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Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





Sure, though your mold costs are extremely high from what I've seen. Even with that, it's on GW to put a price on the model that gets people to buy it. Right now it's $40 because people throw money at GW. Any other company would have a cheaper cost, and soak up some of the mold cost elsewhere. It's also GW we're talking about. They'll probably sell several thousand Tigurius in the first few weeks. If not, they frequently keep plastic kits in production for 10-15-20 years....so the old mold argument is nonsense. I would bet you money GW has never lost money on a single mold for a plastic kit they've produced. GW isn't hurting to cut molds for anything. That's such a trivial cost to a company making hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

And again, it's the luxury that I as a consumer have to not care about "why" they're charging what they're charging. You could hand carve each one out of resin, and I would still not suddenly find value in it and offer to pay that much for the figure.
   
Made in ca
Fireknife Shas'el






Very small mold required to make a single character model in plastic. If it cost 20k GBP I'd be surprised. Remember that GW occasionally does free promo minis for big events - those molds cost no more than Tiggy or Khan's mold. So they don't have to sell nearly as many. I'll be really surprised if they sell enough Khans to justify his mold, but they may just be willing to eat the costs to provoke people to make White Scars (not to mention all the other Codex supplements coming out probably getting minis) armies.


   
Made in us
Resolute Ultramarine Honor Guard





BrianDavion wrote:
Korsarro Khan at least is forgiveable as he's a mostly unique sculpt that looks pretty awesome, Toggy isn't all that differant looking from a normal libby


For those of you old enough to get the reference, after I saw the back banner, and that it was sculpted, I sighed in satisfaction and lit a cigarette.

Tiggy is the only Primaris Libby with a staff instead of a sword (so far, that won't last long), and that sweet sweet molded detail banner. I'm going to miss the hood on the flaming Libby Skull though


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Elbows wrote:
But why draw the distinction of "what" model it is? If a single plastic mono-pose character was $15 or $20...


Because the characters have more detail, more sculpt, and more work put in them to make them the centerpiece of your army? The Special characters even more so? How many single plastic mono-pose dudes have the Chapter Iconography molded on them in at least four different places? Look at Tiggy next to a normal Primaris Libby. Tiggy has so much more detail, and his detail (so far, I'll let you know when I have one in my hands) looks like it has better relief/sculpting to stand out/paint better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Elbows wrote:
Sure, though your mold costs are extremely high from what I've seen. Even with that, it's on GW to put a price on the model that gets people to buy it. Right now it's $40 because people throw money at GW.


Are you complaining because it's on GW to set a price people will pay, and people are paying it, so they set the right price? Isn't that what was "on them" to do?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/08/11 04:34:33


My WHFB armies were Bretonians and Tomb Kings. 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

The sort of prices that they're charging for plastic characters these days, I'd be reluctant to pay, even at FLGS discount, unless I really wanted the model. I very rarely pick up character models separately, most of the ones I have came out of box sets/battleforces.

 Baragash wrote:
Aussie tax is 10%, it’s nothing to do with tax.

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia. As far as I can tell it's self sustaining at this point. You're already paying inflated prices for things, so when companies launch new products they inflate the prices on those too. It's like having to pay some undefined extra tax, just for living in Australia.

   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





it is kinda pricy yeah, if they where ten bucks cheaper I'd have actually picked up Korsaro Khan just to paint and display him but will pass on that I think

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in us
Resolute Ultramarine Honor Guard





 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.

My WHFB armies were Bretonians and Tomb Kings. 
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





Breton wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.


or the Atlantic for that matter

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in us
Resolute Ultramarine Honor Guard





BrianDavion wrote:
Breton wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.


or the Atlantic for that matter


The do/did manufacture in the US. If the Atlantic gets too expensive they will again.

My WHFB armies were Bretonians and Tomb Kings. 
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





Breton wrote:
BrianDavion wrote:
Breton wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.


or the Atlantic for that matter


The do/did manufacture in the US. If the Atlantic gets too expensive they will again.


wasn't it Ral Partha who did all their US manafacturing?

