Well, the AFV Club M60A2 is not released yet, so we can only judge it based on their excellent M60A1 kit. In any case, the Dragon M60A2 is to be avoided. The hull is grossly inaccurate, as it is basically just reshaped M48A3 hull (so it is too short, the front is too narrow with too wide fenders and armor angles are way off, wheels are incorrectly positioned and various hull details are wrong for M60... The turret shape is off too, the gun barrel is oversized and cupola is significantly too tall with oversized MG barrel... If someone needs M60A2 NOW then the Academy one is a better choice. If not, wait for the AFV Club one.[/quote] Sounds like they rushed it and took lots of shortcuts. Did you ever get the idea that every engineer who wants to design a decent kit at Dragon is either doing Tigers or took an offer from (insert another Chinese company here) they couldn't refuse?

To be honest I feel that Dragon have a serious staffing problem in their military model department now... Maybe they lost some good designers to many other Chinese companies that appeared in recent years, or maybe they moved them all to their Disney licensed kit projects... I don't know. But it looks like there are no, or very few, people left at Dragon military kits team who have any idea how to do proper research and who have basic skills to interpret photos and drawings and turn them into accurate CAD designs... As far as I know even their WW2 kits are not the same quality as they were several years ago.

Indeed, the biggest problem of Academy kit is that they used their old hull parts, which were based on even older Tamiya motorized design.

To be honest I feel that Dragon have a serious staffing problem in their military model department now... Maybe they lost some good designers to many other Chinese companies that appeared in recent years, or maybe they moved them all to their Disney licensed kit projects... I don't know. But it looks like there are no, or very few, people left at Dragon military kits team who have any idea how to do proper research and who have basic skills to interpret photos and drawings and turn them into accurate CAD designs... As far as I know even their WW2 kits are not the same quality as they were several years ago.[/ Hi, Pawel! I agree with everything you wrote! In addition, it seems that CYBERHOBBY/DRAGON and DRAGON's "BLACK PLAGUE", for the last 5 years or so, have been "economizing"- i.e, making their kits cheaper to produce and thus, reaping more profits for themselves. By "economizing", I mean that they have taken out of their kits their once-legendary "GREAT QUALITY" and substituted for it a lack of attention to detail, and a fast descent into mediocrity... Most of us are aware of DRAGON's cost-cutting measures, which are reflected in HIGHER PRICING for LESS CONTENT- I won't go into detail... A LOT of modellers on this site, and other sites I'm sure, are not happy with this "strategem" of DRAGON's... To return to this thread's original subject, i.e, the up-coming AFV CLUB M60A2, I will put my faith into this new kit, as AFV CLUB generally produces really nice kits, with fair pricing being commensurate to their kits' fine quality...

Interesting point... It does seem to be rather epidemic with them as of late. Their Japanese tanks of a few years ago were superb and the Sd.Kfz 10/5 is terrific. Pat MMiR

AFV Club's pricing is what I'll have to watch out for b/c Academy kits have been always cheaper. Academy's M60A2 goes for $31 USD (including shipping to the US) on Ebay, while AFV Club's M60A1 sells for at least $60 range so I anticipate a high price from AFV Club... I am price-sensitive and will have to see if this upcoming kit is worth twice the price of another.

I guess the academy kit will need some AM parts to make it right. I will definitly go with AFV Club.

AFV Club's pricing is what I'll have to watch out for b/c Academy kits have been always cheaper. Academy's M60A2 goes for $31 USD (including shipping to the US) on Ebay, while AFV Club's M60A1 sells for at least $60 range so I anticipate a high price from AFV Club... I am price-sensitive and will have to see if this upcoming kit is worth twice the price of another.[/quote] Judging from the positive reviews of AFV CLUB's M60A1 kit, their -A2 should be at least, just as good. I'd rather pay $60.00 for a GOOD kit, than $31.00 for a mediocre one. Hey, I'm not made out of money, either. BUT!!! I live on a limited income, so I use several strategies to obtain the kits that I really want. I rarely, if ever, pay RETAIL prices for ANY kit. I wait until prices come down- I suffer from NO phobias over "being last", and I CERTAINLY have no deadlines to meet... Once prices have come down on the internet, I shop around- Why buy from the first vendor that has priced a new kit substantially lower than retail? There are usually others that follow suit, and you KNOW that they will try to under-cut each other. I stay away from "sucker-traps" on ebay, where a vendor will post a ridiculously low "Opening Bid" price on an item, and without a "BUY IT NOW" option for the item in question. You just KNOW that there will be DOZENS of bidders on that kind of an auction, and sometimes these guys will try to out-bid each other to the point where they wind up bidding HIGHER THAN THE ORIGINAL MANUFACTURER'S SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE!!! What can I say? There's an ass for every seat, I suppose... It may take me MONTHS before I buy the "latest" kit, by which time, said kit is now "old"- But I don't care, 'cause I'M OLD, TOO!!! I watch out for inflated Shipping Prices, too. If I find an item that I want selling for a "steal" of a price, the SECOND THING that I check is the Shipping Price. Many vendors will "low-ball" an item's price to draw buyers in, and recoup the losses incurred by the low Sale Price by charging unscrupulously high Shipping Prices. In some extreme cases, SEVERAL TIMES AS MUCH as the actual Shipping, or even the original price of the item in question! I just ran a quick check on ebay for an AFV CLUB M60A1- Retail Prices run anywhere from an average of $49.00-$69.00, among Asian vendors. Domestic (US) prices run higher, anywhere from $62.00-$75.00, generally. Now, Shipping- That runs anywhere from $16.00 to $24.00 with the Asian vendors, whereas domestic vendors' Shipping runs anywhere from about $9.00-$16.00. As of today, THE cheapest pricing for that kit that I found, was with LUCKY MODELS, who don't sell on ebay. For that same AFV CLUB M60A1, LUCKY lists it at $49.99 + $14.34 for Shipping, for a total of $64.33... Not bad, cosidering that the Asian ebay vendors are selling the same kit for more money, including the Shipping. It's a toss-up whether you want to wait for a few days more and spend the least amount of money with LUCKY MODELS, or get your -A1 in just a few days from any number of domestic shops, but paying more for it when all is said and done. So, in a nutshell, that's how I avoid "Buyers' Remorse"- by shopping around, and watching out for excessive Shipping Rates. As I said earlier, I'll wait...

Interesting point... It does seem to be rather epidemic with them as of late. Their Japanese tanks of a few years ago were superb and the Sd.Kfz 10/5 is terrific. Pat MMiR[/quote] Hi, Pat! You're right- But there again, those kits are from a few years ago, before they REEEALLY started skimping. I can't comment on their Sd.Kfz.10-series kits, as I don't own any. However, their HA-GO and KA-MI kits ARE superb. My only beef with them is that they use those "DS" Tracks. I'd much rather have had DRAGON take a lesson from BRONCO who uses "Link-and-Length" Tracks in their diminutive M22 Locust kits, or TAMIYA, who use "L&L" Tracks in their Hetzers (both 1/35 and 1/48), and their 1/35 IS-2 and IS-152 kits. They look good, and you can't really tell that they're not "Indy-Links", especially once they're mucked-up a bit with "dirt", "mud", etc...