Concern about new Yamato valks prices

[doodler7]

It's funny, I remember years ago when people were paying out over a grand for a 20 year old toy and bragging about it. Now we're sob sob sobbing about 200 bucks. boo hoo us.

Eh, never was able to afford the $50 USD Valkyries when they came out and the $1K versions on ebay or from collectors. The $180+ for a valkyrie with cheap packaging is a bit steep. The Bandai DX 1/60 packaging has better packaging than the Yamato 1/60; artwork wise.

I say if you're not an avid collector, avoid buying just for the sake of collecting valkyries you will not appreciate. For me, I think I've always been a VF-1 fan because of Ro*****h. Don't fall for the exclusive or repaint gimmicks, it'll lead to ranting and questioning your purchases.

[VFTF1]

Let me see if I understand correctly; your rationale is that manufacturer is losing the distributors, so they cut the price.

Distributors are too facing a declining demand, but they don't cut the price.

No - distributors are cutting prices too. Everyone is cutting prices except retailers at this point.

This is due to a very simple reason:

Retailers are hesitant to buy more because customers are hestitant to buy more. Therefore, they are not able to take such full advantage of the falling prices as they would like - therefore neither are you (aka consumers).

Everybody is falling over backwards to offer lower prices - we'll see if this helps on an aggregate scale.

If we're talking about Yamato specifically - Yamato lowered their prices about three weeks ago.

Everybody else is now doing the same (by which I mean Bandai etc).

P.S. I am not very convinced with this flow of argument given the MSRP of various toys.

MSRP is kind of meaningless - first, it's only a suggested retail price, and second it's a RETAIL price.

What's ultimately important is how much the thing is selling for before it goes to a retailer and how many pieces a retailer is willing to buy - this in turn depends on his forcast of turnover.

Lots of folks got burned by overstocking and so they are very hesitant to buy. Lots of other folks just went under or stopped importing due to exchange rate changes.

Also - keep in mind that I'm talking in a time frame of literally a couple of weeks.

The first signals that Yamato lowered its' prices came about three weeks ago. The rest of them (Bandai etc) - something like last week. This is probably another reason why, looking at MSRP and stuff like that - you're not seeing it yet.

You might not see it at all if sales still remain low throughout the industry.

In any case - my point is simple:

This whole thread was opened to gripe about how high Yamato's prices are.

Yamato has significantly lowered its' prices.

Yamato has done everything it could to fascilitate lower prices.

The rest is up to "us"

Pete

EDIT:

Maybe a summary? I dunno - just... I'm getting a really crazy feeling of dual realities - like two universes are battling eachother - because on the one hand there are threads like this where it's like gripe gripe gripe Yamato's prices are too high... but on the other hand - look in our for sale/trade thread. Look how few people took advantage of Big Kid's group buy and my group buy?

I'm not saying "blame people not Yamato" - I'm just saying don't blame Yamato as if they're being oblivious. They really are doing what they can - like everybody else.

people in Japan are aggressively negotiating down prices - I don't know the details of it, I have no clue about the mechanics behind it - all I know is it is happening and the prices are going down.

But it will mean diddly squat if consumers don't buy more of this stuff. It will only mean that people place less and less value on it.

In any event - my writing this was just prompted by seeing people wonder aloud why Yamato's prices are so high and thereby implying that Yamato was doing nothing about it or blind to it.

Yamato is doing something about it. EVERYBODY is trying to do something about it.

They can't magically change the exchange rate, they can't make the recession/depression/crapoconomy go away - so they're just lowering their prices. They are doing what they can.

Ultimately - no one company or one customer can change anything. It's a matter of scale. But I'm just saying that everybody - as far as I can see - is doing their part to keep the ball rolling and to lower prices in light of the bad exchange rate.

They really don't have a choice.

So complaining about Yamato while they are doing exactly what consumers want RIGHT NOW - and I'm talking about overseas consumers - because I'm specifically talking about stuff that is exported outside of Japan - so specifically YOU GUYS... it just makes no sense.

Of course everyone has a right to their opinion, and threads like these are fun and good - but you should know - before you gripe too hard or too quickly - please know that Yamato is actually bringing their prices down and they are in the process of figuring out how to do this effectively.

