Hello Retro fans! We are going through a restructuring process here at Retro Mini Store and the first big action we are taking is removing free access to digital collections when you make a physical purchase. We started to offer this late last year as a stop gap for the Post Office’s shortcomings. We’ve had a number of packages lost, undelivered and returned to us, and many customers would be waiting weeks for their purchases in that mixture of Post Office defunding by the Federal Government due to the elections and pandemic issues with most of it’s aging workforce not being able to work.
Now things seemed to have improved, even though we still have the package lost here and there it is not with the same frequency that it was in 2020. So now, since our customers don’t need to wait that long for their packages to arrive, and also most of our customers did not took advantage of the free digital offer anyways, we’ve decided to not offer it anymore. It was ultimately causing confusion, so we’ve decided to not do it anymore.
You can still purchase collections in both Digital and Physical format, but from now on, these purchases are separate. If you are looking to buy both physical and digital versions of the same collections at the same time, please contact us, and we will give you a discount for doing so, at the same time.
Price Reductions Across the Board
With the pandemic also came the issues on the supply chain. We are not yet 100% out of the water yet on that, but we’ve seen that stocks for microSD cards have become stabilized, although we don’t see the sales on these items that we’ve seen before that allowed us to pass on the savings to our fans, however, it is on a level now that we can roll back some prices to the pre-pandemic standards, so you’ll see 128GB cards costing at least $5 less than before, as well as 256GB cards for $10 less and 400GB cards for $20 less.
We are having some issues with paper recently however, and the cost of ink to print the covers raised a bit, but those are not impacting the prices much, only causing a few delays because sometimes we have the cards ready to be shipped but we can’t print the covers for the boxes. Removing all the covers altogether is something we are considering, but we know our fans love these DVD boxes with the collectible covers, they look good on any shelf and makes our microSD cards a bit more collectible than others.
Hard drives and mini consoles are still a bit more complicated to get, even though you can find drives now at Best Buy, only the models lover than 2TB are common, and the prices are still high on those parts, so we don’t see a price reduction on drives on the horizon. Hard drives in special, take several days to be prepared, and the cost of Power to do so is also impacting my personal bottom line, so we unfortunately can’t reduce prices on these yet. We are also not going to be offering any discounts on Hard Drives until next year probably, if any from now on. The same for mini consoles.
Future Sales on the Store
We’ve conducted a Flash Sale then a Fire Sale last week, and we think this was the last sale of the year. We typically don’t offer discounts on Thanksgiving and Christmas anyway, so don’t expect any more discounted items anytime soon (we warned you!). The regular price reductions we mentioned above are the only reductions you are seeing, and those happened now. Again, don’t expect another Fire Sale, or Flash Sale anytime soon.
Thematic Collections Pulled
We must admit, the interest in our Thematic Collections were non-existent for the most part. Other than an inquiry here and there by e-mail, we’ve had not Pre-Orders, and now that the collections are out of pre-order and ready for purchase, we’ve had not orders for 2 weeks. Such poor performance made us pull the cord on these collections also. They will no longer be offered for Physical or Digital purchase, instead, we are preparing them to be uploaded to the server exclusively for Yearly Subscribers of our Full Digital Access. If you are not a subscriber yet, you are missing! Click here to subscribe to our Full Digital Access for 1 Year.
Full Digital Access
And talking about the full digital access, we are also working on revamping this service a little bit on the very near future. The first change was mentioned above: Exclusive content to the Full Digital Access, coming in the next couple of weeks. Content that will not be offered on Physical Media, or for purchase individually as digital downloads. Only to subscribers of the service will have access to stuff like that.
But that will not be restricted only to Raspberry Pi images. We are going to expand the service to add PlayStation 1 & 2 ISOs, Dreamcast ISOs, and tons of game packs to be used on your projects, including RetroBat and LaunchBox for the Windows 10.
We are also going to offer a monthly payment option, with recurring payments. Details coming soon!
For those that subscribe to this service, we will also offer an exclusive e-mail newsletter that will present you with all new changes and what you can expect coming up on the server. New uploads, tips and tricks and everything else you might need to enjoy this service. Current subscribers will be enrolled automatically.
So, it is important to stress that, if you are a current subscriber, you’ll get all these benefits now! If you have not subscribed yet, please do so to start enjoying all this!
Well, that is all we wanted to say for now. We will be in touch, and if you are a subscriber of our newsletter, you’ll be the first to know.
Thanks again for all your support.