okay, I'm just weighing in on this one because this touches on something that really urks the living h**l out of me.
We have a brand new model company starting up with a really interesting subject, one that I would be very interested in doing. This is great! New company to help keep the hobby strong, great subject to attract a lot of buyers, which in turn help keep the company going so they can produce more kits, and so on and so on....
Now comes the problem. Tarangus calls their new Sa A37A Lansen a "limited run" kit. How "limited" I don't know, they haven't said at their website (which is excellent by the way).
So far the only place I found the kit is Sprue Bros. with a sale price of $97.99, retail $115.00. In today's economy this is an outrageous price. From what I have learned about economics and from reading Tom Cleaver's article on Modeling Madness, the price of a kit is directly proportional to the amount of kits produced. For example, a kit that has, say 5,000 units made has to sell for x amount to cover design and production costs + profit to keep the company solvent, however, if 10,000 units are popped then, theoretically, each kit should sell for half of x.
So here is the thing, not only can I not afford to buy a Lansen, I wouldn't even want to at $100.00. Especially for a small 1/48 2 seat aircraft that only has 80 parts. The other thing is at $100.00 per unit, Sprue Bros will 11 of it's 12 current units in stock 4 months from now. Good bye Tarangus, we hardly knew ye. And that is the saddest part. This company had a good idea, but they short runned and over priced themselves right out of business ( I hope I am wrong but...)
Later