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 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are plenty of pewter figures on the market for about $2.

http://www.essexminiatures.co.uk/collections/25mm-ancient-arab/products/abr1a

£1.20 per infantry.

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_28_55&products_id=1656&osCsid=8e1o109ogfrk1gc5usia0sdc35

£8.50 for a pack of three mounted individual characters. Note that GW individual characters are a minimum of £9 for a single infantry figure.

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/pike-and-shot/seadogs-and-swashbucklers/

Pack of character infantry that work out at £2 each.

Bloody hell! Looking at these reminds me once again how very expensive GW figures are.

Aren't historical miniatures supposed to be generally cheaper than fantasy or sci-fi miniatures, since they are non-fiction and so cannot be copyrighting, driving competition up since more than one manufactor can produce a figure of the exact same subject?

I think it is a throw back to the days where a character was the centrepiece of an army. Back in old Herohammer era before Imperial Knights and large beasties became the centrepieces instead. You are generally willing to play more when the piece is important. It just sort of carried on.

As one dakkanaut rudely told me.

If you think this hobby is too expensive then stop buying and stop playing and stop whinning, wh40k is not for you.

He was right, but I just love 40k too much. Its been a part of my life for too long. I keep telling myself that i should sell entire army at a loss and then walk away.

The last major purchase i made was very foolish. I bet all my money on 5 imperial knights. Then comes along a list with just 2 Wraithknights and totally wrecks my face in. Not only that, my flgs banned me from using 5 IK, by limiting me to only 1, or using a chaos knight with grimoire and invisibility. Mean while the guy with 2 Wraithknights goes around stomping face.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Ok, this is actually easy to explain and makes sense from a business perspective:

Take projected sales by need for the product and price for maximum profitability.

So you have 4 "sets" we can look at to show this in evidence:

Set 1; that "baseline" tactical squad: most players only need/want 3-4 boxes with a few going for 6. This set is $35 or $40 usd currently(and a good kit with all the specials and some other awesome bits)

Set 2; guardsmen( and other high-model count armies): while many plauers can get away with just a few squads the platoons require multiple sets per choice and charging the same as tactical boxes would cause quite a fuss amongst the customer base(a platoon based guard army costing the same as a marine army in a 2-slots vs 4 slots issue). These kits are $29.

Set 3; generic hq sets: usually have more detail and are much more expensive per model, but the average player isn't going to buy more than maybe 2 of them.

Set 4; special characters: every player is going to buy troops, every player is going to buy at least an hq. Not every player is going to buy a special character; and even they are likely to only buy 1. This is why these single models can cost as much as a 10-man squad.

This guy pretty much stated the reason. That single character needs to be as profitable as a troops choice after The time spent creating him, producing him, shipping him, and storing him or he represents a loss. This makes him ludicrously expensive. Whether he is worth it or not is up to you. Most people I know are fine with counts as, and you can usually kitbash pretty good representations. Personally I will buy them because if I like the model, but I'm more of a collector/hobby guy than a player. GW still consistently makes the finest models I find. The only company with models I like as much is infinity, which is actually pretty comparable cost on a per model basis. They're also metal which I dislike.

Despite what people say on the internet. GW biggest competitor isn't other game companies, it's themselves. This is for a couple of reasons. First you may need to buy a few boxes of troops, but after you have them you never need to buy them again. Once you have your army you may never give GW another cent. They have also been around so long they have produced millions of models. These models don't disappear when someone stops playing they end up on eBay or whatever, so you can play easily play without GW ever making any money at all off of you. This is part of why there stuff is so expensive. When you buy from GW you are indirectly subsidizing eBay. Which has kind of created this price increase spiral we see

I expect the fact that there are still sales that make it profitable are a big factor.

When I see the latest prices for new models I recoil from them and proclaim 'who the heck would pay that?! Absolutely ridiculous, £25 - £35 for a single 28mm model!''

Then I see a week later it's 'sold out'.


Same deal with the limited edition codices and rulebooks. There seem to be those out there who want them regardless of cost

This was the real plan of Finecast: miniatures that would disintegrate over the course of several years this destroying the resale market.

I know mine have

Probably because of how many of those models are expected to sell. funding the design of any new model is probably pretty darn expensive, but since they will probably sell way more tactical space marine models than models of Abaddon the despoiler they can afford selling those space marines for much less than one Abaddon.

If they thought character models would be bought as often as a typical troop model, those character models would likely cost far less. But because the opposite is true, in which someone RARELY has an excuse to buy more than 1 or 2 models of a character, they have to proportionately cost more to recoup losses.

Again, the design is expensive, but actually expending the plastic to make a model is much less so, so it's all about how much they will sell per customer.

because the price has to pay for more than just the figure and the box you get it in.....

 sing your life wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are plenty of pewter figures on the market for about $2.

http://www.essexminiatures.co.uk/collections/25mm-ancient-arab/products/abr1a

£1.20 per infantry.

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_28_55&products_id=1656&osCsid=8e1o109ogfrk1gc5usia0sdc35

£8.50 for a pack of three mounted individual characters. Note that GW individual characters are a minimum of £9 for a single infantry figure.

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/pike-and-shot/seadogs-and-swashbucklers/

Pack of character infantry that work out at £2 each.

Bloody hell! Looking at these reminds me once again how very expensive GW figures are.

Aren't historical miniatures supposed to be generally cheaper than fantasy or sci-fi miniatures, since they are non-fiction and so cannot be copyrighting, driving competition up since more than one manufactor can produce a figure of the exact same subject?

I don't think it's a copyright matter so much as a pseudo-monopoly matter and market acceptance.

There's certainly an element that if you only want to buy GW models, you will be forced to pay GW whatever they want for them. But GW also have to charge these high prices because they spend so much money on their retail chain, a millstone around their necks that other maunfacturer's don't have to suffer from.

We see broadly similar prices for all historical models, whether they be very common and popular armies like Imperial Roman, Napoleonic British and WW2 Germans, or rare armies like Incas, Mound Builder Indians, or Carlist War (only one manufacturer.)