PCA wagon

[d-a-n]

I have a rake of 8 of the newer type of PCA wagons, the ones with all the nice ladders, weathering and all that. I thought I'll get another to make it a nice round odd number and found that my local was stocking them. For £22 EACH! I remember picking up the weathered triple pack for £20 at one point and I'm not talking about in the good old days, this must have been within the last 2 years.

My question is are any of you N'thusiasts paying £22 for a single wagon?

[NeMo]

My question is are any of you N'thusiasts paying £22 for a single wagon?

Nope! Not a chance. I picked up eight or nine of the earlier Farish "vee" PCA wagons when they were in the Hattons "bargains" area for £8-9 a pop. Nice enough but I think a little cruder in details than the new ones going for £22, which seem to have more underframe detailing and nicer looking ladders. That said, I notice Hattons still have some of the older ones in stock for under £9, here...

http://www.ehattons.com/52907/Graham_Farish_373_008B_PCA_bulk_powder_wagon_I_C_I_in_white/StockDetail.aspx

Cheers, NeMo

[jpendle]

If you're talking about the bogie PCA's then they've never been less than 18 quid.

Regards,

John P

[NeMo]

If you're talking about the bogie PCA's then they've never been less than 18 quid.

I think these are ones d-a-n was talking about... or at least that's what I assumed!

http://www.ehattons.com/42800/Graham_Farish_377_935_Triple_pack_PCA_metalair_bulk_powder_wagon_grey_weathered/StockDetail.aspx

Weathered triple pack, £20.

Cheers, NeMo

[d-a-n]

If you're talking about the bogie PCA's then they've never been less than 18 quid.

Regards,

John P

No mate, the 4 wheeled ones which used to be £8 in the Hattons sale and about £10 any other time.

http://www.ehattons.com/107816/Graham_Farish_377_925A_PCA_Metalair_Bulk_Powder_wagon_in_Blue_Circle_livery_weathered/StockDetail.aspx#

I simply cannot understand the price hike of double what they used to be!

[bluedepot]

they will still be expensive, but if you wait about 6 months they get reduced in price...

keep an eye out on ebay as well


tim

[njee20]

Hattons were still listing the old one for £10.30 until very recently. The new one (same product code, "A" suffix) is identical, but more than double the price. Utterly mad.

Luckily I have 28 of them, so don't need any more!

[Bob G]

For some reason these didn't sell well when first introduced, so their price was cut and I got pristine ones for £7 and weathered ones for £8 each in 2012.
Now they must have either just got popular or the pricing has caught up with four year's Chinese salary increases/inflation at 20% per year.

Ridiculous. All those old fashioned models I was about to sell on EBay are staying put and getting re-wheeled.

Bob

[Western Exile]

d-a-n, I've got a few more of these wagons than I really need. If you're interested, send me a pm.

[Ben A]

Hello all,

The issue is that previously while tooling was costly, Chinese labour was cheap so assembling complex models was cheap.

This meant that designers could add more and more details like etched parts, wire pipe runs, separate plastic details with relatively little impact on price.

That's changed.

Tooling costs are relatively stable, but labour costs have rocketed.  So all the models that have lots of detail parts are suddenly much more expensive.

Having said that, if bogie wagons are now in the £35 range is £22 really too much?  This Fleischmann tank car is £23 and seems no more detailed...

http://www.osbornsmodels.com/fleischmann-843710--dr-tank-wagon-with-brakemans-cab-iii-26035-p.asp

What do people think is a fair price for a modern spec model with refined detailing?

Cheers

Ben A.

[njee20]

I think there are two dynamics at play here - the price, and the apparent price rise in a very short period.

Against a backdrop of >£30 for bogie wagons you're right Ben, £22 isn't that bad. But... I'd not happily pay £30 for a bogie wagon either! I wish I'd got a rake of MBAs when they were sensibly priced to that end!

What is a bitter pill to swallow is that less than 6 months ago you could pick up the same model for 1/3 the price.

Whether there'd be similar irritation if this were a new model I don't know. I do know that the high prices are the reason I've not got a rake of JJAs, and I understand the Polybulks are even worse!

[Pete @ EGLM]

The retail price of some of these wagons has virtually doubled in around two years.  Making some assumptions, please correct me if I'm wrong!
The price to the retailer is probably around two thirds of the retail price at the most.
That makes a £37 wagon around £25 to the retailer.  Now to make a dramatic assumption:- the price they are sold to Bachmann is around half of that, I.e  £12.50. That covers transport to the UK, transport to the port, the box for the wagon, the tooling, the materials to build the wagon, electricity, rent, rates, and of course the labour cost. If the labour cost was half of this, (£6.25say) which I would surmise is an overestimate, how has the cost to the modeller increased so much?

To me, it sounds like a very convenient excuse to say that It is Chinese labour costs that are responsible.

As I've said all the above are assumptions, what do those in the know think?

Pete @ EGLM

[bluedepot]

I would only very rarely spend more than say 11 pounds for a 4 wheel wagon and 22 pounds for a bogie wagon.

I did break these rules and bought two polybulks though.

generally for coaches i would spend about 22 quid as well. I can't recall buying any coaches that were more than this, although maybe mk2as i got were more, can't recall now. dapol mk3s i got were 20 or under i think

if u wait a while and look out for a sale u can usually get things u want for quite a bit less but still a full rake of say 20 pca wagons would cost a fortune.


Tim

[acko22]

One factor Inthink that will be effecting the price of models will be the strength of the pound.
Companies will use the weaker pound as a reason to increase the price although for a model to increase by a third hmm bit naughty.

But its to be expected if I was honest we have had a lot of well detailed models at decent prices over the past few years so I expected price rises for such a small market when you compare it with say the european or japanesse n gauge market. But as I say a price rise for this particular model by a third is a hard pill to swallow.

[njee20]

To be clear, this isn't increasing by a third, the outgoing one (377-927) had a retail price of £10.30, I bought some earlier this year for a bit less than that. The new one (377-927A) has a retail price of £22.90.

A third would be annoying, the 122% increase on this wagon is a slap in the face!