Like Don Featherstone of Wargamer's Newsletter, I "have never been happy about the manner in which untrained, ill equipped, inexperienced and often youthful reviewers report in the pages of wargaming magazines, on the work of professionals in the field of... model soldier making."

To me, a prime example of this opinionated reporting was contained in No. 58 of Panzerfaust magazine (May-June '73) in an article entitled "The Problem of Figures" by Gary Gygax. The crux of this story was that manufacturers of tin soldiers are gleefully sitting back making little men, for practically nothing, then selling them for huge prices and profits, and as they march to the bank with their ill-gotten gains, they smile happily at the screwing they are giving their faithful wargame customers.

It further states badly that the tremendous profits made available by purchases from large numbers of customers have spiraled prices of tin soldiers so high that it is now OK (at least according to Gygax, for I cannot believe that Panzerfaust would endorse such a practice) if war game clubs "pirate" figures from manufacturers and make their own ... just so long as they don't get greedy and peddle their "recasts" to someone else for a profit!

I'm certain, that Mr. Gygax would not be happy if I bought one copy of his rules book, then Xeroxed off thirty copies and gave them to my war game club, thereby cutting out his royalty on sales of 30 of his books! However according to this article, I would be entitled to do just that since I could Xerox off my copies much cheaper than buying his book, and it's OK so long as I don't sell it for a profit!

Being a long time manufacturer of lead soldiers, and having started many of the standard sales practices in the industry, I felt perhaps it was up to me to straighten out Mr. Gygax --- and members of this hobby --- as to the actual facts concerning the costs of manufacturing, and why soldiers sell at the prices they do.

Let's face it, in any business there are those "inside", and generally those "outside" feel they are being taken by the "insiders". This is true in any business, and I feel exactly like any "outsider" when the fire insurance for my plant comes due. I know for a fact that those damn insurance companies are making a fortune off my premium. "Cause all I have to do is look at all those high-rise buildings owned by insurance companies. And if I had a chance, I'd probahly write a column about how much the insurance comnanies are screwing their customers, and me in particular!

Since manufacturing wargame models is restricted to only a few people, there is a natural tendency that few people will even know how it is operated. Most people, like Mr. Gygax I'm sure, base their price consideration on the fact that an infantry casting costing 25 cents couldn't possibly contain more than a few cents worth of lead in it. I've had people tell me I must make all kinds of profit, since it only costs me a couple of cents to cast the soldier. Like an iceberg, the casting of the soldier, and the cost of the metal, is only the "outer tip" that can he seen above the ocean of expenses. But, before I go into any detail on what it takes to make lead soldiers, let's get some basic business background on prices and pricing.

Prices and Pricing

First of all, who buys tin soldiers? There are three basic wargame groups in our hobby.

(1) The miniature wargamer,
(2) the guy I call the Middle-of-the-Roader and
(3) the board gamer.

Only the first classification really affects the lead soldier manufacturer.

The miniature wargamer is the heart and soul of the hobby. Like myself, he is only interested in tin soldiers, and he spends all his spare time in buying, painting, organizing, researchinn and playing wargame with tin soldiers. He is generally the driving force that organizes others into wargame clubs, and of the hundreds of miniature wargamers I have personally met, I have yet to have one of them complain about prices. Whether a soldier is 1 cent or $1 each, as long as it is what he wants, the miniature gamer will buy it and be happy with his purchase.

The second classification is the middle-of-the-roader. He loves wargaming and is available to play most anytime. He generally turns out to be a fine opponent and a valuable wargame club member. But, he does not buy or paint soldiers, doesn't contribute to wargame publications, seldom sets up battles, and never writes after-action reports. He could care less what the price of lead is as long as someone else has them ready to play with!

The third kind is the boardgamer who could never buy a lead soldier even if the price was one cent each, and just the thought of painting a soldier turns him off. He is content to spend his money buying printed and colorful maps and counters to game with.

