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How long to finish building the kits in your stash (assuming you add no more)?


Filler

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53 minutes ago, Vince1159 said:

I need my eyes tested around my 500th birthday...

 

Not long to go then Vince 🤣  (nothing like good old Jersey humour)

 

Laurie

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4 minutes ago, Vince1159 said:

Cough cough wheez cough,only another few to go...

 

Yes you had better get busy Vince no slacking now.  😄

 

Cough wheez if you will live in the northern climes of the Channel Isles what can you expect.  🥺

 

We in Jersey are all so healthy with our southern aspect. 🤣

 

Laurie

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Ah now, is not 

'How long to finish building your stash?'

an oxymoron?

If you build the kits they are no longer your 'stash'

 

PS. this and my last post are sarcastic humour

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  • Filler changed the title to How long to finish building the kits in your stash (assuming you add no more)?

I've changed it again @Black Knight. This is becoming a bit like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch.

 

Ps. I did take your posts as intended, but I couldn't ignore the fact that what you said were very valid points.

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I can't say because I've no idea how many I have. 

 

However last night I went to the stash picked out the old Airfix P51 and built it. Today I covered it in Humbol 11 and noted that with a bit of work it would be most presentable. I briefly considered some some decals from my decal stash. 

Then I threw it and the box into the bin. 

Then I picked out the old Airfix Hurricane IIB and built it. It probably won't suffer the same fate immediately. But it's days are numbered. 

 

Several others have been lined up. Plus a few half finished no hopers from the, (virtual) shelf of doom. 

At this rate I'll have reduced the stash in a couple of months to a hard core of desirable kits and those I really need to sell to someone who'll appreciate them. 

 

Hopefully I won't add to it even though there is a small model shop in the city centre and sometimes he gets in a must have. 🤔

 

 

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About as long as it would take swmbo to ever admit to being in the wrong! But that aside, I have the uncanny, and irritating habit of starting a build, and then either losing interest in it, or finding that I need some AM part for it, and so it gets consigned to the pending shelf, until I decide to have another go. I only have about 50 or so kits in the stash, but because of the reason (the second one) mentioned, I can't see the stash ever being finished.

 

John. 

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Thinking about this, storing the kits unbuilt in their boxes is actually the most efficient way to use the space. Therefore I won't build anything from the stash now - if I feel the urge then I'll buy something new, bypass the stash and just build that. Much more sensible.

 

Andy

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2 hours ago, Foxbat said:

Therefore I won't build anything from the stash now - if I feel the urge then I'll buy something new, bypass the stash and just build that.

source.gif

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I'm not certain mathematics is mature enough to adequately express the enormous number of years it would take me to finish my exponentially growing stash. I think a whole new type of maths would need to be invented. And if you add quantum physics, where I've built the model and not built it at the same time, it becomes even more complicated. I think I watch too many shows on physics...

 

Regards,

 

Jason

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.. interesting read this thread..

 

so many questions - should I start thinking about selling off my stash (books and kits)?

I could have another 20 years .. or I could get hit by a bus this afternoon..

I already sold off one ‘library’.. and bought most of it back..

Already decided during the pandemic to stop work and ‘retire’ early .. so with more time and no money the stash is going to take a beating!

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Yes indeed it's not just the models. I have so many books. During the late eighties and nineties I collected the entire Osprey colour series of photo books and the Superbase series. Remember them? I realise now that it's time to let them go. 

 

Sad really. My sons have no interest. 

 

But I have to get real. 

 

The irony is that we've just recently moved into a much bigger house but there's no room for all my stuff?? 

 

 

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Compared to most I only have a very small stash (not a lot of storage space) 129 kits... My average build rate is around 10 - 15 per year depending on what I build. I will do a lot of what I would call quick build to help with mojo so I don't get bogged down with long term super large builds that take many months!

 

On that basis, the average time ranges from 8.6 years (rate of 15 per year) up to 12.9 years (at a build rate of 10 per year). So certainly all could be built well within my lifetime!

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  • 3 months later...

Long gone are our formative years, when we bought a kit (more likely got Dad or a rellie to buy it for a special occasion) and built it immediately, rarely having another waiting in the wings. Times have changed...

 

Stash

What's that? I too have a carefully curated collection (CCC) of the highest quality (or so I'd like us to believe).

Figures in 1/35 and ancillaries like float-conversion sets don't count, do they? We're talking proper kits.

With a paltry number of unbuilt kits in the low twenties, I'm not sure I even qualify to come out to play with you fellas, what with your vast air fleets, crowded vehicle parks and naval flotillas spread across the horizon.

 

Time to complete

How long is a piece of string? Probably 4-5 years to complete the current unbuilt CCC. I'm very slow. Should there be an afterlife, I'll likely still be ordering and assembling summat on me cloud or cinder.

 

What's keeping numbers low?

Discipline, comrades, discipline %~))

I have specific, somewhat esoteric interests in preferred scales that are severely restricting my choices. I will confess that every now and then I stray. I'm tempted by other favourite forms and types, and will try different scales and media. So in theory, a blowout always threatens.

But in the past, I've lost about half-a-dozen CCCs to fire, shifting countries and malevolent partners; in short, an unsettled life. Do I really wanna go there again? Well yes, but cautiously and modestly.

I only want enough kits to i) offer mouth-watering choice and variation in my preferred genres come next build and ii) please the eye while scattered on shelves and in cabinets, where I can keep close tabs on them. I’m really into the boxes; I find the graphics pleasing and the unconstructed contents compelling. But everything in moderation, as my old Mum would say.

