Subj : Good grief, even hobbies
To   : DMXROB
From : Mike Powell
Date : Sun Aug 10 2025 17:52:12

y building kits -- which I was
not stocked up on -- have not gone up quite so much.

Overall my opinion is that prices have gone way up while selection is
mostly down.

Mike


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le of the lower-tier brands started making engines
that were also well detailed and very affordable.

That was before 2000.  Then, there were some mergers.  Lots of the smaller
companies were swallowed up or went out of business.  Also, there were a
couple of "technological advancements" like DCC.

At some point since then, but before COVID and long before the latest trade
wars, almost eveything has gone *way* up.  Those engines that were getting
cheaper have gone up in price 8 or 10 fold, and some of those lines were
eliminated in favor of supposedly more detailed engines (although I don't
really see it).  Meanwhile, a rolling stock kit (box car, caboose, etc.)
that likely would have cost you < $10 will more likely cost you close to
$30 now, with the high end kits (formerly between $10-20) now costing as
much as a decent engine kit would have cost in the 1990s-2000s.

Luckily, I stocked up back then

.