In fairness to local hobby shops they do have overheads therefore have to jack up the prices, i.e staff wages, rent, electricity, water blah blah blah and to be honest seems much harder than i am sure it used to be.
The problem is that now the world is such a very very small place and shops cannot and/or have not been able to keep up with the market. Gone are the monopoly days where you could only get parts from your local shop exclusively. The birth of the internet was basically the death of the local business... They operate with little or no overheads, have a worldwide customer base of god knows how many billions of people and have a much bigger scope in terms of ordering capabilities...
A local shop just cant compete with that. What manufacturers should do if they are interested in local shops surviving, is to change warranties to restrict out of country purchases, which they are now doing...
Good for the shops, bad for consumers... but you cant have it both ways
