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Feb 19, 2013 -- 8:59AM, Crenshaw13 wrote:

Feb 19, 2013 -- 7:42AM, 3rdEyeFrog wrote:

WOW!!!  0ED wood-box with all books and dice!!!  I will definitly buy this!!!

I'd like to see a confirmation that it really will be a wooden box. WotC doesn't state that in the listing, and a wooden box would be a big feature to talk about. It *looks* like a wooden box, but it could easily be chipboard with a wrap.  At 150 bucks, I'd guess a wooden box is possible, but they also just charged $50 for little ol' Unearthed Arcana. My personal opinion is that it will not be wooden, but hope I'm wrong!

Agreed. I'd feel a lot better if the preview even mentioned the box, and the whole thing didn't looks so obviously photoshopped. 

After sleeping on this I'm less sold.
The books are the main selling feature. Six half-sized 60-odd paged books. There's not that many more total pages than your average hardcover book, but with far cheaper binding costs. No fancy covers, gilded pages, or even colour art just folded and stapled. Given the price of the Dragonborn and Tieflings books $10 per book would be fair. So half the price is the box, but that's not what's being sold. The description doesn't mention the box, or dice, or other features. Those could be subject to change. 
But ignoring because you can envision the thought process. The booklettes themselves are hard to make fancy without changing their formatting. So the best way to make them a "premium" reprint is to make the box fancy. 

One of the neat things of the premium reprints is giving people nice new copy of an old book they have nostalgia for, possibly with superior binding. Quite often the reprint is more expensive than a second-hand copy on Amazon or eBay. 
But the same cannot be said for the original White Box. It's too expensive and rare to find used copies. This might very well be the only time people will be able to see and hold those booklettes. But they won't because it's freakin' expensive. I can't drop $200 for this, even as a lovely piece for my shelf. It's tempting but I'll have too many other expenses, especially around the release date (aka just before the holidays).

It woud be nice to have two versions of this. Ones boxed in a plain yet solid cardboard box (like that of the Red Box), an affordable version for people who just want a copy. And then you have the super-deluxe version for people who want the extra fancy version.
I imagine a compromise would be PDFs for the books. I should be able to get them printed at Staples for cheap enough. 

@Plaguescarred Is the new OD&D Premium Box made of Wood ?
@mikemearls Yes, it is wooden.