Well, there a whole lot of issues here. Is the price too high? I don't know. For those outside of manufacturing you should know that costs (which determine prices) have been escalating quickly in the past year or 2. This is even more so in the China arena. The problem then lies with the fact that as costs and thus prices increase, discretionary spending decreases leaving less money available for perk purchases.
I think many collectors believe that Code 3 (and other companies) just picks a price to sell their stuff at. I do not know any company that does pricing that way. You determine the costs and then profit margins and set the price. That is how successful companies do it. Like it or not Matrix is successful as was Funrise.

I personally haven't purchased the tillers even though my Code 3 collection is now mainly FDNY. It isn't the price as much as I have other interests that have taken a front seat over the Code 3 items.

As stated the items can be purchased from dealers for less. As it should be. I was an original Code 3 dealer. When they went direct many of us parted ways because it was too hard to compete with the factory. Their complaint to us dealers was we were selling below MSRP. But we had to in order to compete. Now they are down to a handful of dealers (or maybe a few fingers worth). But in the end they may be making more money doing so. Who knows?

As for the QC issues: Being in manufacturing, I wouldn't classify them as QC as those are mistakes in production but design errors. But that is just semantics. I have only a few items I look at.
First the cab sits too low. It needs to be up about 3 scale inches. Because of this it makes the rest of the cabs proportions look way off. A lot of this was discussed over at FE dot net. One thing that happens as models get scaled down is that things that look huge in prototype are barely discernable in scale. Thus the front looks too flat even if it is true to scale. (I am not saying it is just that this visual distortion can happen)
Second the header on the San Francisco model looks goofy. It could just have been done better or eliminated. Only the rivet counters would have really cared about the marker lights on the header.
Third, the San Francisco needed wood ladders or at least painted brown.
Fourth the smoke stake on the FDNY models may be correct but it isn’t up to the caliber of the rest of the model. Add to it the cab sits too low and it becomes more exaggerated.
Lastly the pompier hook looks too large.

Personally I think the SF version looks better than the FDNY mainly because the smoke stack/cab height issue.

As for the price again it is the only game, and it is a very detailed item. The latter is what we are paying for. Can the errors be overlooked for that price, I don’t know. DO I think they have their cabessas up their burros, I don’t know if I agree with that.

Jeff

Location: NW PA