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Originally Posted by Layla's Keeper
Usually the older Tamiya stuff is marked down (picked up the Tamiya Jaguar XJ220 for about $22 the other day) and my local hobby shop has a hard time getting their hands on Aoshima and Fujimi stuff.
In fact, most of their Fujimi stock is old stuff from the MRC days.
Pretty much, if it's a Japanese kit, and it's not Hasegawa or Tamiya, it'll be a pain to get from my local hobby shop. But, I still buy my kits primarily from them, because I want my local hobby shop to stay in business.
And, let's face facts, Tamiya has a much higher MSRP on their kits than most other companies. In fact, the only company I can think of whose MSRP's are consistently on Tamiya's level is Hasegawa, and Hasegawa is a company on par with Tamiya (higher, in fact, when you average out the past 4 years of new Tamiya kits against Hasegawa's).
Quite frankly, kits like the 350Z, the WRX, and even the R34 GTR range shouldn't be cracking the $20 mark even at the hobby shops. They simply don't merit the price when Revell can offer superior detail (and even in some cases accuracy) for $5-10 less.
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Tamiya Japanese MSRPs in Japan yen is not really outrageous. Lately, the prices have come up a little, but it's usually for fantastic kits. Many kits are available from Japan for less than 2000 yen. That's about $19 USD. Not much more then a Revell kit. And I find the tooling
is much better then Revell, along with additional perks such as realistic rubber tires and crisper details (even if sometimes the details are wrong, it still looks good). Revell's tuner cars are somewhat a step in the right direction, but still fall short. Their offering of 4 sets of rims at first had me very excited... but then I reallized that the rubber is basically a rubber band and you only get one set of rubber.
Anyway... considering cost. A Japanese kit will cost at least $10 more than the similar American kit. It works the same way the other way... American kits cost much more in Japan... just look at HS's "Import" listing some time.
A good example to look at is the Aoshima Bomex Supra and the AMT FatF Supra... it's the same kit (same tooling, etc). The AMT costs more than the Aoshima in Japan, and the Aoshima cost more then the AMT in America.