How Much Should My Pax Goodies Budget Be?

IEatAss · February 2017

I currently have $700 saved up. However, I would like to purchase a Galaxy Gear S3 for myself. After purchasing that my budget will be around $400.

Is $400 good enough for a goodies budget or am I better off with the $700?

I plan on purchasing things like shirts and posters and other exclusives.

krazykid · February 2017

How much money do you have access to?

Food will cost you around $20/meal maybe more if you go somewhere nicer. So I don't know if that will come out of your goodies budget.

It all really depends on what you want to buy. Tabletop has all sorts of vendors selling board games near by. There are booths in the expo hall that sell video games at prices that you can probably buy in stores. In general $400 seems reasonable if not a little excessive to spend in the convention center minus food. Unless you're buying furniture from Geek Chic. Then you need lots of $$$.

Onmitsu · February 2017

Your discretionary budget is going to be entirely based off of what you're comfortable spending. I myself like to make it rain on the indie devs, I'll throw some money at any novel idea in the Indie Megabooth that seems cool. But those tend to be quite inexpensive. You could also buy dice, ranging from inexpensive plastic sets to hundreds of dollars on dice made from precious metals and gemstones. Just figure out what budget size you're comfortable with and do the math at the Con on what seems most worth it to you.

DanQ · February 2017

If you are asking my advice, not more than $20

divisionten · February 2017

There's. it much exclusive merch like say, Comic con. Most of it that's unusual or rare is from places like 8Bit with online shops.

theadman2315 · February 2017

what's the average price point for goods sold there? like $20?

Xenigma · February 2017

Depends purely on how much you're willing to spend. There's plenty of vendors around the floor so you can easily spend any amount you might budget, but there's typically very few items that are actually exclusive to PAX. The one shop you may want to budget specifically for is the actual PAX merch booth, and while that selection won't be released for another couple weeks or so the merch banner from PAX South 2017 should give you an idea of what to expect. If you're interested in Pinny Arcade pins you may also want to look for that announcement (again roughly two weeks from now), so you can see if there are any pins you may want to specifically budget or otherwise plan for.

Regarding your specific situation, I personally think $400 is a healthy merch budget for PAX, especially if that's purely merch and not food/drinks/etc, so if you want the phone I'd say go for it!

MephistoN7 · February 2017

$400 is plenty. I typically budget $200, and maybe spend half.

The most popular booths tend to be developer merch booths due to convention exclusive items and that their online retail sites tend to charge high shipping costs with no 'free' option the more you spend.

We laughed last year because Bethesda always rents two booth spaces: one for demos, one for merch. Their line for DOOM averaged a 1 hour wait. Their line for merch averaged 2 hours.

rascrush · February 2017

i normally budget 500.00 for food/drinks/swag so think 400 is plenty for just swag

yutani san · February 2017

I probably spend most of my money on food because its so expensive to eat there. Ive found that most collectable type swag is free anyways if you are lucky enough to be early or be there when handing out things. I would say $100-200 for just swag is plenty, and $200ish for food if you plan on eating 3 meals a day. $400 would be more than enough unless you are planning on buying some big price item.

Also, I have to laugh at the comment above for Bethesda. I wanted a dogmeat pin and I couldnt stay in that line for 2 hours. Every time I checked it was insane. I ended up offering a random girl at the front of the line a $5 commission if she bought the pin for me. I got the pin, and saved 2 hours of my life haha.

Xomas · February 2017

Normally I pick up about a half dozen shirts from vendors and and a scarf from PA. That's roughly $150. I bring my own water and snacks (a power bar or two). If you buy food, it can be pricey, so think ahead. I tend to want a better dinner because I'm not local and want a good experience so will cheap out on lunch.

But $400 should be good. Honestly you can wait on the watch until after the con in case you feel you need to go over budget.

RedK232 · March 2017

I normally do a budget for like $100-200 dollars. I dont buy food inside the con. Gonna be overpriced so i have enough snacks to last me friday-sunday without buying food when im inside. So i only thing i would spend money on would prob be maybe a new mic, like better streaming equipment. Dont need a new Webcam, Mouse, or Mousepad. Then again it all depends on what you are interested in. You can get pretty good swag for free if you know where to go.

Sterica · March 2017

Food can be cheap if you plan.

Buy a thing of bagels and breakfast is solved for like 3-5 bucks depending on your need for topping. Bring bread and peanut butter and you can solve lunch as well. Ditto for dinner, but at some point you gotta ask yourself if you really want to live off bagged lunches for your trip.

Merch depends. Pins can run from like $15 for a single to $30+ for a set. Clothes can rapidly get expensive if you want hoodies and such. Like figurines? They can cost well over 50 bucks for nice ones. The good news is that, assuming you don't live near these places, you can get cool nerdy junk without needing to pay shipping. But how much it costs is going to vary wildly based on your interests. Like, a board gamer can easily spend $200 on games and accessories. If you're into something like Warhammer then may god have mercy on your bank account.

LoonyEclipse · March 2017

400 bucks for a goodies budget seems plenty, depending on what you purchase (And since you said t-shirts and posters mainly...yeah- tees are usually 20ish bucks)

I tink my max one year was about $300 spent on goodies, but I'd planned on that- I'd picked up an Astro A30 headset that year (My old headset was shorting out, and there's always a discount on it at PAX-a good purchase, too: it lasted 5 years of good, hard use)

MephistoN7 wrote: »

We laughed last year because Bethesda always rents two booth spaces: one for demos, one for merch. Their line for DOOM averaged a 1 hour wait. Their line for merch averaged 2 hours.

Really? I found it moved pretty brisk, maybe 15-30 min...I ended up in it twice (bought my pins...and later decided to pick up a Vault-Tec hat. snagged the last one, too)

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