Under 4 Pound, Under $2000 Gbpi Challenge

[KD8GIS]

What makes PI cost so much? Better plastic?   Electronics? Better diodes?  Resistors? (Made in China)  The programing of the software?  Or "Just because"?      Fair questions.  

[phrunt]

The lack of competition really.  You can get a home built PI kit for next to nothing, the price of a cheap VLF coil and make your own PI.  Just because it's a PI doesn't mean it has to be a $4000 USD or higher machine, it can be a VLF priced machine if the manufacturer wanted it to be and they'd still get reasonable profit.

Sure the batteries need to have a bit more juice, but really there is no excuse for the high pricing except for money grabbing and getting high profits because they can.  Garrett have made a big mistake in my opinion, they'll sell a trickle of Axioms at their current price especially outside of the US where they're priced even higher and far too high when they could sell them by the truckload if they halved the price, if people are using and enjoying them they will sell more and more of them as word gets around, selling so few isn't going to help that, especially when with so few being sold and multiple reports of faulty units from what appears to be a small pool of buyers it's not a good look.  It may not be reality and they are selling a lot of them and the faulty units are the squeaky wheel that you notice as the happy people remain quiet, but it is what you see happening.

People in Australia would really struggle to justify buying one at it's current price there, it makes no sense to do so other than to try another brand. 

Nokta may get past the post, it's disappointing for such a vocal company they've gone dead silent on the PI offering as that's a bit of a worry but maybe they don't want to let out any secrets, if anyone comes in at a good price it would be them. 

Fisher I believe have something special if they can get it past the post, weight, performance, everything is there they just need to get the product to market and come in at the right price, too high and they'll sit on the shelf next to the Axioms, price it right and people that otherwise may not buy a PI will buy it, along with many others.

[jasong]

Once you have dies or molds built already, and research done - nothing costs that much really. It's all arbitrary pricing, and price gouging in the case of $10,600 GPZ 7000's and $6000 GPX 6000's. They are obscenely overpriced. An updated, lightweight 5000 tossed into the existing 6000 form factor should cost about $1250-$1500 MSRP and still have enough profit for manufacturer and dealers to sell, using existing tooling.

Woody did a total cost breakdown video on a 4500, component by component (the newer 4500's supposedly were just 5000 boards with the numbers scratched off according to him), and I think it was like $150-$200 including aluminum case extrusions, or something like that, to manufacture. 

It doesn't help that in the US, a large amount of the buyers of these machines historically - at least from my observations in the field - are largely retired persons with a lot of disposable income and an attitude that price doesn't really matter if fun is being had (aka - the "fishing boat" analogy you can find posted in the past). I can't even count how many people I've met who've found maybe 1-2 ounces in their lives happily paid $10,000 for a GPZ with no expectations of paying it off. Combine that with the fact that a ton of people for whom price would matter are friends with dealers who give them very, very deep discounts - often at or near dealer cost, and so the complaining about price is largely reduced to a few people who don't have the disposable income, don't have dealer friends, or simply are tired of prices being ridiculously high on general principle. These people aren't numerous enough to force change. And there isn't enough competition to force change either. Thus - price gouging. 

[phrunt]

Steve makes a good point about the 4500, they could repackage that and head off any competition at the pass a bit like the X-Terra coming in to make the new Simplex rehashes redundant.   If they ever made a lightweight GPX 4500 in a modern new housing it would be a great seller if it was at the right price.

They could even trim the 4500's features down a bit seeing it's so close to the 5000 and come in at a really good price. 

I'm sure there are people at Minelab that's job is just this, trying to stay ahead of the competition in all areas.

I don't care who does it will benefit greatly from doing so, especially if it appeals to more than just the gold market.

[Gold Catcher]

One thing to consider is R&D cost that will go into the selling price, so it's not just raw materials. But then again it is the level of innovation that matters. Just using old technology repackaged should not require much R&D efforts, hence the price should reflect that accordingly So, the question is do we expect a lot of innovation from a 2k PI machine? I sure hope so, but it might not be competitive performance wise to the "latest and greatest" that's out there. But that's not a reason to dismiss it, it would be a great option for folks on a tight budget who would otherwise remain stuck in the VLF world.

GC

[phrunt]

Nokta did it with the Legend, a cut price Equinox but with better quality by far, and proper waterproofing.  I'm not sure if the Axiom is better quality than the 6000 but it would not be a hard thing to achieve.  It's Minelab's lemon when it comes to quality.  There can't be many people left now that haven't had to send theirs in for something.

R&D costs aren't recouped on small amounts of sales easily, they need volume to get R&D back and that's what happens when you sell a detector at the right price, again you can look to the Legend, Nox 800 sales must have slowed down a lot over the time they were out, the Legend which is basically a better clone of the Nox came out and sells like hot cakes and you can bet the Legend was selling more units than the Nox 800 up until the Nox 900 release. 

