Almost cheaper to buy a DML 1/35 kit I am glad I bought mine when I did The Crusader that is I did a price check on the Mark III version at Squadron
$35.10 Ouch
Garfield has a list price of $22.50 Great price
Tim,even with shipping,would it be cheaper for you to buy stuff from Garfield here at Track48?
you fellows still have it good you have lots of places to get stuff from with out to many dramas hell no one in nz stocks afv club so i have to go overseas to get it. the last kit i got in from overesas haulers stug 4 once it got here and the bill arrivedon the card it cost me 109.00 hell i can get adml kit of the same thing for 59.95 locally .and going on advertised prices plus postage the afv club 251 will cost me about 80.00 landed .so there you go things are not the best price wise but we are now starting to get some nice kits ie olivers su 85 and if you dont want to sratch build one then you pays the money and just enjoy have fun build models wayne
Nigel does it for £16.00 according to his price list. He doesn't update often though so it might have gone up a bit. Hannants is on my sh*t-list (along with ASAM) for screwing up an order I had with them anyway so I wouldn't go there again. I got a Fw 190 model and some other bits from them solely because one of the items was only available through them, the rest I could get cheaper elsewhere. Then I get my order and this particular item wasn't included, it just had a paradoxical little note on the invoice to "Please re-order out of stock items". Wrote to Hannants and complained and haven't had a peep back in two weeks. So finger in the air to them and I'll spend my money elsewhere.
The price seems "right" according to the current exchange rates??
March 25 2009, 3:17 PM
Tim:
Sorry to say, according to the current exchange rate between the US$ and the UK Pound, the Hannants price is about right. It works out at around $31, which is very close to the US retail price for the kit.
Sadly, the exchange rate is very poor for the Pound these days. The Yen is also quite strong right now, for whatever reasons one cares to mention.
When my Father came to the USA in 1957 from Scotland, he exchanged his Pounds in New York for $5 each. When my wife and I went on our honeymoon in the late 1980's, we bought our Pounds for $1.09 each. Quite the swing, and it wasn't too long ago (a year?) when the Pound bought you $2, and the Brits were flooding over, along with other Europeans, having a lovely time shopping here in the USA. Now things have changed for the worse, as far as you are concerned.
The Crusader Mk.III is $15 from my HK bulk supplier, with about a $4 postage charge per kit via surface mail. This however is an increase from earlier in the year, by a couple of bucks, so the prices, even from the discount foreign suppliers, continues the ever higher rises.
I do feel that things are getting quite out of hand. With fewer and fewer modelers in the hobby, manufacturers need to recoup their costs on smaller production runs. Gone are the days when an Airfix Series One kit, selling for say 15 Pence, would sell over 100,000 units. In 1968, Airfix magazine had a circulation of 100,000 copies each month. I doubt any of the UK magazines now have even 20K circulation, according to discussions I have had with various editors. Sure there are more titles, but it also appears the same people are subscribers to multiple mags, so the customer base isn't that great.
Dave Morris (Login Dave_Morris) Registered Users 77.96.130.66
Shop around
March 25 2009, 4:36 PM
The stuff that Nigel lists is old stock. I.E. pre-price increase. If you shop around in the UK shops like MR Models, Antics and one or two others who frequent the UK models how scene are still knocking 1/48th Tamiya out at very reasonable prices.
Having spoken to some of these traders they have said that once these old stocks run out, that new stock will come with a price increase.
At least they are not like Hannents who have slapped the price increase onto kits they already had in stock at there warehouse, long before any Far Eastern price rises.
Incidently my LHS pulled a fast one too by ramping up his old stock of quarter scale Tamiya to the new prices. He is always moaning that he nevers sells enough 1/48th armour and that he is stuck with loads of it in his stock room, which he wishes he had never bought.
You would have thought he would have left the old stock at the old prices just to clear it off his shelves,then he pulls a stunt like that. But maybe it`s me who has poor business sense.