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in us
Resolute Ultramarine Honor Guard





BrianDavion wrote:
Breton wrote:
BrianDavion wrote:
Breton wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.


or the Atlantic for that matter


The do/did manufacture in the US. If the Atlantic gets too expensive they will again.


wasn't it Ral Partha who did all their US manafacturing?


Don't know, but the biggest 10 cities in the US outpopulate all of Australia. Two states do it all on their lonesome. Four are close enough to doing so for government work. As soon as shipping across the short part of the Atlantic costs more than US $15/hr wage laws they'll get a factory going again.

My WHFB armies were Bretonians and Tomb Kings. 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

Breton wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:

When folks say the 'Australia Tax' they mean the fact that prices for so many things get jacked up for no apparent reason when they're sold in Australia.


Oh the reason is pretty apparent. The Pacific Ocean is a lot bigger than the English Channel.


It is, but there's no way that freight costs make up for the difference. I've just thrown together a quick but crude calculation as an example.

The closest GW box to me was a Start Collecting Craftworlds box. SC Craftworlds sells for 55GBP. Let's minus 20% UK VAT to get to 44GBP before tax. It sells for 150 AUD. Again, remove 10% AUS sales tax to 135AUD. Then remove approx 5% for import duties to get 128.25AUD. Let's then convert 128.25AUD to GBP. I'm not actually going to use the current exchange rate because GW's Australian pricing scheme was set when the GBP was worth more against, well, everything. So, before the Brexit vote, the exchange rate was roughly 1GBP=2AUD. So, let's divide the Australian price by two to get 64.125GBP. If we actually use the current exchange rate of 1.77AUD to the GBP, GW are getting 72.46GBP per copy instead - even better. So, taking the lower number, assume that GW receive an extra 20.125GBP for every copy sold in Australia compared to the UK.

If this price difference is entirely down to shipping, then the price to ship each copy would be 20 quid right? The physical SC Craftworlds box measures approximately 305x223x53mm. From Mainline Freight, a 20FT General shipping container (Twenty-foot equivalent unit, TEU) has internal dimensions of 5890x2350x2360mm. This means that roughly it can fit a cuboid of SC Craftworlds boxes of 19x11x45 boxes - i.e. 9405 boxes. If it cost 20.125GBP to ship each one, the total cost for shipping one TEU from the UK to Australia would be 189,275GBP. 189 grand. That's absurd. To put it into perspective, a small-ish container ship with a 6,000TEU capacity would be raking in over 1 billion GBP per trip.

A quick search on shipping costs threw up this PDF, which suggests shipping one TEU from Northern Europe to Shanghai was 683USD in 2016, and Shanghai to Australia was 533USD for a total of 1216USD. The exchange rate GBP to USD is about 1.2 at the moment, so it costs GW £1K GBP to ship a TEU to Australia - not £189K. Divide a £1KGBP TEU shipping cost by 9405 boxes gives a cost to ship each box of 10p, not £20. Like I said, very crude calculation but I think it gets the point across.

Or, to summarise - on small size high value items like GW miniature kits, the cost of shipping them anywhere in the world is trivial and cannot be considered as a factor in why they massively overcharge in some countries.

---

For an example of the Australia tax outside of GW, take one of my other hobbies, electric guitars. Personally, I'm a fan of Jackson guitars. Picking one at random, that's built in Indonesia (and therefore starts its life closer to Australia than it is to the USA), I settled on the SL2P MAH. No particular reason, just the first model that I found on an Australian, an American and a British guitar store.

USA - $949USD
UK - £819GBP (at current 1GBP=1.2USD exchange rates $982USD)
Australia - $1,869AUD (at current 1USD=1.47AUD exchange rates, $1271USD)

So, in this case, it's an American company so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the US. But it's not that much more expensive in the UK despite being shipped all the way around the world from Indonesia - further than it has to travel to get to the USA. But Australia, the closest of the three destinations from its origin, has to pay $300USD extra, just because they're Australian.

