Price of Model Aircraft

[Guy Farrish]

Okay. I’m old. It’s official.
Bobbies looking too young to be out on their own. The fact I can call them bobbies still without much irony involved on my part confirms it, but something wacky happened the other day which made me realise HOW old!

I took my son to an aircraft museum. He’s 10. Naturally he wanted a model to make and paint when he got home.
I bought a 1/72 Czech made Gloster Meteor.

£18.60!

I presumed this was one of those ‘exit through the shop’ rip offs/funding ideas so I went with it.

But as I never buy 1/72 model aircraft these days I thought I would check on line to see how much I had been stiffed.

Not much apparently. That was not an unreasonable price by the look of it.

An Airfix Quick Build Spitfire is a tenner. Other, more detailed/accurate models are much more.

I sat there and thought – well I suppose inflation, chunter chunter. So I checked.

In 1965 I was paying around 2s 6d for an Airfix Spitfire. (I think it was more like 2s 3d but I’m going to cheat for easy maths)

According to the Bank of England £1.00 in 1965 would now be worth £17.77.

So with 8 half crowns in a pound that means an Airfix Spitfire should be c £2.22

Somebody’s inflation rates are a bit off.

 

What the heck happened?

Curtiss Helldivers at ‘bargain price’ of £24!

What universe have I been in? I want a real one for that!

[Mike]

Good old person moan!

[zippyfusenet]

I think the main thing that happened is that crude oil, the raw material of plastics, went from about $2/barrel as late as the 1960s to over $100/barrel not too many years ago, and is now about $46/barrel this minute, which is supposed to be cheap.

I can remember about 1966, pedaling my clunker single-speed Schwinn bicycle a couple miles from the sub-division up to Roger’s Hobby Shop at Swifton Shopping Center, and plunking down a quarter on the counter for a 1/76 Airfix Spitfire kit. The quarters were still silver in those days. Come to think of it, that could also have something to do with the present situation.

I like being a geezer, though.

Oh, give me a home where the brontosaurs roam,

Where the shy stegosauruses play,

Where seldom is heard either mammal or bird,

And the seas are Cretaceous all day.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

[Guy Farrish]

Thanks Mike!

I put a lot of effort into being a moaning old so and so. You can’t get that grumpy without effort you know.

Zippy, I suspect you are right. The Bank of England calculator is a general inflation rate, averaging out several indices. I don’t know whether I want to start working out hydrocarbon rates for the period. It will only depress me and before you know where you are Mike will be inundated with posts about how things were ‘better when I were a lad, lad’ and how young people today don’t know how lucky they are not to have cholera etc etc.

So I’ll stop now.

Except!…When did they stop putting any written instructions in kits? It’s all exploded diagrams and ‘intuition’. I don’t think there was any intuition in the Gloster Meteor box.

[zippyfusenet]

Ah, the olden, golden age of plastic modelling, when the kit only had 12 parts, but came with a 6 page pamphlet of illustrated assembly instructions…then they started printing the instructions in 8 different languages, and the type necessarily became very tiny…today, who knows where the kit was engineered, molded, packaged, or where it will ultimately be sold? It’s unwise to presume English fluency at any stage of the supply chain. We’re all better off with pictograms. If only they were *clear* pictograms.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

[Not Connard Sage]

Guy Farrish wrote:

Thanks Mike! I put a lot of effort into being a moaning old so and so. You can’t get that grumpy without effort you know.

 

Absolutely, old boy.

 

Now get off my lawn!

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

Certainly.

Can I have some written directions?

This diagram of the exit is none too clear.

[kyoteblue]

You damn kids get off my lawn !!!

[Rod Robertson]

Guy Farrish:

You remember when plastic kits were cheap. I remember King Croesus invented coin and when plastic kits were plants and animals milling about in the Carboniferous forests! Only yesterday they were just kerogen and today they’re polymerised Spitfires, MiG-29’s and sports cars. The last date I had was a radio-isotope date and I was too old for that! Some here say, “Get off my lawn!”. I say, “Get of my Pangea!”. Hrumpf.

And Mike, respect your elders, you rude young whipper-snapper! Kids these day, I don’t get them anymore.

Cheers and good gaming.

Father Time.

[Guy Farrish]

I think I was probably surprised because I buy 15mm plastic vehicles for wargaming and they seem remarkable cheap. I buy metal 1/300 and 1/200 tanks etc and they seem pretty good value too.

