Hey guys!
I'm brand-new here.
To add to the discussion of apparently overpriced hobby shops, here's my two cents worth.
I used to work in a hobby shop and the argument came up quite regularly as to why hobby shops are generally more expensive than the average toystore (like Reggies and TRU). Well, it basically comes down to buying power. Huge international chainstores like Reggies have shops in almost every suburb, and they buy all their stuff in bulk, in numbers that hobby shops cannot compete with. Therefore they also get substantially better prices than the hobby shops, purely due to the massive amount of purchases they make. Obviously privately-run hobby shops cannot compete with that at all. To be honest, owning a hobby shop is really not such a lucrative business at all. Therefore, please try and support your local hobby shop where you can. But then again, this is a free country and you shop wherever you please
The downside of buying from these chainstores is that they often don't have the variety of model-related stuff you'd find a hobby shop, purely because they're not a dedicated hobby shop.
Also, both Trumpeter as well as Dragon come from China. Both manufacturers offer very standards of plastic modelling, especially Dragon. You do however, pay for this quality as Dragon kits are generally not cheap.
Happy modelling in 2010!
Tinman