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I think that's one way they've avoided "price hikes."

Raise the prices on new figures and leave the old figures
at the original price for as long as possible.

Stealth hikes? Wonder where they got that idea from . . . .

Le Grognard wrote:Stealth hikes? Wonder where they got that idea from . . . .

There's nothing stealthy about it. They announced the price hike on the front page of their website along with the reasoning behind it and a spreadsheet showing the old and new prices.

No matter what, prices are gonna go up.. weather it's 40K or Warmachine or whatever else. Some games will be cheaper than others but the more popular the get, the more cool stuff gets added, the more modelers and developers need to get paid, the more metal prices climb, the higher the prices go.

If they follow in GW's footsteps the price hikes will lead to a better quality product later on. Look at GW's quality 10-15 years ago and look at it now. Look at some of the first few PP models when they first started, and compare to the newer, bigger uber-dynamic-pose models popping up now. IMO, raising prices is more than justified if the product line improves from it. Sure, it sucks to pay more. Wargaming is an expensive hobby. It just comes down to budgeting your cash and not going overboard.

Has anyone seen how BIG the new 'jack is?

No. How spindly is it's waist? I swear that half of them look like the bastard child of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dita von Teese. (Don't look the second name up from work, kiddies...)

Valhallan42nd wrote:No. How spindly is it's waist? I swear that half of them look like the bastard child of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dita von Teese. (Don't look the second name up from work, kiddies...)

Hawt!

I think plastics are on the horizon just because of cost which wouldn't be half bad with the jacks getting bigger and bigger. Pin jobs already are a must with regular sized jacks/beasts as it is.

So here is a photo of Drago:



And here is a photo of a beserker



Now scale is tricky here because they are different photos, but keep in mind they are on the SAME SIZE base.

I think it is clear that Drago is a good deal larger than a standard beserker.

The new price of the Beserker, after the price increase, will be $29.99.

Officially on the PP site Drago's price is TBD, but I think the pics clearly show that he should be a good deal more expensive. Double? Maybe not, but he's definitely larger and has more bits.

And here's some more close up pic's from Origin's of the new Jacks that help show off their size and quality:

http://www.privateerpressforums.com/index.php?showtopic=151164

If part of the question here is trying to address why PP gets away with these hikes where GW has earned the wrath of Satan's kittens, I personally think it's timing and a diminishing supply of "good blood." Everyone has a general feeling that things suck economically right now and (true or exaggerated) PP's articulate announcement regarding their raises has always gone over better than the GW "to make things fair for every army," "to simplify things," "because these are the Jaguars of gaming," has always set people off.

And there's the argument that at least you get more out of Drago (points wise, smash-wise, survivability-wise) than a land raider.

PP will release plastic in many forms, they have to to show increased profit. And like it or not, that is the business model we live under. I think people have felt that at least up until now, PP has handled it more gracefully and tried to deliever in other areas. Personally, nothing angers me more than the way GW tries to push off every change they make as "this is even better for you!!!"

Hasslefree Figures have not increased prices in the UK, in fact they have just started their summer sale. If you are experiencing price increases in the US, it is due to the weakening value of the dollar to buy imports, nothing to do with metal prices.

Kilkrazy wrote:Hasslefree Figures have not increased prices in the UK, in fact they have just started their summer sale. If you are experiencing price increases in the US, it is due to the weakening value of the dollar to buy imports, nothing to do with metal prices.

Don't be so sure

from their website (dated 2/08):

Sorry guys we have fought it for years but the latest round of price hikes for all items bought in from metal castings to resin to postal charges has finally made us do something we don’t really want to. The prices across the range are going up with effect from Friday 22nd February 2008.

As many of you have been with us from the beginning you will know that this is the first time ever we have put our figure prices up since we started in January 2004 and it is not something we have taken lightly.

When going through the accounts over Christmas I found some old costings from April 2004 which showed that currently we are paying 6 times more for each casting than we were then and also with an approximate 400% increase in other overheads since January 2004. As we still charge you guys the same prices as we did then, this extra expense is just absorbed by the business as a whole but it isn’t practical for it to go on, we just cant get away without increases, sorry. Some of the resin figures with the price increases by the caster aren’t even feasible for us to stock anymore at current prices.

Someone did this comparison

Well, being a bit of a spod I decided to research wargames metal prices in a bit more detail., and try to get some facts instead of assertions.

