was looking for another odd sherman to build later in the year and ran across revells reissue of the aboved mentioned sherman for 47 and change plus shipping. and this is a reissue. i could see if its a new tool but come on times are hard and i am building more from my stash these days. but i have all ways want a calliope in my completed works. so what yall think about these crazy price jumps in the hobby.
I serously don’t understand it. I mean, before, with oil up at $100.00 a barrel, I could tell myself “Well, ok; oil is used in making styrene” and at least find a justification for it, but now?
That is high for a reissued kit. The ones who are really smoking something funy are Italeri–their prices are unreal lately!
True so true, I bought the Italeri Sahariana and to allow for the cost its nothing more than a piece of crap, just crap, €45 thats about $60 or there about.## Oh, well nothing I can do except just refuse to pay these prices.[soapbox]## Terry.
It’s hitting everyone hard. I thought about building 1/48 armor, but that, or at least tamiya’s, is the price of what their 1/35 stuff used to cost. I’ll just keep building from my stash and wait for more reasonable prices. You can usually get some good deals at shows, if you don’t enter any models its still a pretty good place to shop.
It’s called “sticky prices” — oil prices drive the cost of goods up up up… Then oil prices drop again, but the inflated price tag of goods remains on the high side, failing to drop along with the price of oil.
And it sure is a drag when you look at a twenty or thirty year old kit that has been re-released without any improvements, is being sold at prices comparable to what we are paying for new kits! Tamiya comes to mind as well. Maybe a pricing “middle ground” could be established for reissues of older kits like this?
I have noticed that kit prices have taken a pretty significant leap in the last six months to a year. Shopping at kit swap meets and shows is a good way to counter… I am also looking for Christmas Sales at Internet-based hobby shops. I’m a little surprised that I am not finding more Christmas sales — and anything along the line of "10% off any purchase of $150.00 or more " does not constitute a real sale if you ask me!
Look at the new Italeri Schnellboote — beautiful looking kit (just saw it at a club meeting today), but it is retailing at $250.00! Even finding it for $175.00 at some internet-based vendors, means that you are spending some serious cash on one kit! Given the not-so-great economy, I wonder how this puppy is going to sell? Despite the prohibitive price tag, I hope it does well as I want Italeri to continue releasing cool (and somewhat more reasonably priced) kits in 1/35th scale.
Squadron.com used to have some great sales in their Christmas catalogue — not so for the last couple of years. Lucky Models has the best prices on the net, but they are currently dealing with some sort of internal issue they are hoping to have ironed out soon (hopefully so, I have an order in with them). Right now, Great Models seems to have the best internet-based Christmas sales. e-hobbyland.com also has excellent prices all the time. By the way, I am not affiliated with any of the above websites — merely a customer.
Anyone know of any other good internet hobby sales going on?
Regards and Aloha,
Johnny B.
Right now I’m strictly building from the stash.
I have enough armor to keep me occuppied for the winter, and enough cars/figures to keep me going 'till 2012 or whenever Armageddon occurs…
I’m only shopping at Ebay and the LHS… Noticed a couple of Monogram tracks there today, Panzer IV and Brummbar, and I think I saw the M34 truck as well, but no Shermans as of now… The Caliope will show up there tho, always does…
Part of the kit price problem, as I’ve seen it, isn’t as much as oil prices as us “getting what we asked for”…
It’s an old pet peeve of mine, but a valid one I think… Although it doesn’t really apply to GAs case with the Re-issue, new kits are high-priced simply becasue of all the demand for more detailed stuff to be given to us… That comes at a price… We wanted a box full of PE and resin parts, super-detailed interiors, engines and gun breeches, individual track links (I’ll never get THAT one) to model “sag”, If we want a 20.00 armor kit, we gotta start grabbing sheet and strip styrene, brass and plastic tubing, small-gauge solder, casting resin, RTV, and get busy makin’ our own parts for the “old” kits… Best thing is, there’s lotsa ways to do it, and lotsa help out there on the net on how to do it, and LOTS of free references. Way more than there was when I started scratchbuilding details…
But we can’t have it both ways, super-detailed and cheap… The model companies aren’t making kits for kids anymore… They’re making kits for the same folks who were kids 30 and 40 years ago and priced accordingly… We hollered for more “adult” details, bnow we pay "adult"prices, simple as that… That’s why we don’t have Monogram, AMT, Lindberg, Hawk, and Aurora anymore…
What’s the old saying? “Be careful what you wish for…”
I also agree with these “just for profit prices.” And it is not just our hobby, but also food and day to day necesseties.
