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[quote user="mlehman"]Volker, I think you're thinking of the past when a significant proportion of a kit's cost was devoted to paint and lettering. If the lettering was by decal, then there was the cost of producing the decal also priced in. RTR generally wasn't available and kits tended to have fairly crude parts that needed no special packaging. And kits were often the only form a new item was produced in, so production was optimzed to simply stuff them in a box. Now, there is sometime painting involved, but much is actually the plastic cast in the correct color. Lettering is by pad printing.[/quote] I have compared three companies, Intermountain, Walthers Proto, and Arrowhead. The first two offer undecorated kits at $10+ less than RTR, where Walthers is a Timesaver decorated kit. Arrowhead sells at the same price. That shows the kits can be sold at lower prices than RTR despite the changes you describe. AFAIK all these RTR models are painted. The print pads don't fall from the sky either. A year or so ago was a discussion about the high costs of some ScaleTrains containers. The manufacturer's reply was that the printing process needing a number of pads and print steps per side brought the price up. I think Arrowhead in this case keeps as profit what the save on the kits. As long as there are modelers will to buy kits they need at almost any price it works. As long as it works it is ok. If not it is no great loss with the small kit numbers sold. Regards, Volker
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