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KingCracker wrote:Some things are way over priced IMO, and others are fair. I dont mind spending 20 bucks for a box of boyz/nobz/lootas burnas. That is totally fine by me. BUT I think $30 for 3 bikes is insane, $100 for your squad of vibro cannons, shoot I dont play WFB but that Empire Steam tank, I cant remember what the price was but I remember seeing it and thinking, holy crap sacks!
Its a hobby tho, and Ive yet to see one, aside from rock collecting, that doesnt cost loads of money.

Illuminated storage cases to store your rocks in - if you have crystals the humidity controlled ones will run thousands of dollars.
Books.
Microscopes, if you're really serious into the hobby maybe a mass spectrometer.
Trips to the various parts of the world to collect rocks.

I'm sure if you got into it rock collecting would be at least as expensive as wargaming.

That said, the latest rises make me disinclined to purchase any new GW stuff in the near future.

I'm still going to pay full price at my FLGS just to spite all you naysayers!! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

Incidentally, anyone want to buy some Chaos stuff, NIB?

Falconlance wrote:As a paintballer and airsofter, I look at buying from the GW stores as "supporting the local field." If the store doesnt have local support, it will close, and our local gamer community will seperate and relocate.

I'd call that a two-edged sword, though. Part of the purpose of GW stores is to get people playing nothing but GW games using official models. Fair enough for them but it means people are potentially missing out on a lot of fun stuff.

The other element to pricing is the quantity of buyers. The more people that buy a company's products, the cheaper those products will be. It's like Wal-Mart. How many millions of people shop at their local Wal-Mart every day? Enough that it's allowed them to sell stuff for next to nothing. Sure they still charge the same as most for a video game, CD, or DVD/BluRay, but everything else is dirt cheap because so many people shop there that their gross annual income is insane. GW charges more because they aren't really making that much right now (comparatively), current events considered. If you're wanting their prices to go down then buying alternative is the wrong thing to do, though as a short-term solution it's not much of a problem. Their prices will never be something like $5.00 for a box of 20 Guardsmen or $10.00 for a box of marines, because they'll never have that large of a consumer base, but continuing to support GW and it's affiliated Rogue Trader stores will help in the long run. I buy their stuff for that reason. Plus they've got some of the best customer support on the market, as was mentioned before.

I am just glad we are all in agreement that Chaos Termies are overpriced at $65 CAN a box.

metallifan wrote:Plus they've got some of the best customer support on the market, as was mentioned before.

QFT

I have a question regarding the "support GW" group, does buying forge world at all help GW on the whole?

It's really a question of cost verus enjoyment or quality. If you spend a little at at time it's not so bad. The cost of getting in is high, but so is everything else. My other hobbies were way more expensive. Photograghy was about $2000 and mountian biking was about the same if not a little more. So $500 or $600 to start is not so bad.

Fattimus_maximus wrote:I have a question regarding the "support GW" group, does buying forge world at all help GW on the whole?

I'd like to quickly state that I'm a complete newbie and could be totally wrong.

I'm fairly knew to this stuff, but from my meagre understanding, FW is entirely financially independent of GW. They make stuff that can be used with the GW rules but sell them as a second party. There aren't "official" rules for most of the stuff FW makes, although they have brought about changes in the game because of their miniature popularity. So, as a legally blind shot in relative darkness, I say that there is no "direct" benefit for GW for buying FW specific products except for general propagation of the hobby.

If I'm wrong, could someone somewhat wiser correct me?

I'm pretty sure all the profit FW makes goes to GW, they're a part of the company.

Huh. Didn't know that. Okay, scratch my comment, I guess.

Edit:

Asmodai wrote:I'm sure if you got into it rock collecting would be at least as expensive as wargaming.

QFT. There's a three room house that someone bought in my town where they've fillied the entire house with rocks and postage stamps for sale. Postage stanps are relativly easy to store, so they're over in one half of one room. But the rest of the store? Good lord, I've mever considered so many rocks existed. All sorts of crazy crystals and local fossils, bits of amber with insects, geodes, rock tumblers (there's always one going and the others are for sale), beads, carved stones from various cultures from modern and ancient times, arrowheads, even a few fleck of god panned at our local river, which supposedly ran out of what very,very little gold it had by the 1700's.

Summed up, yes. Rock collecting can be that expensive. Good call, mate!

RxGhost wrote:
Do you know why Biovores are 25 bucks a piece? Because you can only have 3, but you'll probably never play with 1; gotta' gouge where you can.

That was the justification given as to why some models cost more than others. GW's game structure.

Given that the game is built for the models it is counter-productive to the hobby-collecting/modeling aspect.

Yes and no. The rules are made to sell the models, yet can also restrict the number of possible sales.

