SCALE MODELS: ARE YOU A BUILDER OR A COLLECTOR? OR IS THERE A THIRD WAY?

 

THE SCALE MODEL PASSION divides pretty neatly into two worlds - the craft-driven hobby of scale modelling, and the collector-driven desire for a ready-built collection. 

COLLECTIBLE DINKY TOYS MODEL AIRLINERS

The Guernsey Model Show included some highly collectible Dinky aircraft, including replicas of several airliners dating from the 1950s, a transatlantic turboprop Bristol Britannia, medium-range Vickers Viscount, and the turbojet de Havilland Comet. At the time, the real aircraft were leading-edge four-engine machines, the Viscount in particular being a big success, with 445 being built. Yet today, just four airworthy Viscounts exist, and no flying Comets or Britannias, though the Comet-based Nimrod patrol plane is likely to be in service until the 2020s.

However, Dinky Toys miniatures of these aircraft are available in fair numbers, and represent an appreciating asset for collectors. As ever with collectibles like these, buying what you like is the best plan - even if prices drop (unlikely with Dinky Toys) you've still got a desirable item.

Prices on eBay are a good guide to achievable values, and for a good condition Comet or Viscount with box, you can expect to pay north of £100.00 GBP ($167 USD). A Britannia is rarer and you are likely to pay around 50 percent more, but whatever price you end up paying, any of these will make a fine addition to your collection.

Find out about Dinky Toy and other diecast values at Toymart Auctions here.

SURPRISE COLLECTIBLE GEMS

Always keep your eyes open for goodies - here’s a quickie trio of pictures, snapped in a tiny little corner store, whose main trade is in refurbing old ‘white goods’ - washing machines, fridges and the like.

The store owner turned out to be a keen collector, with a loft stuffed with desirable items. The ones in the shop were just a convenient overflow spot to thin out his collection.

You never know, there might just be that little item to make a collection sing - in my case, after some hard bargaining, I strolled out with the tinplate motorbike!

Making money: Is there gold in your garage?

If you’re anything like me, collecting model kits seems to go at a rather faster rate than actually building them. So far as available time is concerned, many people are at a serious disadvantage, and actually complete no more than half a dozen items a year.

What that means is that storage space for all those boxes can become a problem sooner or later. This happened to me a while ago, when I went into the garage, looked at the floor-to-ceiling ranks of kits stacked at the back and thought, “There’s no way I’m ever going to build that lot”.

So, what to do? Well, like many others have done, I decided to give eBay a whirl. I have to say that there was lot more to it than meets the eye – descriptions, pricing, photos, postal rates and more. And all have to be tackled and mastered. It’s quite a steep learning curve.

But the upside is that once you get going, you find that there really is a world-wide market for your cast-offs and, better still, most people are interesting to meet, even if it’s only by email. In the six months of trading it took to empty that garage, I got to know people as far apart as Slovenia and South Africa.

The best discovery of all was that those unbuilt kits had a value (albeit fairly unpredictable!) and that they went to keen model makers, who had the time and interest to do better things than leave them mouldering away in a garage.