📦 Game Expansion Cost Tracker

Enter your base game's price and add each expansion you own (or want) to see your total investment in that game.

Base game price ($)

What the total covers

One base price, one row per expansion, and a single running sum. Nothing is weighted or discounted:

total investment = base game price + sum of every expansion price

The Catan example loaded by default is $50 for the base, $30 for Seafarers and $35 for Cities & Knights, so $115.00. That is the number worth noticing: $65 of it, 57%, is expansions, and the box on the shelf cost less than half of what the game has taken. Add Expansion drops in a $25 placeholder to test the next one before you buy it.

Getting an honest figure

Price the ones you want, not only the ones you own. Pricing the two you are eyeing shows what committing to a long expansion line really costs.
Promos and upgrades count too. A metal coin set or an organiser insert is money spent on that game; add a row for it.
Blank prices read as zero, so an expansion you were given can stay in the list as a $0 row without inflating the total.
Take the total into the cost per play calculator. $115 across 40 plays is $2.88 a play, and that only holds if the expansions were in the box for most of them.

Expansions resell badly on their own, because the buyer needs the base game already. A complete set usually sells as one lot for something near a single strong base-game price, so treat the total here as what you have spent, not what you could recover.

Frequently asked questions

How much do board game expansions cost?

Small boxes run about $20 to $30, and big-box expansions often cost nearly as much as the base game. Two of them can more than double the outlay, as the $50 base and $65 of expansions in the default list show.

Are board game expansions worth buying?

Only if they get played. An expansion that sits in the shrink adds to what the game cost while adding nothing to the plays you divide by, which pushes the cost per play in the wrong direction.

Should I buy the base game or a big box first?

Base first, every time. Expansions assume the base rules and add teach time to a game your group may not want twice.