I suspect that in the back of my mind has always been the idea that plastic kits (mostly memories of Airfix when I was a child) were the cheap option if I ever wanted to do something  in a larger scale.  I don’t remember aircraft being particularly a premium buy cf armour. I used to do some 1/72 1/76 gaming with plastic figures and tanks but it has been c30 years since I bought any of them. So suddenly bumping my rose tinted memories up against commercial reality of what I still really think of as toys was a shock.

I still can’t get my head around the idea of my son buying a model every few weeks which is what I remember doing (although I am prepared to concede that perhaps it was in reality more like once a month) at those prices.

My memories of the carnage of my childhood ‘re-enactment’ of D-Day and the Falaise Gap with my friends now makes me wince (and not metaphorically) even more than it used to. Let’s just mention tanks, air rifles and methylated spirits, and draw a veil over the rest.

(Kids today huh?)

[Not Connard Sage]

Guy Farrish wrote:

I don’t remember aircraft being particularly a premium buy cf armour.

They weren’t. An Airfix Spitfire IX was a Series 1 kit, an Airfix Sherman was Series 1.

Apart from the fact that the Sherman kit bore little resemblance to any actual Sherrman, and that a Spitfire I would have been a better choice, what’s not to like..?

When I were a lad, Series 1 kits were two bob. That’s 10p to any young whippersnappers reading this. Add 3d (1.5p) for a tube of polystyrene cement at Woolies, and a fun evening of modelmaking and substance abuse ensued 🙂

 

The Vintage Airfix site makes interesting reading.

http://www.vintage-airfix.com/ships-c-35.html

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Victoria Dickson]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

The Vintage Airfix site makes interesting reading. http://www.vintage-airfix.com/ships-c-35.html

Thanks for that link, I had some of their garden birds and a Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, nice to be reminded of them. 🙂

And some tanks and planes obviously, but I don’t get as nostalgic for those somehow.

http://crazywargames.blogspot.co.uk/

[John D Salt]

zippyfusenet wrote:

Oh, give me a home where the brontosaurs roam,

Where the shy stegosauruses play,

Where seldom is heard either mammal or bird,

And the seas are Cretaceous all day.

Brontosaurs? In the Cretaceous?

All the best,

Mr. Picky

[zippyfusenet]

It’s poetry, Mr. Picky. It’s not supposed to be correct, or even make sense. It’s supposed to make you weep. Did I succeed? Are you weeping yet? Maybe whimpering, just a little?

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

[John D Salt]

IIRC, a couple of years ago there was some discussion about some of Cope’s (screw that guy too, they were both idiots) sauropod fossils being different enoughto be a separate species and that “bronto” may be brought back but I haven’t heard anything since.

Master Picky has been correcting people on this point since the age of 8 (which I think must be around the age at which dinosaur expertise peaks in most people), but the Wikipedia entry indicates that “brontosaurus” has been resurrected as a name since a couple of years ago.

Mr. Picky always checks his facts before posting nonsense to the interwebs.

All the best,

Dave Antrodemus (or Allosaurus)

[Guy Farrish]

On the other hand – c$8.00 in the US, £7.60 UK! (but £17.60 p&p) dearer than a Gloster Meteor, BUT with genuine lifelike contemporary caveman!

(I weep)

[Mike]

Be like George Pig, or rather Edmond Elephant..

[Guy Farrish]

One of Blessed’s best roles I felt, he brought a raw mythic quality to the part of Grampy Rabbit.

(And perhaps someone should put Edmond in touch with our gallant dinosaur enthusiasts to discuss this?)

[Not Connard Sage]

Well this thread took an unexpected turn.

 

…are you still on my lawn?

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[John D Salt]

Guy Farrish wrote:

(I weep)

Is it the poetry?

All the best,

John.

[John D Salt]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Well this thread took an unexpected turn.

Thread drift, continental drift, both pretty much inevitable, even if they differ somewhat in pace.

Not Connard Sage wrote:

…are you still on my lawn?

Not me. I’m over there —->

All the best,

John.

[Guy Farrish]

I was going to ask if anyone could unravel Brian Blessed’s military service but I suspect that is another three threads at least.

[Katie L]

The cost of the oil in a plastic model kit is pretty minimal.

Logistics chain costs (which does use a lot of fuel), premises rentals and business rates seem to be what’s pushing up the prices of everything at the moment — or forcing the closure of business who can’t raise prices.

 

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