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

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

Post by PeteJ »

I learned this lesson the hard way 20+ years ago. I way overpaid for the Tamiya 1:12 P34(well overpaid for the time). Since then I buy what I can when it is issued. That is why my shop is stacked to the roof with models. Frequently Tamiya will reissue a kit but often, they languish for decades. Years ago they would create several of new car and motorcycle kits a year. That is a lot of kits.

If you go off of the product numbering system(which is not consecutive for the early kits) that is over 650 different cars and motorcycles. If they reissue a couple a year, you are talking about hundreds of years to cycle through the entire collection. Waiting for a rare kit that you want reissued, is a real crap shoot with numbers this size. It is also probably quite difficult for the companies to decide what to reissue under the circumstances. I don't know how they would do it.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by allnie »

As soon as an "I-want-that-kit" is being released - then buy it. If you wait then the high price is always a problem.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by allnie »

Funny thinking back 50 years when I started in the hobby as a child. The Airfix and most other kits were almost "endless available". I never stood there "if I don't buy it now it is gone".
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by bossy122 »

If you think F1 kits are bad, try shopping for Moto GP bikes.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by f1m »

Just an FYI...

Here is a list of Tamiya F1 Kits for current F1 teams, plus Lotus

TEAM - CAR YEAR - NAME - KIT YEAR

Ferrari - 2017 - SF70H - 2018
Mercedes - None
Red Bull - 2010 - RB6 - 2012
McLaren - 1998 - MP4/13 - 2006
Renault - 1982 - RE 30B Turbo - 1984
Williams - 2002 - FW24 - 2004?
Toro Rosso - None
Force India - None
Haas - None
Alfa Romeo / Sauber - None

Lotus - 1979 - Lotus 79 - 2011?
Lotus - 1992 - Lotus 107 Ford - 1994?

Items to note
  • Takes at least a year, perhaps two, to produce a kit
  • Its been eight years since they've done a non-Ferrari kit
  • Lotus is an anomaly in terms of developing a model of an older car. That is also the year Hasegawa produced theirs which caused an issue for both companies.
  • No backmarkers
  • No Mercedes

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

Post by Jordan2.0 »

If I want a kit I just buy it..rare kits are more expensive,I have no problem with this.If the price is to high,I don't buy.Very simple 8)

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

Post by Icon_Modeler »

f1m wrote:Just an FYI...

Here is a list of Tamiya F1 Kits for current F1 teams, plus Lotus

TEAM - CAR YEAR - NAME - KIT YEAR

Ferrari - 2017 - SF70H - 2018
Mercedes - None
Red Bull - 2010 - RB6 - 2012
McLaren - 1998 - MP4/13 - 2006
Renault - 1982 - RE 30B Turbo - 1984
Williams - 2002 - FW24 - 2004?
Toro Rosso - None
Force India - None
Haas - None
Alfa Romeo / Sauber - None

Lotus - 1979 - Lotus 79 - 2011?
Lotus - 1992 - Lotus 107 Ford - 1994?

Items to note
  • Takes at least a year, perhaps two, to produce a kit
  • Its been eight years since they've done a non-Ferrari kit
  • Lotus is an anomaly in terms of developing a model of an older car. That is also the year Hasegawa produced theirs which caused an issue for both companies.
  • No backmarkers
  • No Mercedes
Just an example Eric. Talking with one of the sales and marketing guys at Tamiya North America. It takes a group of people two years to develop a single 1/32nd scale aircraft kit. The same group can develop a 1/48th scale aircraft kit in about half the time.

Another point of interest. I was told that Tamiya's lotus 79 was actually developed back in the 80's and then shelved. It was only when they found out that Hasegawa intended to release the 79 that Tamiya dusted their version off and went into manufacturing of the kit.

Pete hit the nail on the head. With some 650 kits in just their car and motorcycle portfolio Tamiya has quite a number to pick from when it comes to re-releases. Now add in all of their armor, aircraft and ship inventory and maybe you can understand that it would be impossible to re-release the same kit every few years. And we haven't even considered adding into production new kits that are being developed for the first time that have to use production resources as well. To think that they can re-release the same kit every few years shows to me at least the limited knowledge here at F1M as to what it takes, Time, Effort and Finances, to produce a model kit.

