Friday, May 01, 2015

Acquisitions and disposals

I am trying to make sense of my "holdings" of kits - otherwise known as my "stash". I have always been anti-stash - especially as I could see what happened to many modellers through contact via my shop. It seems that some modellers aren't happy unless they count their kit numbers in the hundreds - sorry, should that be thousands? I had a conversation on Sunday where the ownership of 500 kits was deemed normal - sorry Kelvin - grin. On the other hand, I have known a man in his 80s tell me of his stash of 4,000 kits (yes I will spell it out - four thousand). On asking him how many kits he made a year, he admitted to 4 - 5. I went on to ask if he was aiming to live to 450 or maybe 500? I think that he saw the point.

My stash is very small - smaller even than my wife's stash of jigsaw puzzles.  At the time of closing down SBX, I was on a Fleet Air Arm line and stocked up with a supply that I could get whilst I still had a trade account. It hasn't diminished one jot since then. I have currently decided to leave aircraft alone for a while so these are all sitting on the top shelf of my wardrobe along with a few other aircraft kits. As you will be aware, I have been on a car jag recently and am finding my self imposed stash budget under pressure so I think that I will be disposing of what I have put aside in the hope that the income might ease my car burden. This also means that I have two very nice CMR resin kits to go - one Blackburn Firebrand and one de Havilland Sea Venom. These are very nice kits - nicer than a lot of short run plastic but I don't think that I will be making them 'ever'.

So, what do I have at the moment.

1 x Fujimi 1967 Ferrari 330P4 1/24th
1 x Fujimi 1970 512S 1/24th
1 x Fujimi GT40 (Dan Gurney 1966) 1/24th
1 x Tamiya racing Jaguar MkII 1/24th
1 x Tamiya racing Mini-Cooper 1/24th
1 x Revell Monte Carlo Rally Mini-Cooper 1/24th
1 x Revell Shelby Mustang 350 1/24th
1 x Fujimi Tyrell P34 6 wheel F1 1/20th
1 x Tamiya Lotus 49 (Jim Clark) 1/12th
1 x Tamiya Lotus 49B (Graham Hill) 1/12th
1 x Tamiya Lotus 72D (Ronnie Peterson) 1/12th

The only aircraft kits that I am planning on keeping are:

1 x Revell Hawker Typhoon 1/48th (to go alongside my 1/144th and 1/72 versions)
1 x Eduard Lockheed P-38Js over Europe special edition

The only armour kit still to be around is the Tasca 1/24th PzKfw III for which I am planning on acquiring the metal barrel set.

I have also been acquiring all of the requisite Zero One paints for the cars so I have the green/yellow Lotus set, the red - white - gold Gold Leaf Team Lotus set, the Rosso Corsa Red 300  for the two Ferraris and the Alan Mann Racing set of red and gold for the Dan Gurney GT40. All of the tobacco sponsorship decals are in their boxes and in pristine condition so that should be alright.

We shall see how we go with all of this. To finish, when I put in my order today for the Gurney GT40 and the 512S, I shamefacedly told my wife that I had extended my stash of cars. She then told me that she had bought another 5 puzzles - so that's alright then!

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