GREEN BAY, Wis. — The last time Pat Fuge thought this much about shipping containers, he was in a whole different line of work.

What You Need To Know

  • Retailers say some board games are hard to get

  • A shortage of shipping containers, backed up ports and increasing freight costs are among the reasons

  • Consumers seeking board games are encouraged to shop early for the holidays​

“When I was in the service and I was in logistics,” the owner of Gnome Games in northeast Wisconsin said. “Even then it was a matter of, 'How many are we going to leave behind? Where are we going to get them?' It was never, ‘Are we going to get them?’”

Now many of his games are shipped in those big metal containers which can be hard to get these days due to demand, delays at ports and increasing freight costs.​

“I don’t know exactly what we’re going to have on our shelves come Black Friday because we know we have products on order but we don’t know if they're going to show up,” he said.

Games are among an ever-changing list of consumer goods that may or may not be in stock. Think back to toilet paper in the early days of the pandemic to bicycles that may not show up in stock for months.

Cathy Shiner was among a group of people learning to play chess at Gnome Games recently.

She never expected to see the words “board game” and “shortage” in the same sentence.

“Our kids are big gamers so we’d heard they were having trouble getting a couple of games,” she said. “They went to Gen Con in the middle of September and there was not the amount they were usually use to seeing.”

Fuge, who was teaching the chess session, said at times even chess boards have been in short supply.

He said there are parallels between chess and the global shipping situation.

“What’s going to happen three months down the road and trying to anticipate where both where the market is going to be … and what products we’re going to be able to have available,” Fuge said.