I bought the Dragon SdKfz 251/17 Schwebelafette from Hobbyeasy of Hong Kong. It cost me £14 + £7 p&p - total £21. It took 5 days to arrive and I got it 6 weeks before it was in UK shops - for £28.99. That saved me £8, including the p&p.

Having said that, I try to support local hobby shops as much as possible, or buy online in the UK, but it pays to look around if you want new or less common items.

Not here in Japan, Rob. The older Tamiya stuff is dirt cheap. The Walker Bulldog sells for about $9 USD, and the Panther A, KV-1, KV-2, Leopard 1, and many others all go for about $13 USD. All the old stuff is priced similarly. I just picked up the old M48A3 for $13 USD.

If those kits are selling for only marginally less than the newer kits elsewhere, then somebody is ripping somebody off somewhere in the distribution chain, because Tamiya itself is not pricing them like that.

I totally agree Darren , but when the store you are using is selling kits at such extortionate prices, I would think twice before parting with my cash.

Luckily for me my LHS carries a great stock of all the major kit companies and theres allways 10% of all the marked price which makes them nearly as competative as the "online" UK stores , plus I would rather pay a few £'s extra to get my grubby little mits on a new kit ASAP

The only reason I recently ordered from Lucky Models was the kit I wanted is as rare as unicorn poop , I had tried several stores in my area without success.

Ian

I totally agree, unfortunately that's not going to change the situation anytime soon!




Tried that, the country almost ended up in the toilet! :-)




As soon as the Airbus A380 comes on line, otherwise there's just not enough room! :-) :-)

As there is no LHS near, I buy online from both UK and foreign retailers. To me it’s straightforward, it’s my money and I buy from whoever gives me the best value for that money. Value does not mean cheapest, if your LHS gives you value by means of letting you open the boxes, through advice or even a cup of coffee, it’s for you to say nobody else.

Darren, the bottom line is it’s your money, spend it as you see fit!

PS: Hannants has Dragon’s DN6160 Sd.Kfz.171 Panther A early type (Italy 1943/44). listed @ £34.99. Gee what a bargain! NOT!

So are netmerchants for the same price.

price from models in motion is £31.47

and models for sale are pricing it at £23.

RRP is £34.99 for a kit thats been out for over 7 years

it seems I have caused a stir with this topic however it looks like my local store just lost a customer and made me an online junkie as there is no one else near by. Thanks to everyone for showing where the money is going. In addition, no more Japanese modellers telling me how cheap it is to buy kits out there.

Probably because that was the MRSP when it was released, so Hannants got done over too and are only passing on what they had to pay. Dragon's stuff was very expensive under their previous distributor (and was from the beginning), and it only dropped about the time the newer T-34s appeared at the beginning of last year. Certainly put me off buying their Mod 40 which was joint top of the 'I want!' list with Char B1bis. Of course the price dropped and now I've got one.

Hi,

I put the blame of high kit costs on the middle man and the hobby shops.
I worked for a little while in import export and know the EU laws on importing products. Model kits fall into an area that carrys a very small tarrif. Products made in China (as a incentive) carry no tarrif... (electronic items do carry a hig tarrif)
And kits (or plastic toys as per eu law) from other parts of Asia are in the 1.2 to 1.5% range.....
Kits made in the EU (italeri) carry no tarrif (free trade zone).

Faller is the distributer for Dragon products here in Germany. They also distribute Italeri, revell, trupiteer...... and a few others. They have the market cornerd for thses products and can dictate price an avalability.

Academy has their own distributer and they play fair....

Tamaya has their own distributer.... no comment... prices here are pretty high...

Germany has a vat tax of 16% this is added to the cost of all products and is calculated from the total sale price.

so, if you have a 32 Euro kit 5.12 has to go to the tax ampt.... and say you had to pay 18 to get the kit... that leaves a profit of 8.88.... This is not including the shipping cost from the distributer.

I don't mind paying 32 euros for a kit..... add 5 euro shipping..... about 37 is the norm here. but I don't want to wait 6 or more weeks to get my stuff... That has happend to me often.... I now do all of my shopping out side of Germany. I have found a shop that deleivers in about a week (it is in the EU).

For those wishing to order out side of the EU must take into account the box has to clear the ZOLL (customs) and there it may be stopped and the Vat might be added to it. So keep this in mind when you oder out side the EU.

Gray

To put things in perspective, I was at a LHS and heard a guy talkin' about how expensive his hobby was. He does radio control cars. He's spent thousands of bucks. My kits generally run about 40 bucks. Even less on WWII aircraft. My latest kit I'm working on cost me 43 USD. I've put in well over 80 hrs. on the thing.
That comes out to roughly 50 cents an hour. That's pretty cheap if you ask me.

Are you talking to me?

My point in comparing the domestic Japanese pricing of Tamiya's older and newer kits was to illustrate the fact that there's absolutely no reason for them to be so closely priced anywhere else in the world. Sure, all the stuff is cheap here, but that wasn't the point of my post. The old stuff is REALLY cheap compared to the newer stuff, a very big price difference, so there's no logical reason for the rest of the world to sell the old AND new stuff at nearly similar prices, because Tamiya does not price them like that. As I mentioned earlier, someone's ripping off someone somewhere in the pipeline...

And don't worry, I'm sure Revell, Monogram, Ertl, Airfix, and Heller kits kits are much cheaper in Europe and North America...they're crazy expensive here!

Airfix I feel is the only manufacturer that produces cheap products over here for the most part, the others you list are affordable but I would not list them as cheap. As regards my closing statement it was just a jab at you no offence was meant or intended, I apologize if any offence was taken, as I fully understood the message you were relaying

Oh, no offense taken at all! That's why I was smiling and waving at you!

Glad you understood my point. I just didn't want you to think I was merely gloating about how cheap domestic kits are over here (whoops! Did I just do that now? )

Keeping to the theme of this thread, I notice that Italeri's recent re-release of its great ol' M47 kit is priced in the $30 USD price range (in Japan), right up there with all the modern new releases (also in Japan). Any thoughts about that, anyone?