to replace regular dice. Not worth anything as collector items. Somebody at a convention might trade you other dice for them.