I was hoping for something a bit different. Not sure what. They do look nice though.
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Yes, Intermountain advertises $20.00 kits, but they are rarely available. The undecorated refrigerator cars have been unavailable for 2+ years. Talking to the guys from Intermountain at the National Train Show 2017 they said they were going to release more undecorated kits, but I have not seen it.
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Yes, but again, where are they available? I have not seen a Timesaver Proto 2000 undecorated kit anywhere in years.
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If you can’t get them, t
That is not the question. My question is, if it is justified that the price for highly detailed, undecorated, unpainted kit is the same as for the same car as painted and decorated assembled model. I have my doubts but it is the manufacturer’s decision.
My two examples show that the prices need not necessarily be the same as Sheldon suggests.
I wouldn’t buy a kit at that price.
Regards, Volker
Knowing Mr Hadfield I expect he has done a great deal of research at his target market. Based on what you said, I’d guess you are not what he is aiming at, nor any one else who is put off by the price. To some a BMW isn’t worth it, but I see an aweful lot of them around here on the roads. Just saying…
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For my needs, price really does not matter. What I need are kits. I hate RTR cars because they never meet my standards (except for Fox Valley), and I need to re-kit a RTR car if I buy one.
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Every kit I build gets Kadee trucks and couplers (+$11.00), custom paint and decals (+$10.00), and non-magnetic weights. To obtain the car I want, I will gladly by a $60.00 Yarmouth kit, $50.00 Westerfield kit, or even a $90.00 Sunshine kit from eBay. I would prefer simpler plastic kits, but there are not that many available.
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Tichy makes quite a few nice freight car kits in the sub $20.00 range that build into beautiful models. These are always readily available and easy to obtain.
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My freight car fleet is my love, my pride, and my pleasure. I know that is not normal, but it is me. Freight cars are center stage, with passenger cars and locomotives playing supporting roles.
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I will gladly pay the same price as a RTR car to get the undecorated kit I want.
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However, the 2-3 cars I will buy is not enough for a manufacturer to justify offering these. So, like I said, I am very thankful Arrowhead made these kits an option even though I will not be buying one.
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-Kevin
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I’m not put off by the price of the RTR model. It looks like it is worth is. The equal price for the unpainted, undecorated kit puts me off. Here I have the feeling the manufacturer is taking advantage of the kit builders, compared to different price structure of other companies.
Usually you buy your BMW assembled I think. Otherwise, from spare parts, it gets even more expensive in proportion to the Arrowhead kit.
Regards, Volker
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I can absolutely 100% guarantee you that if you could buy a kit of an automobile it would cost at least double of the RTR version.
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I once got a quote for a kit to finish and assemble my own Fender Stratocaster, Good Golly! It was almost triple an assembled off-the-shelf model with the same features!
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-Kevin
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Then you are in a lucky position that many here, like me, don’t share. As I said I wouldn’t buy the kit at this price.
We all have different needs, preferences, and financial capabilities.
Regards, Volker
Based on what I quoted of your post, I was talking about the undec Arrowhead kit. Arrowhead isn’t aiming the undec kit at customers like you would be my guess here.
Maybe the BMW comment sent everyone down a rabbit trail it looks like. Focus please.
I can see that this thread is going to get merged with the “This hobby is too expensive” thread.
We all have our price points for cars, beer, trains and women.
I have a cousin who owns a winery and he charges high dollars for his wine, because some people think a more expensive wine must be a better wine. He can only produce X bottle of wine per year. If he can sell them at $70 each, why would he want to sell them at $50.
That probably isn’t the case here, but we aren’t entitled to buy a super detailed car for the price of an Accurail or Tichy car. Buy it or not. The good news is that even if you aren’t going to buy a car in this price range, it still raises the bar for detail lower priced cars.
Henrey, well said! It’s like a Mercedes dealer came peddling their cars in a place full of Volkswagen and Ford people, so all the talk is going to be, hey, this is too expensive or not worth it. Which furthers my point, Arrowhead probably isn’t marketing their models at most of the readers here going by the majority of responses. I’m almost sorry this topic was even started in this forum by the posts. [:S]
Well I started it and I have no regrets. I also started the Atlas Factory Closed thread. It’s news that affects most of us and it should be discussed here. It’s not N scale or G scale or outdoor railroads or narrow gauge. HO is the center of the hobby.
