TOPIC:

Some of you will remember back to 2012, where TB members from all over the world contributed their photos, and after a lot of juggling for quality, seasonality, getting as many people in as possible, and the best spread of Tamiya models, we published & distributed a small run of the 2013 TamiyaBase.com calendar  


IIRC, the base price of getting the calendars printed was 4GBP each, plus shipping to me, and 20% VAT on top of that, plus buying (and having shipped) some suitable card mailers, plus posting them on made them come out at 11.50 GBP each (with a whopping 50p each going to Lars for site upkeep).

Some felt that price was quite shocking, and they had a point, seeing as you could buy yourself a slightly bigger, 1:1 retro or classic calendar for 5 GBP shipped. However, for publishing that’s not even niche, barely even vanity, I felt that price was ok. 


For the following year though, the base price of printing the calendars rose to 8 GBP, which would have meant a final price of around 18 GBP, which I felt was untenable.


Recently though, I thought about trying again for a “10-year anniversary” TamiyaBase 2023 calendar, and as a prelude (due to how late we are in the year for a 2022 calendar), I could see what it would cost to publish a small run (somewhere between 1 and 10 probably, I’m not _that_ vain ) of a “Classic & Custom RC” 2022 calendars, populated solely with my own creations

.Anyone want to take a guess about how much the price has gone up?

The cost for getting each calendar printed would be 20 GBP I.e. not including shipping, taxes, mailers and onward posting, so the likely cost (and a baseline for a 2023 edition) would be 32 GBP each  

For comparison, I went on eBay & got two 29cm square (folding out to twice that size) 2022 calendars “Retro Cars” and “Classic Cars” 5 GBP total, posted, for the two of them – 2.50 each  



It’s not all bad news though, if you kept your 2013 TB calendar, calendar day/date layout goes in cycles (though not religious & public holidays). If you missed out on reusing it in 2019, then you have further chances in 2030, 2041, 2047, 2058, 2069, 2075, 2086 & so on     


TL;DR – it’s silly expensive & not happening

It's vain, but I wouldn't have minded having this on my wall ...

These are just photos I already had, I could/would have replaced few of the bare bench shots before submitting for printing ...
 

You maybe can make a digital calendar . And you could sale it for the forum and your work. It could be really cheaper and each one of us could print it as he want. 

If you need other picts, you can use mine or I can send ones to you. And I'm sure several of us have nice picts they would like to share. 

I did a dog poo calendar once. I know its a bit random but its a thing. 

No reason why we couldnt put 12 months of pics up with the correct calendar months and for a small fee download it and print it ourselves. It would probably mean its only A4 size unless you  are lucky enough to have an A3 or large format printer but it would be ok. 

A calendar is a very good idea, but cost is often expensive if you want to make it right.
That being said, there is two components in the cost

• cost of the print, highly depending on the paper and print quality
• cost of the delivery : the closer to the user is the cheaper cost

Why not creating the calendar pages ahead, in electronic format (PDF or PDF), and making sure that anyone willing to get the files pays for the file (a modic amount, just to cover the expense to get there (and why not participating to the forum funding), and each one would be able to use a local print service to get the calendar at the lower cost on his own...

And for the pictures needed, why not organize a monthly photo contest, with forum user votes (and each month a different theme)?

This is just ideas, and may not be what you had in mind...
 

Thanks for the ideas chaps, but TBH they all end up with the result being more expensive, making much more work for me, and/or inferior

That was ideas Jonny. And you do the work. You're the master.