Hello everyone and welcome to 2025!
A random musing to start the year (if you'll be so good as to indulge me!). I am hoping to do a 'monthly modeller's musing', on a particular topic that takes my fancy (or topics that you all might want to chew over) to help encourage conversations amongst us all. I'll keep things casual here in the lounge, Gin and French in hand at the bar
Pull up a chair and grab a drink, chaps!With the "Shelf Queen" group build about to start, and spurred on by some random ebay-gazing, I thought I'd talk a bit today about stashes, and about the 'value' of the kits that we buy.
For many years I have trawled places like ebay to find some of those harder to get esoteric kits. You know the ones; some of those older resin kits made back in the 90s or early 2000s, of harder to find subjects. Think manufacturers like the earlier incarnation of Copper State Models, or perhaps Jager's range, Tom's Modelworks, Omega, etc. As primarily a 1/48 guy I could (and still occasionally do) find the odd gem on ebay this way. As someone who collects far more than he builds these days, my stash has continued to get larger and larger over the years. But still, the search for said gems has not abated.
Often, however, those gems came (and come) at a price. In years past I found myself hard pressed to pay $100 for a rarer kit (not to mention adding postage to Australia)? but there we just some kits that I felt I had to add to the stash at the time (some of the Jager Albatros? and Rumplers were a good example).
Then, we had the collapse of Wingnut Wings and the second hand market in 1/32 for their kits went wild. Indeed, it still is wild in many ways. I couldn't fathom spending $200-300 for a model kit, let alone one that would be more of a collector item than a builder item. Though I love their kits, I have only ever built one (back in around 2012), and have bought and sold a couple here and there, but my eye has always been on 1/48. Thankfully the second hand market for rarer 1/48 WW1 kits isn't as inflated, which makes cultivating a collection a little easier.
So, doing my regular ebay trawl last week, I came across a seller who was auctioning some of those kits that get my attention ? in this case, some Jager kits, and some early Copper State Model kits (including their hard to find Handley Page 0/400 in 1/48). Now they were not cheap even in terms of starting bid price, and in consideration of the tanking Australian dollar and international shipping costs, I probably wasn't going to bid, but I kept an eye on them none the less.
I happened to be sipping my morning coffee when I watched the 0/400 auction finish. The last 30 seconds in any ebay auction is where the real action is, and that 30 seconds did not disappoint. I watched the price of the kit go from around $150 USD to $200? then $300? 15 seconds to go?. $450?. $600?. And in the last few seconds, boom! Here was the final price:
The final auction price ? wowsers!I nearly spat out said coffee on my computer screen. That's $800 USD, which is around $1,300 Australian dollars (and that's without shipping)? for a model kit! Sure it's rare, but really??
It got me thinking; is the person that won that auction ever going to build that kit? There's now way they would ever recoup their costs by on-selling. So have they just paid that much to have it sit in their stash? And what about the multiple other bidders? What was their ultimate desire? Why was this kit in so much demand?
I also thought to myself, how much would I be willing to pay for my ?dream kit?? What even is my ?dream kit?? I think the most I ever paid for a kit was the 1/48 Jager Albatros D.XII, at about $150 USD? only because I've always loved the look of this quirky little aircraft and this kit is also very hard to come by, so when I had the option, I took it. Will I ever build it, though??
One of my "dream kits" - the Jager 1/48 Albatros D.XII. Will it ever get built?? Hmmm?!I can now consider myself a 'kit hoarder' more than a kit builder these days, so I do understand the cathartic feeling that a meaningful 'stash' can provide; there is reward in simply holding these things in one's hands. What is the true 'value' of some of these items? Do we measure our stashes only in terms of accumulated dollar value, or is there more of a personal connection to some kits? I, for example, have bought some kits not to build, but because I have a connection to them from building them in my youth, for example. I call this my 'nostalgia section' of my stash.
My 'nostalgia stash'? what is the true value here??Is a fool and their money soon parted? Perhaps someone would be willing to pay some of those big dollars to get some of those 'dream kits', just because it brings them joy. Or perhaps someone really does want that kit at any price to build?
What are your thoughts?
What would you pay for your dream kit?
How much have you paid for a kit?
What value other than dollars does your stash provide to you? Or, do you not even bother with a stash?
Pile in folks, let's get the conversation started!
Cheers,
Brad C
