I wish Tamiya would repop every single discontinued kit to kill the market on out of production kits…greedy mother f*ckers.
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Sadly things are worth whatever us addicts will pay…
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eBay doesn’t set those prices; the sellers do.
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Yes I know…the sellers are the mother f*ckers…I just hate ebay on principle.
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I hate to say it but it bears repeating:
”The value of an item is established when money changes hands.”
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Even when they set the starting bid at a penny, the market will set the eventual price as bidders try to out-do each other. I have my own limits on things, and I reckon I watch maybe 100 items for each one I bid on, and win maybe 1 in 10 of those. The vast majority exceed my limits long before the bidding stops, and I just don’t bother adding to the fruitless dog-pile…
I figure my stash is big enough that I don’t actually need any new kits, so missing out on silly priced items is no biggie…
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I will only bid occasionally. I look for “Buy it Now”. Those prices are usually around the retail prices on other sites. I also look for kits that are “free shipping”. That is how I save money. I use PayPal Credit almost exclusively, and budget that into my monthly expenditures. It all works great for me!
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I definitely hear what your saying. I paid nearly $50 for Tamiya’s original 1/35 Tiger 1 early kit last year. The vintage 1970’s King Tiger was nearly as bad. Price of the nostalgia build. I remember when one couldn’t sell these for $5 in the 1990’s.
Any particular old Tamiya kit your seeking? Hit me up by direct message if you’d like me to check, I have a few vintage Tamiya kits that need to find a good home so they can get built.
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I’m looking for any 2009 Yamaha YZR-M1 and the Red Bull RB6… probably not in your stash…lol. thanks
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You’re right!
Fresh out of both of those!
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I don’t suppose you’re trying to do Webber at Monaco?
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No not exactly… don’t have a plan as of yet. Just trying to gather some pieces to fill out my collection.
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I would hope that Tamiya would take extravagantly high prices on ebay as an indicator of a market for those kits. Certainly not every out of prod kit would be a good seller but there are some i.e. LRDG truck that would sell.
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In defense of eBay sellers, I’ve found many things that I could have gotten nowhere else.
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I have a couple Model Factory Hiro kits in the stash .
These kits aren’t cheap . Recently they did a re release of a 1/9 Brough Superior motorcycle on a pre order basis so I pulled the trigger. MFH also made a sidecar kit for this but long out of production/inventory. I found one on eBay from a vendor in Japan - priced at about $100 over the original cost so I pulled the trigger on that as well .
Paid with PayPal and received notice from seller acknowledging the order and that I would receive notice when it shipped. After a couple weeks with no further communication I contacted the seller for an update but no response. I contacted eBay and we gave the seller a week to respond- no luck there so I started the refund process which was simple and quick and finally an email from the seller blaming all on Japan post .
I later saw some more MFH kits listed on eBay from same seller . One OOP kit that retailed somewhere in the $ 500. area originally is listed on eBay for -
better sit down for this one - $ 94k . That’s right folks- ninety-four THOUSAND dollars !
I smell scammer .
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Could it be a money laundering scheme?
“This big heap of money comes from selling a ridiculously valuable plastic kit on ebay, scouts honour officer!”
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Ha ha - I just saw the price went up -
now $ 99,999 .
I’ll take two .
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Free shipping?
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A free night with his daughters?
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Hmmm, could be… But please to be sending all your stashes to legitimate Prince of Nigeria for kit laundering. 
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