Now the reader might say that Gygax was right in that the lead figure manufacturer has a built-in market, and like a dope peddler, all he has to do is dangle his product -- at any price -- in front of the miniature wargamer, who is ripe for the money-hungry producer to pluck at will. No doubt this would be true except for one thing: competition.

That article in Panzerfaust asked that all buyers quit buying lead soldiers, and that by so doing "we can get bearable prices and better figures." Of course, any student of economics knows this is exactly what the unscrupulous and money-mad manufacturer really wants. For, if somehow his comnetition is starved out, and he can hang on and manage to stay in business, eventually he'll have the monopoly he craves. And then, watch out for his new price schedule.

Let's face it, as long as Suren and Stadden and Minifigs and others are makinn finures, Jack Scruby has to keep his prices in line -- or out he goes. In my opinion it would be wonderful if everyone quit buying soldiers for one year. Somehow Scruby Miniatures will hang on and at the end of that year..a buck for a 30mm soldier! Great!

Prices

OK, so we now know who buys lead soldiers. So let's examine prices as they are today in 1973... at least as far as my models are concerned. And of course, anything I say in this article refers only to my own business, and not to anyone else who manufactures lead soldiers.

It's a known fact that in the late 1950s a dollar bought almost a dollar's worth of merchandise. It is also well known by government stats that 1973 dollar buys 25 cents worth of merchandise. Thus, most things sold today cost 4 times what they did in 50s.

In 1957 I brought out my first metal soldier and sold my 30mm infantry at 15 cents each. These were cast in brittle and breakable type metal that cost me about 22 cents per pound. In 1973, that same 30mm soldier retail for 30 cents each and the cost of the high-tin alloy costs $1.25 per pound. This makes tin soldiers one of the best buys in our inflated economy, for basicallly the price has only doubled (and you get a better product). Most other merchandise has quadrupled, and by rights, that 30mm soldier should sell for 60 cents.

So let's check. some expenses and problems the metal soldier manufacturer has ... at least at my plant. In checkinq back over some of my old books, I find fire insurance at my plant in 1963 cost me $99 a year. For almost the same coveraqc today, this insurance comes close to $800. In 1959 and 1961 I was paying 2 cents a casting for people to cast a soldier by the piece. Today I have two full time emloyees at pretty good salaries, plus my own tine.

Frankly, if I had to hire a designer, I couldn't afford one, and still cannot see how other manufacturers can afford to do this. I know for a fact that one company paid a disigner $500 for one 54mm model of a camel and rider. Believe me, you have to sell a helluva lot of camels to get over this primary cost. Since I don't pay myself I can't say how much design time would cost me. I put in probably 30 hours a week on design work, and I used to be paid an enormous sum by Ambrite for this type of work, which a small soldier manufacturer could not afford nor absorb in his business.

Then how would you like to have two huge lead pots -- rated at around 80,000 BTU's -- pumping through gas on an 8-hour day, 4 or 5 days a week. Costs on gas have not gone up too much over the years, but the investment in these pots was fairly heavy. Not only this, it turns our plant into a hell-hole during the summer, so you have to employ and pay for the use of a huge air cooler so that your workers can survive. After all, they could easily quit you and net a nice clean job someplace at about the same pay probably, and not put up with these conditions.

Then, as mentioned, the casting of a model soldier is merely the tip of the iceberg that shows. The other 7/8ths lie below the surface, and of course, no "outsider" has any conception of what happens after a figure is cast. Most buyers, I'm sure, feel a Scruby Miniature is popped out of the mold directly into their hot little hands, ready to go into wargaming after a paint job.

Well, let's see. First the figure had to be designed, then a mold made. Then a number of them were cast. Often they were rebuilt at this stage so they would cast easier, which meant another primary mold. Then, into a production mold they go, which requires an expensive vulcanizer and an investment in molds. Then, into the casting machine, after working on the mold to get it to produce.