Pete

Edited October 29, 2009 by VFTF1

[bluemax151]

Just to throw another factor in there with a non toy related example..

Keep in mind Japan is experiencing a lot of deflation/appreciation of the yen. I have already seen articles claiming if things don't start going the other direction Toyota will soon be losing money on any car they export. The Japanese government is trying to depreciate the value of their currency to turn their exporting situation around but who knows how that will go. When I first start majorly importing Japanese products a dollar was about 150 yen. Right now a dollar is about 90 yen.

Also I'd have to agree Bandai got the license because of their overall sponsorship of Macross Frontier. Although I'm sure they have more money to throw around too.

[VFTF1]

If the Japanese want to deppreciate the yen - they could just peg it to the US dollar

And that's not a joke. It's about as funny as "If the Federal Reserve wants to stimulate bank lending and inject credit into the economy to get it moving - they can set the interest rate at zero."

Oh - but they HAVE set the interest rate at zero.

And guess what banks are doing?

NOT LENDING - despite zero to .025% interest rates. They can get free money from the fed - and they are taking it - and then they are....holding it.

Why?

Because last year, when they gave that money away, all they got were people who couldn't pay it back and a bunch of worthless real estate from those who defaulted.

They are scared to lend.

The situation with anime products is identical - and probably the same everywhere in all other industries.

During the boom, retailers stocked up. Producers kept making more and more because demand was growing, and sometimes there would be shortages and the prices of the goods sky rocketed. Retailers had an incentive to order mountains of this stuff - way more than what was on pre-order from customers - because they could count on the value of it appreciating in time.

Now half the customers have trouble putting food on their tables, let alone valkyrie on their shelves.

Orders are down.

Producers are forced to attempt to stimulate orders by lowering prices.

This is how it ought to be.

Eventually, a low enough price will come around that will get people buying. If it doesn't - the industry will collapse. My bet is on the former and not the latter happening.

However - if, in the meantime, the Japanese government artificially depreciates the Yen by tightening interest rates that will BE BAD.

Why?

Because then retailers will ONCE AGAIN order a zillion products that nobody wants.

The last thing you want to do is continue an artificial, fake situation.

You want reality to set in.

You want the dollar to collapse because the US has too much debt and too much spending. When the dollar collapses - it will bring with it the collapse of bad government habits. If the US Dollar is "rescued" - like the US economy - by artificial phoney and fake means - then the bad policies that got us into this mess will continue and we will always be in this mess.

The world is not naturally in disequillibrium.

Prices - when they are left alone - indicate reality - they indicate how many people want what and what they're willing to give in return.

Keep messing with prices because you want them to go up or down and NO BODY will know what is worth anything.

Money will cease having any meaning whatsoever - it is already happening. Gold is over 1000 USD per ounce right now. It was 220 USD before all this started happening.

If the Japanese government depreciates the Yen and anime goods become "cheaper" simply because the Yen becomes cheaper - we're all screwed.

We will just have a buying frenzy that will eventually collapse when reality re-asserts itself and the Yen shoots up.

It already happened last year and people took tremendous losses due to excess inventory and excess production.

You don't want it to happen this year.

You want the Yen to keep going up - getting more expensive - until it reaches a stable market price - the REAL price. And you don't want to interfere with it.

Pete

[VFTF1]

I might be accused of beating a dead horse - but I have more to say on this subject, and I think it's important because we as anime fans DO spend a lot of money on these items, and it would be bad if people thought that they were getting ripped off. Naturally, I am a retailer, so you might say I have a different view of the matter of prices - but actually - the interests of retailers, consumers, producers, suppliers and distributors DO coincide - it just takes a bit of thinking to see it.

I want to address this point about people "wishing" the Yen were "cheaper" and wondering aloud if the Japanese government could "help" by artificially depreciating their currency - I explained above why I think that's a bad idea - but the explanation was kind of general.

Here, I want to be very specific.

Let's say - for the sake of argument - that the US government decided to "help" the anime industry like it's been "helping" the auto industry and other segments of the economy by "stimulating" them.

To that end - let's say that ALL OF YOU got special credit cards with a 5 thousand USD limit on them to spend on anime goods.

Let's also say - for the sake of argument - that all of you decided to spend your new credit with me and everyone maxed out their 5 thousand USD credit cards by paying me.

