I'm just beginning this whole hobby and am completely baffled by the fact that these are so expensive. I bought a pack of 25 miniatures for $33. Plastic miniatures at that. Now, I happen to own a board game called War of the Ring, which is a bit like risk (take control of countries, fight battles, etc.) but it's a Lord of the Rings game. Included in it are Hundreds of high quality miniatures, about 10 times the amount included in a $33 box of these miniatures. Now lets compare the prices, shall we?

For my copy of the war of the rings is spent...
$60...

For ten boxes of 24 miniatures I could spend...
$330.

That's nearly 60 times the price.

Are they just that greedy for money? Is it the fact that they hold a monopoly on the industry? What's stopping an opposing company from releasing a similar miniatures game for cheaper? If someone were to release boxes of their 24 miniatures for, I don't know... $24 would they not overcome Games Workshop?

I'm new to this hobby so I may be missing something. I would also like to comment on the quality of the plastics. Out of the 57 miniatures I own, already 5 of them have broken, and I've been forced to fix them. Out of my 200+ war of the rings miniatures, a total of 0 have broken. The reason being is that the plastics in the war of the rings miniatures is flexible, and thus doesn't snap when you drop it. I store my war of the ring miniatures all cramped up together in plastic bags, while my LOTR: SBG miniatures I'm afraid to put in a padded shoe box for fear of them bumping into each other and breaking. And honestly, if they made their miniatures a little cheaper, people would buy more miniatures of more variety. When they have more variety they need more colors of paints... And, well, with more paints they (you guessed it) end up spending more money at games workshop. So on their monthly visit, if they buy one box for $33, they buy maybe 4 new paints (unless they've been in the hobby a while.) That's about $50. Now if they buy two boxes at $24 each, they may be losing $10 for each box, but when the person needs to buy, lets say, 6 or 7 bottles of paint to get that whole group done, they end up spending $76. Subtract the $20 dollars they lost for the price reduction on the boxes and you come out at $56. That's $56 minus the manufacturing costs. Now, add the number of people who now realize that buying from games workshop is just as good as eBay, and those worried about joining for financial reasons and you could very well be making more money. Of course all I have for financial knowledge is passing information I learned in Middle School, so correct me if I'm wrong.

How large is your army that you need 240 minis? I would love to see that army. And miniatures, no matter if it's warhammer, lotr, or even model trains, will be expensive.

Also, $330 and $60 isn't nearly 60 times, it's only 5.5 which is nearly 6, ten times less than you thought.

Also, if your War of the Ring is a boardgame, I assume the models are in an a lot smaller scale? These are often a lot cheaper.

Other companies can't compete because of copyright (which is, IMO, the problem with copyright).

@OurFoesShallFall: A nice big WOTR army can easily have 240 mini's.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

GW holds the licence for miniatures and board games based on the Films & the books. There is another company, Thomarillion, which does LOTR miniatures based on the books alone but its range is very basic. So because GW has a captive audience of LOTR fans and Gamers who can't turn to anywhere else without proxying heavily; and little direct competition in LOTR themed miniatures, it has free reign to squeeze its customers.

It also has a stranglehold on the miniature wargames market, due to it having the largest market share, a huge high street presence with stores that offer places for people to play their games, and it being the single best well known company in the market. Thats why Gamesworkshop is often synonymous with 'The Hobby'. And they certainly do love to keep it that way - reading any issue of White Dwarf, you wouldn't even know that other companies and miniatures other than GW actually exist.

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My (more regularly updated) painting blog:
https://www.facebook.com/Pindergorn/

War of the Ring miniatures are about the same size, but I haven't really compared them yet.

You wouldn't need 10 boxes of miniatures, it's just a comparison.

I also did mean 6 times, it was late when I typed that.

They do a price increase every June. That $33 box used to cost me $25, and now for $25 you get half the models. From what I understand their profits aren't that remarkable, however. Can't blame them for wanting to expand, businesses will act in self-interest and the bottom line is that hobbyists will remain loyal. Besides, they get their biggest points with people new to the game. You walk in and see that $33 set, maybe complain a little, and buy it, while veterans will see a $25 set being sold for $8 too much--a far less likely customer. Even more important is the starter sets. My Warhammer 40,000 starter set cost me $45, now it's somewhere around $90. I'd never pay that because to me, it's worth $45, but someone new to the game doesn't know any better.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-c ... tement.pdf

You can't possibly compare the two ranges of models, the WOTR models are nothing but rubbish 'army men' in comparison, they aren't even all the same scale with each other. Apart from that, yes GW figures are stupidly expensive.

Because Games Workshop is a publicly listed company with a mission to improve its bottom line, and a sales strategy to do so. It has strategic price hikes every year, because of its captive audience: people who play GW games can't get GW figures anywhere else, and they love the GW figures, which tend to be excellent in design.

Prices are based not on how much the figures cost to produce, and not on what the figures cost last year, but the maximum price that GW thinks people will pay right now for any given figure.

GW focuses on the new like crazy: for its main games like 40K and Fantasy, they're always bringing out new, more powerful army books and models. They focus on getting new young players in, who beg/force/ask their parents to buy big expensive armies.

There are tons of other games out there by other companies that are less expensive to play, but they don't have the market share of GW, and that gives GW a lot of power to set outrageous prices and policies.