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Model kit collection auction on Bring a trailer.


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Not sure who nickynicky is but I tend to agree with the comment.  I guess I am the exception with regard to this collection as I only see one resin kit I would want even though I already have one.  Whoever wins the lot is probably going to sell most of them on line.  The days of asking full collector prices for kits and promos that are 60 plus year old are nearing the end IMHO.

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We're going to see more & more of this as time goes on and I can't help but wonder at some point the market will be flooded with "unsellable merch" due to changes in buyer's taste & demographics. The last model swap I went to, lots of kits cheap and I expect the same thing with the next two shows I hit this month & June. A lot of the same stuff shows up at the various shows.

I'm in my 40s & concentrate my kit collection more towards pre 1969 cars & trucks, but I'm in the minority. I'm almost to the point of having all the kits I've been looking for, but always looking for rebuilders.  

It's already happening in the 1:1 car world with run of the mill prewar stuff and even some 50's cars are coming down in price, in some cases by 30%. Project cars of common stuff are almost unsellable from everything I've seen, read & talked to.

 

 

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Plastic kits will soon be much like Lionel Trains of the 1990's.  Pre War Lionel was gold in the 60'-80's. Then a lot of collectors started passing away and he market became flooded with nice Lionel. Prices drop like a rock. In the 70's you might get $2000 for mint empty Lionel boxes. Suddenly they were just empty boxed. I have a huge collection, when time comes it will go out as a collection. 

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8 hours ago, vamach1 said:

Not sure who nickynicky is but I tend to agree with the comment.  I guess I am the exception with regard to this collection as I only see one resin kit I would want even though I already have one.  Whoever wins the lot is probably going to sell most of them on line.  The days of asking full collector prices for kits and promos that are 60 plus year old are nearing the end IMHO.

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I don't agree with the comment at all. I think nickynicky is likely way off base. His comments don't reflect the reality of a builder with a larger stash of kits. I have almost 600 kits (moderate by some standards), and I build regularly, spending lots of time at the bench. But I know at least 90% of the kits will not be built by me. And, I still buy kits occasionally (in fact, I am wondering what it will cost to ship this collection to Canada). Every builder with a large stash of kits understands this. This hoard of kits is not the result of a builder who bought his whole life then couldn't get life sorted enough to build them, this could very well be a builder who built religiously and died at 95 with a bottle of CA in his hand. Looking at the collection, it is clear this fellow never intended to get to all of them. There is a huge lot of resin bodies, a good number of MFH and Fernando Pinto kits, each of which is a solid project unto itself. Decades of building there alone. This could very well be (I think, likely is) a fellow who built for much of his life, then died or went to a home, and this is just what is left.

If, in fact, he was a builder at all. If he was merely a collector, then it is what it is. They were enjoyed for what they are, and now he's done.

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I may not build often, but I get plenty of enjoyment seeing my boxes of kits on display throughout my house. I tried to give my wife a good starting point for selling them off when I'm gone, but she didn't like that idea. "Those aren't going anywhere." 

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Interesting listing.  I always thought my grandsons would take over and build the ones I haven't.  Most of them are teens and early 20's and they have very little if any interest in them.   They will probably keep my built kits or kits Mike Hanson built that I have for themselves.  They will not build any.  Kinda sad.  

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Some years back there was a palpable fear when molds were going to China and the entire kit industry was going to implode. Hence I grabbed kits a little at a time, now I probably still have 250-300 un-builts and maybe 25 started (and stalled...).

I have known a couple of "modelers" who while they have not built ANYTHING in 25 years, they have over 5000 kits and are still buying. I was selling at a show last fall and had a couple of bites when I offered everything I had on the table for $1000. There was over 100 kits plus other things I had for sale.

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15 hours ago, JJ Deuce said:

Thanks for posting.  That's local to me.  I'd love to check it out if I can.  

Any predictions on the final did?  It is up to $7K now.  Someone will buy them and probably list them individually on Ebay by the weekend.

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This looks very much like it could have been the collection of Lee Kirchner from San Antonio who passed away IIRC in Feb. of 2023. I wish I could remember his screen-name here, years ago he was "Airway" on the Hobby Heaven board and he posted here fairly frequently. We communicated off-and-on for many years. He sent me an email once with a couple of super-secret "these are for YOUR eyes ONLY!" photos of the Ferrari P4/5 before it was made public that Jim Glickenhaus commissioned Ferrari to build, they were good friends. 

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25 minutes ago, Zoom Zoom said:

This looks very much like it could have been the collection of Lee Kirchner from San Antonio who passed away IIRC in Feb. of 2023. I wish I could remember his screen-name here, years ago he was "Airway" on the Hobby Heaven board and he posted here fairly frequently. We communicated off-and-on for many years. He sent me an email once with a couple of super-secret "these are for YOUR eyes ONLY!" photos of the Ferrari P4/5 before it was made public that Jim Glickenhaus commissioned Ferrari to build, they were good friends. 

Keyser.

That's a great guess. Lee was one of my favorites on here and I miss him a lot.

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2 minutes ago, Rodent said:

Keyser.

That's a great guess. Lee was one of my favorites on here and I miss him a lot.

Ah, thank you! I should have remembered that but my brain's still a bit fuzzy at times - I'm just getting back to normal now after successful open heart surgery 5 weeks ago to replace the aortic valve, get a bypass for a widow maker blockage and fix a dissection in the aortic root and dealing with all of the issues that lead up to the surgery since the beginning of the year when I started feeling ill. Fun times. Not. But what I went through was nothing at all what Lee had to deal with for many years yet he continued living his life to the fullest that he was allowed. He's definitely missed.

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