Now - here's where the problem starts.

First- since you got the money "for free" (or at least your payment for the credit is defered in time), you will not be as discriminating as consumers as you would be if you could only utilize money that you actually had to trade VALUE for (aka work/time). You would "splurge."

And furthermore - I, as a retailer - would not really comprehend the source of your splurge.

Well - ok - I would - but most retailers are much bigger than me and wouldn't.

Most retailers just see one figure: sales.

They don't see and don't ask "where is this money coming from?"

If everybody on this board suddenly got a government credit card for 5 thousand bucks and spent it on anime goods - you'd send a signal to retailers: a signal that says: "people are buying a lot of stuff agian!"

Now - understand what a retailer usually does in this situation. If he sees a huge increase in sales he goes to the bank.

If I see that say a hundred thousand USD of sales suddenly came my way then I would be inclined to go get a loan for half a million dollars and invest that money in expanding my assortment, my offer, my stock.

And this is where reality kicks in.

It would suddenly turn out that - after you guys all max out your new "stimulus" credit cards - you're back to being broke - or at least back to having as little money to spend on this stuff as you did prior to the "stimulus."

Actually - you'd be worse off - because you'd have 5 thousand USD more in debt.

Meanwhile - I - the retailer - would be in debt for half a million dollars and have an order of goods that nobody can afford to buy.

Producers would get my half million dollars and higher workers and engage resources to make stuff and also plan based on these figures to make even more stuff next year - and to do that - they would take out a couple million dollars in debt.

But since the original demand was artificial - and only the result of a "stimulus" credit card - everyone down the line would be screwed.

You'd be screwed because you would have added 5 thousand dollars in debt to your already overburdened bank accounts.

I'd be screwed because I would have taken half a million in loans for stuff nobody could buy.

Producers would be screwed because they would have highered workers, built factories and bought machines to produce stuff that nobody could buy.

And then prices would collapse as people tried to get SOME money back - but all of us would be screwed because we could still not pay off our debts.

Then banks would come after our real assets - anything we mortgaged to get our loans - houses, buildings, land - because they would also want to recover their losses.

But banks would also be screwed because just like the prices of the toys would fall - the prices of the real estate, factories and houses would fall too because in a panic everyone would try to get their money back - some of it at least.

So in effect - banks would also go under for making stupid loans to producers and retailers who in turn took stupid loans after consumers took a stupid loan to buy more stuff that they couldn't afford.

Does this all sound familiar?

It ALREADY HAPPENED.

Repeating the process by giving yourself a loan - even if it's in the form of a government artificially manipulating exchange rates - hurts everybody.

What needs to happen is REALITY needs to be allowed to reassert itself. The US dollar is worth negative right now. It's worthless. It is in effect a completely worthless piece of paper.

It's worthless because the Fed keeps printing more and more of it to bail out banks which should have been bankrupt years ago.

The last thing you want is for that cancer to spread to the rest of us - for us to get stimulated into doing things we can't do.

Once prices reflect reality - production will finally adjust to REALITY.

We will finally know exactly how many people want what and what price they are willing to pay.

Right now - the value of money is in radical flux - and therefore prices mean NOTHING. One day they're lower, the next day they're higher.

And it all means nothing because it's all speculation.

Speculation needs to be stopped - and that means governments need to stop manipulating prices, exchange rates etc and just let reality set in.

So don't "wish" for the Yen to go up or down - but for the price to reflect reality and not be manipulated.

Pete

[bluemax151]

So I take it you're against the notion the Japanese government is entertaining about putting a stimulus package together to bail out some of their smaller failing companies? I guess no one is learning.

oooh we could talk about how the overall Japanese dept is supposedly over 200% of their GDP and Americas is much lower... but wait GDP also figures in the amount the Government of the country SPENDS! Welcome to governmental book cooking

I wonder when people will finally realize eventually you won't even have any perceived money to throw at all the problems? Japan has been trying various stimulus approaches since at least the 90s and has never been wholly successful.

