Cheers DragonsReach, that\'s interesting. My initial reaction to your guestimates is also a sharp intake of breath! Not that I don\'t think it\'d be worth it, just that my budget would be stretched! I guess the cost of raw metal makes it just too prohibitive nowadays. That Forgeworld dragon is huge so I guess up to £200 isn\'t as much as it sounds...
I have a comparison rule for whenever things seem too expensive to me, B\'s Cinema Rule (I may have stolen this from someone but can\'t remember). The cost of going to the flicks is roughly £10 (ticket plus snack) for which I get a maximum of 2 hours entertainment (I\'m twitching to get out of the air-conditioned hellhole by that point, so long films are DVD for me). A comic costs roughly £2 for 15 mins so is similar value. A £10 blister of 3 metal minis holds the promise of over 20 hours painting plus all the future use in games, pretty good value! Theory\'s a bit rough around the edges but has helped me get a better perspective when I initially balk at the cost figure before assessing whether I think the product is actually worth it. (I haven\'t done the sums but my feeling is that in the UK houses are priced 2-3x their worth, I wonder what the Cinema Rule suggests?).
Going back to my posited idea of a plastic dragon, I wonder if a smaller (beginners) sculpt available at the £35 would be profitable as a leader for the bigger resin models? It\'s still Christmas present money rather than casual purchase though isn\'t it?
A small thought for those of you who sell painted minis. The Dragon market ties into lots of customers outside of the gaming market. Just think of those rather nasty sculpts you see in pewter in gift/china shops with the tacky plastic gem glued in. The same goes for the cat market. I once painted up a GW Stone Circle (a little henge in Epic scale? for Mighty Empires?) for a friend & popped it into a presentation box with a little new-agey quote on the box. When you Ebay stuff I\'m guessing it\'s in the games section. Has anyone tried presenting their work for the collectable (eg. china) market with text that reads more like a Franklin Mint advert? Appealing more to new-age/hippy markets, etc. Just a thought
Back to that rather nice GW Dragon sculpt, if GW were to decide to produce a resin model for each of their stores, to be painted nicely for long-term display, they\'d have the marketing effect of a nice model in the window & the dragon fans could then order copies until the moulds disintegrate. It may not be profitable in the short term but the additional foot fall might make up for it? Alternatively, & to save on mould storage space/having to create a couple a month, produce the things in a batch until the moulds give up & then sell as a limited edition of only x pieces. Easier perhaps.
B.
