How many burgers did your allowance buy?
Those 30 bucks a week today buys 11 burgers, one burger during the weekdays and
2 each on Saturday and Sunday.
About the relative value of a dollar:
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Haha, I haven’t seen this movie 
It’s hilarious. Low level jokes and sillyness 
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Tojo72’s comments reminds me of a visit to a hobby shop back in 2005.
A dad tried to liquidate his middle school son’s Magic the Gathering collection at a card/hobby shop. The child spent $10,000+ on MtG cards there in a year. The shop refused one cent on the dollar. Dad was referred to Ebay.
I think if most kids have an interest in models these days parents typically accommodate. There’s no lack of elementary age children with new IPhones for example. Too many other items to via for kids attention these days.
Warhammer is a rare gateway to modeling for the young generations.
An interesting take on how luxury goods are priced in a free market.
Jim, just what, specifically, should or can “we” do?
KL
Ah, there’s your problem: You think the prices on luxury toys (and that’s what model kits are) have to be justifiable, or based on some defined cost model. They do not. Sellers can ask what they want, buyers can pay if they want.
KL
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Still waiting for a customer for my Tamiya Willys Jeep (35015)
Only USD 200, free shipping and I’ll refund the customs and other fees.
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$106 for an old Italeri Puma kit reboxed by Tamiya? What am I going to do about? Easy answer wait on an all new kit by someone else.
LOL I paid $6 for the Puma in the Italeri box. Later pitched that sink mark riddled turd in the trash can 
No regrets.
I can recall gas at 19-25 cents a gallon…pack of cigarettes at 25 cents…matinee movies on Saturday, 2 bucks. At 16, my dad would give me 2 bucks and I would go to the local market and buy him 2 packs of Viceroy and a 6 pack of Old German beer…and still get change. Hamburgers? Anywhere from 25 to 35 cents…the cheeseburger at 35 cents. Could buy Bali Hai for a buck, Cold Bear for a buck, MD 2020 for 90 cents. A six pack of Rolling Rock “Big Mouth” was about $2.25. Had to go across the WV border to get 6 point beer since WV was only 2.3 beer. Small examples, but it was part of my childhood/teen years. I graduated high school in 1972. That year, the right to vote dropped to 18, alcohol was made legal at 18, and my draft number was 363. “It was the best years of my life” as Bryan Adams would sing.
Even after all these years, adjustment for cost of living, inflation, etc., I did not mind paying $20+ for two movie tickets and snacks… but paying $50 for a worse PC remake of same crappy movie and snacks … no thanks.
I can watch a good movie from my library with some good bourbon for far less.
Not to mention the sure thing of the girl that I then wined and dined, who’s now my wife at my side. 
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As identified more than once ultimately its buyers choice… Looking at my own stash, I paid RRP or near as damn it for about 40%,the rest, all bar 4 kits out of about 250, I got for less, some considerably so e.g. Meng 2A7+ for £35(typically going for about £57at the time) and more recently Monograms M29C Weasel for £12.00 plus postage.
All I can say is…We are living in the “Golden Age” of modelling.
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Yes indeed, “The Pacific Rim’s Golden Age” and it is amazing!
To buy or not to buy is up to each individual. If you don’t a kit is worth what it’s stated price is shop around.
I was just reflecting on the times we live in (modelling-wise) as I was digging around in my recently acquired M65 Cannon, and thinking , “My God - I never ever thought I’d see this in 1:35”. We are so lucky at the moment; whilst some prices are creeping up, so is the standard of production. Of course, these such thoughts will not deter me from still wanting something else!
I mostly build 1/48 aircraft and some 1/35 armor. Usually I build what’s in the box, rarely any after market. My price limit is 50 Euros (ca. 60 USD/45 GBP) and so most of my kits range between 15 and 40 Euros, a handfull around 50 Euros and one (yes, 1!) kit, for which I paid the immense amount of 71 Euros (incl. discount). That was the new Hobby Boss LARS 2 rocket launcher on MAN 7 to gl. I don’t need to buy every kit I see. My stash lasts me for a minimum of 2 lives …
We have a low priced hobby. Ask the model railway collectors and you know that I’m right. Plus we have weeks (or months) fun building the kits.
I have a self imposed limit of $50.00. No matter how badly I want a kit I will not break that limit. True this does limit my choices somewhat but I find that if I am patient eventually a kit above that limit will either go on sale or I can find it at a show from a vendor or someone who is clearing out their stash. I learned early in my life not to love anything that can’t love me back.
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I disagree with the premise that the hobby is dying - kit prices or not.
Honestly, I started building models in the second half of the '60s, and when I was growing up, besides myself, I only ever knew a couple of other kids who even attempted to build a model - only one of which I know to have built more than one. I had a cousin who was almost 10 years older than I who built models, but because of our age difference, we never associated with each other in that regard.
NONE of these individuals (and I still know them all) have touched a model kit since we were kids. I’ve even personally invited one of them (my friend who built 4-5 models when we were kids) to get back into the hobby.
When I joined my first model club in 1974 (the same local IPMS chapter that I’m in today), there were ZERO other teenagers or kids in the club. I was the only one. I was still the only one when I graduated high school, joined the Army and left home.
All during my career in the Army, I joined the local modeling club that was nearest to where ever I was stationed. There were never more than one or two teenagers in any of them. Sure, adult guys would drag their kids to a meeting every now and again, and we often carried those kids on our membership roles, but none of them ever developed into scale modelers in their own right (as far as I know).
Since I retired from the Army in '04 and returned home, I’m a member of two local scale modeling clubs. In the years since there has only been ONE teenager who has joined either club (and he eventually joined both) and who has stuck with the hobby. Today he’s in his mid-twenties, has graduated college and still builds.
My point, I guess, is that the whole “the kids are leaving the hobby and it will die” argument is based on what seems to me to be a myth, an urban legend that we have created ourselves based on our own memories of when we got started in the hobby as kids.
The demographics at model shows and club meetings seems largely unchanged during the entire five an half decades that I’ve been modeling. There seem to be just as many kids involved in the hobby today as there were when I got started. That is very few.
Meanwhile, the hobby seems to be growing by leaps and bounds as areas of the world where a middle class has or is developing and middle aged guys, just like us, have disposable income and time.
What has for sure changed since I got my start in modeling is that today, there are many, many times more model companies than then, along with a veritable explosion of modeling related accessories, tools, paints and other supplies. In short, the scale modeling industry is clearly a growth industry. Businesses are not started or expanded if there’s no money to be made, and if the hobby was dying, then there would be no money in it.
My sense is that the hobby is not only NOT dying, but it’s expanding and growing. Sure, it competes with other pastimes for kids in America, but I also don’t think there ever were as many kids building models and sticking with the hobby as we seem to imagine.
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wow!
my friend’s kid makes 7$.
Cheers!
L
You got a $5 allowance?