The best way to tell a manufacturer that their prices are to high is to vote with your dollars. Dont buy the kit! And if you have the time write them and tell them in no uncertain terms you will NOT buy their over priced kits. Jeff
If you looked through my collection you'd find remarkably few 'new' kits. I prefer to scrounge around and wait for Squadron to lower prices below the MRSP.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
With less work and less money available in the global economy generally, I am guessing that "retro-modelling" as I call it will become the next big thing. Seek out and build those awful models we didn't know how to build as a kid.
(kim)
The economy is speaking for us. Although I never understood paying $100+ for any model, anyway...
...so...you've never built R/C, then?..
A long time ago the plant manager stopped by my table in the lunch room because he saw my SAM laying there in front of me. He wanted to talk planes but he was disappointed to find I built statics. He liked to build and fly R/C. He found it daring. I commented that that was a very large investment in time and money that could and often did crash. "That's the thrill of it!" he replied. And this guy was in charge of our plant. I wonder if he got as many thrills when the plant dipped.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
I pick up most of mine off auction as stashes get hit by the recession. Got a Dragon 1:48 Bachem Natter kit for less than 40% retail. I have never seen so much PE in one kit :-)
T>treadhead wrote:
Nope. Wanna pay my grocery bill so I can fly one? :-P
There has been a factor of ten inflation since I was a young, beginning modeler. Now, there WERE flying model kits for ten dollars then, but the most expensive solid model kits (non-flying display scale) were about five dollars. So $100 does appear to be in excess of inflation.
However, the better kits today have FAR more detail than even the best kits of my childhood era. Admittedly it was hard to get cockpit detail into a solid hunk of balsa or basswood.
I remember the first plastic kits. They had a pilot figure instead of a detailed cockpit. The engine was often molded into the fuselage sides. Many did not include landing gear- the kit came with a stand and model was to be displayed "gear up." But then, with sixty years of technology improvement we should be getting better kits.
I consider 50 buck kits in line with inflation. Hundred bucks or more per kit are not, unless there is some super detailing and a very large size. I don't buy many hundred buck kits (I have bought ONE- the 1:350 carrier Lexington.
Of course, speaking of ship models, those wooden European kits are overpriced far beyond anything in plastic. Most of them are pretty junky, even if they sell for four or five hundred bucks!
...I'll bet he liked to play roulette, too.
I've still got all my R/C gear with the exception of a viable radio. And an unbuilt 1/5 scale Me 109G-6 to get round to.
...that's like asking to dance wit someone's date.
I've had some of Sam Cooke's "Saturday night" dates...if you wanted to ask Lurch to dance, I wouldn't have been insulted :-P
The most I ever spent on an airplane kit was $47 for a Mach 2 B-45. The most expensive styrene car kit was $42 for a '67 Lincoln at a show. Mind you, that was in '87. While I'd really love a '65 Chrysler 300 they're now going for close to $250; $300 for the promos. Most expensive resin car is the '56 Lincoln I just got from Modelhaus ($97) and I can't do that again in this lifetime without winning a lottery.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
...I think I'm supposed to pick...not the date-er...ee...
...brighten the corner, where you are...
...hmmnn...with or without aftermarket stuff? Somewhere in the $80-90 range is what I think I've put out for most of my recent 1/32 kits, but I know I must have spent three figures base price on some plastic kit sometime...but I can't recall just which one...most likely a Trumpeter one. Or two. Or three...
...with after market additions, yeah - I've spent three figures into a plastic kit many times over. Starting with my 1/32 Tamiya F-14s.
But far and away the most I can think to project on how much I'll eventually sink into one kit has to probably be my Trumpeter 1/32 Su-27. Probably have about $250+ into that one before I'm done. I think the F-100 and/or the F-105G will come in somewhere behind that.
And I STILL seem to keep buying guitars...
the animal house scene comes to mind.
I graduated from the same high school as Belushi - he graduated the year before I started, but his brother Billy was there while I was attending...but that was before John got famous, and we all just thought Billy was "odd"...years later we found out he was mimicking John.
Wonder whatever happened to Billy...don't hear anything about him.
jim's around.
Yeah - he was taking skydiving lessons down at Cal City a few years ago, and his instructor was an acquaintance of mine. I wanted to run into him and just give him a shout-out from the home town, but I was never able to run into him.
According to someone
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
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