They, the manufactures want us to believe that oil is the reason and yes at one point it was. But I paid a $1.64 a gallon today vs. $4.50 + a gallon a year ago in California but when I went into the grocery store I sware I had a gun in my back.
I left. We are cutting back and that is my boycott against them.
This is fact for I work for a manufacture and I have asked if we are going to roll back are prices and the answer is why? Were making more profit. There all wh*res!!!
Although I haven’t been building much recently, I did make a decision to build primarily from the stash, without buying any new kits. That was going well unitl our club meeting the other night. HS owner was sitting there, and said, " It’s been one of those weeks, take 50% off any one model in the store". Needless to say, everyone bought something. That’s the extent of my purchases recently though. Even at 50% the prices are getting bad…
Like has been mentioned in this and other threads, building models is unfortunatly not really a kids thing anymore. Toy stores among others no longer sell them.
I have never seen anyone under 30 in the model section whenever I go into the LHS. I realize that some young folks still build models but it is extremely rare these days. Suppliers aren’t blind. They know that is mostly a bunch of old farts (mental age not withstanding[:-^]) doing this and they price their products accordingly. The online suppliers know that it ain’t a bunch of 13 year olds ordering all those kits and the AM accesories to go along with them…
I don’t like it much either and thats why I buy all my kits off of Ebay, Hobby Lobby sales, or go to shows and hit up vendor tables.
Just my[2c]
Regards,
Jeff
i know what yall mean thier guys. i am at the mercy of the www and ebay. we have not one single hobby shop in this city of over 250,000 folks. our michaels only carries airplanes and i even talked to the manger about carrying some armor. she looked at me like i was from mars. but do me a favor guys for those of you that have a hobby lobby please speak to the mgt about coming to savannah,ga.
I have given up on the LHS. I use him ONLY for paint. He know me pretty well and asked if I was going to buy any kits. I told him he is out of his mind. I dont mind paying a few cents more but why shold I pay $50 for a kit that I can find on the www for $38 and if I wait 6 months after its release, $28 on ebay.
I know we all talk about supporting the LHS but with their prices its time for them to go the way of the dinosaur…IMO
As far as the manufacturers, if when they ran the kit the price of styrene was up then the kit will have a high price. The plastic in that kit may have been purchased 6 months ago when all oil products were up.
Now, that aside, I FULLY agree with Hans “YOU WANT SUPER KIT…YOU GET SUPER PRICE”. Go back and learn some scratchbuilding.
Learn to cast your own parts. Hell last year I made a M925 truck with over 150 ammo crates in it. If I would have bought enough Verlinden sets for that I would have spent $300 - $400. I spent $50 for casting resin and molding compund and made them myself and still had enough material to make plenty of other AM items
We complain about our kids but to some extent we have all become lazy and want everything handed to us. It comes at a price.
When the economy was good, there were tons of people going off to buy Dora and lots of other expensive kits. Now that we are all cutting back, the manufacturers can’t just eat what we all have been asking for these past years.
So…if the prices are high, we are all to blame.
Right now I have more than enough in my stash. I ONLY buy on ebay if I get something I want at a GREAT deal. If not, I can wait.
It’s time for you to get down in your foxhole and wait this one out. Build from the stash, create your own parts. If no one buys the new kit the price will drop. Economics 101.
Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong!!
Rounds Complete!!
I really dont get the way these people price their stuff. Maybe its because I never took economics… but whenever I sold stuff, if it was in person, or even just selling items in a game… I check to see how much it cost me (price and man power) to get the thing im selling, see how much people are selling it for, and I then undercut them by however much. (selling an item in the game guild wars, takes me 15 min to get the item, everyone sells it for 1000$ I sell it for 500$ and I sell 10 in a day, when at 1000$ I’d be lucky if I sold one)
I figure, if its cheaper, ill sell more, if I sell more, I make more money then the people buying only one of the expensive thing. 3 kits at 20$ each is better then selling one kit at 50$
Its honestly why I keep buying academy and Trumpeter, their kits may be a crap to put together problem wise, but there so inexpensive that its worth the trouble.
Its not even a matter of more profit, if you sell more, when its cheaper you make more money (if you price them correctly, 5$ for a kit isnt cheap, its stupid) but if you sell more, it allows you to see what types of kits are selling and where those types of kits are selling, so you can focus on developing more kits along the lines of what is selling and send more stock to the areas where they are selling. If your selling a butt load of M1A1s in Bucharest, then make new and better M1A1s and send the majority of them over there. If Canadians are tossing their panties at all of the IJA tanks, then send your stock for them over there, kind of thing.
