$6800.00. Same price as your “Merchant’s Limited”. $400.00 per car.
To top it off the only “new” tooling Walther’s has to come up with is for the observation cars and maybe the 22-roomette sleeper. The rest is a paint job. I don’t see how that totals up to a 50% increase in cost over an equivalent product.
I shake my head when I see terms slung about, terms like “fraud” and “captive audience”. Has anyone strong-armed anyone else and made them open their wallets? Anyone forced them to model the NYC? Anyone watch you walk into the store, kept a sneering eye-contact, and then marked up the price while you watched?
Before we use terms carelessly, we should pause a moment and reflect on their meaning. No one is commiting fraud unless it is to try to misrepresent the truth. Prices are neither true nor false…they represent an offer of sale with the hope of getting a profit. If you elect to forego the purchase, and don’t wish to negotiate, there is no profit…simple. No one is a captive but by their own desire and choice in business…unless we’re in a monopolisitic situation with staples and essentials. Hobby stuff was never essential, and sure as aitch isn’t a staple.
Just a little side-note from NBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics…
China has recently enacted a minimum wage/minimum benefit package/maximum hours law for industrial workers that has increased the cost of production so much that some Chinese companies are outsourcing their production to Vietnam - in search of lower labor costs!
Don’t be surprised if, when they DO show up, the Walthers 20th Century Limited cars come in boxes labeled Made in Hanoi.
And if you insist on complaining, just check the prices of RTR JNR rolling stock (in Japan, in Yen.) Then add a currency exchange fee, transocean shipping and customs duties…
Boy, am I glad that I bought almost everything I need when the Yen/dollar exchange rate was 360:1.
I have 14 walthers heavyweights bought new at about 44 dollars each and change after taxes. Took me three years to get them all in ones and twoses.
I am up to 60 dollars per car more or less on the Rapdio Passenger cars. I missed out on three coaches but they are not that vital to my plans on this set.
Commodity costs are up. Plastic = Oil and other materials. I expect them to go up as well. Same with Model Kits, paints etc. All of which have already gone up.
A club member bought his passenger set at half price on clearance so… those who wait long enough gets a bargin. Others like me, tend to buy them off the store on day one because of limited productions.
Looking at it another way, once debt is paid off such as cars the purchasing or saving power will far surpass any modest increase walthers or anyone may place onto MSRP’s of these train items.
If yer wondering why I bought Heavyweights in the age of Chessie, well… waiting 30 years for a GOOD set of heavyweights was worth it.
Gee Jeff…i didn’t know you could get so rowdy!..those GUYS (this thing won’t let me type what i really want to call them) at Walther’s! LOL…by the way…ask Landau about his new bean car…[:-^]
csmith9474,
Yep, that’s my point. Walthers makes a fine product, even at $65 a car. They are far and away better quality than all but the latest brass cars of the past 10 years or so. It was not too long ago that the only choices for plastic passenger cars were either shorties (72’ Athearns, etc.) or Rivarossi/Con-Cor cars that were fine…for the 1970’s.
It’s like the NH NE-5 cabooses from Intermountain. They cost $50, which is a little steep compared to the Atlas NE-6’s that were only $27 (almost an identical caboose in size). But I look at it like this: To get an NE-5 otherwise would cost me 2 to 5 times that $50, as they are only available in brass. An NE-5 for $50 is a bargain compared to that Overland NE-5 for $250.
Hudson,
“Nanny, Nanny, boo-hoo”? Puh-leeze.
What you are failing to realize here is that you are plain lucky, lucky to have someone make a high quality passenger train for your railroad that is actually affordable. Most likely, that will never happen for me or for most other model railroaders (unless they model the big roads like ATSF, SP, UP, PRR, NYC, MILW, GN, etc.). The street price for these Walthers cars is going to be around $52. I would love to be able to purchase some NH cars for only $50 a car. Where do I sign up?
BTW, if these are all existing tooling other than two cars, why don’t you go buy them at the lower price these came out as, and repaint them yourself? Then you only have to shell out $100 for these two unique cars and the rest you have for far less.
The Apple iPhone comes to mind along those lines. It was $600 when it first came out. Soon Apple dropped the price to around $450 and the folks you had to have it on Day 1 complained.
If I were buying them, I’d reserve and buy 2 or 3 of the essential cars at MSRP…then wait and see it I couldn’t pick up the rest on sale.
What Walthers is charging may be irritating to you but price gouging it is not. A 20th Century Limited passenger car is not a necessity of life like food always, or sand bags in a time of flooding. So as a business, Walthers can charge whatever they want under whatever circumstances. And you as a consumer can choose not to buy the car at their price. Besides, you know they’ll be discounted and in fact the fewer modelers who buy them at whatever price they’re actually offered, the lower the price will go.
But considering the amount used in manufacture and shipping, certainly not $20 per car. More like $2 - $5, which would be a 5-10% increase. This percentage is, in fact, what Hasbro has announced they will raise the prices of their plastic Transformer toys by in September, to cover commodity price increases. These are made of similar plastics.
So this isn’t nearly enough to cover the price increase noted. It has to be something like a shorter run, production problems, or some other costs.
Yup…Like others have said, who is Walther’s competition?
If you think someone can come along and provide the same thing at a lower MSRP, you’re going to be waiting a long time. The model railroad industry is tiny. The numbers just don’t justify entering the business in direct competition. BLI/PCM didn’t do that, they created a niche for themselves that other mfg’s didn’t address. Now Walthers, Bachmann, etc. are playing catchup in that segment.
They have none to speak of, therefore you see price increses like this.
Has it ever occurred to you that Walthers is paying more for the stuff they get from China? Wages have been rising in China. The day of “cooley” wages is rapidly disappearing in the distance. Happened in Japan. Happened in Korea. China is no longer a Third World Country.