Thomas Bischoff
I consider it wisdom to ask questions like yours … and that you struggle to change from model builder to kit collector.
Just one other thought: you may sell the 33 1:72 Bf 109 and buy 3 in 1:48. But … how long until it would be 4? and maybe some more?

Tony May Autor
Thank you very much for your thoughts! That's a really good question regarding the Bf-109 (P-51, P-47, Fw-190, etc.) issue too.

Last night, not long after posting this, something else came to me though. Why do I NEED to switch to 1/48 scale for this? Granted, it'd be easier on my eyes, but it wouldn't necessarily help with my space restrictions. It would also increase the overhead cost of the hobby by increasing the consumption of paint, thinner, etc.

What is wrong with finally just culling the herd to the select few kits that I want to represent the type to be built on my shelf? IF, down the line, I feel I want to build something else then I might buy one to build immediately but make a personal rule that no more of those, which I've already selected as examples, are to be put up in the stash. It has to go from my front door direct to the workbench.

If I keep that personal rule in place, knowing just how many kits I already have to build, it should work as a pretty good deterrent. Especially since I'm pretty obsessed with masks & gun barrels. It'll be hard to get all 3 at the same time now that de minimus exemptions are gone & duties are a concern even with casual international purchases. Few hobby shops in the US can be found to carry all 3 in any manner of consistency.

What are your thoughts on this decision?

Doug Craven
I think there is a great deal of wisdom in your insight. I have an asked myself, why am I doing this hobby? What am I hoping to get out of it? I hope you won't mind if I share a recent experience:

My friend asked me to come to the house if someone he knew from community theatre. That man had gone into long-term care and his house needed to be cleaned out. my friend asked me to come and help sort the man's model kits to see if there were any that were worth anything, so that we could sell them and make some money for the men's care.

You wouldn't believe the state of the place. It was packed with stuff. We found rooms of old kits. They were stacked in closets, piled up on shelves and in cubbyholes ..., my friend even found some in the basement ceiling. All together there were about 400 kits. And surprising thing? A lot of them are duplicates. For example he had two huge Lusitanias.

I was determined that I wouldn't end up going into a nursing home and leaving a big pile of unfinished kits for my family to deal with. So I went home and started to build, and I've been cranking them out about two a month since then.

Not sure if this connects to your idea or will be helpful. But it was certainly a revelatory experience for me.

bughunter
I'm building nearly 1:48 only, because the finished models in 1:32 are much to big (space needed) for my taste and 1:72 is too small to show good details. For me 1:48 is the best compromise.
But if you say you want to go to 1:48 because of your eyes I think this move will not help. As I mentioned the bigger scale has much more details so you end up with more parts. The size of the parts is may be comparable to 1:72, but shows more details. Of course this is not valid for some big parts like fuselage and wings, and not for all models, but I think it is a general trend.

Paul Shearer
I had I similar revelation a few years ago my self. At the time I was building both aircraft and armor and the smattering of 1/24 scale autos. But I realized that in my wildest dreams I couldn't get through 10% of the stash I had amassed and after thinking long and hard I decided to limit myself to my favorite area of history, namely the wars of the middle east and in particular the IDF. So now I have a reasonable (well, more reasonable 😂) stash of IDF and Arab subjects in 1/35 and might actually be able to build half or more before my end lol

Ben M
I've been refusing to let my stash go above 100 which is too many. So now I have 95. I would like to get below 90 and then set that as the max. Unfortunately I just bought a kit on eBay so I will soon have 96. I better get building.

Tony May Autor
Doug, I can well imagine the state of what you found in that man's home! Years ago I used to speak with a pretty prolific builder & kit review writer. He also had a small aftermarket company with some products you can find on this site. When I was still in my lower twenties he invited me to come to his place for the weekend to help him with "organizing his stash."

He sent photos of his "stash." His large basement had rows upon rows of metal shelving & kits were stacked on them from the floor to the ceiling. I don't remember seeing any ships but I know he had 1/72, 1/48, 1/32 & most especially 1/35 scale kits of every shape & size. He admitted that he knew he had at least 4,000 kits with many of them being outdated or duplicates that he'd never build. He said that he'd send some large "care packages" to my address for my trouble.

