1/64 Figures typical cost
Wow! I see some really nice tracks and dioramas with figures. The little dudes and dudettes are awesome... but wtf? They cost +$3 or more each? Gotta be some that don't go that high... the $$ spent filling up the bleachers on some of these tracks would be more than my take home pay! I do resin casting... I guess I could pop for a few and make some copies... I am really just interested in seated drivers at this point. Just a noob figuring it out...
FredD
F'D Racing
Discussion
I got the bulk of mine from AliExpress. They cost from $2-$20USD each depending on the store and character. Don't get sucked into a bulk pack of ones you paint yourself. I haven't come across any that are any good plus it's many hours of painting.
American Diorama do some top notch ones and they cost about $10USD for a pack of 4-5 people.
- totally agree here. I bought 3 different 100 piece sets on amazon, all suck, prepainted means a dab of color here and there. You can use those to fill bleachers, and "front them" with detailed ones. American diorama is what I am buying, and at $10 a pack, for diecast, not plastic, is IMHO a great deal. Woodland scenics makes nice ones in various scales, and are top quality, too — dr_dodge
- Ok... thanks for the suggestions! Aliexpress is usually pretty decent for mail order to my location. — FredD
Depending on how many you need and if you're ok with painting, a 3D Resin Printer is probably the way to go in the long run. Small printers go for $100-150USD, plus resin and purchasing models. I've dug around recently on Cults3D, and there are a few pretty good model builders on there building 1/64 figures, just search "1/64 People". I've also seen quite a few drivers for in car:
cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/n1-race-driver-1-64-miniature
Some models are free, but the better ones seem to range from $2-10. It's a little investment to purchase the model, but once that's done you can print as many as you want. A bottle of resin will go a long way with this scale and the good thing is you can print multiples at one time. It actually takes the same amount of time to print 1 as it would maybe 20 or as many as you can fit on the build plate. There is a little bit of a learning curve to get going with the slicer software, but it isn't too bad for this type of print. As with anything there's sure to be some caveats. If you're into customizing cars, a bonus is lots of modellers offer wheels and custom body parts or engines for them. There's also an offering of some diorama accessories like garage equipment and scenery pieces. The unfortunate thing with the cheap multipacks that I've found like at Amazon or Hobby Lobby is they are train scale. This means the closest you'll get to 1/64 is 1/87 (HO Scale) or 1/48 (O Scale). HO is probably ok for filling in a grandstand or backgrounds, but if you want close ups for photos or video, they aren't quite right.
AliExpress as mentioned is a good place for figures and accessories. Here are some sites that I've found. The cheapest of these is Outlander Model.
- I already do 3d FDM printing... not looking to take on another printer! But in reality, that would probably work out great! Thanks for the list — FredD
- still gotta paint them — dr_dodge
- I know the feeling, I'm in the same boat. There are some models on Cults3D that I've been able to print with an FDM, but most you'll need a Resin printer for them to turn out well. I hope to get my own eventually, but I'll be doing a lot more than 1/64 figures with it. — AP3_Diecast
You can find scale people at Hobby Lobby in the model train section. I think they were like $8 for 5 or something...honestly they've never been cheap. But what you find in retail will be very generic and honestly the resin stuff you find online is better quality.
If you're looking for racing specific poses, the $3 is market it seems.
I forget which channel does it but I've seen a track where they just cut out paper people. It's unique and still gets the story across.