I remember thes kits well, they got me into armor. Of course they were quite a bit more affordable then. Do us modelers really miss our youth that much to pay so high a price for a kit that rates fair at best? Would you pay so much for a piece of your past?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2588&item=5960270810&rd=1
Wow!! i bought that kit at the old D&C store downtown,I think for like $3.95. Of course gas was $.43 a gallon but still!! I don’t know, it’s that ebayitis and collectamustus that drives those prices.To each his own.[%-)]
The most I’ve paid for a kit from my past has been $50. It was for a resin kit of the animated Fantastic Voyage Voyager. This was the one kit that had the most meaning for me. but I don’t have a problem paying 30 to 40 if the kit has some meaning. Otherwise, I try to keep prices around 20 or less.
Don
Man that is a lot for that crappy kit! I paid $5.00 for it back in the 70`s at a 5&10 store.
I remember it and the others like it. Somehow the box photo was always so much more than I could make the kit.
And no, it isnt woth 70 bones to me just to have an old yellowed box with a few abstract memories in it.
HOLY $#!^, I wouldn’t pay that much for that kit. But I only build kits, I don’t collect them, so although they’re not worth that much to me, they may be to a collector
For future reference, here’s the item description “1/32 MONOGRAM OSTWIND FLAKPANZER IV SEALED c1974” -
so far, $71 with 14 1/2 hrs left.
I guess there’s really no way to put a price on someone’s sentimental value. I can’t see paying that much to build it, since there are better, cheaper alternatives out there, but as a collectible, who knows? Maybe the people biding that much know something we don’t. After all, how many of us (or our Mom) threw out our baseball cards?
Ouch…No I wouldn’t. The seller got himself a bidding war even though one guy’s only fired one bullet. I know I’ve seen that kit at model shows go for a lot less.
I am currently bidding on an old Hawk kit, but I bet I won’t bid the rent money to get it, no bidding war from me.
I don’t know if it’s really a matter of sentiment. I would think that collecting is probably the reasoning behind this. I myself would never pay that much for a kit from my past. I built a Revell space shuttle and boosters as the first ever kit I build, and I found that same kit recently, but delivered it cost only $15, so it was not overboard.
71 bucks for the Flakpanzer?
An LHS down the street that specializes in old stuff has the same kit sitting on the shelf for about $30 USD!
It’s not so much a matter of old stuff being expensive as it is about taking a good look around and finding the best deal.
I just bought Monogram’s 1/32 Screamin’ Mimi M4A1 Sherman, also for about $30 USD, just for nostalgia’s sake. Worth every penny! I still have four that I built in the mid-seventies.
I also recently bought the old Aurora MBT-70 for $50 USD, and am now having a blast accurizing it (pix coming soon). Nothing sentimental about it, as this is the first one I’ve owned, but I really wanted to build an MBT-70, so here I am!
Oh, and I did buy a Maximillion kit (from The Black Hole) for about $40 USD, which is indeed a trip down memory lane! I’ll be building him soon, too.
So, is it worth buying old kits?
Only the buyer can answer that question! [:D]
ok- say you drop $75 on it…then what?? PRobably not build it. Stare at it?? Put it in a closet? What fun is that?
I’ve never paid that much for a kit from my past. I do have some of the kits from that line like the Screamin’ Mimi (paid $9.99 when Squadron was clearing out the reissues around 97), the M4 Hedgehog (ran across it for about $15 at a show) and the PanzerSpahwagen (from eBay last year for about $20).
If you look long enough, you will always find another. These bidding wars always occur when two non-savvy eBayers bid for the same thing. Best thing to do is to just track the auction until the final 10-15 minutes and bid in the final minute.
I agree that you can’t put a price on nostalgia, I love it myself. I’m not an expert, but wasn’t Aurora like the bottom of the barrel. If I’m correct I had an IS III and it had wheels and tracks as 1 piece.
I really had a ball making the Monogram kits. I had so many of them and they were easy on the budget. Then Tamiya’s Pak 40 got me rolling in the right direction. So many great memories. Perhaps the memories are priceless.
I agree Jason, nobody would build it, just recall the goood old days.
Actually, some of the old Aurora stuff was pretty good. The MBT-70 I’m building now is fairly accurate shape-wise, but has a lot of simplified (or simply left off) detail and a goofy suspension gimmick that’s taking some work to accurize. I have the M4A3E8 and M46, and they’re both pretty good, too. I have the Panther, but I can’t recall how good it is…it’s been a while! All of them had seperate wheels and tracks. I’ve never seen the JS-III, so I can’t comment on it.
In a time when these kits were eyepopping new releases that everyone wanted, it’s easy to appreciate how far the hobby has come, dragging us all with it. Nothing is priced too high for the person who has the disposable income and wants the item. You’re either a builder or a kit collector, you can’t be both. If you are collecting kits, you are making an investment, which means you love $ more than the hobby. If you’re a builder, well, you find away to get the cash to get what you want, and you put that kit together.
And the world turns…
Steve
I’ve got to agree with J-Hulk, Aurora had some nice, state of the art kits in their day. Many of their science fiction kits from television series were top notch at the time and still hold up nicely. Many have been recently reissued by Polar Lights to include the Land of the Giants Spindrift, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Seaview, and several Batman related models.
Personally, the one vintage kit I paid a relatively large amount for was the old ITC T-92 US Airborne tank. That kit cost me $24.99 + s/h but is a really a neat andd rare kit. There were only two prototypes of this tank made. Only two companies made models of it. Hawk/Tamiya Moeki did one in 1/48 scale, and the ITC one in 1/24 scale (the one I have).
Okay, I’m perhaps wrong about the Is III being Aurora. I believe it was about 1/48 scale and it had the one piece tracks and wheels. Anyone have a clue as to the brand? I got it say early 70’s.
Aurora did a Stalin. It was a kit made in the 1950s. It had vinyl tracks. Compared to a kit designed in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, it was down right primitive. It was 1/48 scale.
Lindberg did an old Stalin as well. Another ancient kit that originally had one piece track/suspension assembly and little wheels underneath powered by rubber bands. It was 1/64 scale (if memory serves me).