I just can't get past the $30 for a 1/25 scale plastic model. I guess I'm just not into it that much anymore.
This.
I guess I'm stuck in the late '70's early '80's when it comes to pricing on kits. When I was a kid in the '70's, Conn had (still has) the 5 cent deposit on bottles. My friend and I would collect and cash in bottles for a few weeks, then go and buy a few kits. At the time, K-mart would have sales where some kits were marked down to .99 (or less!). I remember buying a Volare Roadrunner kit during one of these sales, and the body wasn't fully molded. Part of the drivers door and most of the drivers fender was not there. It was obviously a manufacturing defect. Ended up using it for parts.
I think I gave up models when pricing reached the $10 range.
It's not just you. When I was a teen in the early 2000's, I could get AMT kits at Wal-Mart for $5 ($4.94 to be exact). Now Round 2 is re-releasing the same kits at 5-6x that price. It was a treat to get a Revell kit for me as they were $15 at the time. I stopped buying for the most part when the $5 kits disappeared. I still have a supply of stuff that I never built, and occasionally I'll pick up something at a swap meet if the price is right (I'm quite fond of the JoHan '71 Sox 'Cuda kits). I usually build one kit a year or so.
