semajnollissor wrote:
My plan is not to recoup the cost at all, because you can't. However, if I take the view that I am going to spend X amount of dollars per month or year on hobby stuff, then why not spent it on making stuff for everyone.
The economics get even worse if you add in the value of the time spent working on the original model.
Well, you can recoup the cost, and you probably do want to do so, unless you have tons of money to throw around. Investing your time in the community is one thing, but taking $700 out of your bank account to make models you are going to give away is something else altogether.
That being said, I do think that most, if not all, of the great designers we have on this board (and I do not count myself in that class at all) do not do this for the mad profits. I'm going to wager that any extra money made goes back into production of the next awesome model.
Speaking of your time, another thing to consider is if you are going to cast the items yourself - if you didn't think your time was valuable before, you're going to change your mind when every spare hour you have is spent mixing resin, pouring, pressurizing, and demoulding.
For your last point, you mention the value of your time working on the original model - this is where I think more along the lines of you're doing this for strictly selfish reasons, so you can justify your time. In other words, you're creating an item because you want to see it in your army. The fact that other people in your hobby can make use of that model is great, but it is really a secondary benefit.