The strengthening of the currencies of countries with capital-account surpluses underscores the dangers of intensifying global deflationary pressure. Take the example of Japan. As capital is repatriated by nervous Japanese investors, the yen strengthens. Yen appreciation exacerbates Japanese deflation, thereby resulting in a dynamically unstable increase in desired cash holdings that further exacerbates deflation and currency appreciation. This deflationary cycle coupled with a collapse in Asian growth caused Japan's economy to contract at an astonishing 12 percent annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2008. Japan has shown again that currency appreciation in a deflationary world is extremely dangerous, just as Sweden's experience after 1992 demonstrated the benefits of currency depreciation for a small, open economy not facing a global contraction.

Japan's experience during its "lost decade," and more recently during the current crisis, provides powerful evidence of the dangers of allowing deflation to emerge and persist.

Japan's experience during its "lost decade," and more recently during the current crisis, provides powerful evidence of the dangers of allowing deflation to emerge and persist. Japanese officials exacerbated their country's woes by exaggerating the scale of fiscal policy packages designed to stimulate the economy, while also failing to acknowledge and address the reality of a dysfunctional banking system.

During the 1990s, Japan announced numerous stimulus packages that boasted values as large as 4, 5, and 6 percent of GDP. These efforts intensified after a disastrous decision in the spring of 1997 to effect an increase in taxes on consumption. Japan's pattern of inflating stimulus packages by including multiyear expenditures and expenditures on items that would otherwise have been undertaken anyway is disconcertingly similar to the approach of the Obama administration in articulating its $787 billion stimulus package. Beyond that, the Obama administration made a crucial strategic error by electing to implement an inflated stimulus package before attacking the daunting problem of fixing the financial system. During 1998, even as Japan implemented massive fiscal stimulus packages, it announced a support program for troubled banks equal to 12 percent of GDP (the equivalent of $1.71 trillion in current U.S. dollar terms). But the economy continued to shrink in nominal terms. The stimulus packages were not ever fully carried out, and the financial rescue package, like U.S. packages so far, was opaque, reactive, and unsystematic.

Japan languished in recession until the world economic recovery after 2002 because it failed to recognize the extreme dangers arising from a byproduct of persistent deflation and negative nominal GDP growth. When the value of all the goods and services produced in the economy is persistently falling, profits shrink, investment dries up, and consumers spend less in anticipation of further cuts in prices. Ominously, the annualized drop in U.S. nominal growth was 4.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008--a virtual collapse from the positive 3.4 percent growth figure for the third quarter. Year-over-year nominal GDP growth fell to 1.7 percent. By the first quarter of 2009, year-over-year nominal U.S. GDP growth will drop below zero for the first time since 1958.

Negative year-over-year nominal GDP growth is virtually unknown in the postwar period outside Japan, save for two brief episodes in the United States during 1954 and 1958 that were tied to external factors. Persistently negative nominal GDP growth tied to a global economic slowdown and intensifying deflation is a phenomenon not seen globally since the Great Depression. In Japan, year-over-year nominal GDP growth fell to -2 percent during 1998 and remained negative for over two years after the poorly timed 1997 consumption tax increase, the Asian crisis, and poor implementation of stimulus and financial rescue packages.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is probably fair to say that Japan did everything wrong in dealing with a postbubble financial and economic collapse. Poorly designed fiscal stimulus packages with inflated numbers attached; opaque, reactive, and haphazard measures to try to restore a functional banking system; and a failure, proactively, to address an emerging deflation all doomed Japan for more than a decade of low growth and massive wealth loss. For its part, the Bank of Japan eventually ended up cutting interest rates to zero by 2001, but it did so only reluctantly with announcements couched in promises that the minute prices started to rise again, it would abruptly reverse the low rates and easier liquidity conditions.

The most disconcerting aspect of the American response to the crisis (and to varying degrees the responses of other industrial countries) is the persistent repetition of mistakes made by Japanese monetary and fiscal authorities as they struggled to contain the economic and financial damage from the bursting of Japan's asset bubble in 1990. This is especially disquieting since many of the leading U.S. policymakers today, including Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and National Economic Council chairman Lawrence Summers, were advising the Japanese aggressively to reflate after 1998 in order to contain the damaging deflation that had emerged. Let us hope they heed their old advice now because, if anything, the problems facing American policymakers today are considerably more daunting than the problems that faced either Swedish or Japanese policymakers. Today's world losses are far larger and more widely dispersed than those confronting Swedish and Japanese authorities.

