Yeah, have to agree with most of what John said.
Of course owning a hobby shop doesn't help, because now I don't have to pay retail or Ebay prices for what I want.
My own personal stash I think is in the 700 kit range. Which is large, but not as large as a few people I know. One guys has probably over double that. One guy in the Moncton club said he stopped counting at 3000, and that was 4-5 years ago, and he only builds automotive subjects.
My own collection is fairly diverse as I tend to build pretty much anything. But I too have a finite amount of space to store them. The more I buy, the more I have to decide on what to get rid of, because there is only so much space, and when I look at the stash, every kit has a plan for it, so it becomes harder and harder to weed out some of the older kits, to make room for newer ones.
Sometimes it's not hard, for example, for years I had 2-3 versions of the old ESCI T-55 kits. In it's day, it was the best T-55 kit on the market. Then along came the Tamiya kit, but at the time, I couldn't really afford to shell out $60+ for the kit. In the process I did some work for a US aftermarket company, and build a couple of the Tamiya T-55s for them to show off some of their upgrades and conversions, and it burnt me out of building the kit for awhile. Few years down the road, I got one for a decent price, and since I have had the shop open, I have proceeded to get 2 more, as well as a couple of the other different versions that Tamiya makes (Enigma, Ti-67), along with a few Legend upgrade kits to convert the plain jane T-55s to other variants. So now I have long since sold off the ESCI kits, and many other kits that newer better versions had come out over the years.
As far as collecting. Certain vehicles I really like, Challenger and Challenger II, LAV type vehicles, Abrams, lately I have been more into the modern Soviet/Russian armored vehicles, but also have other collections of models like Nascar, probably 50+ different Nascar kits. Ferrari, I think at last count, I probably had 32 or 33 Ferrari kits.
We laugh when we say that it is a "sickness", or an "Addiction" (on this aptly named website), but in reality, to some, (me included) that is probably true.
However, like my wife says, she would much rather have me addicted to this hobby, than if I was out every night at the bars drinking, or getting into trouble. At least with this, she knows where I am, and at the end of a build, I have something to show for it.
Of course with the stash, and the business, I don't build nearly as much as I would like to, and have many kits that are in progress. I know some people will look down on that and say I can't finish what I have started, but I look at it this way. If I start a kit, and loose interest halfway through, rather than force yourself to finish it, likely rush through, and do a less than happy job on it, it is better to box it up for another day, and choose something else that is holding your interest at the moment.
One other thing that I think grows people's stashes a bit (and I am guilty of this) is the box art. A really well done box art will sell the kit, whether or not that kit turns out to be a decent kit to build or not...could be the worst kit in the world to build, but if the box art is killer, it will sell. That is where "cool" factor comes into play.
Ok, didn't intend to write a book here, so I will close it down there! LOL