Some like Special Characters are unlikely to be massive sellers, as each player of a given army is only likely to need one each, whereas line infantry etc are generally bought multiple times.

Hi folks.
I agree that any minature that is only going to be bought in low volume , is going to be priced a bit higher , than minatures that are going to be bought by the box full.

GW moved to plastic minatures for the high quantity minatures for armies.And I assumed would keep low run minatures in metal.(As metal is more cost effective for small runs, plastic is more cost effective for high volume.)


However, why is it other companies can sell plastic minatures at £0.30 to £0.80 each and metal minatures £1.00 to £2.00.

Yet GW think £1.2 to £6 is ok for a single plastic figure.And £8 to £30 for a metal figure?

If the price point for the minatures was lower wouldnt that improve sales volumes?
As GW have extensivley invested in plastic manufacture , NOT maximising economies of scale seems slowed to me.
(Especialy as thier fixed costs are so high.)

GW prices are so high because most of thier customers are NOT aware of cheaper alternatives.


TTFN
Lanrak.

Lanrak wrote:Hi folks.
I agree that any minature that is only going to be bought in low volume , is going to be priced a bit higher , than minatures that are going to be bought by the box full.

GW moved to plastic minatures for the high quantity minatures for armies.And I assumed would keep low run minatures in metal.(As metal is more cost effective for small runs, plastic is more cost effective for high volume.)


However, why is it other companies can sell plastic minatures at £0.30 to £0.80 each and metal minatures £1.00 to £2.00.

Yet GW think £1.2 to £6 is ok for a single plastic figure.And £8 to £30 for a metal figure?

If the price point for the minatures was lower wouldnt that improve sales volumes?
As GW have extensivley invested in plastic manufacture , NOT maximising economies of scale seems slowed to me.
(Especialy as thier fixed costs are so high.)

GW prices are so high because most of thier customers are NOT aware of cheaper alternatives.


TTFN
Lanrak.

The army you play will also determine the price per mini. Lower point armies will give you more minis for your money.

The price is also higher because I find the GW minis to be of a higher quality than most other wargaming minis. They're also made of a more durable plastic, which is great because I drop my stuff on the floor all the time


GW is, I believe, concious of the fact that most of their customers -are- aware of alternative sources for minis judging by the fact that most GW stores strictly prohibit gaming with non GW minis in their stores. Some, like the West Ed GW are pretty lenient about it, and I played against a kid there once that had converted some 28mm 1980's style American Infantry to be a bit more 40K-ish.

A lot of them though will ban non GW minis because then it would be promoting the competition. You wouldn't see a GM Dealership selling Ford or Dodge parts, just like you wouldn't see a GW selling, say, Flames of War.

A lower sale cost would probably sell them more, yes, but then again, they ship internationally - that's expensive as hell. Most shipping companies charge in both Actual and Dimensional Weights when shipping. sending a couple hundred pallets of minis from England to Canada or the US easily costs thousands once all expenses are considered. And then adding up all the countries they have to ship to, and the quantities they have to ship in, and then all the employees they have to pay, being as massive as they are, plus they need to have the cash to keep their various warehouses up and running, and to pay the stoners working in them, etc... etc... etc...

The thing is, a company involved in specific product like GW will never have the massive sales volume of a department store which would otherwise allow them to drop their prices. Nor will they be able to price low like a small time miniatures/bits producer that doesn't have a line of stores or warehouses under it's name. The cost is relevant to the company's needs. If they dropped their prices down to compete with smaller miniature lines, they'd probably go bankrupt very quickly. Just wait a year or two and prices will probably start going down as the economy gets it's feet back.

There are no cheap alternatives to GW if you want to play 40K or WHFB.

Most GW customers are dedicated to the GW stuff, that's how they get away with the prices.

GW have to charge the high prices because of the high fixed cost of their retail empire.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Yes and no. The rules are made to sell the models, yet can also restrict the number of possible sales.

Some like Special Characters are unlikely to be massive sellers, as each player of a given army is only likely to need one each, whereas line infantry etc are generally bought multiple times.

The rules do not restrict the number of possible sales unless a person believes absolutely model X is model X and can never be used for anything else - like conversions. Costs however make conversions less appealing, especially now that the bits program is gone.

Its like GWs excuse for the steam tank; the projected sales werent high enough so they raised the price to make their money back.

In other words gouge the suckers that actually want it.

One of the biggest piss offs is Khan and Vulkan, same size but vulkan is $30 where as khan is a mere $18, basically GW knows that vulkan will sell better and made a larger run of him, and thus pass the previlege onto you by charging you more.

Same with all of GWs new scanning technology, that should drop prices on all new items but it hasnt. I recently bought a $7000 laser stencil cutter that will make my life ten times easier in my airbrushing business, and thus I can get more projects done and charge slightly less. The machine has already paid for itself in spades. More work done = more people that see my stuff means more work that comes in.

