My Basement Collection: These Poor Models Never Made it to the Big-Time!
I am sure some of you have a few models laying around the house, and/or workshop, that just never got any attention. These are the "Hanger Queens" of the Modeling World...LOL. Something is broken, Missing Parts, Bad paint-job, mediocre effort, failures, dusty, and just no room to properly display. You thought so highly of them at the time but then they just faded away to a dusty death. Some that may have been good for the day but now it does not compare with your current work quality. Some the cat just knocked to the floor and now the landing gear is missing.
Well, this article is dedicated to my collection that meets the above attributes. They never got any love but still worth showing. You spent good quality time building them, good money buying them, and at the time had such high hopes. But for some reason this collection never made it to the big time.
I invite you to add pictures of your models which also meet the above criteria, those Hanger Queens which you once loved and hoped for a masterpiece, but they just could not hack it. BTW I have a lot more then the few pictured here. Those did not even make it to this showing...LOL!
Nevertheless, an impressive collection of "wannabe's", IMO...I'm sure we all got the same "collection" (or at least, HAD the same collection). 🙂
Hey Paul ,yes I have had some of these most of which I have punted on on ebay ,some of yours look O.K. to me especially the dios and ships/subs but as an idea for future projects all of these can be re-done and it is a lot of fun, remove all the fiddly bits landing gear, armament ,canopies etc then rub down the decals and thick paint then prime up and your away.
Cheers and thanks for putting my mind at ease that I'm not the only one with a pile of old rubbish lurking in my mancave ! 🙂
Thats is exactly what I have been doing. Its why I even have pictures of the dust queens. I have actually written articles on this site of some of the re-done work. ALL sold on Ebay. The only ones I dont re-do and/or sell are the ones with no replacement parts. I just re-did a German U-Boat featured on this site a few weeks ago. Came out really nice and sold quickly for good money. Have many many more with no current photos, or just to dusty to touch.
Almost all the models pictured in this article have been cleaned up and sold already.
You have CG-51. Thomas S. Gates in there, Paul. I was part of the commissioning crew on her at Bath Me. Commissioning was at Penn's landing in Philadelphia That was a long time ago. When I heard of her decom I felt as if a long lost friend died..
Nice to hear u recognize the ship, not my best work. I have a huge collection of modern 1/700 ships like the CG-51 both NATO and Russian. I had taken a break from model making, Then my son wanted to play with toy ships so I started throwing together models that were purchased for him only to play with. I therefore did not try my best b/c he would just destroy. But I started putting more and more into each ship build and stopped letting him play with them, he lost interest, but I kept on building, getting more complicated with each build. That is how I got started back into crazy, out of control, model making after a 3 year hiatus due to model burn-out. Wish I had pictures of all of the ships...huge collection. Maybe 20 or so. In a plastic crate. May just sell the collection someday.
Paul, good to see I'm not the only person who has a collection of what I call my "Pre-model days" models. I learned a lot from these builds, and sometimes its just hard to get rid of old friends !
Eww! Ugggly! Phew! 🙂
Time to break out the Easy Lift Off and take them back to original plastic and demonstrate that you have learned your lessons.
Have actually done that with a few of them when they are in one piece and/or I have replacement parts. I recently posted the German U-Boat which was a re-make. I still have many built models that are so dusty the paint needs to be stripped, but they are nice models. Just no pictures of them. They will most likely be fixed up, re-done and sold at auction site.
Paul, is that a DC-6 (or a C-54?) in military markings and a Convair 240 / 340? Worked on both, whose kits are they? Wait, Martin 404?
Most of my old relics have been lost in various moves and the rest have been contributing spare parts from my junk box for years.
Hi Jaime...good questions. If my recollection is correct the model was marketed as a C-54 and the USCG markings are OOB. I believe it was a 1/144 Minicraft/Academy model. The Convair was a 1/144 kit boxed by some small limited-run company but I dont recall the name. Could not tell u the exact variant Convair. Do recall the decals are also OOB.
If you need the space stick em on the bay. Lots of folk cant build kits and would love to have them on a shelf. Just a thought.
Good suggestion Anthony. I actually do sell all my models on Ebay if they are not commission builds and therefore sold already. Some of the models pictured are already sold. Thats why I even ended up taking pictures of them in the 1st place. If they are broken and cant fix I dont sell. I need to be very careful w/ Ebay b/c I do sell a lot of high-end, museum quality stuff, and have built a good customer base. If I sell to much junk associated with my seller name it could wreck my reputation as a high-end seller and people will not trust the better stuff with higher prices. So, I do have a box of decent but broken stuff waiting to be fixed. I have very little collection left in the house.
Good stuff. Yeah I understand how you have to be careful with buyers for sure.
I'm with Neil - I think that dio is still waiting to happen!
Thanks for posting - but I think I'll keep my hanger door closed!