Pricing Nostalgia

Very nice...do you still have any of them? I found some very early squadron mags and 1971-72 Scale Models in an antique store...kinda sad looking at those prices now!

I get really sad looking at the prices on the merchandise now on the shelves. :{ Part of the problem is that I was buying stuff back when those old prices were current. It tends to make me hold on to my money and takes a lot of the fun out of shopping.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Yeabbut, back in those days, I was earning about 8K per year, and after rent, car and food, I didn't have too much discreationary ca$h left over. By the time I retired, I was making a lot more, and thanks to a couple of pretty good investments, managed to retire with a nice pension. Seeing a model (any model) for over seventy bucks will take the wind out of my sails, but it's the same feeling that I had back then and saw a kit that I would have liked to have that cost $20.00. Maybe that's way I still have twenty-year-old Patra paints in the workshop that I'm wringing dry.

-- John The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. . - - - Henry Kissinger

Yeah, still got a few Pactra and Testors paints with usable juice in them. I've always figured if there was a remote chance of building a kit and I had the money, buy it now. It will only be more expensive later. The way things look now adays I usually wait on things like low pressure injection and vacforms since they'll be supplanted in 10 months by a better kit.

Freewheelin' Franklin almost said: Models will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no models.

Cheers,

The Keeper (of too much crap)

I have a few that are factory printed at 19 cents on the lid, store marked down to 16 cents. Testors MM paints, at $2.35 are hmmm (little quick math in my head), 1237% higher now. Unfortunately, my paycheck hasn't gone up proportionately.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. --Leonardo Da Vinci

in article snipped-for-privacy@mb-m04.aol.com, The Old Timer at snipped-for-privacy@aol.comspamless wrote on 20/4/04 13:12:

I have quite a fue of them in my loft allong with Air Enthusiast from the early 60's ,even some of the first quarterlies plus most of air pictorial ( I think) from the 60's and 70's. I tried to gove them away a fue years back but nobody seamed to want them.

Maybe that's way I still have twenty-year-old Patra paints in the workshop

I have some Modelcolor Air Flash paints that still sound liquid when I shake them and some Red-Label the same. Anybody got a rough idea of age for these 2 types of relics?

i'm still squeezing pactra out of 70's plastic bottles.

An interesting take, with which I agree. I couldn't afford $5 kits when I was a kid, and $70 will still make me flinch, but these days I've got fifty times the disposable income, so a kit that costs ten times as much is actually more affordable.

It's also about what the hobby really costs. Let's say I spent $6.98 for an Airfix Meteor III, then purchase aftermarket landing gear and canopy and doll up the cockpit with some photo-etch for a two-seat Meteor (cost = about another $10.00) I use some decals (cost unknown, as it comes from partial sheets already used for other projects) and three or four colors of paint. Some CA and microballoons to fill the seams, and some sanding sticks to smooth out everything. Dremel time, some Future, and a matte clear coating. Net expenditure is about $20.00, for about 15 hours of hobby time. Compare with:

Golf: Even assuming you have already amortized the clubs, walk the course instead of carting, and only use three balls in eighteen holes, even a public course is going to cost you a lot more on a per-hour basis.

Skiing: Anyone bought a two-day lift ticket for $20.00 recently? I thought not.

Recreational drinking: At a cheap neighborhood bar, your $20.00 ought to get you at least mildy intoxicated for 2-3 hours, and after you sleep it off and enjoy the ensuing hangover, you might be close to a 15-hour total experience. Torturous though an Airfix Meteor might be, I think it preferable.

Recreational reading: Two good paperbacks at $8.00 each, and a recreational beverage or two, will cost about the same, and might give you a few more hours of leisure time enjoyment, but sip sip slowly!

Of course, the dynamics are a little different as the cost of the kit goes up, but despite what your closet tells you, the hobby is pretty cheap in terms of what actually gets built. The trick is not to buy kits you'll never build ;-)

Mark Schynert

I love it when some talking head for the Government holds a press conference and tells us that inflation is very low. What they carefully don't point out is that the current Government index doesn't take three major items into their calculations; Food, fuel and shelter. Whatta scam, and it's both parties taking part in it!

Bill Shuey

Mark:

You really don't want to open that bucket of worms, do you??? :-)

Bill Shuey

_ _| |_ |_ _| | | |_| "Begone Hellspawn!"

Golf

Used to Cross-country ski before I developed arthritis in my feet and knees. When I started, it was $2 per day, plus $10 for ski rental. The next year (when the owners saw how many people wanted to ski, the price tripled. I bought my own package and started skiing at municiple parks in the country. The ski center went out of business after about five years. The price of greed.

I quit serious drinking after I started having kids. Something about being a role model. Quit smoking about the same time.

I try to buy my books at used book sales or used book stores. Rather pay $.25 for a reasonably new paperback than $8.00. But then I remember the "bad old days". -- John The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. . - - - Henry Kissinger

Come on Bill! You're old enough to know that you can't believe government sources or politicians about anything.

Rick MFE

Me? I , uh, er, plan(ned) to build every kit I buy (bought)! Yeah, that's the ticket!

-- Chuck Ryan snipped-for-privacy@REMOVEearthlink.net Springfield OH

Rory, I hope you mis-typed when you put Air Enthusiast back to the '60s. I have Vol.1 No.1 and it's dated June 1971. When that title showed here I dropped Scale Modeler like a rock.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

I never drank, smoked or skiied and I did a lot of my recreational reading courtesy of my library card. Yeah, I'm cheap. ;)

Bill Banaszak, MFE

in article snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net, Bill Banaszak at snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net wrote on 21/4/04 3:51:

I will go up and look .I think it changed name at some time but i will go up and look.

Too late! And I think it's a 55 gallon drum of worms... I'll be able to build every kit I bought assuming I live into the next century

Cheers

The Keeper (of too much crap)

Bill, the term is "fiscally conservative". Cheap is when you borrow someone else's library card.

Rick MFE