GW seems to think charging more on its already shriking fanbase is the right way to go. Thats like putting a burning house out with dynamite.

metallifan wrote:The other element to pricing is the quantity of buyers. The more people that buy a company's products, the cheaper those products will be. It's like Wal-Mart. How many millions of people shop at their local Wal-Mart every day? Enough that it's allowed them to sell stuff for next to nothing. Sure they still charge the same as most for a video game, CD, or DVD/BluRay, but everything else is dirt cheap because so many people shop there that their gross annual income is insane. GW charges more because they aren't really making that much right now (comparatively), current events considered. If you're wanting their prices to go down then buying alternative is the wrong thing to do, though as a short-term solution it's not much of a problem. Their prices will never be something like $5.00 for a box of 20 Guardsmen or $10.00 for a box of marines, because they'll never have that large of a consumer base, but continuing to support GW and it's affiliated Rogue Trader stores will help in the long run. I buy their stuff for that reason. Plus they've got some of the best customer support on the market, as was mentioned before.

I was walking through the model section of a Wal-Mart just a few years ago wondering why they don't carry GW products. Now you can't find a modeling section in most Wal-Marts that you walk into. I suppose that answered my question.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ravenous D wrote:Its like GWs excuse for the steam tank; the projected sales werent high enough so they raised the price to make their money back.

In other words gouge the suckers that actually want it.

One of the biggest piss offs is Khan and Vulkan, same size but vulkan is $30 where as khan is a mere $18, basically GW knows that vulkan will sell better and made a larger run of him, and thus pass the previlege onto you by charging you more.

Same with all of GWs new scanning technology, that should drop prices on all new items but it hasnt. I recently bought a $7000 laser stencil cutter that will make my life ten times easier in my airbrushing business, and thus I can get more projects done and charge slightly less. The machine has already paid for itself in spades. More work done = more people that see my stuff means more work that comes in.

GW seems to think charging more on its already shriking fanbase is the right way to go. Thats like putting a burning house out with dynamite.

That's why there is probably a lot more people reselling old GW stuff than buying new.

Wal-Mart is fine for national brands, only. Anything else is of the lowest quality. It's an issue of price (what you pay) vs value (what you get for what you pay).

There used to be a point at which i would pay GW retail prices in the store just for convenience.
After the recent price hikes and them moving alot of stuff to direct only they, at least in my case have priced themselves out of the market if I save 15% or more I can wait a week to get my stuff.

I no longer buy GW products retail.
I buy through B&M stores and online dealers at a discount AND 2nd hand at bring&buy tables at tournies. I've picked up Wraithlords and warwalkers for $20 each (but I don't HAVE to have the latest models) instead of paying triple that for the new one.

Recently, 3 players in my club decided they wanted to play DH. Then they discovered that the army is practically all metal, and pinning is a part of it, and they sold their stuff off for about a third of what it cost them.

I just noticed that a 10 man CSM squad is up to $40 USD now. Termies are $60. Obliterators are $35 each now. I was going to buy some more CSM, but instead I'll just keep the money.

metallifan wrote:


A lower sale cost would probably sell them more, yes, but then again, they ship internationally - that's expensive as hell. Most shipping companies charge in both Actual and Dimensional Weights when shipping. sending a couple hundred pallets of minis from England to Canada or the US easily costs thousands once all expenses are considered. And then adding up all the countries they have to ship to, and the quantities they have to ship in, and then all the employees they have to pay, being as massive as they are, plus they need to have the cash to keep their various warehouses up and running, and to pay the stoners working in them, etc... etc... etc...
.

Just wanted to point out that GW does not ship to the US and Canada. We have our own manufacturing plant in Tennessee.

infernus1986 wrote:There used to be a point at which i would pay GW retail prices in the store just for convenience.
After the recent price hikes and them moving alot of stuff to direct only they, at least in my case have priced themselves out of the market if I save 15% or more I can wait a week to get my stuff.

Good point. You have to wait a week for GW to send the stuff you order to the local shop, or they charge £4 for delivery.

Todosi wrote:

metallifan wrote:


A lower sale cost would probably sell them more, yes, but then again, they ship internationally - that's expensive as hell. Most shipping companies charge in both Actual and Dimensional Weights when shipping. sending a couple hundred pallets of minis from England to Canada or the US easily costs thousands once all expenses are considered. And then adding up all the countries they have to ship to, and the quantities they have to ship in, and then all the employees they have to pay, being as massive as they are, plus they need to have the cash to keep their various warehouses up and running, and to pay the stoners working in them, etc... etc... etc...
.

Just wanted to point out that GW does not ship to the US and Canada. We have our own manufacturing plant in Tennessee.

