I have the luxury of being able to shop at two LHS's. One of these is a large shop in an affluent surburb north of Dallas TX and the other is a small one-man shop about 30 miles closer to home. In the large shop they don't have more than 50 or so Athearn blue box kits out of a total inventory of probably 20,000 available pieces of rolling stock. The sales clerk who is not the owner says that they can't get them any more. On the other hand the small shop I go to has about 300 of them out of about 1000 pieces of rolling stock. The owner says he has no problems getting them. They are not old stock, I have purchased some recently that were re-issues (and upgraded) kits from Roundhouse with the Athearn packaging. The owner suggests that there's a higher mark-up on the RTR and that's why the other shop quit carrying the kits. What have other Gauge members experienced at their LHS's. I for one still purchase the kits as I have more time than money. What are your thoughts and observations. By the way, both shops are 20% off all the time so I have no experience (or need) with Internet shopping.