Once I saw the Shep Paine dio on the side of the box I was hooked. I remember I went home and must have read that insert about 10 times trying to figure out How I was going to copy what he did. Of course my rendition did not turn out nearly as well as his but I was very proud of it. I distinctly remember cutting out the individual roof tiles/shingles and trying to match them to the pictures. Damn that’s when model building was real fun, before AMS kicked in and we started to worry about if this or that was correct or the right color. Still fun but the pure joy born of ignorance is gone.
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Airfix 1/76 Chieftain. Happy days. Airfix poly in the small metal tubes open using mk1 incisors🤪
I bought both at the same time in the early 80’s
Tamiya Pzkw IV
Tamiya T-34/76
They were hand brushed,I believe I did the Panzer whitewash over gray.Both were destroyed by fireworks perhaps 5 years later
Trumpeter’s KV-2, back in 2013. I was in my 20’s, so a bit of a later start than most here. Never even painted it, building it was enough enjoyment, and I figured my paint job would have been garbage anyway.
Believe it was Monogram’s 1/48 UH-1D, turned out a hot mess, met its demise on a 4th July when I was a kid courtesy of firecrackers. Around the same time there was a Revell Space Shuttle that was pretty impressive size wise which I tried to handbrush all that flat black cause when you are a kid you just dont know better…
I remember the first armor kit was either a Nichimo Tiger 1 from 1964 ( the most inaccurate kit I remember to this day) or an a Aurora Panther.
The actual kit was as out of proportion as the box art.
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First armor kit? How about first, second, third and possibly fourth armor kit? That’d be this bad boy right here:
And as you can see I still have a few floating around the stash. I started my nephews in the hobby with this very kit a few years ago as well. And if the Zombie Apocalypse happened tomorrow and we suddenly couldn’t order anything more online, I’d build the hell out of these and be happy doing so.
I remember emulating Shep Paine’s mods - the repositioned bogies, the bent (albeit slightly melted) fenders, the extra stowage… Somewhere in the mix I got the Monogram Sherman and my very first serious attempt at a major conversion was doing the one piece transmission housing out of Bondo. Man, my mom was not pleased with the smell in the dining room.
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There was a small hole in the bag (I was too excited to notice it) and one of the front wheels was missing…Bad start ! 
H.P.
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First kit i think was a 1/72 Revell or Italeri Mirage III with Swiss marking,in my early age any plane of the Swiss Air Force I saw flying over my house was a Mirage even if ad a propeller… 
First Armor was the Tamiya german sdkfz 251/1 ,all brush painted in Humbrol 67,same color for the figurines…was a very dark blob of paint and glue 
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The ancient Revell 1/40 Sherman.
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I’m not sure, it was when I was in 6th grade (1965). I’m thinking it was a 1/48th Aurora Panther I got for a birthday gift. After that it was mostly Monogram 1/48th planes until they released their 1/32 armor kits. I did a Renwal Ontos. First kit I ever binned. The gun tubes kept on sagging and my solution was, “it must need more glue” and promptly turned it into a BIG mess. Also remember a motorized Sherman that ran on the floor over pillow hills and crashed into green army men. Memories…
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Military Modeler, I remember that old rag of a magazine! It was the only military model magazine fairly available to me back in the day! Eye ball copied a wooden flak tower in balsa wood from an issue. Good times!
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Nice topic and an ever better read so far!
My first kit ever was a car from Revell (90ies Camaro Z28). Painted it with the only color I had available, a kind of glossy red and glued it with paper glue… until everything fell apart a few days later when touching it again 
First armor kit was the Matchbox 76th scale Jagdpanther (already under the 90ies Revell license but still in Matchbox markings). Hand-painted it with Humbrols.
First 35th kit was a few years later an Italeri Panther (can’t remember which one) which I tried to place in my first diorama: A North Africa setting! 
So much for accuracy issues back then…
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My first armor kit was the Aurora King Tiger in 1/48th scale, around 1966. Later I discovered the Monogram 1/35th scale US armor kits that were rereleased that year. Three years later, the Monogram 1/32nd scale armor kits started to appear. In 1969, I also splurged on the new Tamiya kits. notably the King Tiger, Hunting Tiger, Panther, Jagdpanther, followed by the Tiger I and M60A1, when they appeared in 1970. Dabbled in a few 1/76th scale Airfix kits, but they had the bad formula vinyl tracks that destroyed the styrene road wheels (rot-a-track, we called it). Sheperd Paine’s model building leaflets included in the Monogram kit rereleases in the early '70’s were a revelation to me. Never looked back…
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Seems that, while already an old man, I am still younger than the average here 
, never saw those Monogram, Nichimo or Aurora models.
My first 1/35 armour was Tamiya Ford Mutt:
(yeah, I also love the new forum copy&paste feature for photos!)
Before that, I had built a lot of aircraft and some 1/76 tanks, mostly Matchbox.
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I don’t recall the kit but I have spares of the Mutt kit and DAK Kubelwagen so probably one of those two was the first armor kit. My first model I recall building was the AMT Star Trek bridge kit.
No paint and I am sure a glue bomb mess and then I recall a Monogram F-20 being melted and dying in a ball of flame. An A-4 Skyhawks in grey and grey tiger strip is mixed in there too. I think I have parts of that hand painted fuselage.
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Blockqu
So was mine…maybe a couple of years earlier! In those days Airfix armor was going for about .59 $…that’s right, 59 cents!! And they all eventually got blown up with firecrackers! 
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Me too! Cast hull, easy eight suspension.
Built it in the very early 1960’s. The decals named her “Black Magic”.
I don’t recall what I had to pay for mine, but I’m sure I paid for it with money from collecting up soda bottles, so no doubt much less than a dollar!
At only six years old, it would have been a great and difficult financial decision, too… comic book, candy and a soda or buying that model (only my second or third, no doubt). Timing would have been a big issue, too. Between issues of my fave comics would have certainly timed things in favor of getting that model! LOL!
Mine was an Airfix Sherman in about 1976ish…for some reason I then did about another 4 or 5 Shermans exactly the same…
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