The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

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The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by BMW »

Hi,

One thing I have noticed over the last years, which others have noticed as well, is how rare and expensive out of production kits become.
While it's not a new phenomenon, I fear it is hurting our hobby quite a bit.

Serious modellers usually buy every single car multiple times, (comon, admit it guys!)
But if a casual modeller wants to build an F1 car, and decides to build a car, then s/he will have a hard time finding that specific car at a reasonable cost. And most casual modelers care about that exact car and would probably not be interested in "whatever is left on the shelf".
This is a particular problem with popular cars, like cars driven by a world champion, even more so when it is a popular world champion.

We can all understand that the usual problems are obtaining licencing, and the costs of designing the kit, and the molds, but when a model is al made, why don't companies make several production runs and re-release kits?

I know some kits are re-released sometimes, but many (most) are not.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by Corpsegrinder »

Absolutely the same thought as you. If a company already has a mould of a certain model, why not making more and re-release every, let's say 2/3 years. I am 101% sure that they will all sell out quickly. And you are right when you say we tend to build the same F1 car multiple times, I regret so much that the only kit I bought twice is the MP4/8, if I knew that plastic kits were to become so hard to find, I'd buy 3/4 of each one. There are so many kits I'd want to buy (most of them are from Tamiya) that haven't seen any re-release for at least 6/7 years. What a shame.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by bestbalsakits »

in business, it all comes down to return of investment (ROI).
I'm sure if the companies would make more profit by re-releasing every 2 or 3 years, they would.

However, risk of having a re-re-re-release too soon & get stuck with left overs, would eat all profit from previous attempts: kits would need to be stocked and werehouse surface/volume + workers to handle these goods would cost money. So it is more profitable to make a limited run and make sure all goods are gone in the shortest possible time.
Also, spending money as a company to do 1 thing will influence available funds to do other things. And maybe, these other things make more profit. So that would be an easy choice.

I think that Tamiya 1/12 934 recent re-release has proven that if you as customer want a kit, you need to buy when it gets released. Tamiya did 1 round of deliveries, and immediatly closed opportunity to order more. So, it is not only customers that need to adapt to this new situation, but also shops & retailers. It takes a little time to get used to, but once aware of the new strategy you can only blame yourself if you're too late to the party.

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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by BMW »

BBK, Sure I understand about the production and storage costs, but the companies could perhaps consider changing their production approach from a large run initially, and then leaving it for a decade to several small runs each other year.
I am sure that outside F1 modeling, there will be kits that are either exceeding anticipated sales, or under delivering, here too the manufacturers would reduce their risk by producing the kits incrementally rather than in large batches.

Currently, the ones earning the most are the kit sellers on eBay that are trying to sell kits like the Hasegawa Ferraris and Fujimi Lotus 97t for several hundred percentage markup. That is not right, of course. instead of the models going to modelers, they are being kept unbuilt by kit collectors and speculators. let them speculate on bitcoin, they can't do any damage there :D
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by SBEST »

bestbalsakits wrote:in business, it all comes down to return of investment (ROI).
I'm sure if the companies would make more profit by re-releasing every 2 or 3 years, they would.


Wim
Yup, I agree with this statement. As far as re-releases go I would like it if Tamiya would make different versions. For example, why not a 1977 P34 Monaco version in 1/12th scale. Or a Ferrari 312T/312T4 different race versions ?

Be interesting to find out how the Tyrrell 003 Monaco versions sales went.

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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by Corpsegrinder »

BMW wrote: Currently, the ones earning the most are the kit sellers on eBay that are trying to sell kits like the Hasegawa Ferraris and Fujimi Lotus 97t for several hundred percentage markup. That is not right, of course. instead of the models going to modelers, they are being kept unbuilt by kit collectors and speculators. let them speculate on bitcoin, they can't do any damage there :D
Yep, that's what I hate the most and this is the end result of not having older kits available anymore...speculators buying and keeping kits waiting until they're not around anymore so that they can sell them for x10 times the original price...this won't do our hobby any good.

I am still convinced that few re-releases every couple of years will be sold in a flash.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by CelicaGT »

Before I got more serious about modeling I had no idea the crazy prices people charged for out of production kits.

It seems like some kits stay available (Tamiya F189 comes to mind) and the prices are reasonable. I don't know if they do lots of small batches or just made one really huge production run and so there's a huge stock. When I first started modeling I assumed all kits were like that. I really wish more kits were like that. I know, wishing doesn't pay the bills for model companies.

It is pretty frustrating as a not super-serious builder without the room to just buy up every model I might ever want to build that basically that's what you have to do. Or you're forced to pay a huge mark-up for a model that's not even that old (Ebbro Lotus 49 going for $200 on Ebay, glad I got mine a few years ago!). Or you just flat-out can't find the model.

I don't really have any solutions since I have no idea about the business side of things. Obviously if the model companies aren't making money then we won't get new models. :?



By the way, does anyone have a MFH 1/20 BRM P83/P115 they'd like to sell? :mrgreen:
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by Grypham »

Using the Porsche 934 as an example, I wonder what the actual production run was, and how Tamiya decided on that number? In a lot of shops, they were all sold out even on "Pre-Sale" status.
At near $200, that was still around 1/2 what the eBayers were asking for the previous release. I suspect it wouldn't be easy for a youth to talk Dad into spending $200 on a kit, but I suppose that's not the intended consumer for 1/12th kits in any event.

I second the motion that there should be more re-releases (kudos to Italeri & Revell for the Protar kits), especially slight variations (I.E. the Tamiya Monaco Tyrrell) as they may only need to tool an additional sprue and some decals, yet release an essentially "new" kit. I lament the fact that Tamiya missed a golden opportunity with the movie "Rush" to release that version of the McLaren M23 based on their existing kit. And why not tweak/fix the old electric motor + battery box variants?

Anyways, I'm getting off topic about scarcity and prices, but surely a tweaked re-release would be considerably cheaper to market than a total new tool design.

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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by SebLeung »

There seems to be 2 factors at play in the plastic kit market right now. First seems to be that supply has suddenly dried up for some kits (Fujimi 97T & FW14B, Ebbro 49) and opportunistic eBay sellers are trying to take advantage of being the only listings on the market. I don't think those prices are properly indicative of price since nobody in their right mind would pay $500 for a Fujimi 97T that only has a 50% chance of not being warped. My question is why the supply has dried up so suddenly, all three of those kits I listed above were plentiful on eBay when I got into this hobby 2 years ago. Seems to be a late 2019 phenomenon. The silver lining is that when members on this forum post sales, they're not hell-bent on making a massive profit so if you want these kits you just need to be patient.

The second factor, which is more mysterious to me, is the massive inflation of certain Tamiya F1 kit prices on eBay. I'd been planning on buying an RB6 since early 2018 but kept putting it off. Back then they were around $50. Now they're $100? At first I figured stock was also running out on these, combined with the fact that I'd heard that Red Bull is notorious hard on licensing, it seemed like there'd be a slim chance that this kit will ever be reissued. Fair. That is until I checked prices of the new SF70H kit on eBay. Plenty of stock, no chance of the supply drying up within the next 5 years. And yet they're posted for $100USD when they're still in stock from first party retailers like HobbyEasy for $45? It doesn't make any sense to me.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by SBEST »

Wonder if someone is buying up the supply?
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