Mail order

www.greatmodels.com has low prices and a good selection of models. Thier shipping is not too fast though, oh well.

gtrijm, so what happened to the model that was sent naked? I'm sure you received it since you know it was sent naked. I only thing I can think of is the box getting ruined. I'm sure the sender sealed the box right? as in nothing inside got lost?

For many years I've been purchasing models from Roll Models, both in the US and Mexico. They give good service, although it takes 2-3 weeks for delivery. Most of their prices are on the low-end of the market. They don't provide photos of the merchandise though. Squadron Mail order is OK, but it won't provide insurance delivering to Mexico, which is annoying.

Ebay's fine, but a precaution: if the ad doesn't specify sealed in box, check that all parts on still on the trees! No big deal, but stuff like is annoying, what kind of mow-ron removes all the parts from the trees?
Also - I had one joker tape a mailing letter to the model box and ship it... that's right, no usps box or anything... just shipped it naked. Waddya think happened?

I find Ebay is great for OOP (Out of Production) kits.

In the last couple of months I've gotten hold of 2 Hasegawa F-4Gs in 1/72, after trying usual channels for the last 2 years!

Ditto a Fujimi Phantom FGR2.

For everyday stuff I tend to use Hannants (www.hannants.co.uk), simply because they're the biggest in Europe and I live in the UK.

Cheers,

Rob M.

On Ebay, you can get the best deal on kits...that's hard to argue about. Especially big expensive kits.

Reading through the ads in FSM you can get a lot of online model store web addresses. Visiting the sites will give you a feel for them. You can shop around from site to site relatively easily. Modelexpo and Internet Hobbies are two additional sites I have used besides the two mentioned by Toad.

I've been very impressed with Squardon myself- just the other day, they called ME because I had filled out an order form incompletely! Now that's service!

I've also used Great Models Webstore. Good experiance, however they do things a little differently. They don't stock all their advertised items and get them from a distributor which can take longer. There are pro's and con's of this approach.

The good thing about both these online web stores is that they provide pictures and detials of each item. It's nearly as good as going to your local hobbyshop to browse!

Toad