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My Stash Philosophy is under siege.


Structor

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When I return to modeling last year I was determined to have a philosophy when it came to purchasing kits. For myself, I felt it was important because without it I found myself buying kits that I knew I would never build. There are so many cool kits and genres. For instance motorcycles, Sci-Fi, ships, and armor. I love to look at these, think of the possibilities and soon I am buying them. The thing is, I am lacking one important thing with those...passion. They don't excite me beyond their coolness factor. I thought I had it figured out. With the spectacular kits that Wingnut Wings is producing and my love of open air, wires in the wind, two wings are better than one aviation, I knew WW1 airplanes were what I wanted to build. Then came my discovery of Real Space. It was always there but for some reason I had not paid it any mind. It would seem that my passion for real space well exceeds WW1 aviation. No problem yet. I can do both. It will likely be beneficial. Tire of one?, need a break?, spend time with the other. (Just don't apply this logic to women :D ) 

 

My stash philosophy also had this important catch: no more than 2 kits at a time. Have one I am building, have another one on the shelf that I am thinking about building. Part of the fun is the time we spend thinking about building. It may even be the bigger part of the enjoyment. With this approach I felt like I would get more building done (sometimes, with too many models there in the stash, all of them talking to you, wanting to be built, the actually building part of this hobby gets reduced). I was able to keep my stash to 2...until Wingnuts announced their price increases and end of shipping. The smart thing to do, the thing I did, was to buy a few models in order to save money. OK, my philosophy took a little hit but it was still intake. Then came my discovery of Real Space modeling and my stash philosophy was blown apart!  I have never been one to worry about the availability of kits. Certainly not when I was younger. Even when I rebooted in the hobby. I was sure I could always find something I wanted to build. I have found in the last 2 months though that space models can go out of productions and only be got by paying high prices on ebay or not be found at all. As a result I have gone a little crazy lately buying. I feel I have a good idea about how I want to model space and have been buying what I can to reach those ends. 

 

A question to you all.  Have I entered at a non-typical time or is it always a struggle to get space models?  Also, do you find that you follow the "maybe it won't be available later" buying imperative more with space modeling?

 

Thanks for reading,

Greg

Edited by Exemplar Structor
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Personally I feel we have far more real space kits available than ever before. With the rise of Dragon's STS, Apollo and Mercury kits, Hasegawa Voyager and Horizon's Atlas kits we have had a real injection of nice, accurate rocketry kits.

Previously all that was available were reissues of Revell's ancient Apollo and shuttle kits, most of which were more than a little inaccurate. However that said I do tend to follow the idea that they might not be available later because a lot of manufacturers are changing how they produce all their kits, they don't want stock occupying warehouse space, costing them money to store. These days it seems that lower volume kits are produced in batches and once sold may be out of production for some years, but i don't see it as limited to only real space.

 

Cheers,

Stuart

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Stuart, I hear what you're saying. I know there have been a lot of new kits in the last few years, especially from Dragon, but I am having a hard time finding any of them to buy. No one seems to have them. Reading posts from just a year ago I don't think that was the case. Maybe we are nearing a point that they will produce some more? It doesn't seem possible that Dragon would not get more utility from their molds. 

 

Here's an idea. Eduard licenses Dragon's molds, issues their kits as a Profipack and corrects the errors with resin or new injection parts and adds PE. I'm a dreamer.

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When I was looking for the kits for the DIO I'm working on.  I had to go to e-bay to find what I was after.  No real space kits at my local hobby shop, so I just looked up what I needed and then waited for e-bay to list.  I had to pay big money for the kits, but all were from the 50's or early 60's and original.

 

  You just have to be persistent to get the kits you need.

 

Rich

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