Price and reissue

[mainat]

Saw a copy of Heroquest at my local Half Price bookstore for $75 just a few days ago. Description said it was missing a couple of door bases and had a broken candlestick. Box was in good condition, didn't look inside as it requested the shopper to ask for "assistance".

[Daedalus]

The last liscensing of Hero Quest to the Brazilian company Estralia in 1994 indicates that only the figures require a GW license renewal. Hasbro's license for that edition included both Chaos Warrior and Fimir names. Chaos Warrior and Fimir art was still present, as well. The IP for the art at least was apparently bought by Milton Bradley/Hasbro. [Or, more likely, MB simply licensed directly from the artists. GW often worked with cheaper, partial licenses from freelance artists back in the day, so a new license was probably available to MB. -edit] It seems odd to me that GW would lease out the IP for the figures on a seperate license-timeline from that of the IP for the names.

I made the edit to my post on the previous page based on some interesting imformation coming out from a trial beween Games Workshop and Chapterhouse. Apparently GW used a lot of freelance-artist work in thier earlier days, and they opted for cheaper, temporary copyright liscenses from the artists that owned the IP. They were smaller back then, and probably didn't forsee a day when other companies would try to challenge thier ownership.

As Gary Chalk has testified that he never directly worked under GW and they never purchased the copyrights on any of his works, then there is a chance the old HQ art (Gary's cards and books, at least) is still available for license. Assuming MB didn't take out a more complete license, I wonder how much licensing the old art would cost today.

[bastianbux]

Saw a copy of Heroquest at my local Half Price bookstore for $75 just a few days ago. Description said it was missing a couple of door bases and had a broken candlestick. Box was in good condition, didn't look inside as it requested the shopper to ask for "assistance".

That's pretty reasonable. I actually just scored a copy for $50 (plus 10 for shipping) on BoardGameGeek a few days ago. I hope it arrives soon! It's been so long! I can't wait to get my hands on it!

About the artist for HQ... that's pretty exciting. If the artist owns the copyright (is that what you're implying?) and GW can re-licence it from him and bypass MB, we'd be set for a reissue!

[Blackthorn]

Congrats. You can still find some good deals on boardgamegeek if you're diligent.

[naf]

I used to play this game constantly when I was a kid. Was in love with it when I first saw the commercial, and found it under the Christmas tree that year. My parents generally did not give in when my brother and I asked for stuff on a whim (they prefer we earned things), but for some reason when I saw the Keller's Keep and Witch Lord expansions on the shelf, they bought them for me on the spot. I think they saw how much I enjoyed the game. A while later, I saw the Barbarian pack on the shelf, and they got that for me as well. Unfortunately (in hindsight) I got bit by the Magic: the Gathering bug pretty hard, and it was consuming 100% of my gaming time, while HQ collected dust. I ended up trading my whole HQ collection for some rare Magic cards. When you're 15, you don't think that you'll EVER want to play that old kid game again, or that it'll be worth some bucks in the future.

I'm back into board games now. I really wanted to have a copy of HQ to play with my kids, and of course my adult gaming buddies, so I tracked down a never played, but out of shrink, copy on ebay for around $100. I have no problem paying that, as the game box was in pristine condition and the components are better than if I had my old played copy (kids are pretty hard on their games!). Also, I've been selling off my Magic collection which has netted me hundreds of dollars anyway (ahhh, the gaming circle of life is now complete). Now I have a great copy that I'm going to baby. I don't have the expansions, but searching for the tiles to print lead me here. I remember the KK and Witch Lord tiles were printed on flimsy cardstock anyway, so printing them on a quality photo printer is going to be of similar quality.

The only thing that still irks me is that Barbarian pack. I'm never going to see that thing again unless I get extremely lucky at a flea market. I'm not shelling out the $500+ people are asking. And I didn't even realize there was an elf pack until recently, never saw that one at the store back in the day.