Here’s Barry’s drive, C-16 under a Bumblebee, with grey drivers from MANY years ago. He’s had these drivers for at least 15 years
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7361/9062446857_f4a29e1997.jpg)
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7281/9062446939_d4aff6ae5e.jpg)
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Please read the enclosed link. You will need to copy and paste into your browser. The link refers to “MSRP”. Of note is the paragraph pertaining to the United States. It explains how manufacturers will post an extremely high MSRP for a product with no relation to production cost, to allow “deep discounters” to offer massive discounts on the MSRP but still make a profit and ‘fool’ the consumer he is getting a bargain.
Thus the ‘street price’ is as I suspected a true value of an item and the MSRP is a manipulated price allowing sellers/discounters to fool the consumer he is getting a bargain, whereas in fact he is only paying what the item is worth.
http://library.kiwix.org/wikipedia_en_all_nopic/A/Suggested%20retail%20price.html
Remmber to copy and paste the link to your browser.
All that is well known and true. In think 20 pages back I said MSRP was a made up number for discounting purposes. But, add to that MAP, and you can see some of the issues.
When the Connie was 800, and street was $250-$260, the new 2-8-0 is MSRP of $1575, and a street of $800, you can see where some of this comes from. If the street was without MAP, and we were about 1/3 the cost of MSRP, we’d be a bit over $500. Remove the (retail) Ames Super Socket for about $100, you’re closer to $400, or, half the current street pricing.
So many factors, QE1,2 and 3, cost of labour in PRC, cost of raw materials, less competition, new marketing plans.
Without factoring in the financial aspects of labour, QE1,2 and 3, the price should be probably $450-$500. You can figure out where the other $300-$350 pricing comes from (if you leave the socket out, which was told to us several years ago cost nothing…).
When you can go back and see, clear as a bell, what the pricing was before, from MSRP (phony) to street, and what it is now, knowing there is a MAP included now…you can make up your own mind, as at least one person in this thread has done!
I’m just gonna watch. It is highly interesting (and often entertaining)…and if more shoes drop in the weeks to come, we’ll have to see how folks respond in manufacturer’s forums.
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Dave,
if the MAP is to protect the small businessman from unscrupulous price manipulation in the market by ‘deep discounters’, then who actually gets the money? Does the deep discounter make a higher profit margin or does the manufacturer set a higher wholesale price and thus reap an additional profit?
Either way it seems to me the moral attitude would be to offer a wholesale price to all retailers at a realistic pricing policy, such that discounters cannot manipulate the market with heavy wholesale discount margins because of their greater buying potential. It seems to me the MSRP and the MAP are merely market tools to rip the consumer off. Surely a fair and reasonable wholesale price with a moral profit margin for the dealer is a fairer system, but then when has marketting ever been known for its morals. Is it the businessman or the manufacturer who is to blame for the current pricing policy?