That's the Australia tax.

   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





except are they shipped from indonesia to australia? or shipped from Indonesia to the USA and then back to Australia? (this sounds insane but it's quite likely the case)

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

BrianDavion wrote:
except are they shipped from indonesia to australia? or shipped from Indonesia to the USA and then back to Australia? (this sounds insane but it's quite likely the case)

That's a question I can't answer, but unlike GW minis, electric guitars are quite a competitive market and you're right - if they're not shipping direct from the place of manufacture to the destination that is definitely insane. Sometimes manufacturers do build guitars elsewhere, then ship them to the USA for final QC and setup, but when that's the case they make sure they advertise the fact because having a stage of the process in the USA adds prestige/value to some buyers. I can't imagine it's the case here.

Anyway, not trying to send this off topic to guitars, I'll stop there.

   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





 Bellerophon wrote:
BrianDavion wrote:
except are they shipped from indonesia to australia? or shipped from Indonesia to the USA and then back to Australia? (this sounds insane but it's quite likely the case)

That's a question I can't answer, but unlike GW minis, electric guitars are quite a competitive market and you're right - if they're not shipping direct from the place of manufacture to the destination that is definitely insane. Sometimes manufacturers do build guitars elsewhere, then ship them to the USA for final QC and setup, but when that's the case they make sure they advertise the fact because having a stage of the process in the USA adds prestige/value to some buyers. I can't imagine it's the case here.

Anyway, not trying to send this off topic to guitars, I'll stop there.


it might sound insane but with the way shipping routes work it might be less insane then you think. the guitars would be assmbled in one country, then sent to the HQ where the warehouse is, and then shipped out throughout the world.

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon





Midlands, UK

BrianDavion wrote:
 Bellerophon wrote:
BrianDavion wrote:
except are they shipped from indonesia to australia? or shipped from Indonesia to the USA and then back to Australia? (this sounds insane but it's quite likely the case)

That's a question I can't answer, but unlike GW minis, electric guitars are quite a competitive market and you're right - if they're not shipping direct from the place of manufacture to the destination that is definitely insane. Sometimes manufacturers do build guitars elsewhere, then ship them to the USA for final QC and setup, but when that's the case they make sure they advertise the fact because having a stage of the process in the USA adds prestige/value to some buyers. I can't imagine it's the case here.

Anyway, not trying to send this off topic to guitars, I'll stop there.


it might sound insane but with the way shipping routes work it might be less insane then you think. the guitars would be assmbled in one country, then sent to the HQ where the warehouse is, and then shipped out throughout the world.

If that's what they're doing, then I'd say it goes towards proving my point - they can afford do do so because intercontinental shipping is so cheap.

Again from that shipping costs PDF - a forty foot equivalent unit (FEU) between Shanghai and the USA West Coast was 1,279USD, and a TEU between Shanghai and Australia, as before, 533USD. Assuming guitars in a shipping box approx. 50x20x9 inches, you fit about 250 into a TEU, 500 in an FEU. Therefore shipping guitar sized boxes from the USA to Australia via Shanghai costs about $4USD per box - nowhere close to explaining a $300USD price premium on sales in Australia.

   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut





I wouldn't bother with minis as an Australian. Do paper minis instead. That's the only language GW speaks.
   
Made in fi
Calculating Commissar







The price of kits has definitely reached my pain threshold. If it wasn't for the fact that my FLGS gives store credit for retro games, I wouldn't have bought any new kits in several years now. As it is, I can hand in spare Final Fantasys and Cash Banookas I find at flea markets, and end up with an effective 50-80% discount.


A project idea I've had for a while is making an entire Marine army with zero GW bits, and base them on the Auretian Technocracy, a human civilization Horus' forces destroyed during the Heresy, whose fighting force, the Brotherhood, was said to wield Marine-like power armor. At the current rate, it'd probably work out cheaper than Primaris.