Executive summary
Comparing 1997 and 2006, the base cost of casting alloy increased 12.4% from $5,187 per ton to $5,832 per ton.
(General Consumer Price Index inflation was 25.7% in the period Jan 1998 to Jan 2007)

Methodology
The Prince August web site gives details of three grades of casting alloy. I assumed that industry wide, general use of casting alloy uses 1/3rd of each grade. This gave me basic proportions of lead, bismuth, antimony, zinc and tin to find prices for.

I got US producer prices for 1997 and 2006 from the US government science service web site http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/ and did a load of sums in Excel to find average prices per ton.

I choose the years 1997 and 2006 because 2006 was the latest I could quickly find figures for, and 1997 is 10 years earlier which is a nice baseline for comparison.

The CPI stats were got from the http://www.bls.gov/CPI/ website and cover 1998 to 2007 because their published stats seem to start at 1998.

I noticed in my research that metal prices can be very volatile, and sometime double or halve from one year to the next. These swing do not affect all metals equally, so wargame metal being a complex alloy, the swings often balance out. The consuming industries of course hedge against swings by stockpiling, futures trading and so on.

(It was interesting to find how little the price of metals may change historically. Bistmuth, for example cost about $1.50 per pound in 1906, and $3.50 per pound in 1997. In other words the straight dollar price more than doubled, but taking inflation into account this is really a huge reduction in the cost of the metal. This occurred because increasing demand for the metal stimulated the opening or more mines, better extraction methods and so on.)

Criticisms
There are various obvious problems with my method and assumptions, for example, the prices used are based on single years while as noted above prices can fluctuate up and down from one year to the next.


Does anyone know how much the US retail price of wargame figures increased between 1997 and 2006?

syr8766 wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Hasslefree Figures have not increased prices in the UK, in fact they have just started their summer sale. If you are experiencing price increases in the US, it is due to the weakening value of the dollar to buy imports, nothing to do with metal prices.

Don't be so sure

from their website (dated 2/08):

Sorry guys we have fought it for years but the latest round of price hikes for all items bought in from metal castings to resin to postal charges has finally made us do something we don’t really want to. The prices across the range are going up with effect from Friday 22nd February 2008.

As many of you have been with us from the beginning you will know that this is the first time ever we have put our figure prices up since we started in January 2004 and it is not something we have taken lightly.

When going through the accounts over Christmas I found some old costings from April 2004 which showed that currently we are paying 6 times more for each casting than we were then and also with an approximate 400% increase in other overheads since January 2004. As we still charge you guys the same prices as we did then, this extra expense is just absorbed by the business as a whole but it isn’t practical for it to go on, we just cant get away without increases, sorry. Some of the resin figures with the price increases by the caster aren’t even feasible for us to stock anymore at current prices.

I stand corrected.

Another interesting fact, the US price of bulk polystyrene was a bit over $2,000 per ton in January this year. Since much less weight of plastic is used in each figure than metal, the materials cost advantage is obvious.

Kilkrazy wrote:

syr8766 wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Hasslefree Figures have not increased prices in the UK, in fact they have just started their summer sale. If you are experiencing price increases in the US, it is due to the weakening value of the dollar to buy imports, nothing to do with metal prices.

Don't be so sure

from their website (dated 2/08):

Sorry guys we have fought it for years but the latest round of price hikes for all items bought in from metal castings to resin to postal charges has finally made us do something we don’t really want to. The prices across the range are going up with effect from Friday 22nd February 2008.

As many of you have been with us from the beginning you will know that this is the first time ever we have put our figure prices up since we started in January 2004 and it is not something we have taken lightly.

When going through the accounts over Christmas I found some old costings from April 2004 which showed that currently we are paying 6 times more for each casting than we were then and also with an approximate 400% increase in other overheads since January 2004. As we still charge you guys the same prices as we did then, this extra expense is just absorbed by the business as a whole but it isn’t practical for it to go on, we just cant get away without increases, sorry. Some of the resin figures with the price increases by the caster aren’t even feasible for us to stock anymore at current prices.

I stand corrected.

Hey, ain't no thing. You can only be right 99% of the time on the internet . Interesting to note, which I just noticed today, is the cost increase in resin casting as well (why I don't know), so it'll be interesting to see if plastic casting, as you point out, will really be the way to go, or if resin casters (Old Crow, for example) find themselves squeezed as well.

When considering plastic vs metal there are two factors, the cost of raw material and the cost of moulding equipment. The equipment for plastics is at least 10 times more expensive. This eliminates the materials cost advantage unless the production runs can be much larger. That's why so far, only large companies like GW have done it. And it's very interesting to see so many small companies (Perry Bros and others) doing plastic ranges all of a sudden.

