With each issue of Model Railroader I’m seeing product advertisments with higher and significantly higher prices on just about everything (especially engines or just about anything from Walthers)! I think most agree that our hobby is a great one and we all hope that the next generation will take up where we leave off. The trouble I see brewing is that this constant upward spiral in pricing may very well block entry of many youngsters. Either quality items will simply cost too much, or the affordable ones won’t work well, lead to frustration, and result in kids moving on to another hobby. Hey, I think DCC, sound, detail, and smoke are all great, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to start in this hobby in the 1950’s if a decent engine cost the equivilent of hundreds of dollars!
One of my MBA degree holding sons explained to me the other day that all of the top business schools profess that companies should just keep raising prices until purchases start to drop off. Now isn’t that a wonderful way to keep the shareholders happy and shirk on other non-monetary accountability to which companies used to hold themselves?
I understand fully what you mean because I am 15 and have a limited budget, and almost every cent I earn goes to model railroading. DCC seems to be much of the problem of locos prices jumping up because they all have decoders that add more dollars to the price tag!!
I just looked, the price tag on my very first athearn blue box GP50 was 22.50, now any of the remaining retail blue boxes are 56.50, kids these days can’t even afford those entry level engines not to mention the RTR stuff and higher level gear. I understand with places like trainworld and kleins you can get some cheap gear and thats great but i did enjoy sifting through the blue boxes when i was a kid, a suprise in every box, sadly they don’t run as well as other stuff today, still a fond memory though.
Athearn BB is just about the only type motive power I buy, mostly because of price. I’ve looked at the expensive locos in the catalogs priced at 165 bucks for DC and 265 bucks for DCC. I feel like that is penalizing someone for have DCC. The price is ridiculuos. Do the companies think that because people have DCC, that they are made of money? Or do they think that if they make it, someone will buy it. I can get a BB loco, modify it for DCC, add a decoder, even one with sound, if I want, all for less than 120 bucks. Let the companies stuff that in their pipes and smoke it.
hay, go to ebay or other auction site, or do a little searching on the web, bargins are out there, even at your local hobby shop but ya got to search and take time to get what you want at the price you are willing to pay, example just got spectrum k-4 for $36.00, normally sells for over $150.00, newere one also!
I agree with you on purchasing from Ebay or even at a train show. You can normally find some real bargains at resonable prices. Plastic models do not hold their value very long unless you quote exceptions to the rule.
The first run of Kato Dash 9’s in Santa Fe paint started bringing over list price on Ebay back before the second run came out. I sold three of mine and repurchased three later at almost one half the price.
There is always a bargain if you wait and buy at the right time. The BLI blowout on their stock, which has happened twice now, is always a bargain. My USRA light Mike with sound was $129.00 at the blow out price.
I am now hopefully waiting for the next major blow out from BLI.
I would like to know (a honest answer) just how much the rise in cost is due to petroleum costs. I suspect it certainly has something to do with it, but just how much?
Just something to think about.
Peter
I would guess at this point in time - none. The fuel costs for transporting things will take a while to work through the pricing calculations, and the raw material costs are usually incured in the country of manufacture (most likely China).
I agree with the e-Bayers! I have found very good deals on e-Bay, and I am on the verge of buying a Stewart-Baldwin (I think it is Bowser owned now) S-12 4904 B&O #385 for no more than $30, and this is a loco that costs over $80 new! I would post a pic but this new forum confuses me!
Yes, I am afraid that your son is quite correct, as I have heard this very same senario quoted by others in business over the past 10+ years. And, indeed, over that same time period we have seen model railroad prices increase at a rate far beyond anything previously experienced in the hobby’s entire history. Of late, with plastic loco offerings approaching or even starting to exceed $500 per MSRP, we are definitely nearing the limit of what 90% of hobbyists are willing to pay. However, as long as there remains a 10% who will meet any price the manufacturers set, you will see prices continue to climb. To judge by how the industry-end of the hobby has evolved since the early 1990’s, it seems the manufacturers consider that catering to a limited clientele of big spenders, at the expense of the average hobbyist’s needs, is the best way (read more profitable) way to go. I very much expect to see most of the really desirable models offered only as pre-orders with at least some cash-up-front before very long, similar to the way brass has gone.
I’m 42 and have taken to kitbashing my old lokies because I can’t afford brand spanking new items 'cause they pricier with each years new releases…
I like that comment:
“One of my MBA degree holding sons explained to me the other day that all of the top business schools profess that companies should just keep raising prices until purchases start to drop off”
Maybe that explains the $3.30 a gallon in gas, its also a terrific way to build customer disloyalty and an angry consumer base…what these MBA pirates DONT tell there clients is that if they F over their customers enough they will stop buying their product entirely, and when sales start plummeting, the company BODs always cry, “Why are sales falling? What did we do wrong? Whaa whaaa!”
