I have a fairly large collection because I (1) make about 6x the average salary for Serbia (2) live single (3) in an apartment that would be classified as a "tool shed" by American standards (I know first hand, I lived in the US for 3 years; my host family had a spare bedroom that was bigger than my whole apartment). There are two other collectors in Serbia with comparable collections - one is a successful lawyer, and the other has a private contracting business. Normal people's collections here are... much smaller than US collections.

 

Local Wages varies per work or how much an employer pays his employee.
Or Local Market Price Varies per Economy/Market.

If someone wants to use Local Wages as comparison, Toys shouldn't be used as a standard. Toys aren't considered basic necessities.
It should be Local Wages to Cost of Living or Local Wages to Basic Necessities such as food & clothing or Market / Economy.

Like in the fast food industry, a McDonalds regular hamburger here in the Philippines isn't the same burger size compare to other countries, let's compare to Macau's or USA's McDonalds burger where it's bigger than a person's palm (Asian's palm). Or if not the size of the burger, it's the quality of the ingredients being adjusted. As for their "World's Famous Fries", either cut sizes of fries or quantity of fries as per standard weight in grams that varies to country's economy or market's spending capacity.

Fast Food (McDonalds/Burger King) "Value Meals" here are adjusting to a average person's spending power (for a whole meal) between $1.00 to $3.00 USD.

While Toys adjusts also to the market, It depends on what price a local distributor willing to sell the product locally.
What I've observe here in Philippines, the local Hasbro/TF Distributor was kinda "maintaining profits" and not "greedy in profits" while at the same time considering other factors in pricing the item (logistics, delivery, storage, taxes, shipping, shelve space/consigner's rent, currency exchange rates, etc.).

I consider our Philippine Market fortunate that TFs here are cheaper compared to other countries.
Our Leader Class here are still within $60 USD range for 10 years since I started collecting.
But of course there's a price adjustments on Legends, Deluxes and Voyagers bit by bit in the 10 years span.
Deluxes were $13-$15 USD 10 years ago and now it's around $20 USD.
There was a time Leader Class even went as low as under $55-$56 USD around Combiner Wars initial mass release.

Now I'm curious now that our country now have a new tax laws (effective 3 days ago) decreasing a person's Personal Income Tax from 32% down to 25-22% in staggered basis in a period of time. And there's a tax bracket if one's earning not beyond or under $500 USD per month, it's gonna be tax free. I would like to think those peeps under that bracket can start a TF collection easily right from bat.

Tax Free Wages means, Better purchasing power.
Better purchasing power, good for the market.
Good for the market, Benefits a business.

Sorry for the bit off topic & lengthy post...

 

...why announce that you are putting people on an ignore list? The only possible person who would care is the one that you just ignored.

 

I literally just wrote in my post how much SW Black figures cost here... read it again.

I am understanding Blurr totally - I refused to buy it full price and then I saw the Legends toy and decided to not even buy it. But what's wrong with Triggerhappy? His paintjob is pretty great. If you mean the lack of a targetmaster, then you should have said the same thing about Misfire and Slugslinger too. But I fully understand that an extra Minicon sized robot simply does not fit into the 17$ deluxe toy budget, as compared to a small 2-piece, inarticulate gun. Though, someone should really ask Aaron Archer about how they managed to get Generations Cyclonus released the way he was, with Nightstick... could be the size, as he is certainly a bit smaller than most deluxes?

LOL dude... even German and UK wages dwarf Hungarian wages. US ones? An average McDonalds employee earns about 140.000HUF (545$) a month - and'd that's after taxes and mandatory health and pension funds. And the minimum wage in 2017 was 496$. That means they would literally have to pay 10% of their monthly wage on a Deluxe TF5 toy... Understandable then why Tesco (where most people with low income go shopping) has not just giant discounts on toys, or they would not be able to sell anything.