The Swedes had two advantages. They chose to deal with the financial crisis first, and they had the option of stimulating the economy through a sharp currency depreciation, which helped to avoid intensifying deflation. The Japanese mishandled stimulus packages and financial rescue packages, but most damaging, they allowed deflation to emerge and persist for far too long. If nothing else, the experience of the Swedish and Japanese with their financial crises confronts U.S. and other G7 policymakers with sobering realities in 2009. So, too, do the lessons of the Great Depression.

http://www.aei.org/outlook/100012

[Valkyrie addict]

where in releases a freaking repainted valk every month at an inflated price falls "Yamato is doing something" concerning the economy...

I don't know about you, but to me, it seems that Yamato is right now is at the top of their game wiping their asses in money moisted with our tears

[jenius]

Ugh... please, let's not have people posting shallow economic reviews of issues of significant depth on a forum dedicated to cartoons. Also, Valkyrie Addict, you sound like a nut job. I think ya need to tone down that rhetoric a bit. The Toynami MPC was $79.99. That's roughly the price of the V2 VF-1. Is Yamato's price really that offensive to you? Hey, if it is, just make sure it's not your money they're using to pay for the groceries they feed their children with (or re-invest so that they can build more and better toys).

[Valkyrie addict]

haha! ok, I'll stop trolling about Yamato, promise

[anotheran]

compared to a few years ago, the yamato V2 valks with PT are so cheap at around $90. true they're expensive for a toy but it doesn't have a huge audience like hasbro's transformers. There are too many cool toy choices in Japan.

take a Yamato VF-22 and compare it to a Bandai VF-25G, which do you think is a better deal? I personally like the VF-25 design more but there's no question in my mind that Yamato has a better product.

[mechaninac]

Concern for a product's price, be it a Yamato toy or anything else you can buy of a frivolous nature, is the wrong thing to dwell on. The retail price on the primary or secondary market will always, with a small margin of variance, reflect what the market will bear (a function of supply and demand, and the prevailing exchange rate since we're discussing imports for most of us).

My solution to the collector's quandary is very simple and works every time with just a little application of diligent restraint: if an item is too expensive, don't buy it or wait for the price to drop (there is always the risk of waiting too long and missing the boat, but that is preferable to blowing your cash indiscriminately); if said item happens to be one of those absolute-must-haves then save/budget for it so you can afford it without sacrificing/jeopardizing more important financial necessities.

[bluemax151]

Ugh... please, let's not have people posting shallow economic reviews of issues of significant depth on a forum dedicated to cartoons.

Well it's infinitely better than just a bunch of whining overly dramatic posts about how Yamato is needlessly gouging the hands that feed them IMO. At least it's semi productive, not a witch hunt and may alleviate/calm some peoples fears with some different perspectives.

I'm all for hardly ever taking anything seriously even IRL though.

[Macross_Fanboy]

Well, I've read quite a few posts, and I do agree that the prices make me wince when I see something desireable with the good ol' circle-kite on it, but you kinda have to pay attention to where in the world you are. In another thread in this section, I mentioned the prices I've see so far for some of the toys, namely Gamlin's -22 and Max's 1S which one is just under 10000 yen or a few yennies over and a few hundered Yen over 8000. The Destroid Tomahawk is more expensive than the 1S, which I found as a surprise considering the simplicity of the toy. I'm in Hong Kong where most of the great money spending habits we share are distributed around the world. I know walking through Yellow Submarine back in Japan I was shocked at the prices for the 1/60 YF-19 with FP/FB and this was when the dollar was at an all time low in my 5 years in Japan, damn near 80 yen to $1, that was harsh when I was separated from my command and lost my cost of living allowance, even now with overseas housing allowance and utilities allowance, my rent is almost 2000 dollars. For all of us Macross fans who like the slick toys but don't like the prices, we might as well stick to the Hasegawa kits that are under $30 even if they only have a fighter mode, I bought myself three kits, but I haven't built them yet. I have to wait until I move out next year to somewhere with more room since I have a family now which will also dictate what kind of spending power I will have, which won't be much! JLO was wrong, love does cost a thing, wether it's love for Macross or the people around us, the dough's gotta go somewhere!