Import tariffs from China to the US could rise to 80% in the future, causing big problems for an already precariuous market
  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    That kind of surprises me.

    When I think about board games, I think of:

    • Printed boards.

    • Printed cards.

    • Molded plastic pieces.

    • Maybe cut wood pieces.

    • Maybe glass counters.

    • Maybe plastic dice.

    And all of these have to be put in a box.

    But…how labor-intensive are these? I’d think that the printing would be pretty heavily automated. I don’t know whether molded plastic needs a lot of processing (snipping seams or something?) or whether machines can bring a molded piece to a final state without human intervention.

    kagis for an injection-molding plastic cost breakdown

    https://www.omrajtech.com/composites-blog/cost-model-for-pricing-plastic-injection-molded-parts

    Labor costs are associated with machine setup, operation, and quality control.

    That doesn’t sound like there’s finishing costs involved.

    Glass counters are machine-made.

    I’m sure that cut wood pieces are done by a machine, or they’d cost a lot more and you’d rarely see them in budget sets.

    Dice are done by a machine.

    I guess that maybe a human could put N items of each into a box. That doesn’t seem like a lot of labor.