I have a huge collection, yes. Most of it I bought outside of the country, because 1: Transformers, like all western toys, were not imported here over the Iron Curtain until 1988-89 and 2: prices have risen to ridiculous levels. During TF Cybertron, a deluxe was around 4500 HUF (17$ by today's $-HUF). Now, as I just mentioned, a TF5 deluxe is 12500 HUF in most stores (49$). I implore - ask yourself, would YOU buy deluxes at that price, if you had a wage half of what you earn now?
I barely buy TFs in my own country anymore - I either use Kapowtoys, HLJ and Chinese ebay sellers, or the help of my US friend Chris who buys TFs off HTS or BBTS for me, and sends them every 3-4 months in one big box - which I have to pray gets through customs without them taxing it.

If I have to guess, they are cheaper than painting them? But then again such details are never really "painted" anymore, they are tampographed - which are kinda like stickers that are just "ironed" into the top of plastic, AFAIK. I don't know how the process works, but Wizkids uses it for tiny details on D&D/Heroclix miniatures, like beards, book pages, etc.
I do not like Hasbro using stickers anymore than you do, but they are MILES (well, Kilometers  ) better than what stickers Takara used for Arms Micron and their Gashapon Kabaya toys (that peel off within days).

Sorry, but this comparison fails totally when you realize that the regular SW toys cost as much as a Legends sized TFs. And they always cost that much, even before Hasbro cheapened their articulation to 5 points. When Clone Wars toys were on shelves, they cost 4000-5000 HUF, around the same as a Legends sized TF. SW Black on the other hand, even the smaller sized ones, was always a higher price category.

Yeah, thanks, that's about right. The minimum wage is actually closer to 500$. And I only ever count "netto" (net) pay, why bother counting without the tax, pension and health funds that unlike in the USA, are mandatory here?
I think it's the USA that has it easy, not that Europe has it bad with not just toy prices, but pretty much every other product too. I don't understand how the USA economy can work without taxing anything that is imported - from the same Chinese manufacturers that make stuff we in Europe buy. The only reason a Deluxe is 17$ and not double of that in the USA is that they have to pay no import tax. When I send a package to my friend in California, I never have to mark it as gift or under-declare value or do the same tired old game I have to play every time I buy something from outside the EU - because they have absolutely no customs charges for mundane stuff (as far as I understand, the customs only checks for forbidden items like foodstuff and weapons).
Hasbro Europe simply raises the prices as the value of the $/EUR changes, but since wages here are much less than in the USA, people buy mostly the small, cheaper toys - it's why the last Leaders I saw here were from CW (and they only appeared in one store chain, 1.5 years after their US release, at cheap prices because I assume they got them from some warehouse being sold off), and the last Voyagers were from TR Wave 2 - Astrotrain and Alpha Trion. Even that was like a year ago now... and nothing since then in mainline stores. Even Deluxes are getting more and more rare. On the other hand, cheap chinese KOs of 2007 Movie toys and Alternators, as well as Roadbots, can be found anywhere...

 

Sorry I mistyped. I meant to ask how much TFs are.

I assumed you'd figure that out based on the context. You talk about relative pricing, but only mention the price of one thing.

 

And now YOU are going on the ignore list

 

I'm sorta glad about this. this means I can focus on saving money for other things I wanted to buy other then TFs.

 

The list of wing_saberX

 

I would be lucky to live in a box if that happened. Real wages in the US, for working people, have been stagnant or in steady decline for decades. But every time I look for jobs overseas, like in UK or Germany, they seem to pay twice as many pounds or euros as dollars so the prices look roughly equivalent. So it was a legitimate inquiry since I've never considered Hungary or many other countries. Plus Hoffman had me thinking about the scope of completism these days and I wondered how that factored in.

 

Damn - note to self: get a PASSPORT!

 

Not sure where you're getting your info from, those things are mandatory here. Income tax, Social Security, and Medicare costs all automatically come out of your pay before you ever get it.

As far as the import taxes, or lack of, that's just one of the benefits of freedom, which includes freedom of choice. As such, no mandated national health care means a much smaller tax burden. That is always subject to change, depending on how a large portion of the population places priorities on gov't supplied health care vs. individual health care. If more people want the gov't to take control of their lives, the tax burden will go up, and some sort of VAT will become a reality here.

 

Haha. Thumbs up for this.