shodog wrote:
This is exactly the reason it hasn't be re-released by MIP and hasnt be reproduced by someone else.
This was an expensive kit back in the day. After you bought the $125 transmission, you needed to spend another $175 for the 4wd conversion. The conversion and tranny were more expensive than the RC10 buggy. These were 1980's dollars so that would translate to about. $500 kit
I thought we went through this before.
There is no actual proof that the kit is rare. If so, show me and everyone else so the $1000+ these things fetch today can be justified. And how many have we seen pop up for sale in the last few months? Several. I'm sure
MIP made more than a handful of Legend kits in the early 1990's, considering they need to produce between 500 and 10,000 of them today to be profitable, according to other posts in this thread. They weren't individually numbered or sold as a special edition. They were sold for several years and didn't seem very exclusive at the time.
And just for the sake of comparison, the TrackMaster Equalizer Signature Series dirt oval cars were sold in a limited quantity of just a few hundred, both belt-drive and direct-drive, with an individually numbered tag. When these cars do come up for sale, NIB kits have sold for less than half of a mass-produced used RC10 kit with a mass-produced used
MIP 4-10 Legend kit attached. Explain that.
You didn't need to buy the SP-1 tranny for the Legend kit, so that's not really an argument. The kit was selling for $139.99 from everyone who had them according to my old magazine ads. And a few years later they were being sold for half of that amount. Even Rick said the hobby shop where he worked had a hard time unloading the leftover kits.
I would be willing to bet that
MIP sourced the belts and pulleys from another source like SDP-SI, which is where you can still get them today. The shafts and front gearbox gears may be the only parts that would be difficult to reproduce/source, but I'm sure it could easily be done by someone with the right equipment. These kits weren't designed by NASA engineers and didn't use material made from unobtanium. So I know they could be reproduced with stronger materials at an affordable cost today by someone with the ability and equipment to do it.