Maybe I just never took economics classes and im missing some buisness person reason why selling more at a lesser price is bad then selling less at a higher price
I bought that kit when it was initially released in 1996 (I remember buying it at the Ft. Leavenworth PX). I think the price 12 years ago was in the low to mid $30s. Around the same price as their new (at the time) M977 and M978 HEMTTs. So if we estimate the original price at about $35, and now a decade plus later is $47, it’s not that much of an increase. It is still high though.
The only part of the kit that was new in 1996 was the turret and rocket launcher. The upper hull was from 1988 and the lower hull/suspension from even earlier.
Heh… I bought it when it came out with Shep Paine’s Diorama Tips back in the 70s… I’d gotten the M-48 before the Caliope, but eventually had all the Monogram armor… Think the T-34 kit was around 6-8 bucks back then, not exactly cheap since their 1/48th scale planes were around a 1.50…
At first Trumpeter kits cost about 60 clams, then they were about 80, fine import tax, most bang for buck detail, swallow hard and buy the Bearcat. But now it looks as though they want the price well past the century mark. My F4U-1d has floor boards wha…several indescretions on the radial powerplant ( I just don’t get that no mfg makes an inarguably correct R2800.)so I 'll just have to fix it myself. So I buy the 1/24 BF109 g10 at a real good discount, get inside the Galland panzer is solid grey plastic,the cowl guns quite inaccurate, and the DB605D is fully 30-35% too small thats a lot. That kit retails for $109.00 lucky for me i’ve been trying to convert an Airfix 109E to such a variant so I can cannibalize its scratched weapons and correct scale powerplant to save this albatross. Speaking of Airfix, have you folks seen what they could do in 1/24 The FW190 is outstanding and the Stuka is a masterpiece, Trump ain’t even in the same league as Airfix’s big line. I’m left to question the ethics of sending my hard won dollars to our market rival, for the priveledge of taking the call as they phone it in.
You guys are lucky, who got a stash… I’m soon 17 and have just started my “stash” (2-3 kits)… And you lucky guys who got Hobby Lobby… and go to shows… Here in Norway, one IPMS a year, and that’s the only show I’ve heard about… You guys are so lucky! [yuck]
This isn’t a reissue of the old Monogram Screamin’ Mimi Sherman Calliope. That kit was an old direct vision M4A1(75) with the early M3 suspension.
The Italeri kit was based on the M4A3 upper hull they first issued as their M4A2 Jumbo and M36 Jackson in 1988 with a new 75mm turret and rocket system (new in 1996). The suspension is from their 1980s M4A1 Sherman/M7 Priest/M32 TRV/Kangaroo that is close to 30 years old now.
The Italeri Sherman series is actually one of their nicer kits that still hold up well today. All of Dragon’s original Sherman kits used many of the Italeri Sherman components. It wasn’t until recently that the new Dragon Sherman series are original kits.
Redleg12, I have had some success with the LHS when I order a kit and prepay. He usually prices it comparible to what I can get it thru Squadron, but then again they are usually higher than the other online hobby sites. For now, I’ll stick with the stash. I’ve got about 12 kits that I really want to build and will always look for the deals at the model shows and swapmeets. you are right on target with the scratchbuilding, I think we are losing our artistry when we merely add on superdetailed parts. Drive on!
Around here, there isn’t a lot of choice at the Hobby Lobby. That goes for models kits AND supplies. The armor section is pitiful, and unless you want Revell, don’t get a car there. The wingy things have a decent selection (not great, but not bad either), and the have a few of the floaty things…if you want to pay WAAYYY more than you should.
I don’t understand why “my” Hobby Lobby doesn’t seem to carry things everyone else’s does! But, having found some online shops and eBay, I can get the kits and supplies that HL doesn’t have. And if I want Testor brnaded supplies, I can go to HL…they carry MOST of the line. Any other brand, I gotta go online. (The only LHS I have found around here caters to R/C, and is a bit too far to go for a casual visit.)
As far as the stash goes? You’re 17, my friend! You have PLENTY of time to get a stash going! I’m 40, and my stash consists of 9 or 10 kits, plus what is being built and painted right now. Of course, my wife just wants me to FINISH one or two [:)]
Besides, without a stash, your wife (or mom) isn’t going to ask why all these kits keep growing, and “when are you going to build all this stuff?”[:-^]
Michael