Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A conundrum

On the NZ120 list yesterday, a suggestion that someone overseas could step in and produce items for sale locally.
Honestly, its just not going to happen. There's no money in it. I'm doing casting for myself, making models that I want/need. now if other people are interested in them, then I can probably sell some, but I'm not in a position to go into full scale production (well, maybe not, watch this space).
I'll also have to work out what they are worth. I've looked at the UK market and its hard to tell. UK modelers are an amazing bunch. Buy a perfectly respectable model, then strip it down and hack it into some other variant (different head code boards, drivers arm in the wrong position etc), but mostly sticking with the horrible tension lock coupler ( though I think there's some movement towards kadee's). They will buy etched frets for a model without the correct dimensions ( often for quite substantial sums of money) and then merrily file it down to whats correct ( when the manufacturer should have got it right in the first place)
I think they are all mad. maybe we should be more like them.

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