The oldest built kit in your collection...

Dave-

LOL, I do stay up pretty late!  Looking forward to seeing your photos!  

My oldest built kit I have is an Aurora MBT70 tank in 1/48 scale. It was the first tank model I built myself and had been played with when I was a kid. If I was to guess, I think it would have been built between 1970-75. It was a favorite tank and it survived multiple vacuumings by my mom over the years. It was badly built, unpainted and many parts were broken and missing from the turret.

Around 1996, I discovered eBay and found a partially built kit for $5. I picked up the kit and the next time I made a trek home, I retrieved the old kit. I used the two kits to rebuilt my old kit. I painted it up and decaled it with old Tamiya M113 decals.

The base kit has been built for over 30 years.

I'd love topost some of my "oldies", but my pre-1994 kit collection is all lodged at my parent's house in Pennsylvania, 2.5 hours away!

I have some old Nichimo Panthers, and especially, some old American tanks I built back then. An old Monogram Patton, and an M88 Cargo Tractor (?) by NITTO, I think?

Got some of the older Tamiya's too, like the Sgt York and the Stuart...ahhh--memories!

The oldest kit I have, and still not completed is this old Airfix Apollo Lunar Module. I got it when I was 10 or 11 (now I am 44 ) Never did finish it at the time as someone gave me a Centuri Model Rocket catalog and it got shelved to build "Flying Rockets" . I look at it every now and then, thinking I might finish it up.

I originally built stuff from around 1983-1993 while i was still in diffrent apts.I don't have anything from that long ago.i then stopped for about six years and then started up in 1999 when I was able to set up a work area in my first home.I have everything i have built in the past nine years,but the oldest I think might be my:

1/48 Hasegawa P-51 Mustang  1/48 Hasegawa Me-109 Trop and 1/48 Hasegawa F-4B

I think they look pretty good built OOB  sorry no pics in the camera right now.

Thanks for sharing your stories everyone!  Not sure why I think of stuff like this, but I am always curious to hear from everyone.

summit- Very cool that you still have that kit to be finished yet!  I bet the day it is completed will be a very special day indeed.

The oldest kit I still have is the 1/35 Tamiya Quad Car for the Desert Rats. It's missing a fender, though. I threw away all of my old cars I built in the early 80's. I had some cool ones, too.

I still have the first model built since getting back into he hobby as an adult: the venerable 1/48 Tamiya A6M2 I picked up for $5 during a Hobby Lobby sale.

Frank,

It's funny, I was just thinking about this last night. My oldest kits are the armour kits I built in highschool, 25 to 30 years ago. I still have most of them and my 15 year old is using my 1/35 scale Tamiya Stug IV as a reference for his WIP Stug IV. The kits have survived 3 moves and storage in shoe boxes in my attic. They are still in pretty good shape. I'll try to post some pics inbetween  work and kid's sports!

Tom 

Daywalker wrote:

Very cool story Rob, thanks for sharing!  Do you have any photos of this one?

I also have another old rebuild project that has been ongoing for at least 7 years. In 2001, a friend gave me a parts kit of the old Renwal Ontos. I had built the Revell reissued kit around 1982-83. It had lots of moving parts so many of them were vacuumed off by my mother cleaning my room. I started using the old parts kit to rebuild my original kit. I've set it aside and have not bothered with it in a few years. One day I will finish it though.

My oldest model that I still have is the Revell 1/32 F-14A Tomcat.  I bought it in the early '80s, possibly late '70s but did not build it until 1990.  It was the very first model that I did a realistic finish on, and even fooled around with sheet plastic and wire to improve the ejection seats and landing gear and gear bays. 

I started building in the early '70s around the age of 4 or 5.  Started with snap-together dinosaur kits and then started glueing King Kong, Godzilla and Frankenstein kits and then moved on to AMT Star Trek kits.  Been building most of my life but the Revell Tomcat was the first build where I could call myself a modeler.

~Dave

I have pics of some of my first scratch-builds, but they are on a 2 GB SDRAM chip, can look at them on the camera but it won't talk to the computer.  OTOH I can take pics using the same camera and a different SDRAM chip and it'll talk.  Weird.

IF I could DL those pics I could get them posted up here....

  Haven't been around here much lately have a few minutes before I leave work(Night shift Bites) Anyway saw this and had to add my 2cents... I STILL have a Hawk XF-92A that I built when I was 9 or 10 (will be 52 at end of month) and an old revell spitfire that I built when I was 17. The main reason I have these two is the 92 was the first model that I used spray can and the spit was the first that I airbrushed.

    GW

The oldest build that I am still in possession of is my 1/48 Airfix SHAR FA.2, it has all the hallmarks of a early Tango1 build: Seams, silvered decals and the brush marks as well.

I keep it as a reminder of the wonder of modelling, when it was finished I thought it was the dog's bollocks..........of course, time has moved on and I have improved, just a little!

I'll photo it later and post it here! 

Thanks for the stories fellas!  I really am enjoying hearing about people's old builds, reminds me of days gone by.

Hope some of you will be able to post photos later, I'd love to see them!

The oldest built kit in my collection is the Tamiya M3A2 Halftrack I built 16 years ago, sitting in the living room of my apartment using a 3ft x 3ft folding card table as a work surface. I know its that old because my daughter was 3 years old at the time and now has turned 19.

I did not use my airbrush on this one.

Boy now I look at that kit and go hmmmm if I ever did another one I would do so many things differently and boy have I come a long way.

Hi all,

Just returned from the Ihobby Expo with the kids. Fun for all! As promised I'm finally posting a couple of pictures of my oldest builds. As I mentioned previously on this thread these are from my high school days 30 plus years ago. These have mostly been in shoe boxes for 20 years. No where to display. Now I build 1/48 aircraft and leave the amour to my 15 year old.

Anyway here they are. Thanks again Frank for another great thread!

IMG]http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/mm425/yesfan62/100_4949.jpg[/IMG]

I gave most of my old kits tomy kids years ago. Buthesetwohave to tie for age, dating from 1972 roughly. Both were repainted in 1987... Monogram 1/32 Stug IV, and Tamiya 1/35 StuH III

I think the StuH is just a tad bit older...

The oldest kit I still have is the 2001 Space Odyssey Moon Bus I built in 1970.

Second oldest, is the MPC Millennium Falcon. Built it in 1979. First model I ever "weathered."

Third is a Tamiya BMW R90S which I built in 1981.