I have been reading lately about the rising wages in China which coupled with the increasing value of the Yuan against the Dollar means higher prices coming from China. Since much of our RTR comes from China, we’re going to be seeing price increases - in fact my favorite RTR company, S Helper, has already raised prices.
While this may be bad news for U.S. consumers (and us model railroaders in particular), it is good news for the U.S. trade deficit and good for Chinese workers. But it could also be good for the kit and parts business since those are mostly made in the U.S.
I think you may be over optimistic. There is little left of the kit business. Accurail and Bowser are the big HO players in the kit business and they both have pretty limited lines - not many car types and limited paint schemes. Also they are both batch producers which means only certain items are available at any one time. The parts business is so limited in scope and dollar value it has little or no impact on the market. Lifelike kits are not made here and are also limiyted in types. Kits like Branchline and Intermountain are expensive and need pretty good skills to get a well built kit, thus the popularity of the RTR.
I hate to ask this but can we not have this discussion again ? The same topic occurred a few months back and turned into an ugly political discussion mostly full of emotion and devoid of facts. I believe the thread was ultimately removed by the moderators.
Personnaly, I like kits since they are usually cheaper and it gives me something to do (I don’t have the layout anymore)
Go to China and buy the stuff there. You might be able to get a sound/DCC Atlas or P2k for around 25 bucks new there.
I learned for my geography teacher that if you go shopping at night, and wage a calcualtor war* with a shop owner you can get something for about 8-20% of what you would pay for the same thing here. IIRC you are only allowed to bring back 800 bucks worth of stuff.
They show you a price using a calculator. Set your inital low, then go up by incriments of one. Usually the salemen will get tired after a while and get what you want for cheap. At night the same factories used to produce export goods (like Nikes) will make the same exact thing with the same materials for much cheaper.
Wonder if the same thing will work for korean or japanese brass locos…
But if China goes into a civil war (they are close), we might end up losing most of the stuff that’s made in china.
I don’t know were you get your info but china is more stable than ever barring a few problems which they have always had, and as for labor costs going up, it won’t add much to the cost.
I didn’t get into the hobby until 1962 but I have acquired a number of back issues from the '40s and '50s. Looking through them in addition to die-cast locomotives there were several companies producing brass kits. These kits required lost wax castings to be affixed to a pre-formed boiler and the drive mechanism required assembling; they appear to have been quite competitive in price with die-cast locomotives. Although I cannot say for sure it appears as if these kits disappeared with the advent of inexpensive/cheap already assembled brass locomotives from Japan beginning in the late '50s.
It could be that that may become the wave of the future.
Your bucket has a big hole in the bottom and it ain’t going to carry any water as can be testified to by the number of Vietnam vets who took their R&R/I&I and went to Japan looking for cheap brass locomotives only to find it to be virtually non-existent. In fact several discovered - and this was brought up several times in Letters to the Editor of Model Railroader - the one thing you were almost certain to find in the Japanese hobby shops was imports from - are you sitting down for this one? - West Germany. China, like Nippon in the '60s, simply does not produce model railroad equipment for domestic consumption!
Brakie you need to pay more attention. The discussion was kits. Accurail still sells more kits than RTR and the RTR are just assembled kits - same cars as the kits. Bowser RTR are not the same paint and numbers as the kits.
You made my point that Branchline has a very limited selection - only one body in the Yardmasters. The RTR Branchlines are actually made and sold by Intermountain, but again, the discussion was about kits.
Its hard to talk about kits when RTR is replacing those simple basic kits.Either way they are the same old Accurail,Bowser and Branchline cars at a higher price just like the older Athearn BB kits that comes RTR these days.
Well I understood what Brakie was saying, maybe you are the one who needs to pay more attention. His point was that even the kit makers are going more RTR now.
I, for one, would really like to see more kits and parts on the market. It sure seems the RTR are the main stream lately. And frankly, they sure do demand a hefty price tag, at least in my eyes.
I’ve been in, out, and back (almost 20 yrs. this go-round) into the hobby since 1959. Maybe I just wasn’t paying that much attention, but it seems to me that in just the past few years the prices have gotten quite high and the selection of scratch / detail parts has dwindled.
Just my 2 cents worth…With inflation that might be 75 cents today!
Fellas, you’d better hope it doesn’t work that way. If RTR falls by the way because it’s too expensive, you’ll find a lot of players disenfranchised because they have no interest or capability in kit erection. That means the manufacturers will lose sales, including of ancillary items and materials, and many of them will go broke. I am sure the hobby will suffer.
If the US dollar is so weak, how come when I look at stuff on Ebay from Canada or Australia that cost $23 their money, it’s only $20 US?? Wouldn’t that mean our dollar has more buying power in those countries?
Atlas already raised all their prices on track. About $1.50/turnout.(HO)
The US dollar is very weak at the moment. Not to long ago you needed 11 Swedish Kroner for one dollar. A year ago it was about 7,50 SEK per dollar. Now it’s bellow 6 kroner. So basically, for us Europeans the US is on sale! A Euro was worth less then a dollar not long ago. Now the exchange rate against SEK is approximately 9.40 for the Euro and 5,95 for the dollar.
This makes a huge difference.
In your comparison against for example the AUSD the AUSD have been rather constant, exchange rate about 5 SEK for as long as I can remember. So as you can see, if the dollar was lets say 8 SEK to the dollar and the AUSD was five SEK two years ago and now the AUSD and USD are almost the same you can see how the dollar have crashed!
If an average swede makes about 26000 SEK you can see how that have changed in dollars.
This is not a secret. All goods made in China (or anywhere else) are going to cost more in the US. Not just RTR train stuff. All the stuff you get at Wal-Mart is going to go up in price. Rather ironic that US companies were outsourcing jobs to foreign lands because it was cheaper. Now it’s cheaper to stay in the US…