model price limits

Help! I've just discovered ebay!

The last two weeks I have been surfing for deals and spending like hotcakes!
Good news is that I've gotten some much-wanted kits at sometimes half of what they are in the LHS. Bad news is I'm running out of space for the 'stash.'

 

bilbirk wrote:

To me it depends on the kit. I'll spend on the average around $40 for a kit but I'll make exceptions(Leopold, Morser Karl and BR52). The wife was not happy when I bought those!

 

ooooooo....I have those three as well. Luckily, I have no wife to answer to anymore.

 

if i want it, i'll try to find the best deal. So far I've found $650 for the 1/35 Dora. Its sooooo tempting.

The most I've ever spent was about 90 or so dollars canadian, for the Trumpeter Wellington 1.  I spent just over 70 cdn for the Tasca Firefly.  I rarely stray from the average for a "normal" 1/35 armor kit.  Kind of ironic that somebody who rarely builds anything other than armor set a spending record on an airplane.

Here's a question for those that don't build strictly OOB.  Do you consider the prices of upgrades and maybe specialty paints whn you consider a new kit? 

For instance, you buy a $20 kit and then maybe a $20 resin cockpit and a $20 PE set and then you realize you're going to need a half dozen more colors that you don't already have.  All of a sudden the $30 has ended up costing you $80.  Or do justify each of those purchases seperately?

I ask because this just happened to me; a $35 kit, plus upgrades (Verlinden resin cockpit, eduard PE set and misc. parts - $55), plus reference material (books - $20) and paints ($25) is running me over $130.  Granted, I certainly won't be going all out on all my models, but I was just wondering how, or, if you guys deal with that.

-Fred

 

I agree about model prices being fairly high....I'm a kid-14, and my parents dont spoil me, but I'll admit I am fortunate and earn allowance and babysitting money and stuff, and if I wasn't pretty good at saving money, I would have a tough time coming up with money for this hobby. What I'm starting to realize is, a lot of those old kits with low detail are great for the price. Sure some great DML smart kit with include PE and aluminum barrel is rgeat, but for half the price, so are some old Tamiya kits. The only thing I cant stand in a cheap kit, is poor fit. But Ive realized you can turn not-so-great kits into masterpieces with a bit of TLC, and there great practice for when you do indulge in a more expensive kit.

Thanks to buying Tamiya's 1/350th Enterprise at full price about 11 years ago, starting it, losing interest in it when it was about 40% complete & putting it in the loft where it has spent the last 8 years waiting for the enthusiasm to return, I now have a price limit for a single kit.

Other than breaking it once for Trumpeter's Hood, I have limited myself to spending no more than a third of the Enterprise price on a single kit. As somebody said, there are always special cases.

Accessories can be painful with ship kits. PE can sometimes cost as much again as the kit itself. Also, although I managed to pick up Trumpeter's 1/350th USS Essex for half its usual price, I might end up spending as much again increasing the size of its Airwing. Buying another plane set every few months limits the pain a bit. Still, my choice to like ships, so no complaints

Good thing that I like aircraft kits too, which are a lot easier to find on discount. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've gotten maybe a half-dozen kits (ok, maybe closer to a dozen) since December, when I decided I wanted to build models again.  I got them all off of eBay - I found out where my closest LHSs are, and I have been stocking up on supplies - but I haven't bought any kits from them, and I don't plan on doing so for the foreseeable future (only part of the decision is based on the not-so-good selection at either one).  I'm trying to be bargain-conscious, but I wonder where you guys find all these sales where you can get a 1/350 Essex for half price, for example.  Hobby Lobby doesn't have any locations anywhere close to New Jersey (the closest is 3 states away), so my only hope is the infrequent shows (the only one I know of is coming up in April).  Hopefully I'll have some jake by then.  But I'm finding that eBay isn't prone to giving you the bargains it once did - they're still out there, but are increasingly harder to find, and even tougher to nail.  I have plenty of kits in my stash, but I don't think I have to tell anyone that a kit in the stash is nowhere near as appealing as a kit on the shelf. 

Model kits are not the only expesive items in the hobby, paints are up there too at $2.99 for the MM line. You walk in and buy three bottles of paint and you just added $10 or more to your hobby bill after taxes. Yesterday I bought a mixture of MM, Tamiya and Humbrol paints to replace what I left behind in Riyadh last August and the tab was $77. Of course I could have bought them a couple at a time to spread out the cost but for the projects I have lined up i.e. a VIIC, P-51D, EF-2000 and some figures, I really needed the colors now to have at the ready.

Scott

alumni72 wrote:

I've gotten maybe a half-dozen kits (ok, maybe closer to a dozen) since December, when I decided I wanted to build models again.  I got them all off of eBay - I found out where my closest LHSs are, and I have been stocking up on supplies - but I haven't bought any kits from them, and I don't plan on doing so for the foreseeable future (only part of the decision is based on the not-so-good selection at either one).  I'm trying to be bargain-conscious, but I wonder where you guys find all these sales where you can get a 1/350 Essex for half price, for example.  Hobby Lobby doesn't have any locations anywhere close to New Jersey (the closest is 3 states away), so my only hope is the infrequent shows (the only one I know of is coming up in April).  Hopefully I'll have some jake by then.  But I'm finding that eBay isn't prone to giving you the bargains it once did - they're still out there, but are increasingly harder to find, and even tougher to nail.  I have plenty of kits in my stash, but I don't think I have to tell anyone that a kit in the stash is nowhere near as appealing as a kit on the shelf.

Yah, no Hobby Lobby's out here either, so most of my stash is ebay. Can't beat the quantity and selection. Just don't buy the kit-du-joir and you will save a fortune.

When it comes to limited run kits, buy them when they're on the shelf otherwise you can end up paying 2 to 3 times more for the kit on e-bay. 

Case in point:  I wish I had picked up Classic Airframes 1/48 Bf109A for around $35 at my LHS (High Sierra Models) last year.  I hesitated, only to go back the next day to buy the kit... it was gone!  So, 6 months later and $83.35 poorer, here I sit with my prize.....

I think it would be hard for me to go over that three figure mark. (US$80)  The most I ever paid was AU$70 for a B-36 (1/72) and most of that was postage from the states.  That 1/35 Dora Railway gun sure got my interest though.  If I came by some spare cash I'd be very tempted.