I guess you learn something new every day. Though that won't make the shipping all that much cheaper really, considering how much would be done out of a location like Tennessee, they probably pay a fortune sending stock to the staggering number of cities across the continent.

metallifan wrote:

Todosi wrote:

Just wanted to point out that GW does not ship to the US and Canada. We have our own manufacturing plant in Tennessee.

I guess you learn something new every day. Though that won't make the shipping all that much cheaper really, considering how much would be done out of a location like Tennessee, they probably pay a fortune sending stock to the staggering number of cities across the continent.

Unless they retooled Tennessee, it should be plastic-only with metals coming from the UK. The pisser is that their shipping costs are staggering, and self-imposed. GW had (or may still have) this policy that they will make sure all orders are filled quickly for independent retailers. I've heard more of more than one occassion where a store owner says something to the effect of "Why did they overnight my $50,000 spring inventory? It's November." What makes that policy so amusing is not the extravagant costs, but how poorly they manage their own stores inventories.

The cost of the Eldar heavy weapons platforms are a huge joke. It simply has to be because some bet was made.
"I wonder how many of these we can "actually" sell? Do you think this might make people want only imperial stuff now?"

metallifan wrote:

JourneyPsycheOut wrote:The GW hobby is not that expensive compared to other hobbies. I know people who spent over $1000 dollars on a set of golf clubs. I play paintball too and that isn't any cheaper. It can cost up too $400 dollars just to get a half-decent set-up, and then you still have to pay for paintballs and air which can run about $15-20 per trip.

QFT

My gun, stock off the shelf, was $545. Add a $150 barrel onto that... $60 for a remote CO2 feed line, $45 for a Carbine Stock... And then like $50 for a bag of paintballs... Yep. Definately makes GW's prices pale quite a bit. Which is part of the reason I don't complain about them. Because it's probably the cheapest of all my hobbies

I don't completely understand this logic. How in the heck can you compare nice golf clubs and high quality paintball gear to... plastic and metal toys???

Last time I checked my minis were A.) not able to get head-shots at 100 yards, and B.) well they are toys. Neither of the examples you have stated have any relevance to the fact that I want to play with tiny soldiers. I feel like I am missing a pretty important point here.

Saying that all hobbies can be compared by cost alone is ludicrous. I like to garden as well, and that costs next to nothing. If gardening isn't a hobby I must be some sort of crazy person... hmmm. Here is a megaphone, please do not use it to yell at me.

AFAIK, Aus has the highest retail GW prices, and also, the most rapidly growig GW market(Buyers/Gamers).

It would be stupid of any company with shareholders NOT to gouge us poor, addicted fools..(Look at Al Pacino/Scarface= GW Comittee/Board Members.....)


And H.B.M.C is right. That Maelstrom place rocks ya socks.

with an iron fist wrote:

metallifan wrote:

Todosi wrote:

Just wanted to point out that GW does not ship to the US and Canada. We have our own manufacturing plant in Tennessee.

I guess you learn something new every day. Though that won't make the shipping all that much cheaper really, considering how much would be done out of a location like Tennessee, they probably pay a fortune sending stock to the staggering number of cities across the continent.

Unless they retooled Tennessee, it should be plastic-only with metals coming from the UK. The pisser is that their shipping costs are staggering, and self-imposed. GW had (or may still have) this policy that they will make sure all orders are filled quickly for independent retailers. I've heard more of more than one occassion where a store owner says something to the effect of "Why did they overnight my $50,000 spring inventory? It's November." What makes that policy so amusing is not the extravagant costs, but how poorly they manage their own stores inventories.

QFT

Alas, poor corporate money management and even worse store managers - The bane of any retail outlet. I work for GM and see this all the time. They express airfreight anything left out of an order they shipped us, even if we're in no rush for it. It costs them about $50-$75 to ship a tiny little 10x10 box that way. Let's think of what else that $50 could be used for...

Poor Corporate money usage.

And then you get the managers that order things that GW wants them to, rather than ordering more of the stock that actually circulates. Then the stuff they ordered doesn't sell and it's money down the drain that we have to pay back.

But that's not to say they're all that bad. Can't really account the many for the failures of a few. Well you could, and it's definately easier, but that isn't the way to do it . Considering the costs of living right now, I don't spend enough annually on minis to really feel the burn on my wallet or my mood. But others have a good and fair reason to feel mad about it. It definately isn't fair that GW has kind of built themselves into a corner on the price issue - On one side, they'll start losing annual income if they reduce prices until things even out. And on the other side, they'll lose more business if they go any higher. Kind of a bad situation really.

Ahh well. Long as I play the hobby, I'm going to keep buying, if only to hope that it'll do something to bring prices down later.