The supply does not get to make the demands. 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





Breton,

Why respond to my post if you don't read the following sentence to the bit you're referencing? I stated extremely clearly that GW prices the models at the top of what anyone would pay for them - and that's 100% fine. Read before you post.

Also, regarding character models having more detail - what of it? How much more time goes into that? A few extra hours? Even if it's 10 additional hours of sitting and modeling CAD...that's an impossibly small difference to justify a 500-600% cost increase for a piece of plastic. Or do you believe they're paying sculptors hundreds of thousands of dollars per mini or something? The sculptors get paid a salary, an extra day or two of work, or gasp - even a week - doesn't suddenly make the end product worth 5x the cost of a normal marine. That's a rather silly thing to justify your prices.

This isn't a Yamaha grand piano vs. a cheaper piano. We're not talking hundreds or thousands of hours of master craftsmanship, we're not even talking about a different software or material. You don't crack open a miniature and find it's a finer grade of plastic etc. I'd agree with you if GW used cheaper board-game plastics like some companies do - but that's not the case here. It's not as if the monopose figures come with weapon and arm options, or a variety of build-options beyond a couple head swaps....sadly those days seem past (great little kits like the old dual Wizard box or the classic Space Marine captain one)

You feel that a monopose plastic figure is worth $40? Good, go buy a bunch. I don't. Even with "extra details".
   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





It's worth considering you're supposed to retail price, roughly, 5x the cost it takes to make so that you can cover the cost to make it, the distribution, and the retailer's cut. The retailer's cut is especially important to GW.

So suppose a kit like the Broodlord is $50. That's 20,000 copies to sell to cover the tooling alone, which isn't all the cost of making it. They have a much greater over-head than someone just making miniatures.
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






40$ US? That price is a joke!

And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
Made in ch
Stalwart Dark Angels Space Marine





Australia

I thought it was a bit rich that Primaris characters were AUD60 each on release when the Death Guard characters released at the same time were only AUD40, except for Typus, who's AUD70. Well, I guess there's the precedent.

I'm a bit surprised the recently released Primaris Phobos Captain and Librarian are only AUD55. To put it in perspective, AUD55 will also buy 1L of Johnny Walker Red or 1.125L of Jim Beam White Label, and we have large taxes on alcohol. It could also buy 55L of fresh milk from the supermarket.

If I really want something I'll order it on eBay, pay the freight and still pay less than going to the local GW store.


Note that the Australia Tax has also been applied to digital downloads on Steam where freight doesn't apply.

Dark Angels > Purple Death Legion (Purple Vanilla Marines) > Dark Angels > Death Watch > Thousand Sons with special appearances by Tzeench Demons  
   
Made in us
Resolute Ultramarine Honor Guard





I have my Tiggy, and I'm loving the back banner. And it wasn't nearly as expensive in US dollars as it is in Australian.

My WHFB armies were Bretonians and Tomb Kings. 
   
Made in gb
Legendary Dogfighter




england

I like my solution to this problem.

Don't chuffing buy it...
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dark Angels Dreadnought





I thought $35 for a Primaris character was ridiculous, but $40 is obscene. Hard pass for me.
   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut





I have a feeling it's a tactic to make your usual Start Collecting filler that soon will be handed out free with each SC box look like a better value in comparison. Is TS have Ahriman, it's pretty much a given Tiggy and Khan will soon land in Primaris SC boxes, especially given SW precedent...
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





 Irbis wrote:
I have a feeling it's a tactic to make your usual Start Collecting filler that soon will be handed out free with each SC box look like a better value in comparison. Is TS have Ahriman, it's pretty much a given Tiggy and Khan will soon land in Primaris SC boxes, especially given SW precedent...


I doubt it. Ahirman is in the 1k sons box because the only other 1k Sons HQ is the exahulted sorc which comes 3 to a box. the Primaris Space Wolves box was just sliding in the space Wolf Leuitenant from Tooth and claw into a boxed set instead of making him avalaible independantly.

Honestly I imagine when vanilla marines get a SC Primaris box it'll just be the SM side of Know No Fear

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
 
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