About hobby shop mark ups: It's a little understood fact that markups are really necessary. With some variation between types of merchandise, it is a general rule that a manufactured item must be able to be sold at a retail price 5 times its cost of manufacture. Sounds awful, but it's not. The manufacturer HAS to make a profit. The distributor HAS to make a profit. There are plenty of packaging and shipping costs, often import duties, advertising, losses due to damage, theft, etc. And finally, don't expect a retailer to be able to pay his rent and other overhead AND make a profit, if he cannot mark an item up 100%. None of this involves ripoff. (There are SOME products that are traditionally marked up excessively --- Perfumes and high-ticket jewelry are often marked up over 1,000% just at retail but most stuff is around 100% +/-.)
About the decline of model railroading: I'm the guy who started this thread on MR Forum a few months back, and there were some interesting (and some wierd) answers there. I think my opinion has come down to a concept that there is a core of what I would call REAL model railroaders --- people who are model builders, craftsmen (to individually greater or lesser degrees of skill, but craftsmen all)who gain their enjoyment of the hobby from the whole spectrum: Research, model building, layout planning and construction, scenery, perhaps hand-laying track, perhaps photography, and finally --- perhaps --- operation. This core is probably relatively small, likely less than a quarter of the number of bodies generally counted as model railroaders. And this core doesn't spend nearly as much money as the "business of model railroading" would like them to. It's not that they are cheap, nor necessarily poor (tho' some of us are...) it's that a few pieces of rectangular and round brass bar stock, some detail parts and a motor, tend to cost a whole lot less than a ready to run steam locomotive. Card stock, strip wood, and styrene cost a whole lot less than a car or structure kit. Hand-laid track and turnouts cost a tiny fraction of flex or ready track. And the money you might spend on a Sherline lathe and mill (or even that brass bar stock) are likely not dollars counted as having been spent "in" the hobby of model railroading.
I imagine this "core" of "real" model railroaders stays relatively stable, and it's the fads of the moment, driven as often as not by marketing hype and media frenzy that causes the number of "all" model railroaders to fluctuate. This isn't the first big spike downward. I remember in the late 50s and early 60s it was generally considered that slot racing was to be the end of model railroading!
And PLEASE NOTE: I do not fault those who I leave out of my "real" model railroader group. They are welcome to do whatever it is that turns them on: $1500 brass locos. Buying a box full of (sorta) ready-to-run rolling stock. Prefering operation over model building. The annual loop of track around the Christmas tree. Whatever. That's great. Do it. But perhaps they should be called something besides "model railroaders" by the Harvard MBAs who think they know how to measure whether the hobby of model railroading is advancing or declining.
Bill
