I’m just really curious how often you buy models, either back when you were younger and now.
I want to apply my own rule of building 3 and buy 1… but my behavior is to build 1 and buy 3 lol.
That’d be me if I had the money lol
Well,I bought 2 in 2020 so far.I have a stash of 30-40 right now of most kits that i wanted,and there is nothing in my mind right now that is on my list to buy.I will eventually get a Tamiya P-38 but not now,it will just sit there anyway,got enough to build.I don’t buy just to increase the stash,I don’t binge buy,I am more of a targeted buyer.No impulse buying.
I keep a small supply of 6 models and after I build one or two I order one to replace each one I built. So averaging it out I would say I probably buy a model every couple of months.
I have tried to do similar to John but i spread mine throughout the year. I aim to only buy half the number of kits that i build in the year. This year i had bought 6 new kits by the end of Feb, and then last week i just ordered my first 2 since then. So now i need to build a few befopre i allow myself to buy any more. We will see how long i hold out.
When I was a kid, I guess there was a routine or a frequency. I’d get a kit as a Christmas present and as a birthday present, and those are roughly half a year apart. And I had an uncle who’d take me to the store (Kiddie City) and let me pick out a kit. That was probably once a month. And when I was old enough to have my own money (paper route), I bought myself a kit every few weeks, maybe once a month. I guess it was finish 1, buy 1.
As an adult, there’s no frequency. If I feel like it, if I’m focused on a particular subject, then I may buy a couple of kits that fit the subject. But I have gone for long stretches in which I didn’t buy any. I’ve bought far faster than I build. Now, I’m looking more at getting rid of kits, because I know I’ll never get to building them, and I have no place to display them.
I buy about a model a month. I believe my average build time to be about six weeks. If you look at the stash growth rate (leaky bucket differential equation) that means my stash grows at a steady rate. I am trying to reduce the input flow a bit, but not sucessfully so far.
As A kid it was on and off, pretty much as I had the money. As an adult, ditto Baron. I buy when I see a subject I want or off my wishlist as I have the means to do so. Mostly what I buy now is AM for the kits I have.
Shows are a completly diffrent story. I’ll grab as much as I can depending on the deals. If fact, I was able to scratch 5 off my wishlist last year. Now I’m working on getting the AM for them.
I never knew what a ‘stash’ was until after I returned from hiatus (like most everyone here) and joined up here several years back. Swore I’d never have one. What a silly concept, a pile of models to build someday, thought I. Oh, maybe one or two kits for a rainy day…
Uh huh. Right.
That hasn’t worked out quite like I had planned. Unlike Tojo, turns out I am quite the impulse buyer when it comes to kits. I’m more like John, (build one, buy 3). Another of those realitiies not exactly matching the vision things.
My buying habits have evolved over time. As a kid it was go buy one when I had enough spending money to get one. As a young single adult, it was go buy one when I felt like it, build it, then go buy the next one. Early married life when things were tight was to squirrel away a few dollars here and there to eventually save up enough for a kit that I wanted. Then came a more affluent time and eBay… models could be had at real bargain prices and my wife and I were doing really good paywise at work… what had been a stash of a dozen or so kits multiplied like rabbits. The good times ended like for many people and it was back to squirreling away a little cash when possible and bargain hunting. But now I was in model clubs where guys would bring in some of their stash kits to sell off. So my stash continued to grow, but at a slower rate. Nowadays finances are better, I have a pretty extensive stash, and my purchases are mostly of the few previously unreleased subjects that interest me which come along every so often. Not the latest rehash of a subject that has been kitted repeatedly for the last 60+ years.
I really don’t buy kits any more. I already have neither the time to build nor the room to display what I already have.
I am quite happy with the decisions I’ve made.
I’m not a very serious modeler, I guess. There’s other things that my disposable income goes to, mostly improving my domicile.
Bill
There’s definitely something to seeing a kit that you want, and buying it, and then just looking at it, thinking about building it, how much fun it’ll be, etc, etc. And you buy it, and if you don’t build it right away, it’s just another kit in the stash (with apologies to Pink Floyd).
I know that I’ve gone on binges to buy kits, for specific collections or themes. For example, I was on a yellow-wings kit, especially after I saw Accurate Miniatures’ F3F and SB2U kits, and Classic Airframes’ Goshawk and F4B-4 kits. So I picked up a bunch of those. That was almost 20 years ago; those kits moved with me to my current house in 2002.
Next was a collection or theme of “All US Plane Types Used at Midway”. Then I read “Doomed at the Start”, and started acquiring kits of USAAF aircraft in the Philippines at the outset of the war.
And I’ve got a stash of 1/72 Italian fighters from WW II, and 1/700 kits for the theme of “Our First 10 Carriers”.
All that time, it was fun to think about building them, but I’ll never really finish them all, nor be able to display them all.
So I may just take a table at a show some day and unload them, so someone else can enjoy them.