Haters are going to hate.
I was debating on starting an Arrowhead thread myself, if no one else had. Its a new maker, so it is completely valid as a subject. The issue of pricepoint didn’t faze me at all in any way. The only rub, to me as an individual, is that product #0001 in their catalog wasn’t really for me. Which is like…the biggest possible “whatever” there is. There’s lots of products that aren’t for me, a Mid-Atlantic Contemporary modeler.
You are right Henry. H8ters gonna hate, and on another forum there are some of those.
I agree about the factory closing topic, very relevant to the center of the hobby for sure. But for the Arrowhead responses, predictable unfortunately. Hopefully newsworthy for a few.
Yes of course. The more years go by, there is a higher probability that anyone new model is going to not be of interest to a good sized percent of train hobbiest. You gotta nail the scale, time frame, car type and road name. A lot if stars have to align to get buyers. I got lucky and my wallet didn’t this time.
Volker,
Kevin and I are in agreement here.
Nearly every one of my 800 freight cars has Kadee trucks, refitted with Intermountain wheel sets, and genuine Kadee couplers, easily $10 to $15 just to start.
The car itself may start life as a simple Athearn Blue Box kit, or it might be a more expensive hi
And there are lots of products that are not for me, like any prototype made after September 1954…
So the closer Arrowhead got your needs, the further they would be from mine…
It is an ever growing divide in this hobby…
Sheldon
As a side note, from someone who was once the shop forman in the BMW dealership…
They build great cars, so does Benz, but they are so far past any practical limit on deminishing returns that they only appeal to a specific type of customer. And it is not just about the money…
Some will laugh at this comparision, but it is valid.
In 2002 I bought a FORD Crown Vic LX, special ordered with the high performance package like the police have and otherwise pretty loaded. That car was less than $30,000.
If you compare the features and hard performance specs of that car to the same year BMW 735, the FORD delivered 80%-85% of the performance and features for 40% of the cost - how much are you willing to pay for the last 15% of performance and features?
And don’t tell me the BMW will last longer, I know what it takes to keep a BMW on the raod, but look at the miles on those cabs and police cars.
Sheldon
Volker,
I think you’re thinking of the past when a significant proportion of a kit’s cost was devoted to paint and lettering. If the lettering was by decal, then there was the cost of producing the decal also priced in. RTR generally wasn’t available and kits tended to have fairly crude parts that needed no special packaging. And kits were often the only form a new item was produced in, so production was optimzed to simply stuff them in a box.
Now, there is sometime painting involved, but much is actually the plastic cast in the correct color. Lettering is by pad printing. So decoration of the car is a fraction of the relative cost in the old days. And each car sold is usually sold as a decorated kit, the cost is still there in its entireity. While Kadee and Tichy do offers undecs, the declining availability of decals makes it moot for many prototyp[es unless you go the custom decal route.
Since so few kits are ordered, they make up a relatively insignificant part of the overall costing process. If you make 10,000 items to a design and only 200 are ordered as kits and they are in all 10 roadnames the model is offered in but in differing quantities, say 40, 50, 30, 20, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 and 10, does it even make sense to cost a kit out as separate from the bulk of the costing involved in building RTR stock? Not really, because costing, producing and inventorying such short run item really doesn’t cost less than a decorated RTR or the difference is so insignificant it makes little sense to do so.
That said, it’s a nice car at a not unreasonable price compared to the MSRP of many others. I come to this by way of narrowgauge, where there was nothing RTR in HOn3 before-Blackstone. Narrowgaugers tend to be well aware of the length of the process needed to build RTR vs buyi
I don’t think the hobby, in this case the RTR car, is to expensive. The same price for an unpainted, undecorated kit puts me off.
I agree with riogrande5761 that the kit isn’t aimed at me. It is aimed at those who don’t care about the price and can afford it.
With the choices given by Arrowhead it would be an easy choice for me, the RTR model. I model the 1920s so the model isn’t for me anyway.
Regards, Volker