@Ray Lombardo posted:These posts are useless. Prices are set by costs of production relative to demand. There are also monetary policy decisions involved that are off limits here. If people pay the price asked, then they aren’t too high. Everything else is just people expressing a view that they would like things to be cheaper. The answer is to make more money or buy less crap that you don’t need.
Prices are set by what the market will allow as well. The fact is that train prices have been increasing for many years and they weren't cheap to start with and people have been complaining all the time. These trains are a small market so the margins are higher, plus there has been inflation due to cost of production in China going up, parts scarcity because of Covid disruptions and shipping that has been increasing for a long while, it adds up ( blaming one factor alone is one element economics which is about as useful as predicting the future based on 2 data points).
Thing is, people are still buying them at these prices and I agree with another poster, that many of those complaining aren't the ones buying them likely, otherwise likely Lionel wouldn't be producing stuff at all ( it is nice to fantasize that if we stop buying the trains Lionel would make them reasonable, problem is at a lower price point would no longer be worth it for them to produce). Now if we could get millions of ppl to buy trains, well....
I get irritated when ppl on here try to use the prices to price some point outside trains. Take a look at the archive threads on here, we have heard the same complaint since I have been on here, the prices keep going up, they are too expensive, and I have been on here since 2009. Prices rise when inflation was running 3% and they went up more than that each year, it is going up now w real inflation showing up in the economy as a whole.
This is a hobby item and a luxury one at that, so it is what it is.
