Some of you have mentioned getting kits off of Ebay. I’ve looked quite a few times over the past year and have yet to have found anything that isn’t either overpriced or overbid.
When looking for the Tamiya 1/16 Tiger I, the prices were higher (even from Hong Kong without shipping) than what I ended up paying from an online shop.
By the time you add what people charge for shipping on Ebay, I almost always seem to see the same kit at the LHS or GreatModels cheaper.
This isn’t an anti-Ebay rant, I’ve found a ton of stuff at great prices, it just seems that I have yet to get any great deals on kits. Too many people shopping for the same stuff I guess.
If not in Hong Kong ,… avoid buying from there , period !
The shipping will be more than the kit itself !
I have gotten some pretty good deals off EBAY , you just have to shop around .
There have been bad experiences from what I hear from others I have had none myself .
I hear where you’re comming from. I bought one or two kits off of e-bay about two years ago, but since then, it hardly seems to be worth it. Plus, there are just too many people out there that have way too much money on this kind of thing apparently. I see items starting at the below 5 bucks range, and in a matter of a day or two, skyrocket to 30+, with still a couple of days left in the auction. i’m tired of the price wars, and I’ve not ever really found one kit that was ‘very cheap’, hence I haven’t used e-bay in more than a year now.
Avoid the bid war items ,… I am sure you could find these cheaper elsewhere .
On websites somewhere , perhaps even your local hobby store .
Unless you really need it , I would not go this route .
i’ve had good experience… got my Tamiya Fruhe tiger for a total of 26
got my alanger t-35 doe 25
got my bishop DML for 19
i watch and see and calculate the shipping, and if the end result is the same as a LHS, then I don’t bother…
I don’t see the point of buying an in production kit on E-Bay and spending the kind of money that people seem to be spending. I can kind of understand if you’re looking for something out of production or extremely rare that you just have to have. That kind of occasional expenditure can be justified, I think. But to spend twice as much on the kit and shipping because you can’t wait a couple of weeks for it to hit the stores is insane.
Maybe buying a whole kit and paying shipping from Hong Kong to the US or elsewhere is bad, but I got some wonderful PE from Voyager, shipped from Hong Kong for my Dragon 251/7 and the shipping was comperable to stateside and I got it in about 10 days.
But I agree, having just gotten back into modeling, I thought I’d buy a bunch of models at auction sites on the WWW and after checking prices for a couple of weeks decided that was a fools game.
It’s good to hear that I’m not missing something. When I was looking for my 1/16 Tiger, I tried for a month or so and saw that most sold for $550-600 plus shipping. the Hong Kong ones would add about $100 on top of that for delivery. I finally got it from a place in Maryland for $560 including shipping still in the huge outer cardboard Tamiya box from Japan.
It never even saw a shelf, let alone sat in some guys overheated attic for two years.
When I did buy off Ebay, a Tamiya BMW and Zimm tools, both times I thought ‘Hey what a deal’, a few bucks for the kit, a few bucks shipping, can’t go wrong. Until I was in the LHS and saw the kit on the shelf for $4…Or the Zim tool for $10.
Not burned, but still not worth it.
For a guy like me, who lives in a small town and has very few options in kit buying, eBay is great. I got my Tamiya Bradley for around $20, where my only other options would have been a 3-hour drive to Hobby Island or $40 at the local Hobby Lobby. You have to pick and choose carefully, and I don’t even bother to bid on an auction unless I can calculate the shipping.
For someone whose LHS is actually local, eBay may not be the best option.
While it is true that some models quickly exceed their value on E-bay, if you shop around you sometimes can find good/great deals. In the past month I have picked up four Sherman based kits off of e-bay for under retail value (including shipping). Well, now I have at least admitted to my addiction to Sherman tanks. I guess I will either recover or go broke.
I agree with spector822002 and pmm736. Don’t use ebay for “hot” items or in-production stuff. If I decide to bid on something, I set myself a limit and stick to it. This strategy usually doesn’t win me the item but it avoids getting into “bidding wars”.
Sniping is my biggest complaint about Ebay. I know I could easily do it. I know there are services out there I could use. But I don’t and if I need to snipe to get something then I just wont feel good about it when I get it.
As a side note…in less than 30 minutes searching the Internet, I have found every kit specifically cited in this thread for LESS than the prices paid on e-Bay and all of them from reputable retail stores (not individuals).
I know there are those who swear by e-Bay - in fact millions of people. However, I’ll never be one of them. It’s just not worth the risk.
Rule #1 about buying on eBay, “Don’t pay too much, another one will be coming around soon.”
If you shop smart and use online stores like Squadron.com as a benchmark, you can get great deals. I have gotten great deals, and in the early eBay days when I was still a rookie, probably paid too much for something I could find online elsewhere.
Got my 1/16 Tiger from Hong Kong arrived within 7 days to the UK I paid 200 dollars for it, I have just bought the King Tiger of the same guy for 160 dollars, these are the static display kits very hard to find in the UK so far no problems at all.
Getting bargins on E-bay takes time and patience. to get a real bargin know what you are bidding on and its “hobby store” price…
I’ve bought a lot of my kits from the local hobby shop… HobbyTown USA, but I also keep an eye out for those deals too good to pass up…
my personal rule… Is to always add the shipping cost to the current bid… if the combined total reachs Half the Store price its “bargin factor” starts to wear thin and unless its something I really want or can’t find I will stop bidding…
some of my better deals are a Tamiya Duce and a half… for $16, Revel Pro-Modeler Ju88a for $10, M8 greyhound for $14, Total and a few others.
The best bargins are the ones where the person selling seems to be selling off someone’s collection and they have no idea what to ask… in this situation luck comes in handy as everyone seems to pounce on these sales.
I havn’t gotten burned by a bad sellor yet though in the early days of my e-baying and model building I made a bad purchace or 2 because I didnt’ really know what I was buying…
Books can be found faily cheaply too esp if they sellor uses media mail… though i’ve got a couple where they changed me the $3 and something regular mail rate… then sent with media mail and I guess they called the rest of the money “handleing” …
The main thing is to keep an eye out and watch what your interested in.
I have always had great luck buying on ebay, but I usually look for really odd or hard to find stuff, never really look for anything specific as far as kits go, I just start looking for whatever is going to be sold within an hour or so and keep an eye on it, sometimes I put things on my watch list and get lucky.