Kit pricing

i am with you on this!! unbelievable

Be glad you don't build 1/32 then...   today's pricing makes buying-time decisions a little easier to pass up on an item.

As my father-in-law used to remind me,  "There are no side pockets in coffins."

I'll get nine months of pleasant modeling time out of a $100 kit, so one in a year or two, what the heck?

I remember when gas was 25 cents a gallon,a pizza cost $2,bread was 30 cents a loaf,and my first brand new car cost $6000.00.EVERYTHING has gone up in cost,so it's all relative.So have our paychecks,I started my job at $ 5.36 an hr 35 years ago.If we can't afford a kit or if we don't want it bad enough,we pass on it.It's that way with all of our luxury items in life.

When I was a kid, Monogram had a line of kits called "49ers" - they  cost $0.49 each and included some pretty cool subjects.  My first "expensive" kit was the Monogram Phantom Mustang which cost something like $4.95.   I got it as a birthday present with the admonition from my father to take great care in building it because it was so expensive...

Of course back in those days every drug store had an model aisle with kits and a rack of Testors or Pactra paints.  Thousands of kids built models back in the 60's. 

IMHO the current price levels just reflect a natural progression of the hobby and the economy overall.  Certainly manufacturing costs have risen over the years while the pool of modelers has been shrinking. 

At the same time modeler's expectations have risen, driving the demand for more detailed, sophisticated state-of-the-art kits.

Just the way it is, I'm afraid.  While I never imagined spending $100 on a plastic model kit when I was growing up in the 60's, I also never thought I'd own a $10,000 car or a $100,000 house for that matter...

Mark

RedCorvette

When I was a kid, Monogram had a line of kits called "49ers" - they  cost $0.49 each and included some pretty cool subjects.  My first "expensive" kit was the Monogram Phantom Mustang which cost something like $4.95.   I got it as a birthday present with the admonition from my father to take great care in building it because it was so expensive...

Of course back in those days every drug store had an model aisle with kits and a rack of Testors or Pactra paints.  Thousands of kids built models back in the 60's. 

IMHO the current price levels just reflect a natural progression of the hobby and the economy overall.  Certainly manufacturing costs have risen over the years while the pool of modelers has been shrinking. 

At the same time modeler's expectations have risen, driving the demand for more detailed, sophisticated state-of-the-art kits.

Just the way it is, I'm afraid.  While I never imagined spending $100 on a plastic model kit when I was growing up in the 60's, I also never thought I'd own a $10,000 car or a $100,000 house for that matter...

Mark

 

 

 

couldn't have said it better

Well, lets just say that these days, my stash is not growing at the rate that it did 10 years ago. Thank goodness for the guys who dump newer released kits from their stash for a far more affordable cost at IPMS & AMPS meetings. And a member who takes care of his fellows during his business trips to the Far East....

I stopped buying plastic in 1990 and, began to use line drawings to fabricate my models. I still have a stash of Monogram kits though they will be relics for the future. I like carving just as much as building and have to say that my preasent job relied on these skills.Plastic companies just makes shorter runs of certain models to justify $100.00 kits. Great topic

Glad that I've got a big enough stash that I don't have to buy any more for quite a while, if ever. The only new kits that I have were won as door prizes at the shows. As a side note, in the late '50s when I got my first car, gas was $.32/gal. and cigs. were $.32/pack.

Jim

Its the ever increasing cost of crude oil.  Plastic is made from oil.  That's pretty much it in a nut shell.  Shop E-bay for deals.  Thats what I do.  I'd love to build that Great Wall P-61 but there is no way I will pay $100.00 bones for it.  A new tooled B-17 with an F or G option though?.............hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, might save up and by two.

Joe

3 places for ya:

Ebay

Yard Sales

Hobby Lobby w/ the 40% off coupon

I've found great deals on eBay...just have to have patience for a good deal to come along. Over the course of the yard sale season in my area, I will always find one or two that will have models. You just have to beware of the "professional" yard salers who have everything sky-high. At one sale this year during the "Yard Crawl" ( a 30-mile stretch of yard sales along a particular route) a professional was selling Revell kits at top dollar and some were overpriced. However, during that same day I found an older lady selling a 1/48 scale Pro-Modeler P-51 Mustang that her husband had started on before he passed away. He completed the first two steps, and did a great job with that, so I gladly purchased it and will finish his work someday. Also....Hobby Lobby's 40% off coupon is great. Take a $30 dollar model and whack 40% off of it and it's not so bad.

Dre

Be glad you don't build 1/32 then...   today's pricing makes buying-time decisions a little easier to pass up on an item.

O i don't know, unless you go for the high end ZM or WnW wings kits, most 32nd ones are not to bad. I don't think i ahve paid more than £50 for any of mine, and i ahve more than a few 35th armour and 72nd aircraft that cost more than that.

But the prices have certainly gone up in the last couple of years. Given the way things are going, you would think model companies would keep more of a lid on prices. Maybe they think modellers are imune to the current climate.

The Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon USED to be a good way to acquire models, but now that my local one has decreased the a/c inventory to about 10 kits, there isn't much to choose from :(

I'm relying more on local swap meets.

Mostly older kits, but can sometimes be much cheaper than buying new.

Bought some bagged ( no box ) 1/24 AIRFIX kits for $5 each at the last show. 

Unfortunately, those deals don't appear at every show.

This year the bad economy made dealers more pliable.

