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Is it just me being cheap? or have Armor models really gotten expensive? i just got the new Squadron catalog 60 dollars for a kit seems like a lot of money to me. Its probably just me being cheap and old........

The new uber kits are in the $50-60 range, but they have all sorts of new fangled doo-dads included and slide molding technology, etc.

But old kits from the 70s and 80s are being reissued at prices in the $30+ range as well.

- Sabot

The new uber kits are in the $50-60 range, but they have all sorts of new fangled doo-dads included and slide molding technology, etc.

But old kits from the 70s and 80s are being reissued at prices in the $30+ range as well.

You mean the kits that we thought were getting expensive when the 'uber kits' jumped from $2.50-$3.00 to $7.50 -$10.00 in the mid seventies?

I remember my first Tamiya tank. It was the year 1972 and it was the wired remote control 1/35th SU-100. It had the push button box and real rubber bands tracks.

It was under $7.00 and the reason I remember that is I paid for it all in coin from my plastic bank I saved from my lunches every week.

THAT was a long time ago.



Jeff

Hi Folks!

If I remember right, my first tank kit was the old Revell M4 Black Majic kit which sold for a $1.50. Back in the days when the price was marked on the box by the kit maker.

Some of my VERY old history.
Sgt, Scouts Out!

I remember those days too. Prices printed right on the box from the manufacturer! My very first tank kits my Mom purchased from SS Kresske (Spelling?) it was a spin off from K-Mart.

Anyway, she bought me the Aurora kits and I know those had to be about $2.25 back then because the Tamiya's were twice that amount.


Jeff

Consider that such kits are generally made of plastic, and plastic's made from - you guessed it - increasingly expensive petroleum.

That's so true. I think gas was around 60 cents a gallon when I first started driving. And that was for leaded.


Jeff

While I agree that kit prices are effected by oil prices, it is not in the raw materials. It effects it in the area of transportation costs. Our Lindberg, Monogram, Aurora, Hawk, Revell and other US manufacturers transported the product from NY, CA, IL, etc.

Today, all kits come here from Europe and the Far East. That increases the overall cost.

Buying from overseas sellers like Hobby Link Japan or Lucky Models can cut the cost. Of course, the cheapest shipping rates mean a one month delivery time via ship.

Another part of cost can be the US distributor. There is at least one distributor that seems to double kit prices once they take over a line.

Aye,

the price for polystyrene and similar has not noticeably risen in the last decades, after all it is a byproduct- although manufacturers and importers like to use that excuse.

After all, only a minor percentage of the actual kit cost comes down to the plastic, the box is actually more expensive. Transport costs have risen, as have wages and of course the value loss of the US Dollar does not exactly help, including the domestic loss of purchasing power, especially importers try to make up the proceeds of a diminished market by increasing their profits- and some importers are more equal than others, so you better shop around overseas if you are stuck with one exclusive US distributor.

90-95% of the sales by Asian-based companies are made in their domestic and neighbouring markets anyways, the price increases in Asia have mostly been less dramatic in comparison. Trumpeter did increase their prices (not by as much as the importer would like you to believe), they entered the market with deliberately low prices to quickly garner a corner of the market and to push Dragon and Tamiya out of the equation, now that they have apparently found their niche, they follow old capitalist traditions like increasing prices... Crafty folks those ChiComs.

What Roy said. I also had the Revell M4 as my first [c.1955]. In 1972-73, my first tour on Okinawa, I tripled my collection, as the box marked price, used for $$ in the US was yen in Japan, hence [if marked 1000] a $10 kit went for 1000Y in Oki, around $2.80 in those days!