Last, I'd really like to know how many kits are actually selling at the bloated prices you guys are talking about. My guess is ZERO. I've been selling kits off for 5-6 years now and I can count on one hand the number of kits I actually made more then what I paid for it. In fact I'm lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar especially for an F1 kit. So I think by and large the inflated prices you are seeing on eBay will not last and if you were to check the "completed listing" or "sold listings" you will see that none of those kits listed at the inflated prices have sold.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by sky1911 »

I'm always torn on the "buy it when it's out" issue. I mean, there are a lot of kits I would like to have - and could afford to buy, MFH, Tamiya or Italieri. I just don't buy them because, as it is, I have enough kits in my stash, that I haven't started or even really looked at other than having a casual check that everything important is there - not looking for every tiny part! You might call that foolish and maybe it is, I don't know. Just because I want or realisticly more like "would like to have" something and because it may be gone or hard to get in the future is not really a reason to buy for me. I mean sometimes I get the feeling that I am buying kits just to have them. Now what is the point of that? It's like the car guy buying all those beautiful cars to put in a storage facility and never to drive them - that's not what they were made for. And neither are the kits to be stacked in storage. They should be built and displayed, not locked away in some cupboard / attic / basement (take your pick). In a way, everyone buying these kits with the intent of "maybe building them in the remote future" is fueling the fire for those that just finish a project and want to approach the next one by buying it when they have the time to do so. This is not meant as an attack on anybody, it's just an opinion.

I mean where does this hoarding lead to? I have upgrade kits and transkits where I don't even have the base model kit. Why? Well just because it was apparent that the transkit is harder to come by then the actual kit and might only be available for a short time. Foolish? You tell me. In my opinion "yes", but also "guilty as charged".

I've seen the re-release of the 934 happen and I have been eyeballing that kit for some time now. I'd rather have the 935, because I don't really like the orange colour, but whatever, I like the shape of the classic 911. And on reading this thread I felt like I should probably buy it NOW - and was almost ready to do that yesterday. Realisticly I won't be building it in the next 10 years, because there are other kits I would rather do first. I may succumb to buying it regardless. Not because I "need" it or really want it, but just because it might be more expensive to buy it in the future. And if I'm not going to build it anyway I might as well sell it - at then typical asking prices :S - in the future.
On the prices... looking for 934s on ebay yesterday, I found a green Vaillant kit - the RC body, I think, for... sit down please... 4.500€ asking price. Like hell! I have had actual running cars that have cost less (several cars that didn't total that sum actually). However, whenever I stumble across a kit that falls into the "would like to have" category for cheap (say for considerably less than 100€), I go in for the kill. Because it is an "opportunity" as in, "it's cheap so why not?".

Besides - I'm only talking 1/12 kits with the exception of the Bandai Star Wars stuff which is mostly 1/72 - at least the ones I'm interested in. With Bandai I'm also looking for deals. I had been eyeballing the Millennium Falcon on and off for years. Usually fired up by the release of a new movie of the franchise or me binge watching the older movies. So I went looking for it late last year found a reasonably priced version that was open for OBO, put in an even lower price (say 2/3 of the typical asking price of similar offers on fleabay at the time) because "why not?" and got accepted - I wasn't expecting it to be accepted, but it was, so I paid and got it. I will probably start building it some time soon, because Star Wars is still fresh at the moment. Otherwise it'll probably move to the archives.

All of that aside, I'm really happy about Italieri re-releasing their old kits. Again, I'm torn. Buy them now or wait? The 8C Monza is the most appealing to me, but looking at my stash (not that large, 4x MFH, 6x Tamiya, 1x Trumpeter) it probably will be sitting on the shelf for a long while... so what to do? It seems reasonably priced right now. Hoard or pass? ;)

/edit
The same is true for video games btw. If I see them for dirt cheap and they have been on my "might be worth checking out list", I get them. After all you buy digitally these days anyway, so no harm (by creating artificial scarcity for others) done other than increasing your list of "todo" stuff. However, over the holidays I started to try and complete some of them, so I can justify getting newer titles as well ;).
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by jaykay »

You guys have to consider one thing as well when talking about insane ebay prices.
Some sellers list kits for unreasonably high prices while they don't have them in stock. This way the listing stays online ( with no one buying ) and they don't have spend time recreating it once the item is back in stock. They just change the price back to normal.
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Re: The scarcity and rarity (and prices!) of plastic kits

Post by bestbalsakits »

jaykay wrote:Some sellers list kits for unreasonably high prices while they don't have them in stock. This way the listing stays online ( with no one buying ) and they don't have spend time recreating it once the item is back in stock. They just change the price back to normal.
I believe that most of sellers offering kits for unreasonable high prices, not only don't have kit in stock but also have no intention to do so all! Should one of their listings get sold, they just go & buy the model themselves at that time.
Not sure if there is a term for this referring to selling goods one does not realy own, but when you look at shares @ stock markets where this form of selling is a very normal attitude and is called shorting or short selling. The riskier the item is where you put your money on, the bigger the reward or losses can be.

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