The Hobbit minis; are those prices for real??

[Doomsdave]

I quit paying GW ages ago.  If I get any of their stuff it's on the secondary market.  They seem to be selling to someone though and will probably be around to sell to my grandkids.  The Finecast nonsense followed by the paint change was the capstone on my decision.   Since there is no official GW store within 8 hours of me, and fewer hobby stores over the last 10 years and the nearest Games Day is halfway across the continent there's no chance I'll be playing "official" rules for the rest of my life-so no sense in buying their rules.  It just seems like they hate their customers.

[Verderer]

The secret is that GW has monopoly on the 'GW hobby'.

[Mo!]

If the prices where anywhere near resonable (and crapcast was still metal) I probably would have bought everything as I totally love everything Tolkien... now im buying nothing (until I can find it on ebay or on this here nice forum for a reasonable price)...

I have been a big fan of GW since the 80's but they have totaly alienated me...

[Mahwell skel]

Its a real shame as my children are actually showing an interest now.

The hobbit is off the menu for a starting point for them pricewise however LOTR on ebay seems very cheap if you bid on the bigger bundles being sold off. The single figures are expensive but I set myself a target of no more than 50p for a (good condition) plastic figure and £1 for a complete metal or mounted including postage. Setting this limit and thinking I would be easily outbid I now have the problem of explaining all the packages to the wife...

[zemjw]

There were some FailCast and plastic releases this month that I still think must be a misprint - non hobbit, sorry for slight thread hijack 

Most of the FailCast is £15, and the single plastic figures are normally around £11. One of the chaos plastic lords (going from memory here, so could be wrong) is also £15 - for a plastic figure 

What confuses me, however, is that some of the other currency prices quoted for that figure are different from the FailCast figure - not all, but most. So, either misprint, or very rapidly changing exchange rates in different counties

To bring it back to the hobbit - what are they doing with the painting on those figures? Eyes, we don't need no stinkin' eyes. I mean, seriously - bad, bad painting. They're not doing either hobby - ours or The Games Workshop Hobby (tm, reg, patent pending etc etc) any favours.

Final part of rant - do they really need to use the full name of the movie *every single time*

And... exhale

[Conquistador]

Final part of rant - do they really need to use the full name of the movie *every single time*

Two words.

Product branding.

 

Gracias,

Glenn

Who absolutely despises GW.

But I started as a historical grognard didn't I?

Also a JRRT fanatic back in my misspent youth (20's and 30's)

[Momotaro]

It would actually be quite interesting to calculate just how out-of-step with inflation GWs price increases are.

Quite easy if you have any memory for the line's prices over time, and you're bored and a bit geeky    I started buying LotR in 2002:

2002 prices

Infantry boxes were 24 figures for £12.
Cavalry were 6 models for £10.

Inflation rate 2002 - 2011 (according to the Bank of England inflation calculator) = 33%.  Let's multiply in another 3% for 2012, to give us roughly 37% inflation from 2002 to 2012.

2012 prices

Most Lotr infantry 24 figures (now 2 boxes) £30.  Increased by 150%.
New Dwarf Grim Hammers 24 figures (2 boxes) costs £40.  increased by 234%.

Most Lotr cavalry £18 (still 6 models).  Increased by 80%.
New Rivendell cavalry £30 for 6 models.  Increased by 200%.

Price increases were more in line with inflation (well, 60% or so) until the start of 2012, when the infantry boxes were split in two and the price hardly dropped.  The same is true of a lot of WFB and 40k models - you often now get 10 figures in a box for roughly what 20 would cost only five or six years ago (Imperial Guard troops being a good example).

Interestingly, there are models that have gone up less than inflation.  The core troop regiments for Tomb Kings have gone from £15 to £20 in that period - price inflation of £33%.  In these cases, they're still selling exactly the same models as they did ten years ago.

Even at £18, the plastic LotR cavalry are still a decent deal - £3 per model.  But the infantry include a lot of sets that are really showing their age - Moria goblins and Mordor orcs, for example.  Both, of course, look bad when compared with the prices for modern historical plastics.

[Doomhippie]

Thanks for this info. It kind of undelines my perception that in certain areas GW has gone bonkers while in other areas the price is within  a "reasonable" (whatever that may be and please note the quotation marks) range. Though admittedly those are getting fewer...

[Treebeard]

The last release of GW are incredibly over priced.
I had resisted since then but I think this time I'm done.

30€ for Bilbo and Gollum ? No way.
40€ for 6 Elves of Horses when the Riders of Rohan box is still 23€ !?

[Viper]

30€ for Bilbo and Gollum ? No way.

Hey hey, don't forget you get a tiny little boat and a little rock too.
 

[bobhope]

funny thing with GW toys, they are about the only toys I can buy my kids that when we're done playing with them I can sell them for more than I bought them for

which when you compare them with the competition- computer games/footballs etc
just saying...

[obsidian3d]

The last thing I bought from GW was the sixth edition starter box. I have enough figures from earlier in my career that I really don't need to buy anything else to play several armies...and at the rate their price continue to increase, I likely won't be buying anything else either. I looked at the new Chaos Space Marine codex and there's no way I'm paying that much for an army book. I'll play casual games with my friends with the old codex, or just play a different game altogether.

[Argonor]

Well, as stated, I'm probably done buying stuff from GW. Simply can't justify using that kind of money on such few models. Never really liked most of their rulesets, anyway (LotR at first seemed a nice change, but the rules quickly proved themselves to favour clustering the minis instead of spreading them out in real cinematic skirmish-style, which made the course of a game a tad predictable).

Until I find myself a new reliable source of income, I won't be buying anything else, either, but on the other hand, I probably have minis enough to last the rest of my life, given that I can restrain myself to already planned projects. 

[thenamelessdead]

The company seems bent on maximising profits at the cost of pretty much every aspect of their 'hobby'.   Many of the newer models are awful and designed purely as an excuse to raise prices.  The new Scyla is a good example - the first two incarnations were far smaller than the new one.  I suppose they did something similar with Gazhgkull Thraka many years ago, but that was an exception at the time.  The changes to some of the infantry boxes are particularly bad - 10 plastic Orcs now cost a lot of money and for a large army you'd need to buy several boxes to the extent that an army with lots of basic Orcs is no longer an option for the majority of Orcists.

[The Gray Ghost]

way beyond anything I am willing to pay.