I was incredibly overwhelmed by what I saw. I hadn't even been to a hobby shop with that many model kits in it before. He had a fair sized workbench in one corner of the basement while on either side of the basement stairs there were glass enclosed shelves (glass shelves too) with many of his builds on them. A small part of his display area was devoted entirely to awards he'd won over the years at model shows. In the end I never made the trip to his place both because of home & work scheduling as well as simply being overwhelmed with what I saw in those photos. That would be some heavy duty work because there was no semblance of order. A weekend? More like a week.

As far as my stash goes, it's pretty overgrown, especially if I count those that I passed onto my son. Quite a number of them have been alleviated of their model boxes, bagged, tagged & stored in large storage totes. My son & I both refuse to store them in the garage where the temperature cannot be maintained. Therefore they have essentially taken over an entire closet out of the 4 in the apartment. When either of us wants one in particular we just look to to the stash here on scalemates & it'll tell us exactly where it is. I never intended my stash to grow to this size. It really started going out of control when I was receiving cast-offs from other modelers or gifts from people quitting the hobby faster than I could build. I used to average 20-50 models a year but then I got into aftermarkets so now it's closer to 10-15.

However going into a nursing home with all of those kits left behind doesn't sit well with me either unless I have it arranged in advance for someone I can trust to help my family liquidate them to pay for my care and/or funerary expenses at least? I certainly wouldn't be needing them at that point.

Tony May Autor
bughunter, you are very correct! I think what I wanted to convey was that I wouldn't be dealing with parts as small as say ... crosshairs in 1/72nd scale, that sort of thing? That & I would save a lot of money on aftermarkets because there's pretty much enough detail, for my satisfaction, with what I've seen of 1/48th scale kits straight from the box. Otherwise though, switching to 1/48th scale isn't a silver bullet if you opt to go the whole 9 yards on aftermarkets for those too. I admire your dedication to Great War aircraft by the way. Once upon a time I wanted to devote as much time & research to that subject as to what I devote to the 2nd World War aircraft.

Tony May Autor
Paul, that sounds like it was a real important revelation for you. Looking at your stash it really does look like you brought that monstrosity you described well under control! Originally I only built WW2 warbirds with one or two outliers that were just random things I wanted to build. What started me on the slippery slope of expansion though was one model the missus came home with, wanting to surprise me. It got me to thinking about other periods of history & it just sort of snowballed from there.

I've cut back to "only subjects from 1930-1980." Then after my son was blinded & he returned the Great War planes to me I added them back into the build list, though it wasn't going to be the comprehensive selection I'd planned back when. When I start actually culling the flock now though it's going to remove a lot of planes from brushfire wars or conflicts that I only had a few planes to represent it.

Tony May Autor
Ben,

That's a good practice to keep I think, unless you're one that likes some subjects you'd only find as limited run kits. In which case it's kind of hard to avoid when you've got a limited window to pick those up.

That's the other thing that eats up a lot of my build time; Limited run, vacuform & resin model kits.

Anyway, yep, get building, friend! Don't be like me! 😉

bughunter
Tony, your stash has "only" 3450 elements. That is not big enough for the Top 50 here: scalemates.com/cool-facts.php?page=largest-stash
so nothing to worry about 🙂

Tony May Autor
bughunter - I'm burning through the morning figuring out what's to go & what's to stay at the moment. This will take days, maybe weeks, to figure out, localize everything & either sell on Hyperscale or eBay.

bughunter
By the way, nice of you to mention my models. But I've also expanded my range and now build colorful jets as well.

Tony May Autor
I've been trying to expand into those same areas without steering too far away from my "fixed period" for building. The missus loves when I build colorful trainers & the like so I've been trying to add them as I go. 😉 She'd positively LOVE if I did Tiger Meet schemes, I bet.

Doug Craven
Wow Tony. 4000 kits. That's wild. Thanks for relaying that detailed story. Very interesting.

Ben M
I prefer doing trainers and stuff like that with more colorful color schemes. I've gotten a bit tired of green and NMF, but I still do some of that.