Anyone else seeing a price increase?

The pull back cars that used to be $5 at the gas station are now $9.99 around here.

that bites ... now its more than $5 for four :(

Down here Publix is the main supermarket cars went from 3 for $4 to 2 for $3.  On a related note, anyone else seeing a drop in quality?  I got a porsche 928 that I wanted to remove a small tampo so I did the dry erase trick, it not only took off the tampo but the PAINT also.  Then just in handling it,  my fingernail scratched the tampo.  This is one of the reasons I prefer the OLD cars. 

Dude...some stores in Canada sell them for $2.29 regular price

So when you buy a hotwheels,do you add tax at the till

The Kroger in my neighborhood has peggers consistently at $1.25, occasionally on sale for $1 - very occasional. I admit I don't buy as often or in the volume I used to but still...the ability to "splurge" and get 10 for $10 are long gone it seems.

Real question is, how much is too much? $2 per car...$3...when will you go, "that's just stupid" - lol - how far can Mattel push it before you give up?

Or on a more realistic note, how much have even these 10-25 cent increases limited your haul at the store? 

Most casual trips to the store, I'd give myself a $5 limit and whatever that got me, that's what I'd get. For a long time it was 5 cars, now it's 4...if things keep up, it'll be 3 or less.

With all of the price increases on so many items, Hot Wheels and Matchbox "mainlines" are amazingly cheap. I have a few new-in-package cars that I bought from Kay Bee in 1991-1992 with $1.09 price tags. I paid about $1.25 each for boxed Matchbox cars from my local 5 & 10 & stationery store in the 80's. When I ordered a case of cars from Dollar Tree for $1 then $1.25, it seemed like a bargain.

The higher quality collectors cars only seem expensive compared to the mainlines, but $10 to $20 each is nothing when you consider the time we spend working on them, adding weights and lube. I usually race the mainlines and see what I can make them do. Being able to buy a new, packaged car in a store for less than $2 is almost free when you see them on eBay for much more, plus shipping. I recently spent $20 plus shipping to get a car for a custom paint job and was only available by Tomy / Tomica and a cheaper version by Welly. According to an inflation calculator, a $1 car in 1985 would be $3.01 today. That seems reasonable if the quality was the same.

I think my local Walmart is still selling them for $1.18 a piece, but it could've changed.

Most stores here (Aus) retail mainlines at $2 but can also find them priced up to $3.50.   

Don't often see them on special but when I do they are $1-1.60.

In my area (SW MO) Wal-Mart sells them for $1.18.
Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar sell them for $1.25.
I know O'Reilly sells them for $3.49 (I just checked one of our stores, lol). The mark-up is real...

A local diecast store says wholesaler intel has chatter claiming mainlines will break the $3.00 barrier by Christmas this year.

Personally I've slowed my purchases way down and any further price hikes will be cause to finally consider walking away from new retail altogether and stick to secondary markets only.

I just got back from my cruise to Eastern Europe... Egypt, Turkey, Greece, etc. I saw several places with Hot Wheels on sale for 5 and 6 euros each, more for other stuff... 

Duty free also had them... about the same price...

Needless to say none made the trip home with me.

Local prices here in Florida are all over the $1 level.

It doesn't really limit my purchasing because I seldom find what I need on the pegs to enter the races posted here. Most of my purchase come off ebay and the prices are steadily rising as I think many vendors think there is gold inside them!