My jobs when I was growing up allowed me to get what ever I wanted. Not huge, 1 or 2 every couple of months, mostly 1/72 planes and other things. As an adult, especially in college in the early 1970’s I moved into armour. I was really lucky, 1/35 tank models were just starting to appear in numbers. I had a friend who worked at a hobby shop and he would feed my growing obession. So I learned all about Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi, Otaki, etc. My part time jobs were good, my rent and other bills were OK and models were inexpnsive. So in 1976 I moved to Denver, I had beginning stash of 9 unbuilt kits, many built, maybe 20. Others I had given away. I got married had a Daughter, kept modelling, I then had about 40 kits in the 1983 period of time. I also got into IPMS then. Got a divorce, kept modeling, again my job was great, the collection kept growing. Now the stash numbers in the hundreds maybe thousand. I’ve been remarried for 20 years, still good friends with my ex-wife, my daughter loves my models. She gets me stuff for holiday etc. My buddies at IPMS are all good friend with me. We have club meetings at my home, until COVID. Soon, we will start again.
Now I hardly ever get anything new, or old. Have done a lot of it. I have a fantastic local hobby shop I’ve been using for decades, Colpar Hobbies. We in Denver used to have many more shops around. I worked part time in one 40 years ago. You should see my collction. I have amost every thing that Tamiya, Dragon ,Academy, AFV Club, you name it . There’s my partial biography. Boring.
Hi JimiJimo!
I used to buy about two a week till I went in service. Then about one every three or four months. Became a civilian and my model buying went crazy! In 1982 I had three barn shaped 12x14 foot sheds filled to the rafters!. Natural disaster forced the sale of all of them.
Started again in the late 90s and now have a large stash. Buy models now, No! After Market( P.E.and such ) yes. Model railroad scenics that can be used on scratch-built Tankers and Freighters, Lots. At least four or five a month. Sometimes as many as six or seven at one time. They add up to maybe one or two expensive ship kits every two or three months.
When I was a kid, the limiter was the allowance I had in my pocket, plus the lack of information about what was out there (pre-internet/smartphone days). But then, things seemed to move slower back then anyway, so it all balanced out. I built what I bought on the same day. I never had a storage problem, because every New Year’s Eve I’d go to my friend’s house and we’d blow up all our broken models.
As I got older, like many others, I started buying better and more expensive kits. I still blew up the old ones up until high school, but by college I stopped. I began to appreciate finished models more, and once I started a full time job, I realized I could afford pretty much anything I wanted. This was the start of the Stash. I pretty much much bought anything that caught my fancy whenever I saw it, and so the Stash grew.
Contests and trips to Japan were another source of model purchases, especially the trips to Japan, where Tamiya and Hasegawa kits were 1/2 price compared to the US retail. I would go nuts and buy as much as I could fit into my suitcases. But as time went on and the Stash grew, it became obvious that there was a limit to what I could hoard. The last time I went on a trip was the 2018 IPMS Nationals, and I brought home only two kits, one of which was for a friend.
I still buy whatever I want, but temper the “buy this” finger by asking myself if I have room for the kit. There are certain things that break straight through this feeble resistance, like Airfix’s upcoming 1/72 Avro Vulcan B.2.
The real deterrent for me now is the fact that I have witnessed several modeling buddies passing, and they all left behind enormous numbers of kits (which dwarfed my own but that’s besides the point). Helping their families try to sell off the kits has been arduous to say the least. My sister told me that if I did that - she’d kill me. I don’t know how she’d do it, but I believe she would find a way to deal me a second death!
and perhaps buying books?
[;)]
Yeah, I just got a good one from Arcadia Publishing (the little brown ones).
“World War II Shipyards by the Bay”.
I’m working on a paper about the Mission class T2 tankers.
Bill
I started building at the ripe old age of 6. My 2 uncles kept me supplied with everything until I got old enough to make my own money. I bought whatever I wanted when I had enough money which started a stash that has kept growing for the last 73 years. I stopped buying kits about 8 or 9 years ago when I started going to contests. Then I only bought a kit if it was something special for me. Instead, I just bought raffle tickets at the shows. At 3 or 4 shows a year, I usually brought home at least 2 or 3 per show (which comes out to $10 a show. I have built around 5 or 6 a year, which means that my stash has still grown over the years. At the rate I build now, I still have enough kits to last a good 200+ years. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the man upstairs will let me take them with me to the Great Workbench In The Sky (if I get there).
Jim [cptn]
Stay Safe.
Very impressive, Tickmagnet - calm, controlled, selective - like a trained marksman. In my head I’m like that too, but, in reality, I’m more prone to bursts of rapid fire! A recent Korean War theme led me to buy the new AFV Club Centurion Mk III, Tamiya’s 25-pounder & Quad, and Tamiya’s Churchill mk VII. Of these, only the Churchill is yet built, but the theme has expanded to include British tanks generally. Thus, I have Tamiya’s Challenger 1, (completed) Challenger 2, (unbuilt) and Valentine (on the bench). And a new (long) list of “must haves” - Matilda, Crusader, Vickers Light & Mediums - oh, and Airfix are bringing out 2 new Cromwells this year! And, as for the Battle of Britain build, I’ve only got the Hurricane finished - where will it end? Of course, there is also the “ooh, that’s nice” category to contend with (Tamiya SAS Jeep, Airfix Beaufighter TF10, Revell U-boat Type VIIc (1/72)). Oh, and the V-Bombers (all 3, still boxed).
The stash currently stands at about 25 or so, and it needs to be controlled. Mrs 6390 hasn’t said anything yet, but I can see her expression when The Delivery Man Cometh. Must…build…faster…
Happy modelling,
Hutch.