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Originally Posted by Rivkin
I used to be very interested in building ship models. While these guys are enormously beautiful, and have a wide appeal, nevertheless - ship modeling died on my own eyes.
First of all it was replaced by mostly machine made models, that looked 50% worse, but costed just 5% or the real thing. Than the whole industry went to China, with an exception of a few guys who make 10,000$+ models for museums and a few very rich buyers.
Why Stradevarius is still the best out there ? Same story - semi-mass production, multiplayed by the high costs of manual labor, multiplayed by non-growing demand.
We must remember that in the past centuries a lot of artisans had a choise in between of being a starving peasant, spending all his life in the field, or to be a less starving (but still very poor) artisan. And many were ready to sacrifice many years of apprenticeship in order to get there.
This epoch is gone. Manual labor will never get to its past heights - third world's labor force is mostly unskilled and the first world's labor force is too expensive.
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Hello Rivkin ,
Authentic plank on frame ship modeling is very much alive and well in the U.S.
A friend of mine supports his family quite well by building custom models . Some are in museums , some in corporate hq.'s and in the hands of very wealthy individuals .
Not a dying art here .