Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne looks tariffs getting real, and reports on his Free Comic Book Day.

We're starting to see some effects from tariffs, especially on supplies.  Arriving restocks of Ultra PRO Standard 2.5" x 3.5" Soft Sleeves, commonly referred to as "penny sleeves," will now cost $1.22 per pack, quite a jump from the previous price of $.54 to $.57 a pack, a price increase of about 125%, certainly rendering the penny sleeve designation as moot.  Now the question is: raise the price on supplies to a figure whereby the store makes its standard margin, or add the tariff amount to the current retail price and treat it as a tax?

Although claims have been made that container ships have stopped unloading at ports on the West Coast, including one widely shared photo stating ships have stopped unloading at the Port of Seattle, such claims are, shall we say, overblown to say the least.  For the first quarter, the number of ships unloading in Seattle was actually slightly up in numbers from 2024, although in some cases, the amount of freight can be 30% less than expected for the ship involved.

Of course, given the two to four weeks it takes for a freighter to cross the Pacific from China, those ships arriving now may have left pre-tariff and we may see a significant drop in shipments arriving if more companies take their cue from The Op and Cephalofair Games and send shipments back to their point of origin (see "The OP May Send Fifteen Containers of Games Back to China"), or store them in China hoping that the situation changes.

Since the "de minimus" exemption expired last week, a look at their websites show online fast fashion retailers Temu and Shein are approaching the import taxes differently.  Temu has apparently moved a lot of product to stateside warehouses and shows these "local" items, that avoid the tariff, first when a customer searches on the side.  Shein, meanwhile, apparently has little to no U.S. presence and has chosen to include the tariffs in its displayed costs, not breaking them out for consumers as Amazon had considered doing.

On a happier note, Free Comic Book Day took place this last weekend.  Though traffic was steady here all day, we had no lines waiting to get into the store as we have seen in past years, with only two people waiting at the door when we opened.  The drizzle and threatened thunderstorms may have accounted for that, as well as the drastic drop in costumed customers.  Though the Marvel and DC books were popular as always, I was rather surprised to see the popularity of the Black Mirror book from Twisted Comics as it was the first book of which we ran out.  Our figures showed sales up about 20% from 2024 but down the same amount from 2023, with about half the people coming into the store just scooping up the freebies.

How was your FCBD?  Any thoughts on impact of the tariffs?  Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.