Garrett may struggle to get their R&D costs back until they adjust their pricing on the Axiom.  They need it to be a detector people want to buy, if they came out with the Axiom at $3000 Australian dollars (about $2000 USD) they'd sell so many of the things to people that never even considered these higher priced detectors even in Australia which would be their toughest market to crack I would think.  If they did cheaper like $2000 AUD they'd be a massive hit, the casual detetorist that tend to just try buy a Gold Monster and hope for the best would be all over them. 

The Axioms not taken off as it should have simply because they didn't do what Nokta would have, and come in at a cheap price and grab a large part of the market Minelab miss out on due to their ridiculous pricing.

I just hope Garrett are testing the market trying to get Minelab sky high prices and come back to reality when they see they're very overpriced.

[Steve Herschbach]

11 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

One thing to consider is R&D cost that will go into the selling price, so it's not just raw materials. But then again it is the level of innovation that matters. Just using old technology repackaged should not require much R&D efforts, hence the price should reflect that accordingly So, the question is do we expect a lot of innovation from a 2k PI machine? I sure hope so, but it might not be competitive performance wise to the "latest and greatest" that's out there. But that's not a reason to dismiss it, it would be a great option for folks on a tight budget who would otherwise remain stuck in the VLF world.

GC

The idea has never been to produce a cutting edge product, a GPZ 8000, for $2000. Yes, development costs are real, and must be recouped. I have always been thinking GPX 4500, which last sold for $2699. Dealers cried when Minelab discontinued it. Development costs long since recouped. All it needs is to be repacked in a modern housing using a modern battery option. I’d be thrilled with something like that and have never asked for more on this thread. Minelab can do this easily. Minelab discontinued the machine since, as a monopoly, it was undercutting sales of the $3999 GPX 5000. Solution? Discontinue 4500 so you have to buy the 5000. That’s what lack of competition gets you. The 4500 always was and still is Minelabs ace in the hole, that allows them to stop any threat by Nokta dead in its tracks. Maybe Nokta has figured this out?

Whatever, we will get there, and not too much longer. The fire of competition is doing its magic in VLF as I type. A match has been lit to PI and people like me will continue to fan the flame until somebody fills this massive hole in the detecting market.

[KD8GIS]

Price the product to "What the market will bear"...   A high enough price and the sales go down, But then again you need to build fewer (You're only gonna sell so many anyway) and you need fewer people to pay to build them. 

  Electric appliances at one time were very expensive.  A color TV in the early 70's cost a lot of money. Computers in 1980,  What did you get for your couple thousand dollars?  Now you get a whole lot more for the same money.  A metal detector (computer) R&D?  Sounds good,  As mentioned (Repackage) Put a (ALL PRO) sticker on it. "New and improved" You really don't need a better product, You just need to "Sell it".  Facebook, YouTube, Forums. 

 

[Jeff McClendon]

 I’m on Social Security with a little retirement fund and I work 2 part-time jobs. The last thing I needed was to pay over $4000 US for the GPX 6000. The lighter weight and the high sensitivity to a wide range of nugget sizes is what tempted me to do it.  I was disappointed in the GPX 6000 at first but now I guess I am happy with it. Have I found $4000 US worth of gold with it already…..nope.

Like many, I tried the less expensive Whites PIs. They just aren’t the answer for me.

A GPX 4500 in a lightweight housing with lightweight battery sounds fantastic.

I would be just as happy with a PI that costs half as much as the GPX 6000 that would hit 0.1 gram nuggets a few inches deep along with deeper bigger sized gold, that weighs less than 4 lbs, uses current GPX 5000 and prior models Mono and DD coils and would double as a good relic and saltwater beach detector.

 

[jasong]

El Nino showed some pretty interesting tests with the ATX a while back with some good results to small nuggets. Minelab is Minelab and they do what they do. But I'm curious if there is a reason Garrett isn't doing exactly this revamped 4500 idea with their ATX package - updating it with a bit better performance/noise handling, better coils (or allow for NF/CT ML coils use), and throwing it in a better, lighter case, lighter batteries/shaft/etc and tossing it out for $1500 or something as a market shakeup - surely the ATX itself can't be making a ton of sales as is? Wasn't that Steve's original idea years back, or something similar? Is the ATX too close in performance to the Axiom if it were updated?

A lot of tech disrupting companies price their products at losses to gain market share, with the idea that the short term losses will be outweighed by the long term gain in customers. Not saying either company should sell at a loss, but it seems like the detecting world is not taking advantage of some aggressive and/or strategic marketing tactics that could be employed. Maybe it's just not worth it in a decreasing market like gold detectors where the long term is in question?