Lucky Strike!

I've been eyeing Marktplaats (Dutch Ebay variant) lately on a daily basis, to see if people are offering cheap Me-109's and Fw-190's that I can use for my late war German airfield board I will build someday. Cheap as I will be building them as hulks. Lowball bids of 2.50 for a kit, and sometimes I'm lucky. Most of the time I'm just amazed that people dare to ask the same for a secondhand, decalless kit as a brandnew one in the shop. And they wonder why they don't sell.....

Anyway, here comes a lot of 18 aircraft in a box, mostly Hasegawa and Fujimi, (quality stuff so interesting) WW2 (ok, correct period) asking price 35 euros including shipping (double interesting, plus alarm bells cause this price just ain't right, waaaay to low). Some jokers are already in a typical Marktplaats bidding war, outbidding each other with cents, bloody ridiculous and insulting to the seller IMHO. So I pop in a bid of 40, for fun to see what happens, and to keep it low as I have no idea what is in it, it might be half built stuff or stuff I don't need, the listing isn't very clear. But at moments like these asking for a list is time wasted, so what the heck. 2 hours later an email. I won, please transfer the money to this account and it will be shipped asap. More alarmbells, I won? Already? Well, at worst I'm being scammed out of 40 euros, so hey, why not. Asked him to deliver it at work and then started the waiting game. An email the next day, the money was in, he was going to post it the very same day. And lo and behold, the next day a big box gets delivered at my office....

Moment of truth. During my lunchbreak I popped open the box. Nah mate, this can't be truth. Slowly checked all 18 boxes, with my mouth opening wider and wider with every box. 18 boxes, all mint, like they came right from a distributor. Some had their price tags stuck to the paperwork inside. 8 euros for one small box, 23 euros for a couple of fighters, and then some with the guilder prices still on them, on immaculate boxes, so you know how old these are. 70 guilders for a 2 engined bomber, which even back then was a lot of money for a kit. A quick look sorted these as 4 for 10 euro a piece, 11 that would be 20 euros minimum and 3 bombers that I've seen ranging from 25 to 40 up, and a lot of these seem to be discontinued. Some of the fighters and bombers have a band across the box to celebrate 1945-1995.

So I'm looking at least 360 euros in retail worth of kits. And I just won it for 40 euros. And you know what the biggest joke is? I have no use for Japanese aircraft! I don't do Japanese in 20mm as it is a very rarely gamed army in my parts, so I don't have any need for these.

Ack, life can be funny sometimes......