The other day, I was browsing around my local game shop, and decided to take a closer look at the miniatures. I was underwhelmed. Has the quality and detail of miniatures decreased over the decades, or am I just imagining it?

What brand of mini's where you looking at?

Quality can vary dramatically between manufacturers, not to mention that getting a batch of bad casts is pretty easy. Yes, it's pewter, but we're still talking about HOT LIQUID metal that you're pouring into a mold. Lots of things can go wrong.

I haven't looked at metal miniatures in years. There's so much cheap plastic on the secondary market (DDM, MK, Heroclix, Horrorclix, Dreamblade, Star Wars and so on) that I kind of forgot minis can be made of metal. But I don't paint, so there's that. I still have a few metal minis sitting around in storage. Reaper put out some pretty good models for the price.

I think that's just you, honestly. Granted, my experience is limited to Warhammer and War Machines minitatures, but if anything, I've found them to be getting MORE detailed.

This. It's either just you, or it was just whatever rack of minis you were looking at.