Resin is a kind of halfway house between plastic and metal, offering many of the disadvantages of both. Its main use is to make models that are too large to be done in metal, but have production runs too small to be worth doing in plastic. It's sort of a "boutique" modelling material.

PP prices have always been crazy. That's why my Khador force is made up of stuff that I have got 2nd hand/on offer or whatever. To hell with competitiveness, I just play for fun with what I can afford. The price of new stuff straight of the shelves has always been offputting to me, and doubly so now. For instance I was all set to get the new Fenris model, but took one look at the price tag (£26 for a singe guy on a horse? WTF?) and changed my mind.

I'm not dissing PP for charging what they think they can get away with. They've got to make a profit, I accept that It just happens that I think its ridunkulous. I work hard for my money and I'm not going to piss it away on overpriced crap.

That's the beauty of playing many systems. Right now my spending is focussed on building up an undead CAoR army from second-hand/deep discounted old Rackham metals... For the equivalent of that one model I bought huge box of crap off ebay - haven't counted it yet, but there are a couple of dozen models in there at least.

I guess it comes with the territory of Grumpy Old Fart. If I know how much fun I'm likely to get out of any given model, and frankly can't justify that much money. For £26 I could buy a crate of wine, or a couple of brand new DVDs or... and the list goes on. The amount of fun I am going to get out of a single (well, OK he comes with a dismount as well, so strictly speaking it is 2 models) just doesn't come close. For £26 I'd want a vehicle, or something pretty hefty in size at the very least....

I know geeks are typically slaves to their nerdy desires, but sometime you've got to grow up and realise that the little metal (or plastic) men just really AREN'T worth that much money!

daggitkiller wrote:If part of the question here is trying to address why PP gets away with these hikes where GW has earned the wrath of Satan's kittens, I personally think it's timing and a diminishing supply of "good blood." Everyone has a general feeling that things suck economically right now and (true or exaggerated) PP's articulate announcement regarding their raises has always gone over better than the GW "to make things fair for every army," "to simplify things," "because these are the Jaguars of gaming," has always set people off.

I think the reason GW price rises equate to more hate than those from PP is purely because with PP if you play a single faction and already have a 500-750 point army, you know that you are probably only going to buy a couple more models. So if they gouge you by a fiver a model, then it hurts but not too badly as they will only gouge you be a tenner total. With GW though, if they gouge you by a fiver a model then you will be out of pocket by a whole lot more as the you will be buying more models in all likelihood.

Personally I despise both companies in that regard, and think in reality they both try and take the piss, exploiting the nerdiness of their core demographic.

Message: If you don't want to be exploited, then its simple: don't let yourself be. Walk away and play something else. Personally I'm cool with the fact that there's loads of stuff out there that I would LIKE to buy but can't afford. I've always wanted a Jaguar car for instance, but the money required to keep one on the road, let alone buy it in the first place is much more than I think reasonable for a means of transport - so I am quite happy batting around in my battered old Hyundai...

Some things are worth it, some things just aren't!

@Osbad: I think that's a very good point regardless of the company. You know you're a grognard when you start complaining about Old Glory's prices! This is a hobby, and while part of the joy of any hobby is complaining about the things that bother you (I'm sure this happens in needlepoint as well), at the end of the day, it's a leisure activity done for fun. And if that means your khador army is all purchased on ebay/ con flea market sales and has a bunch of non PP figs, great! And if that means your WHFB dwarf army is made up of ebay/bartertown purchases and old Harlequin/Black Tree figures, great!

My thoughts, which I base on absolutely nothing, is that the cost of materials, be they styrene or casting metal, are a very small proportion of the cost of the actual model.

If polystyrene is $2000 per ton, that's aboot $1 per pound. I just happened to have an old scale that weighs in ounces, and I found that a single sprue from the Ork Loota box weighed aboot 1.25 oz. That's aboot 12.8 cents.

I can't remember how many sprues there are in a Loota box. Let's say it's 3. I got mine for $20. That makes 2% of the cost of the model the styrene.

So, if the cost of styrene went up tenfold, the actual final cost should go up by no more than $3.50 or so.

I think the cost of materials is a red herring. I think the real cost is in the molds, labor running the molds, in the development of the models, in the creative staff that puts the marketing around the models, and in profit for the various hands that the model passes through.