Of course the MBA-hole that told them to do this has already moved on to job #3 since then and is loooooooong gone before the bottom drops out…Its been my experience many of these kind of guys are business sociopaths…no conscience, no loyalty, only focused on getting what they can for themselves any way possible no matter who they hurt or put out of business. Ask Jeff Skilling (cant ask Ken Lay unless you have a Hotline to Hell) of Enron, he jacked his own company in the name of personal greed, lied cheated and stole from their own company…didnt care that they destroyed 1000’s of lives yet the claims he did no wrong and doesnt show any real concern for anyone but himself…a classic example of a Business Sociopath,
if i may be so bold, may i suggest a boycott? no one who can read this purchases a new locomotive from walthers or directly from the manufactuarer for a year. if its something that you really want, OK, get like 2 or something and then wait until more come on ebay. ive never had the pleasure of getting a brand new locomotive. my 2 best were new in box ebay items that were several years old already. im 15, and i had (at one time) the $ for non-DCC atlas equipment. (2 of them).now i need benchwork, so no new stuff until next year atleast. the boycott is just a suggestion, but if atleast walthers has half a brainstem and a tiny shread of pity, mabey theyll drop thge price for a bit. then we attack the market like piharrans, buying everything we can get, then wait for the price to drop again…
muwahahaha
GEARHEAD426
What I don’t understand is that most model railroad products are manufactured in China becuase of the cheap labor. They [manufacturers] make mrr products for cheaper now and charge more than when they were made here in the USA. It’s a win win for them and a lose lose for us. I won’t even go into lost jobs being exported.
It seems that every month or so, we go through this same exercise with pricing. So lets take a look at a few things: 1. Is the cost of labor going up or down? 2. Is the cost of heating and air conditioning going up or down? 3. Are Real Estate taxes going up or down?(LHS) 4. Are water and Sewer taxes going up or down? 5. Are shipping costs going up or down? 6. Is the cost for health insurance for employees going up or down? 7. Is the cost for electricity going up or down? 8. Is Petroleum use worldwide, used in the production of plastics, going up or down? 9. Has the cost of a barrel of oil gone up or down? ( hint , it hit an all time high of over $78/barrel today) 10. Is the oil consumption by China and India, the two most populous countries in the world with 2.4 Billion people, going up or down? If you answered YES to each of these 10 questions, congratulations! You are learned, you know what is really happening in your world outside your train room, and you also know “why” prices are increasing. And, as several other modelers have stated correctly, there ARE bargains out there every day, but you have to get off your lazy butts and LOOK.
It’s time to look at some hard numbers and see the truth. In 1957 I saved my pennies and bought a Penn Line PRR K4 kit. The price from E&H Model Hobbies (who advertised “Super Mail Service”) was $34.50. Adjusted for inflation that would be $234.96 in 2005 dollars. Today Bowser offers that same kit for $124.95. Their deluxe kit, which includes superdetails and lights goes for $239.95. With a little effort you can find a BLI K4 for about the same price.
Exhibit number two is a Walthers heavyweight diner. They offered it in kit form in 1957. The price, including superdetail kit, interior and Central Valley trucks was $10.10 which would be $66.26 in 2005. Today’s Walthers heavyweight diner is a superb ready to roll model with far better detailing for $44.98. Note that today’s diner includes diaphragms and couplers. And by the way, if you act now, you can get it on sale for only $29.98.
Brass was pretty cheap then. Tenshodo made a very nice USRA 0-8-0 for $34.50, same price as the PennLine K4. And the same $234.96 in '05 dollars. I think I would rather have the P2K version for $249.98 at Wholesaletrains.com. And that includes sound and DCC.
For the most part, today’s model offerings are superior in every way to their older counterparts. They are better buys, not just in dollars, but also in quality and features. You don’t have to look back a half century to see the truth in that. P2K, BLI and others are producing better models than anything on the market a decade ago. Bachmann and Athearn have made tremendous strides in quality. Model railroading has never been cheap, but we get far more for our dollars than ever before. And it is only going to get better,
Anyone who thinks that prices in the LHS and at Walthers have gone astronomical should check out the Japanese equivalents! We get away with about 1/4 of the advertised prices for approximately equivalent items in Tetsudo Mokei Shumi.
As for fuel costs not effecting us right now, don’t bet on it. At the LHS I visited last week, the manager told me the carrier that delivered something he had ordered hit him with a totally unexpected fuel cost premium on the COD bill! I’m sure he isn’t the only one.
It’s easy to say that maybe we should strive for quality, not quantity, but most of us are hard-wired to always want MORE. Realistically, I need more rolling stock about the way Custer needed more Indians. I still find myself lugging home things to kitbash. Oh, well…