Check this out !
Didnt know they were THAT scarce.
Bidding is up to AU$250 (about US$200)- 45 bids already with a day still to go. Hmm… might have to invest in one.
Wish I had about 4 of that kit to sell, I’d be rich!!!
Brian [C):-)]
Hmm, I only paid $45 for mine.
I only paid $19.95 for mine
WOW…but wait - there’s MORE!!!
It comes with its own “Limited Edition Plague”…outstanding.
Would that be the Bubonic, Hemorrhagic, or Glandular?
Jeez, man…how many cool kits or tools could you buy with $250 in your pocket? Plus, it IS an AMT/ERTL kit…Eduard/Tamiya/Hasegawa it definitely is NOT…
$250 Aussie dollars… $192 US dollars…
Perhaps a bit steep, but it’s nothing to get excited about.
And it may not be super scarce, but it’s scarce enough to make it a much sought after kit. I sold mine at a show… the fella asked me to hold it while he went to an ATM. Several guys who’d been eyeing it up throughout the day saw it behind the table and asked me if it was sold. One guy offered to pay double what I was asking… then the second guy kept saying, “I’ll pay ten more than him”. A third guy got into the action and before I knew it they had their own little auction going on in front of my table. It was rather entertaining, really…
As the old saying goes… “A fool and his money…”
But then if you really want something and have the money to get it, I don’t call it foolish. I say more power to 'ya…
Fade to Black…
I suppose a model run of 15,000 kits is smallish, when you circulate them throughout the entire world. No doubt there is one canny entrepeneur out there with a basement full of them. The question for me would be, if I outlaid that much cash, would you build it or keep it as is ?
You also have to wonder how many ebay sellers snap up that stuff and resell it a week later at a higher price. This is one reason I hate Evil-bay.
Air Master
Yes and no… depends on whose standards one goes by. But one thing that many folks do not take into account is the fact that it is not necessarily the number produced which makes a kit ‘scarce’.
There could be ‘only’ 15,000 of any given kit made. But if they’ve all been purchased and are, for the most part, tucked away in basements, cellars, garages or in car trunks, then a fella who missed the boat first time 'round may find it rough going in trying to find one… even a couple years after production stopped, nevermind a decade.
My Dad understood this very well and had three of these kits in his collection, as well as a couple of the regular edition. He planned to build at least one of the regulars, keep one of the specials for himself and sell the others after he retired, by which time he anticipated that they would have appreciated in value quite a bit. Unfortunately he never made it to retirement and it was I who wound up raking in some mad crazy loot from selling the extras. I think he would have been startled had he known how much some people are willing to pay for a stinkin’ model kit… I know I was.
Anyhoo, when one of these does show up for sale somewhere nowadays, often times it’s a feeding frenzy… especially on epay. Sometimes you can get lucky and find somebody selling kits such as this one at a show or a flea market for cheap because they have no clue as to what they’ve got. But such opportunities can be few and far between.
Oh, and if ya’ll think that $200-$300 for this particular kit is alot… keep your eyes peeled for a Contrail 72nd XB-70. The one that was in my Dad’s collection could have payed for a downpayment on my next car…
Fade to Black…
I remember when that kit was first released and didnt think it was worth the $20 then , so i passed it up . O well .[sigh]
I alwas baffeld by the prices that some kits fetch. I don’t think I will ever pay such a high price for a kit, for two reasons:
-
my stash (100+ kits) is big enough for the next 20 years. So I already have enough to build.
-
As long as the molds are not destroyed or damaged there’s always the chance of a reissue. I always find it funny to see how kits prices drop after a reissue. Or how vac form and resin kits get dumped after a injection kit of the same aircraft has been made. (At the nationals this year I saw kit’s like the DEKNO FK-51, AMT Millenium Falcon, Dynavector Wyvern etc. beeing sold off because there are newer ander better alternatives)
Rare?
Yea, right!
“Rare” kits come up , usually like this<
nowt for years, then, 1 that goes for $200 plus,
the 2-3 more within the month for $60-$80,
Then someone puts one up at $250+, no sale!
then they settle down to $40-$60, 2-3 times a year
then the mfr re-releases it at $35-$40!
then I buy at $12!
Mind you, it’s a good way of picking up a cheap resin to practice on before risking, say, a CMK Tiffy bubble-top
Jon UK
It’s only a Hobby, isn’t it?
Wadya mean OCD?
A LOT of them do that. I’m on ebay all the time, and I know which kits they’re going to go after. A few examples are:
Hasegawa 1/72 F-4G Wild Weasel (there’s one on there now with a buy it now price of $65.00) These are always big ticket items…
Hasegawa 1/72 F-4S “Hells Angels” aka Triple Nuts…sells for at least 35.00
Hasegawa 1/72 RF-4B “Black Cat Special”. I bought mine on ebay for 12.00…there’s one on there now for $39.00
Hasegawa 1/72 F-14B “Santa Cat” …forget it, this one never goes for less than $50.00
Hasegawa 1/72 A-1H “Special Bomb” this is the issue of the Skyraider that has the toilet bomb…usually sells pretty high.
Any Fujimi 1/72 RAF or Royal Navy Phantom is usually a highly contested, but not always ridiculously expensive auction.
AMT’s KC-135 family is ALWAYS an active auction…if you live in the States, you’re better off looking for them on the shelves…you’re much more likely to find one collecting dust in a store than pay a decent price on ebay. Among this group of kits, the KC-135R is usually the one that brings in the highest price. There’s two “Laser Lab” -135’s on the top shelf of my LHS…maybe I should snatch them up and get greedy… [:-^]
The thing with these auctions is that whenever you see a kit go for a high price, the next day there will be five of them listed with an opening bid set at nearly the price that the first one went for, and they don’t sell (hmmm…I wonder why). If the seller really wanted to guarantee a decent sale, they should list it as “buy it now” for 60% of what it sold at in the high auction.