So why do you or we stash kits?

[knarf]

quote: ps: I'm thinking of becoming a vampire and do a tv show...then I can build for another thousand years of so and have enough money to buy more kits!

that's not a bad idea Walter

i personally have less than 100 unbuilt kits only a couple are vintage or possibly valuable(original issue sneaky pete by revell and monogram's rat vega) but i've got almost 200 built kits and all american save the lone ferrari testerosa. i don't have any left from my childhood thanks to my younger brothers while i was away in the military. the oldest build i have would be a 57 chevy by amt that i built in germany during the early 90's. its built kinda oldschool but with then late model vette interior.

[Erik Smith]

I buy kits for many of the same reasons everybody else does.

I also buy quite a few to resell. If I can get a kit for a price I can resell and make $10, I will buy it, store it, and sell it with a few more when the time comes. With eBay, models are fairly liquid - meaning within about a week I can comfortably sell about 20-30 and get the money about as fast. A small investment but it adds up and helps pay for kits I want to keep - as well as any other needs.

[rustbucket82]

Because I get "in the front door, out the back door" pricing at my Local Hobby Shop....Even though I only have about 70 kits in my stash (mostly aircraft and armor) I think I am pretty much done buying new kits.

[iBorg]

Mental illness.

Seriously, I suffered building during the Pac Man era of video games. You could have anything you wanted as long as it was a Corvette, Firebird, Camaro or Mustang. I remember driving sixty miles on the hopes of finding a Monogram Stock car and being thrilled to find a PRO STOCKER! This was before the internet days and you might find advance notice in the one magazine that served the hobby that was pretty good then (hasn't been for at least ten years).

No seriously.....mental illness.

[Tompidom]

I stash kits to build them one day! lol Every kit I buy I make a plan for, but I've got over 700+ kits.

I can go into my hobby room and sit there and just look around and it brings a smile to my face. All stresses leave..it's my happy place!

I have to agree with this.

I buy kits because i want to build them. And because i love the idea of having my own hobby shop. So i start with my own private hobby shop. Eventhoug i paid for a kit when i bought it. It still feels like getting a kit for free after pulling it out of the stash a couple of years later. And i don't think i bough my last kit. Maybe ill never stop buying kits maybe i somday say its enough(probably not). For now i just love looking at what i still have to build.

[Tom Geiger]

I've always been a collector so it comes naturally to me to have a model car collection. I have close to, if not, 1000 kits and old restorable built ups and my fair share of resin. I have been doing this for 25 years and the collection grew by leaps and bounds in the early years, but much slower today. I'm more likely to buy cheap parts kits of subjects I fiddle with today.

For the longest time, I was saving things for the future. Whether it was a kit, a resin accessory or decal. Only recently did I decide that the future was now and I've started using these great things on projects. For instance when I realized I had a dozen of the '50 Ford pickup, one of my favorite kits, I dumped the 5 unsealed kits into a large tub for building and parts. Since then I have two more of this vehicle in progress. I screwed up a few parts in the process, no problem I just dug into the tub for another. And that makes it fun for me.

I have a friend I see at shows and when we passed carrying bags of purchases we'd quip, "More kits for the estate sale!" So if I leave some behind someday, you guys can all fight over them!

[gwolf]

As a teen in the mid 80's I'd get Johan USA Oldies kits (the '60 DeSoto Adventurer being my favorite) for $4 each at a 5 & 10 store in my grandma's town. I wish I could have bought every single one they had back then. Not for resale or hoarding, just because I liked the makes and models of those kits more than say a '53 Vette or a '69 Camaro and now the price on those simple kits is pretty high.

[wgflatliner]

my reason for stashing kits:

1. it started with my love for the chevy impala. I had to have 1 of every year from 58 to 67. My favorite is the 64, and now i have like 8 of that year.

2. being in a club, i find that the club does various group builds of certain cars, like the charger for example. i don't know which charger i like the most so i get many different years and hope to finish all for the group build, but if i can't, at least get my favorite one done. The rest sit in the pile waiting to be built.

3. going to model shows/contests, i usually frequent the vendors. I find something that catches my eye, and then i find out that he has a bunch of similar kits at a price that i just can't pass up. then i get home and go through all of them, then put them in the closet hoping to build them one day.

4. i've had really good luck with people just giving me kits for free. i come to work, there'd be a stack of unbuilt models there given to me by somebody who still hasn't told me who they were. Showing up at the LHS and coming across a guy giving away stacks of boxes full of models for free. i can't help it that i want to be a charity case for models lol..

5. presents from birthdays and christmas. can't just give them away!

[58 Impala]

It's a sickness, no really, I love cars and this is a way to have all the cars I've ever liked and can't afford in 1:1. I hope to live long enough to build maybe half of them. (I'd tell you how many I have in my stash but I'd have to kill you). Well maybe it is really a sickness.

[robertw]

George, here is another way to look at why we stash our kits, with model kits, you never know how many times a kit is going to be issued, some get reissued for 40 plus years, so get one run and they are done, so if you want a kit, its best to buy it when its first issued, because you may not see it reissued again. Sure, most of the kits that have OOP for long periods of time can still be found online, but how much as the price gone up on that kit.

And if you are a builder of Japanese kits, they almost never reissue kits, so once they done, they are done, and once the supply runs out, good luck, and when you do, they are going to cost you.