Once the model has been cast and comes "alive", it then must be handled several more times: from casting sprue to stock box; from Stock box to package; from package to shipping box. And it takes time to count models into the packing box, to recognize all the models available, the walk back and forth between casting area, stock area and packing area ... etc. etc. ad nauseum!

Thus, for each casting, one must figure that behind it is research, design, molds, handling, packaging, maintainance, insurance, labor, taxes, rent, utilities, advertising, and loss of casting. The latter can eat you up sometimes, for if you miscast more than 10% of the figures (mnot cast completely and must be melted back down), then it begins to eat into your profit. So you can see, there's more to casting soldiers than meets the eye.

One statement made by Gygax in his column is quoted: "The manufacturers would not be giving us all those goodies (i.e.. variety of positions and periods) unless it was paying them, and rather handsomely at that. It certainly isn't out of philanthropic motives that they're in business." I really have to smile at this, as I'm sure other manufacturers will do.

I wonder how many hours and how many dollars I have spent on "lines" of model soldiers that I thought would be popular and that would sell so that I could get my "rather handsome" profit. I think back over the years of discarded lines of soldiers that I have thrown out, simply because they didn't sell!

Let's see, there were 30mm Ancients and Medievals, 7 yrs. War, French and Indian War, Franco-Prussians; 29mn Civil War, Seven Years War, Mexican War ... just to name a few. To top that, how about rebuilding 30mm Napoleonics 4 times so as to keep the quality up with my competition; or as now, re-designing the 20mn Napoleonics for the 4th go around. Think of the time and molds reguired for that. All of this at cost to my bank book! It takes quite a few sales of "popular" models to make up for the costs involved in trying to peddle models the a buyer doesn't want.

I think one can assume that large manufacturers such as Airfix, do not engage in the philanthropic fun of making models that won't sell. Rather, they come out once or twice a year with their Napoleonic sets to an audience literally dripping at the mouth to buy them out, sell huge numbers of this new series, and lose not one penny in working their tail off making fiaures and molds that no one wants!

This brings us to another point Mr. Gygax makes when he writes, "Frankly, I do not think any firm (lead soldier manufacturer) is giving us a fair shake price-wise. If ... it is expensive to cast metal models of wargame figures, then what is wrong with (them) going to a plastic figure ... ?" It is obvious that Mr. Gygax has no concention of the real reason small manufacturers stick to metal rather than plastic soldiers. First, of course, molds to die-cast plastic model costs up to $20,000 each. Molds to cast hot lead figures cost only a few dollars. With a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, the small manufacturers can take varieties and periods of metal model soldiers that are financially impossible for the larger manufacturer to make. Because of the smaller expenses the small manufacturer can produce a long line of soldiers each month, giving the wargamer a growing variety in the market to buy from. Without this fact, the wargamer would be limited to buying plastic soldiers at the will of the large manufacturer, as it saw fit to bring them out.

Answers?

How does this answer the argument that manufacturers of metal soldiers are not giving their customers a fair price, and should therefore get into making plastic soldiers so is to cut down the price? Well, let's look a little further.

The manufacturer of plastic models, such as Airfix, Marx and others, have a huge investment in each die they cast from. At Ambrite, while I was employed there, one such die cost the owner close to $15,000. It required a $35,000 die-casting machine to use the die in. When the die was completed, it could "spit" out about 30,000 castings in an 8 hour shift. As long as you have world wide distribution and have a huge sales force, you can keep this hungry machine going full blast. Without such a sales program, that machine sits idle and makes no one any money.

To sell these products, you have to produce them cheap, sell to the dealer or distributor cheap, and he then makes his profit before it is sold to you. If a dealer can sell a box of Airfix at 89 cents, you can figure how cheap the Airfix company can cast those plastic soldiers!

