I wanted to share a notion with others for player feedback on a solution I'm considering for my own expansions. A lot of our custom made expansions can include new Purchase Cards or variations on standard ones. These have always had two challenges:

1. The Land has no place where they are listed for sale.
2. If a place exists where they would be sold, no price is known for them.

There are two ways to provide this information (sans editing the board by a card or overlay). The needed information is placed:

1. on each Purchase card, or
2. collectively on and accessory card/sheet, such as a rules card.

Both are fine, though the rules card approach doesn't solve secondary conflicts. If more than one expansion is added, the first expansions rules card "price list" doesn't include Purchase cards from the second (etc.) expansion(s). I've tried the price list approach with a couple of play test groups using multiple fan expansions and this problem quickly became evident. Plus, whether organizing the price list by card type and subtype, Location where available, and or price, the information's organization was never completely satisfying.

So I started turning back toward the information being placed on the card itself. But what and where? Below is a rough idea I came up with...

The card is at 1/2 resolution; right-click and View or Save to see it full sized. I used the emblem from the Purchase card's back with vector masking and layer effects to create a gold coin. It still needs some work. Standard locations where available are listed on the card's bottom; this area could also be used to designate non-standard spaces or cards where a special Purchase cold be acquired. Typically locations should be kept to no more than 2 (max. 3) based on room on the card and/or over-availability.

A better approach for design would be to use a mirror of the right bottom corner, perhaps with a gold background instead of the yellow jewel (under the Order Number) to show the price in gold. But simply duplicating that corner and mirroring it produces internal bevels and shadows (not external shadows) that are in the wrong direction by 40 to 60 degrees. It looked aweful. I may still try some graphics hacking later to rework the shadowing, but for now, what you see above is what I've come up with. Let me know your thoughts for adjustments or any other considerations overlooked.

I think these are great ideas JC and looking forward to seeing what comes out of it

However, I think that one problematic issue may be valid here: there are some cards or instructions that allow you to draw a card from a purchase deck (both by choosing and at random) and I think that these instructions will become overpowered if you introduce more powerful items / friends (e.g. mule) to this deck. Hence, I'd suggest creating another Purchase Deck, which would be identical to the standard one but it wouldn't undergo the abovementioned rules.

I hope I'm clear enpugh on this idea

Apart form this, the rest seems to be quite nice and interesting. Keep up the good work!

Okay, let me see if I follow you on this.

Some of my original Adventure cards for In the Balance had places where a random Purchase card was drawn for so called treasure or booty. Usually they were Place cards similar to Cave, which only offers gold, but mine offered occasional random draws of a Purchase instead. Is this the kind of situation your refer to? Are there standard commercial cards that do this as well, ones I'm not aware of or am overlooking?

The particular card above isn't what I'm concerned about most, but now that it comes up, I wouldn't mind hearing more in conjunction with the issue of Purchase cards drawn as booty/treasure in a choice or random draw. The original ITB had some extra versions of standard Purchase cards to be used as random Purchase deck, vs on organized for direct Purchase. Later feedback from players showed that most groups didn't like either randomizing their standard Purchase deck or having to manage two separate ones.

In the coming 2.0 version, I had planned to remove most random draw of Purchase cards for a number of reason based on player feedback. If there are standard commercial cards or other game components that use a random draw of a Purchase card, let me know. This may lead to reconsideration, aside from the small additions to custom Purchase card templates I'm raising here. Tell me more.