Small Scale Military Headquarters

a long long time ago i thought i bought 3 spits and trade 1 open one and the 3rd vanish ..

5 years later i found her new unopened in my collection... i am saving her for my son

Must have been like my collection, five boxes on top of it and five boxes in front of it. Have to move things around every 2 years or so just to remember what I have.

Must be quite a collection to loose a plane (or rather several planes) like that. I sometimes misplace an action figure or two, but never something that large

Sheesh, these threads are nothing without pics! lol

hotrodrock wrote:Must have been like my collection, five boxes on top of it and five boxes in front of it. Have to move things around every 2 years or so just to remember what I have.

i bet most guy who been collecting since day one when 21st open have the same number of planes.. it also does not help when monkey did there dump sale.. man i almost fill up half the garage with that sale... also when broke then.. thank god the sale was once in a life time...

BD One, when I first saw your post I said how could you misplace something like a Spitfire?
Well I just found an Indy Troop truck and a 21st 251 / 22 pak 40 halftrack both unopened in the attic. You kind of got me thinking.....didn't I have another 251? Thanks man, it might have been years before I found them.
As for the Monkey dump.......I opened that sh-t up as soon as I got it......none of that is missing.

Black_Dragon_One wrote:a long long time ago i thought i bought 3 spits and trade 1 open one and the 3rd vanish ..

5 years later i found her new unopened in my collection... i am saving her for my son

Kind of like finding gold !!

Again !!

pickelhaube wrote:

Black_Dragon_One wrote:a long long time ago i thought i bought 3 spits and trade 1 open one and the 3rd vanish ..

5 years later i found her new unopened in my collection... i am saving her for my son

Kind of like finding gold !!

Again !!

it funny yes.. 6 or 7 years a go i knew i bought it but forgot were i place it... and i thought i had everything in my head... lol...

and figures for get about it.. i have marvel, gi joe, ect...

i left my collection at my parent homes so it was all box up.. i would buy them and store them or just open one...

going through my collection i also found my f16 that was on sale badcat when that thing was cheap...

it has been years since i really went through my inventory and see what i have bought


i forgot i was missing the barn house and the french ruin...

other wise... ya it complete...

thanks to the guys on this board for helping me fine those missing peace that never came down to orange county...

aviator nut also supply a lot of the peace

but wally world was the best... tru... main history...

it is sad that 21st went belly up.. we could have more good time....

I too had forgotten what i had bought in the Walmart feast of planes. For instance untill looking I didn't know I had both a "Peg O My Heart" and a "Jabo" P-47's in the old Motorworks red boxes. Nor did I know I had a "Big Beautiful Doll" P-51.

Ya know there's 18 karat gold then there's the 24 karat gold. I looked through my Spitfires a while ago to see if by chance I had a "DWK", but unfortunately, well not so unfortunate, I had two "NKK's", a "4Q" and a "ZPA".

No "DWK" to be found.
Which one did you find?

You guys who were in on the Golden Age break my heart. I've gotten most everything I want, but still haven't found a reasonably priced Spit or Cobra ... the last two major holes for which I don't even have one example ...

It seems so strange to me that some people have so many hidden away that they don't remember what they have !! I really don't see the point of having them if you cannot display them and enjoy them.

.......I dunno, just my way of looking at things. I guess I will never understand the thinking behind hoarding or speculating !!!

Snake Man wrote:It seems so strange to me that some people have so many hidden away that they don't remember what they have !! I really don't see the point of having them if you cannot display them and enjoy them.

.......I dunno, just my way of looking at things. I guess I will never understand the thinking behind hoarding or speculating !!!

i bought so many because one of these day i get a bigger house to do war game and or story mode with my camera

I don't call it hoarding or speculating. You have to remember most of us guys who bought our stuff back in the old Walmart days paid $39.00 each, or in the case of my second Spit it was on sale for $25.00. That was high for us then, and we bought them because we loved them. In most cases I just wanted one of each scheme. No different than your typical Star Wars, GI Joe, one of every figure vehicle collector. They still make excellent display pieces even if you don't take them out of the box.

Yeah we just happen to luck out when 21st went out of business our stuff went up in price. You want to call it hoarding and speculating you're just sour grapes.

I never thought of it as hoarding or speculating, if I had the chance I would of bought extras also, as it was I missed the good times of 1/18, but have managed to get a fairly nice collection in part to the so called hoarders and speculators here that have sold some of their collections.

I'm glad they bought extras.

i can tell you these r great bunch of guys and 1 girl lol... many of the member help each other out in the hay day

I had the same attitude about what I thought of as "hoarding" back when I got bitten by the 1/18 bug a couple of years ago -- why would someone buy all that stuff and keep it stashed away in sealed boxes? Since then, I can see a few things in myself that could have ended up that way if I'd been lucky enough to have been into this back in the Golden Age. I now have six or seven "NIB" items stashed away.

Partly this is a function of having searched long and hard for an item and happening on more than one at a price I was willing to pay right around the same time, sort of a "shopper's momentum" thing. The other is a function of having ideas for custom projects that I won't get to for a long time. (I've got at least three very clear notions for F-104 customs, so I've been grabbing them lately).

What does still "bother" me a little is the thought of all these models that have been lovingly preserved in sealed boxes for so long that, as collector's items, they can't be opened and displayed without seriously undermining their economic value. As someone who was once into full scale semi-classic cars, I encountered the same feeling about some cars that were just too valuable as collector's items to drive.

In the case of the cars, though, there was a very well-established base of knowledge that you could look to to determine just how rare a car was. We know EXACTLY how many 1953 Corvettes are left, so a collector can make a completely "rational" decision about the economic impact of putting a few more miles on his museum piece (and risking the nightmare of some idiot hitting it). What I wish we had in the case of 1/18 was at least a rough idea of how many "NIBs" are left of the rarest 1/18 items.

What's cool about the 21stC planes, in both 1:18 and in 1:32 is that you can take them out of the box by sliding out the whole tray the plane is on, untie the twisty ties, put them together, display them, then when you want to, take them apart, put them back in the box. All that is not original is that you have cut the scotch tape on one end of the box.

Many here do that because of a lack of display space. A rotation if you will.

They are so rare that it really doesn't matter to a buyer who want's one when you decide to sell it. As long as the plane is not damaged or missing parts.

On the other hand because of the way the inside of the box is constructed you can't do that with the 1:32 BBI Dauntless and Wildcat. It's a one time deal as the box gets destroyed just to get the dang plane out.

But anyways that's the beauty of the 21stC planes. I keep all my boxes of the ones I open, and put them back when I'm done displaying them.