I investigated hiring a company here in town that does finishing for various tourist items do some painting for me on some fossil replicas. They would generate a mask that they would then spray paint over. It was a charge per step, and it was some fraction of a buck per paint pass. Their QC was not meant for fine detail like the airplane models you can buy, but was suitable for "random" patterned fossil replicas (we ended up doing it ourselves).
That said, with 5-6 colors per model on a few sides, having that painting done here in ABQ (*assuming that outfit could make tight masks to do it right) would eat up the bulk of that $3 budget for labor, if not all of it.
I actually do this in my head constantly. I see cool stuff at the museum gift shop, etc, then think how the HELL can they sell that so cheap! I was looking to buy a ship model a year or so ago—a sailing vessel, a 5th or 6th rate. I was stunned how cheap they were. You can get a 3 ft long model of a real frigate, or the HMS Surprise from O'Brian's books for ~$400. $400. Those models, even built from kits must take 10s of hours to build—very skilled labor. Blows me away. They must be making those in china or india, etc. A model that takes 20 hours of labor or more in the US? Call it $30/hr. 60k a year. There would be $600 just in labor. Assume $100 in materials, and the thing would wholesale for $1400, retail for $2800. If they only sell online and avoid wholesale, it would be closer to the $1400. Still...
There's a guy in Seattle making perfect replica WW2 A-2 flight jackets. They are over a grand each, based on the current wait time for a jacket, he has to crank out a jacket (it's just him) every 3 days or so (the leather and proper parts he buys are rare and quite expensive, so there is a few hundred in cost right there). When I buy an A-2, it's gonna be from him though, I like the idea of supporting a local (to the US) craftsman who is compulsive about accuracy.
|