As far as PP's prices go, I'd agree that $60 figure is insane. Even though $60 isn't such a huge amount, considering it will no doubt take hours to paint, and provide hours of fun play time, it still is hard to swallow. Not very well thought oot.

Similarly, PP's metal obsession is also very poorly thought oot. Not so terrible with some of the newer Hordes stuff, but the old Jacks are just ridiculous. Those models just SCREAM plastic. They're like five pound bricks, and have none of the detail that demands metal be used.

Probably just an effect of the fact that startup companies can't afford to make styrene molds, but after things picked up, they should have thought a little harder aboot it.

Phryxis wrote:
Similarly, PP's metal obsession is also very poorly thought oot. Not so terrible with some of the newer Hordes stuff, but the old Jacks are just ridiculous. Those models just SCREAM plastic. They're like five pound bricks, and have none of the detail that demands metal be used.

Probably just an effect of the fact that startup companies can't afford to make styrene molds, but after things picked up, they should have thought a little harder aboot it.

Well, after putting a MOWDC together yesterday basically by chopping his arms up and totally repositioning him (and doing the same to a Skorne Cyclops, and fighting with a Defender for a month, etc.), I won't mind a switch to plastic for components at least.

Regarding startup costs, I'm curious to see how Warlord and Wargames Factory do with that, as they're essentially startups (backed by venture capitalists--yes, we now have venture capitalists in this hobby) going straight for plastic. Warlord has won this round as WF seems to be retooling, but since WF is American and with the cost of shipping going up, I suspect they may do pretty well in NA anyway...

I don't know but I expect the cost of making moulds for polystyrene is coming down thanks to computer design and manufacturing.

Phryxis wrote:If polystyrene is $2000 per ton, that's aboot $1 per pound. I just happened to have an old scale that weighs in ounces, and I found that a single sprue from the Ork Loota box weighed aboot 1.25 oz. That's aboot 12.8 cents.

I can't remember how many sprues there are in a Loota box. Let's say it's 3. I got mine for $20. That makes 2% of the cost of the model the styrene.

that's only the cost of the metal/plastic itself.. you need to pay a guy to pay a sculptor to make the item. Pay a guy to make the mold, another guy to cast the pieces, another guy to pick the right pieces and stick em in the box. You need to buy the plasticy container thingies to put the metal bitz in to put in the box, you need to pay designers or a 3rd party design company to take photos and design the box, you need to buy paper to build the box with, and you need to pay to ship the stuff to wherever it needs to go. There's a LOT more costs involved.

But still thats just how bidness works when you're making your own stuff.. take pizza for example. 15 years ago I worked at a pizza shop. My boss told me it costed him 75 cents to make a pizza. He sold his pizzas for $9.49. He sold a lot of pizzas, prolly the best around and most popular in the area at the time (and philly has TONS of pizza places).. with a huge markup like that, he was still barely making a profit because of all of the other operating expenses, salaries, insurance, rent, all that stuff. There's really a lot more that goes into the manufacturing process than most of us stop to think about.

Um, Necros, that's exactly what Phryxis was saying. He was attempting to challenge the notion that rising material costs are the driver behind price increases.

yeah I know, I wsan't paying attention as usual, I usually skim posts and then read in full later.. :p oh well, I was bored at work and needed to post something anyway

I don't know but I expect the cost of making moulds for polystyrene is coming down thanks to computer design and manufacturing.

Well, you'd think so, but as somebody who works with computers all day long, my experience is that people spend so much time noodling confusedly with the computers that the net result is even more wasted money.

It certainly seems like the process should be faster to go from a 3D model to a mold, and probably should require a lot less talent as well.

I know I could make a perfect 3D model copy of a Rhino a lot easier than I could make it in plastic.

daggitkiller wrote:If part of the question here is trying to address why PP gets away with these hikes where GW has earned the wrath of Satan's kittens, I personally think it's timing and a diminishing supply of "good blood."

While goat blood may be getting increasingly expensive as we enter a recession, the major difference is that PP offer platitudes to their customer base, while GW's mask slipped so long ago they only put it on for the kiddies.

Frankly we are seeing the asame business model at least in pricing, Gw sold miniatures cheap once. Like GW, and crack dealers, the price goes up as people get hooked. Plainly speaking PP can afford a price hike because people will still buy.

GW's mask slipped when they became a publicly traded company with stockholders they had to appease. They definately weren't like that before.

What is PP's excuse? ($100 cavalry units? Makes the blood knights look like a bargain, and PP did it first!)