 

So growth of the CCC is most likely going to be very slow, ideally maxing out at 28 unbuilt kits then slowly reducing with diligent construction.

 

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!

Robert Burns 1785

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I've avoided this topic since it was first floated, but in for a penny... 

 

At my current build rate (c.1/yr), and discounting kits that would take most people substantial time (1/12 cars that want detailing, 1/32 airyplanes etc), and assuming no long hiatus due to health &C (and also not counting the kits already in the 'to be sold off' pile), umm... 

 

if it all went right, and if no one ever issued any more kits that I'd want (yeah, right), I'd clear them out by around 2400AD. Seeing as I won't make it that far, I'd better get my A into G and make a serious effort to sell off those that aren't priority, or else whoever I leave behind will have to deal with a mess such as I have recently faced when a friend died. 

 

Sigh. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've just read right through this thread and found it fascinating. We modellers vary so widely in our habits and attitudes and as individuals we vary over time too.

 

First let me answer the question.

 

I have eight kits in the stash at the moment and two in progress. the eight amount to less than a year's building (four of them are a single project) and the two in progress will be finished by Christmas this year. Assuming no major changes in my health etc, and that I don't buy any more, I will easily finish all of them by the end of 2022. 

 

I used to have a lot more than that but when I lost all interest in the hobby a couple of years ago, I sold a lot off. At that time I was rather disgusted at what I was as my greed in buying so many kits, far more than I could have completed in a reasonable lifetime. I still kept maybe fifty kits, the best of the bunch, the ones I 'couldn't bear' to part with even though I wasn't building anything or even looking at modelling websites. That's a bit strange, I think, and certainly not rational. There's an emotional side to this that you just can't work out with arithmetic.

 

After my mother died I really appreciated how little interest she had in material things. She was totally free of the collector's habit, and had very little of our routine materialism. Clearing her flat was simple. She had few things and they were all well used. She hadn't cleared out on purpose, she just lived that way all of her life. She disliked being given gifts that weren't edible because she'd have to look after them. 

 

Then I read about döstädning, which is the Swedish for death-cleaning and is what some Swedes do on retirement. It's decluttering with an attitude, designed to make life easy for the retired and their death easy for the survivors. 

 

I sold off the rest of the kits, just at the time that I was getting interested in restarting modelling. Ironic, but my regained interest was in figure modelling which was new to me anyway. I did soon drift back to tanks and 'planes but so far, I haven't bought more than a year's worth in advance. I also disposed of 90% of my books, anything which was not of immediate use. I have regretted a few items but I can't now tell you what most of those kits, books etc actually were. They were junk. 

 

So why did I buy them in the first  place? I don't deliberately collect anything other than kits and books. What is the common factor? Well, when I was very young, my parents ran a busy pub. They were always in the building but rarely 'present' in my life. They were preoccupied, tired, maybe a little drunk, and while I assume they loved me a lot, they expressed this by working really hard to buy me things. Things that would keep me occupied while they made more money to buy me more things. Guess what those things were? Kits and books. Solitary hobbies to occupy a solitary child. I loved them, the kits and books, both for the reading and the building and for the very fact of being given them. Just getting a kit/book meant that I was loved. 

 

I grew into an adult and learned to look after myself. Now I had the money, and when I was feeling low, or lonely, or happy or celebratory or any emotional state that seemed to call for a pat on the back, I'd buy a k/b for myself. Remember how bad I felt when I sold off the stash that first time? That was me as a little boy resenting me as a grown up taking the love away. 

 

However, when I sold off the remaining 50 and all the books, I was fine because by then I'd worked all this out and was able to reassure myself that I'd always be ably to buy one when I needed one. Now I don't often compulsively buy kits not to build and books not to read. Only when I'm enabled and encouraged by this lovely gang of modellers here. 😁 And by those fiends, the advertising industry. :angry:

 

I like it this new way. I don't ever feel oppressed by a 'stash as task list'. I don't care if I miss out on the latest best thing in the plastic or publishing world because there will be a better one in a month. I can go where my interest leads me without feeling I 'have to' build/read all the other ones first. It works for me. 

 

So I think there's a lot we can find out about ourselves by examining our stashing habits and if this thread hadn't turned up on my search, I'd have started it myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Well my early speculation of March the 13th 6:55 am on a Friday 3002 has slipped.

 

I have had to tidy the store cupd in our flat. Now knackered & weak but some confidence I can make

it by .

4002.

 

Laurie

 

 

 

 

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So I started to catalogue my collection in a Google sheet - tremedendously useful for keeping track of aftermarket parts/decals that I have for a particular kit. It did make realise that I have a grand total of, roughly, 530 airframes in my collection (some are in multi-kit boxings and others are sacrifical for conversions, so counting airframes for completion was easier than counting kits specifically).

 

Now given that my current output is about 3 aircraft per month, this means about 15 years to complete them all - which hopefully as a 37 year old, is within my life expectancy!

Edited by Tim R-T-C
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13 minutes ago, Tim R-T-C said:

So I started to catalogue my collection in a Google sheet - tremedendously useful for keeping track of aftermarket parts/decals that I have for a particular kit. It did make realise that I have a grand total of, roughly, 530 airframes in my collection (some are in multi-kit boxings and others are sacrifical for conversions, so counting airframes for completion was easier than counting kits specifically).

 

Now given that my current output is about 3 aircraft per month, this means about 15 years to complete them all - which hopefully as a 37 year old, is within my life expectancy!

Yes but Tim.

 

Does this mean you will never buy any more kits ? 🤣😿

 

Laurie

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