I bought a yoyofactory Supernova today, but I didn’t know what to tell my mom when she asked why it costs so much. So I have been wondering why they cost as much as they do. Does anyone know why?
Splash pattern anodizing, precision machining, beadblasting, and stuff like that.
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raw material cost, machining cost, and profit cost. I don’t think many companys get compensated this well but if a yoyo cost 25 bucks to make, then they would like to sell it at around 50, which then the retailers would want to sell it for 100.
Many if not all smaller companys don’t make that good of profit.
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The real reason we have $120 yoyos is because there are enough people willing to pay $120 for a yoyo.
That said, I am really curious what the costs really are. I would like it if someone with real, actual knowledge would share a break down of the manufacturer cost (not retail cost) as a percentage. Like 40% for material, 20% machining, 20% anodizing, etc…
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Thank you for replying.
Well for one a lot of yoyos are made in America by relatively small companies.
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Absolutely not. I’m pretty sure its around $10 machining, $15 bead blasting, $10-15 anodizing and about $5 for everything else. Plus, they have to sell it wholesale to stores to make money.
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Probably because yoyofactoryben wants a new beemer… 
The reality - These are mostly small companies making small runs of niche products with little potential for the economy of scale that could be realized if the product were mass produced on a much larger larger scale. In other words they have less final product to spread the costs over and make a reasonable profit.
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Having done the whole 9 yards myself, I can give a pretty accurate rundown of EVERYTHING.
first- $35 for bare halves (made in USA). these are raw halves that have been machined and tapped.
next- $5-$10 for blasting + anodizing. This can vary a lot depending on how complex the anodizing is. some of the colorways out there right now cost 25-30 ea. (like bip-bop)
finally- Axle, bearing, silicone, packaging. all together, a mid-range estimate would be around $3.
All together let’s call that $45. You can expect the vendor to want nearly keystone margins, so let’s say you want retail to be $110; if they want $45 of that, you’d be selling to the retailer for $65.
The retail price gets pretty high very quickly, as you can see.
Also, the larger your run, the cheaper your prices. I wouldn’t be surprised if YYF can make these premium, $100 chinese metals for under $20 simply because they make so many.
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Looks like I was on the more expensive side.
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Our lowest priced metal yoyo (POPstar) is also close to our largest volume metal yoyo and it is produced in the USA… Go figure :o
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Thanks for responding.
The reason why MagicYoYos are so cheap is because they own ten freakin’ CNC lathes to their disposal, compared to OneDrop who doesn’t even have access to a single CNC lathe occasionally.
small diameter/small width= very little waste…
Also, with the diameter being 1.73, you deliberately got that down to the next smallest 6061 rod to keep the price low(1.75)… That was no coincidence
Pretty sure onedrop owns multiple CNC Machines
yo-yos are magically sent from the sky to certain people/companies to sell and it all depends on what time they get it.
12:00-1:59=$4-$7
2:00-3:59= $8-$15.99
4:00-6:59= $16-$24.99
7:00-8:59= $25-$50
9:00-10:59= $51-$90
11:00-11:59= $100+
They get better as the night go’s on and the person/company selling the yo-yo needs to judge it on it’s performance and all that other stuff people said.
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That doesn’t make sense. Isn’t there a saying that “The early bird catches the worm?” Ice wines are like that too, you need to wake up very early to pick the most perfectly-frosted grapes to produce the highest quality wines.
I’m sure 90% of the people on this forum don’t actually know jack about all that putting out top of the line product on a regular basis entails, myself included(not to call anyone out specifically, but that dude that’s “been through the whole 9 yards”, I think put out one yoyo that didn’t see a full-size run). I’d just leave it at, if you can appreciate it, get it, if not, buy a YYJ Classic or a Duncan Freehand and call it good.
For a good long while One Drop was the ONLY yoyo company doing in-house machining.
I don’t make habit of eating worms or yo-yos. No but seriously one cannot question the ‘Yo-Source’…