hopefully I will be moving in a month or so and had hoped to sell some of my collection to have less to move and to have a few bucks to spend on expenses.... I will have room to store the unbuilts at the new place. The buildups, well that could be a problem.
time after time I go thru my boxes and look at the kits but am having trouble parting with them. Flashes of a cool diorama idea go off in my head, and I always seem to find a way to justify keeping the damn things.
Some kits are big, the 1/48 B-1, a Lindberg 1/8? hot rod kit, etc. where shipping costs make selling them a bit prohibitive and others are just too ordinary spark any real interest. Selling them for $10 when I paid twice that does not make a of of sense but that may be the only way....
If it were me, I'd probably sell that which I could most likely get my grubby little paws on again either in stores, through contests/swaps/e(vil)bay, etc. -- y'know, stuff that keeps getting re-issued. Keep the rare and OOP stuff. And don't be too afraid to swipe any decals and/or weaponry that you might want from the stuff that you're going to sell -- it'll assuage some of the guilt of selling it below cost. (But *DO* remember to label the kits as "incomplete" and tell *exactly* what's missing and, if possible, let the buyer know where after-market replacements can be found/bought! It's only fair!)
-- Edwin
(Remove "DIESPAMDIE!")
"Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can trust to be dishonest... Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly stupid."
- Captain Jack Sparrow (Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)
Usually it's not all that complicated for me. I normally just get rid of the ones I no longer want or don't plan on biuuilding. Occassionally I guess wrong but nobody's perfect. Getting half of what you ppaid for it is better than it sitting on the shelf gathering duct and getting nothing of what you paid for it. ;~)
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" In walks the village idiot and his face is all aglow; he's been up all night listening to Mohammad's radio" W. Zevon
You have to be ruthless. Think about your current building rate, then see how many years worth of kits you have stashed. You may discover that you have more kits than you can reasonably build and enjoy in a lifetime.
Go through the collection - again, objectively and ruthlessly - and make a list with the kits that you will absolutely build some day, and that you simply will not part with. Make another list with the kits that you would like to build, but are either too big for your display area, or will take more time and effort to build than your interest level. Make a third list for the kits that you know that you will probably never build, either because you lost interest in the subject, they're just too big or they are beyond your level of skill/patience.
Sit back and think about the lists for a few days. Maybe put the lists away for a week and go do something else. Then go back to the list and make any corrections... but again, be ruthless. You don't want to start with 20 kits on the "must keep" list, 40 kits on the "maybe list" and another 40 on the "disposal" list and end up with 90 kits on your "must keep" list, 9 on the "maybe" list and 1 on the disposal list. Remember, there's always e-bay and manufacturers will reissue old kits.
Once you have a good list, either sell them on e-bay or on the various web-based forums, or here.
As for pricing - I figure that a good amount of the enjoyment of
*buying* a kit comes from looking at the plastic and maybe playing with the bits. If your goal is to get rid of stuff, price them to move - shipping costs + a small premium. If you price them ridiculously high, you'll never get rid of the kits.
I've sold quite a few kits from my collection (and still have a bunch left) at a slow, but ideal for me, rate. I've managed to sell most of the big box kits that were the greatest offenders in terms of space (both built and unbuilt), so I'm really happy with that!
I hear ya! I had an old (obviously) Allyn X-2 that I bought as a kid in an old Mom-n-Pop for a buck. Made it back then (as a kid makes all models 8-D ) and rebuilt it years later after I got home from the military. Two years ago I sold it for $25.00 to a friend on the west coast who is a better builder than I am. I replaced it with a 1:72 version so I'm happy and I'm pretty sure that he'll give the piece a good home. I know that I probably could have gotten more via eBay or announcing it here, but for God's sake, "it's only a piece of plastic!"
I know, I'm a heretic; get the stake ready.
-- John The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. . - - - Henry Kissinger
You'd rather sell your buildups than the unbuilts, did I get that right?
Okay, if you've got room for the unbuilts but no room for buildups that means you're not going to be able to build any more. In which case this move is flawed, seriously!
Hang them from the ceiling or walls. If you see a few that just don't meet your current building standards then put them on ebay. For years as a youth the previous years building wound up dying in the firecracker wars...so sad. hth
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. --Leonardo Da Vinci
I don't collect them but I still have my first one. I don't think it's worth much as the handle's gone and the thermos holder followed. The thermos bought it in first grade. But I can still look at Roy, Dale, Trigger and Bullet. They're sitting up there on the shelf next to my Aurora Lone Ranger figure. :)
I once owned a LOT of guns. Got to be a problem storing them all. So.... I sold the ones that were the easiest to replace, and kept the few unusal one's. Didnt regret any but one sale. (sieries 70 Colt 9mm Govt model)
Moral is, get rid of the common stuff, and keep the OOP models that really mean something to you. And... there are a lot of OOP kit's that will be available for a long time to come at shows etc.
"Only a Gentleman can insult me, and a true Gentleman never will..."
I don't seem to have this problem with my unbuilt models but I my other hobby; collecting militaria, is another matter entirely. I have a bunch of historically-significant items, including some that are named to Aces and other historical figures, and some that belonged to family members. These will never go anywhere. However, I also have literally closets full of other, more average rather run-of-the-mill items that my wife is constantly telling me to get rid on. I've looked the stuff over several times but have yet to be able to make a decision as to what to part with. The link below will give you an idea of the enormity of my problem:
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;~)
My home page:
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" In walks the village idiot and his face is all aglow; he's been up all night listening to Mohammad's radio" W. Zevon
Not terribly picky Bill--one of our club members has talked us all into building a bunch of P-38's for a reunion of his dad's squadron, and 1/72 seems to be the scale preferred for this endeavor. I don't want anything cheesy, but I don't want to spend a lot either. I'm completely unfamiliar with the quality of any of the P-38's in that scale, so.... I think he said they were all G's and J's if that helps narrow the field.
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. --Leonardo Da Vinci
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