The average lead soldier manufacturer is probably like myself: he has a couple of regular employees, is up to his neck in debt for his machines, probably does his 8 hour stint at the plant, then goes home to tend to his mail and books. He has neither the capital, sales force nor distribution to turn out soldiers at Airfix's rate. And, even if he could manufacture plastic soldiers in exactly the same method as he manufactures lead soldiers, he could not possibly sell them for much less than he does his metal soldiers, for he would still have basically the same gross sales, since he does not have a world wide sales force able to sell all the products he could turn out! You need only look at small plastic manufacturers such as Historex and others, who sell their products within the same price range as metal Imries or Staddens, to see that most model soldier manufacturers are not really manufacturers in the modern sense, but are more cottage industry type businesses.

I have to add one more little bit from my experience concerning prices of soldiers. Over the last several years I have offered "cut-rate" special models. I advertised certain of my warqame lines at "cut-rate" prices, the most recent being a nice series of 25mm WWII models at half their reqular price. Some 2,000 readers of my Soldier Factory News saw this ad, but as of this date, I have not sold one of these soldiers!

Some years back I offered my most popular 20mm and 30mm Napoleonic infantry as "battery molded" castings at half price. Sales were so small I finally just pulled them off the market! I have a hunch if Panzerfaust offered a $10.00 boardgame at $2.00 they would sell very few of them. Most people today shy away from "bargains" as you well know. Automatically you'd figure the $2.00 game was a low quality job, and you'd probably never buy it. I have found that people who are interested in their hobby will not buy anything unless it is of a particular kind or type he wants. And if the price is competitive and within reason, he will not complain about the cost, provided the quality is what he wants.

I firmly believe that all lead soldier manufacturers are today giving their customers good products of good quality at a fair price. I feel there are some dealers and stores who have raised these prices on a local basis but I am not talkinq of these people. I am talking only of buyinq direct from a manufacturer whose price is published in his catalogue. If there were no competition between manufacturers you can be assured you would be paying higher prices for soldiers, since profits are low despite what others may think.

I know what my business makes each month, and I'll be quite honest in saying that I made more profits from my business when I first sold soldiers at 15 cents each and did all the work myself in my garage, than I make today...despite the fact that my price has doubled and my outpyt is perhaps 20 times greater!

One more argument about prices of soldiers...and other things in these days. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, it costs you 50 cents a day for them. You can buy two Scruby Z5mm infantrymen for 50 cents. One pack of cigarettes a day costs you $15 a month. This is equal to buying 60 25mm infantrymen a month. Over a years time, you could buy 720 25mm infantry- men for the same price as your investment in cigarettes (or booze, or picture shows, etc.) -- 720 infantrymen a year is just about right to paint in your spare time. It will make a helluva good war game army. The cigarettes (or booze or what have you) will be gone at the end of the year. The 720 infantrymen will be there waiting to go to battle for you ... for the rest of your life! Is this too high a price to pay for the fun of the hobby?

If it should turn out that Mr. Gygax's article does turn off buyers from purchasing metal soldiers, then Scruby Miniatures will pull in its neck and sit around and wait until their competition quits. When Minifigs and Stadden and the rest stop making soldiers, you can expect then that Scruby Miniatures will be out with the cheapest metal 30mm soldiers on the market... at around $1.50 for one infantryman! Man, what a day that will be!

And in the meantime, as the metal soldier manufacturers gradually fold up, the happy wargamer can eagerly wait for Airfix, or some other huge manufacturer, to come out with their yearly issue of Napoleonics, so that gradually he build up a huge army of soldiers ...all on guard, or charging on one foot, or with Highlanders perpetually fighting French cuirassiers!

The only answer of course, is to keep on buying those tin soldiers! By doing this, you will keen ol' Jack Scruby fat and happy, and grinning all the way to the bank... as he rushes down there to tell the manager how come he can't make his loan payment this month!

And, Gary, I promise I won't Xerox any copies of your rulesbooks for our wargame club!