So buying now ensures us we will have the kits that we want , and not have to take out a second mortgage on the house to buy that kit that we passed up years back

I agree completely with this and have experienced the same problem of trying to find a kit that had once been on every LHS shelf but was now difficult to find. I do admit that I have more kits in the stash then I will ever build but consider that I'm saving them for others to build in the future. LOL

[ScaleDale]

I get sucked into building off the wall projects like a '56 Thunderbird with a 815 Mountain Motor and get paranoid that I will mess something up and hunt the 'net for a spare kit or two. I just ordered two 64 Fairlanes so I can build a Super Stock Thunderbolt. The kit bash for the T-bird has consumed around 10 kits (and don't ask about my aftermarket bill...).

That's my story, at least.

Dale

[Blackwolf]

It doesn't pay for me to have a stash my grandkids are always finding them even when they aren't in the house. They have a nose for plastic.lol

[Bill Eh?]

It doesn't pay for me to have a stash my grandkids are always finding them even when they aren't in the house. They have a nose for plastic.lol

Marcus, if they have a nose for plastic, then you have taught them well.

[Draggon]

I'm gathering for the afterlife. The way I figure it, if I finish one every other month, I'm still good for about 20 years "up yonder"

[Dennis Lacy]

I build hot rods and most of them are as far from "out of the box" as it gets.

I stash kits that are proven to be good parts donors. I try to keep the quantity within reason because I honestly don't want hundreds of kit boxes stacked all over. Typically, as I use up the parts I wanted the kit for I will turn around and sell what is left of the kit for a few bucks.

I don't buy kits for collector value. I'm just as happy to pull parts out of a 60's vintage mint kit as one I bought from the hobby shop today. It's only plastic.

[Chuck Most]

You can't build it if you don't have it. Simple, really.

[Tom Geiger]

I spent last evening down in the model vault doing some sorting. Since I moved, I've had all my kits in kit cases. When I did the move the cases were filled kinda random since I thought they'd be unpacked quickly. Recently I sorted them into cases by car make. Last evening I sorted the Chevy and Ford boxes down to eras. That's when I found that I had 6 or more of many kits. I took several of each kit and put them aside to sell. I took the sealed kits first since they'd sell better and I plan on building what I have. I wound up with a huge pile of kits to sell.

Then I went upstairs to watch a bit of TV. That's when my mind started to wander as to what I would do with those kits. By evenings end I came up with enough ideas to justify keeping them all!

[Draggon]

I "get it" Tom. In my stash there are probably 50 I wont ever build. Using ebay prices, thats at least a cool $500 in my pocket. Then like you, I start to think. my "ebay pile" gets reduced to less that a half dozen.

[IMSANUT]

While I cannot speak for others, in my instance it is partially due to trying to fill a category. An an example, it has been a goal for me to obtain every kit or decal variant for IMSA GTP, and GTO class race cars. I also have done a similar thing with SCCA club racing subjects, collecting models that could be used in 1:1 builds, as well as generic builds. And while I've been at it, Trans Am subjects, both vintage and more recent.

Also, the IMSA cars, many were only done in resin, thus making them relatively rare. Consequently, when I see one come up on evilbay, it gets followed and bid on.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[Gramps2u]

Its my personal time capsule... I figure its going to take a LOT of time ( Millennium) to get all of those kits built. Either that or leave my 3 Grandsons one heck of a collection to have a blast with! Which ever demise comes first.

[1930fordpickup]

Part sickness sometimes, part thrill of the chase for the collection. 90% of the time only buy what I would like to build , the other 10% is for trade bait if the price is good.

Now that the kit prices have doubled in the last 15 years or so, it has become an investment. LOL

[Draggon]

While I cannot speak for others, in my instance it is partially due to trying to fill a category. An an example, it has been a goal for me to obtain every kit or decal variant for IMSA GTP, and GTO class race cars. I also have done a similar thing with SCCA club racing subjects, collecting models that could be used in 1:1 builds, as well as generic builds. And while I've been at it, Trans Am subjects, both vintage and more recent.

Also, the IMSA cars, many were only done in resin, thus making them relatively rare. Consequently, when I see one come up on evilbay, it gets followed and bid on.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I'm doing something similar. I'm working on getting all of AMT's trophy Series kits, the old Monogram rods like the blue beetle and red chariot, and the "early iron" series.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Draggon

[69NovaYenko]

For me my stash has grown based on two things:

Kits I want to build:

When i run across something I`d like to build in the near or far future I snap it up while it`s still "readily" available. If I don`t a year or so later, after the the kit is out of production, "supply and demand" kicks in. In other words, the limited number of unbuilt kits that remain in the market place escalate in cost because they are getting harder to find. Cannot tell you how many times I kicked myself for not acting when I had a chance to acquire a kit at a reasonable price and did`nt do it. So, in the end, I had to pay a marked up price for a kit on the on-line auction boards due to "supply and demand."

Kit bashing:

When i find a kit that has really cools parts that lend themselves to other builds I grab mulitples of it for future kit bashing sessions.

..

Edited May 2, 2013 by 69NovaYenko

[wgflatliner]

now, the real issue isn't stashing kits - it's finding room to display the kits after they're built. i find that i'm rapidly approaching the point of giving away built models just to make room for newly completed builds. or buy more shelves and move them out to the garage.

[knarf]

give away models??? shall i supply my address