Hi TT yes I am in shock over the price, but I remember falling in love with a Graupner Gracia kit in the late 1960's and that was £10!!!! I could not afford the Gracia and had to wait until a kind sole gave me one recently that needed a lot of TLC and she sails beautifully now.
As an off shoot to this thread, models like Vanadis are quite complicated boats and require a knowledge of how to put them together even at the pond side. Let alone sort out a problem! From my current experience only a few modellers have another generation coming along after them who will have the ability to run 'dad's' models.
Quite a lot of money can be tied up in models much to the surprise of remaining family members, however it cuts both ways as recently we were involved with a deceased's model boats and they had been left too long (6 years) and not worth much at all after this amount of time.
One of our members who had terminal cancer and knew he was 'going' soon, put everything into working order and contacted the people who he wanted to have his models and they collected him and he shared the pleasure they had in receiving them, he was a first class craftsman. I was one of the last people outside of his family to see and talk to him, him and I know I left him in a happy state of mind, he died 2 days later.
regards Roy