Fantasy Muslim regular cavalry 2

 

This finishes my 'establishment' for my nominal town/sultan's regular  cavalry force.

Probably should have spent more time on the standard!

Meanwhile, going through the painting production line are a unit of Sarmatian Rhoxalani and a unit of nominal Lombards - lance rather than javelin armed! I'm currently looking at doing 3 Rhoxalani units and 2 Lombards - the Lombards then giving me a complete DBA army! 

The mould this lot are on have so far produced a bit under 100 figures with about another 50 or so wanted for future units. Add to that the figures I needed to get the infantry master cast. So how does this fit in with my 'costing' structure?

Moulds, metal, energy costs and (? - hobby!) time. To get a mould and figures made tends to be expensive - can't afford to have a mould made to produce 20 figures! So how do I cost it?

I'll use this as a starting point. When I was trying to get Minifigs to either start production of the S Range Ancients or let me buy the range they said they had to have guaranteed sales of about 800 per figure. That's... not my starting point!. For me, I look at a price of £1.25 per infantry figure or rider. Metal costs about 25-30p, no idea what electricity costs per figure, and then a mould costs about £100 each. So very roughly if every 'spare' penny went into buying a mould then about 100 figures makes a mould cost effective for me. Selling figures, not inclined to give my time up for free so I split it - 50p to the mould, rest to me. Actually as metal costs a bit more than 25p a figure and as I have to pay tax on 'profits' it probably knocks it down to 35-40p or less per figure for me.  Shouldn't forget any discounts such rounding down the bill or giving free postage for larger orders, likewise the cut PayPal takes... Anyway, bottom line is that for a commercial Garrison mould rather than a personal Garrison mould I probably need at least 200 figures per mould for it to be worthwhile. 

Some moulds will never pay back the 'investment', others way over achieve. Overall though Garrison more than pays for itself, and, happily, I'm able to have quite a few new moulds made to replace old moulds or just to make it quicker to cast figures by making the content of each mould a lot more logical than the haphazard moulds I originally bought!