Why are Resin 1/35th figures so expensive?

First off Resin is expensive and the price has gone up with the hike in oil prices.

Second Silicon is expensive.

This stuff is hand made not just cranked out by a machine so paying someone to do it adds in.

Also for clean molds and copies they need to be preasure cast and the tanks are very expensive.

Also depending on the detail and the silicon used you won't get that many good copies before you have to replace the molds, ball park figure 20 to 30.

I have been buying garage kit's that range from $30 to over $200 and have seen rare or large ones going for well over $1000.

I have in the past also done some casting in a friends garage so I have some limited experience of what goes into it.

I've also visited a shop in LA that produces studio props (TV & Movie) and replica studio scale models.

Eric... 

Resin figures = small production runs, more hand work, and more waste in the process. Bad pours, mold problems etc all add to production costs.

Injection molded = larger production runs and more efficient prodcution methods. Molds have a longer life so you get more out of them. Hence cheaper pricing.

Alpine is some of the best and you get your monies worth. As for the others, they have their pluses. Verlinden's stuff is kind of dated and really no comparison to Alpine. Good, prolific but not nearly as well done.

In all honesty you can do some amazing stuff with DML, Trumpeter or Masterbox figures and Hornet or MIG heads and produce some outstanding figure work with the look of big money figures for much less impact on the wallet.

Resin figures are too expensive for me to use, except in some limited and specific cases, and that's usually a head gettin' swapped... Even the 6-8 dollar ones...  Figures are never in the poses I want, so I chop 'em up and make 'em do what I want...  Resin figures are too expensive for that, lol... Oh, I'll break down and buy 1/48th now and then though... Ebay has figures that go pretty cheap sometimes...  I got a three-figure Desert Storm Tankers (I only wanted the CVC Helmets on the figures so I could cast my own, lol) set in 1/35th for 5 bucks once, and several 1/48th pilot/aircrew/groundcrew sets in the 8-12 dollar range...

On top of it, I don't want my dioramas to have any figures on them that are recognizable by other modelers...