Going et Gerald comments, "But I have already spoken with collectors who said 1 € for a 30mm figure is too expensive." This is stupid and collectrslive in another planet, where they benzine still cost 15 cents a liter, a read even less and waken up in our wolrld very expensive !!
Ronde bosse painters are ready to buy 75mm fgures for 30 to 50 euros unpainted to paint them ... this is 60 to 100 deutch mark !! ... I wold have never bought such a model for such a prohibitive price.
Flats must restate their selling price to an acceptable level, higher, ...or disappear. We rarely find nowadays armies on tables of hundreds of flats as before, but doramas more sophisticated, or sanyetes of 2/3 characters or single pieces, painted with more care, where the time for painting against the material (the flat) itself are higher. Ifa flat would cost 5 euros or 7 euros, it would not stop people painting them nowadays. The selling price found on ebay's include a depreciated mould, aged, . But a new mould, high quality should give flats charged at higher price to users.
Going to China i a big mistake, like clothes, electronic, toys = it is giving up again our know-how, artistic talents, tradition, manpower, salaries to foreigners for their own benefit, until we become plants in our house, ordering everithing by a laptop, travelling on TC screens, holding meetings from home in video, we don't even need legs anymore !! (le futuristic view of some people f what will a hulan look like in 500 years !!).
We must keep, sherish, protect this art here, within Europe as a sign of our culture, our values and pay for it.
Tomorrow, wih 3D printing, even colouring on computer, a painted flat will cost ... centimes; 98% will go in the pocket of the conceptor in California, and we will have no longer any interest, because each flat will be the same as millions others, like a coin of metal !!! Instead of being built, painted by an artist well known in our own country instead by little hands among thousands of (young) chinese or russian girls, producing them in large series "aall the same" ...).
Do we want quality, value, ...or low cost an massive productions, low quality and poor looking ?
I have my answer, but I am not a collector .... I don't need to keep 20,000 flats in my home in boxes and drawers; only a few framed and exposed ... because I painted them myself!
I would even pay 10 euros for such a 30 mm flat, but no paint an army of 300, which would tak a good part of my life n one single subject ....
Everyone to find his passion ... and pay for it on his way!