Only other option might be spending hundreds for kits in bulk during special sales.

Another thing that has run up the price of a lot of kits is licensing. I've noticed that Boeing, Ferrari, Dodge, Chevrolet, etc., are getting licensing royalties on kits of their products. And, consequently, the kit makers pass that cost on to us.

I no longer care what the prices are. At my age I have a lifetime supply and if I need something different as a subject, I switched to paper for the variety. Not only that but all I spent for the paper stuff was for card stock and printer ink. Also I rescale to what ever scale I choose to build in or the same one in different scales.

At $59 - $79 for the majority of their releases, WnW is actually a lot of bang for the buck. When you consider what you get - interesting subjects, flawlessly engineered kits, outstanding detail, instruction booklets that double as permanent additions to one's reference library, the best decals (OOB or AM) in the biz (and lots of 'em!), included PE detail parts, no sales tax and free shipping, then I consider their prices a bargain.

It is good therapy to vent.  But then...

For $8.00 or $9.00 one can buy a very good newly-tooled WW2 warbird in 1/72 scale from Airfix.  And they are offering some Vietnam-era jets for around the same price (See the latest FSM).  These are made in India and the quality and execution are very very good.  Which makes it even more difficult for me to reconcile Tamiya and Hasegawa charging four times as much.

There are also some very good deals on Amazon, and these offerings will sometimes change almost hour-to-hour, so it pays to make frequent return trips.  I've bought some very good (normally expensive) models at prices that still surprise me.  And - sometimes the pot is sweetened with free shipping.

That said, I still prefer to check first at my local hobby dealer and see what he can do to help.  If his prices are within hailing distance of an online hobby site, I'll go that route.  I think there is a mutual benefit to supporting these local stores - they get the business, and I get the convenience of buying some sheet styrene or Tamiya paint right now when I need it the most.  And, once in a while a model shows up at a very good price.

And, yes, I too remember all those low prices from the fifties and sixties.  I'm also earning 20 times what I was in 1970.

Agreed. Hasegawa is one of the worst price gougers among the mainstream manufacturers IMO, followed by Italeri. In the case of Italeri, many of their offerings are older, dated releases priced the same as the newest state of the art kits from other manufacturers. No thanks.

Many of the cottage industry resin kit companies charge gobsmackingly high prices for their puny little kits too. I don't bite on those either.

No bout adoubt it, prices for kits are pretty steep. But with ebay and online sales, I've managed to put together a pretty good 1/48 stash last year without paying more than $20-30 a kit. I think  I've only spent more than $30 on the Tamiya Betty and maybe the He-219.

Oh...and for armor, I don't think you can beat Dragon USA. They are always having a sale and a $100 order ships free. So, I wait til they have 4 kits I want on sale.

Eduard's "Weekend Edition" kits are a retty good bargain... Same plastic as the pricey "high-end" kits they run, but they drop the PE and give ya only one decal choice..   It's actually amazing, the difference in their kit prices of the same subject, once they get rid of the stuff a modeler should be scratch-building anyway... $20-25.00 difference in a few cases...

I hate not being able to afford the "new" kits...  If they'd just leave out the PE super-detail parts, metal gun-barrels, indy-link tracks,  and 22 different sets of decals, and ESPECIALLY the 200 page instruction book with the color glossy prints with the cirlces and arrows and a paragraph on each one explaining what each one was, they definately could move more styrene...

They're (Eduard) on to something with those that the other "Greeblie-filled" Tamigawa kit manufacturers should look into...   Let the folks who can scratch-build all the Greeblies in on the kits do so without boxing up a half-pound of brass and aluminum and adding it to a kit, and make those who "need" that crap buy it separately-bagged or after-market if they need it...

Well look who the FSM cat dragged in...

Kinda miss the ol  Hammer

hasegawa and italeri are the worst when it comes to prices. charging big $$$ for crappy old toolings. i don't mind tamiya because they actually put time into their subjects.

randypandy831

hasegawa and italeri are the worst when it comes to prices. charging big $$$ for crappy old toolings. i don't mind tamiya because they actually put time into their subjects.

The sad thing is that we won't see as many young people coming in as when we were all kids. What 10 year old has 40 bucks in his pocket for a kit, not to mention the cost of paints and glue. Only us foolish ones are willing to shell out that kind of money, but not for our kids to spend an hour builing it only to forget about it later. I remember buying kits at the local drugstore which had a selection of kits and a rack of Pactra paints. Airplane glue was kept behind the counter (to discourage all you glue sniffers!!) and usually had to have Mom or Dad get that.

I wonder if the market will survive once this generation is no longer able to build these kits.

hey Sprue-ce Goose, how are you? Any 1/24 airfix aircraft kits you bought at those prices are a steal, at 5$ each, suggest build or Ebay

Hey Jimbot58, I am doing the best I can, I bought a whole bunch of Dukes of Hazzard model car kits, before they sky rocketed and am going to sell them someday, I hope, any ways, I gave my nephews one of each, so they hopefully don't get on mom and dads nerves to much during summer break

My rant;

Lately I've been seeing these new 1/32 aircraft kits selling at $150 to 200 and up msrp.  Then directly under the ad for these, gee  you can buy am and pe for another ridiculously priced add-on.  If I initially hafta pay so much for a kit it better have EVERYTHING needed to dress it up already in the box or that puppy should fly.  I find this marketing technique appaling and it reminds me that just like everytihing else in this commercial world, those who got it , get it.