It was a Jumbo Collection Sale - What's in the Box?

Unless you've been living under a rock the past fortnight you'll have no doubt heard of Waffle's latest and greatest Collection Sale which included 600+ Boeing 747s. My small contribution towards relieving Waffle of the burden of this monster collection has just arrived so here's a sneak peek of what lies within this monster box. These models will no doubt feature in blog posts in the coming months so keep your eyes peeled for them!

Despite having a room for my collection fitting in 747s still poses a significant problem, especially when they are the fifth most common type in my fleet (with 49 of them prior to this sale). Of my current 747 fleet 28 represent US Airlines and 9 of those are Pan Am examples. Of the remaining 21 - 5 are Asian (not including Chinese), 4 are European, 4 Chinese, 3 African, 2 Australian and 1 each Middle Eastern, Canadian and South American.

The other thing that makes collecting 747s in 1:400 a challenge is the variability of the moulds available. The best are the Aeroclassics and Big Bird Mark 1 examples followed by the Apollo, Aviation 400 (series 200s), newer Gemini Jets. The older Geminis and Dragon Wings/Jet-X show their age but can still be nice whereas the Phoenix and JC Wings moulds are almost universally rubbish. Sadly for the past few years Phoenix have made far more 747s than everyone else and the best moulds have been almost unused.

The most sought after Aeroclassics and BigBirds are very hard to find and tend to command very high prices, which is why this sale was a godsend to so many. Personally I tend to feel uncomfortable spending large sums on an individual model. Out of my entire collection I've only spent drastically higher than the original purchase price a handful of times. Volume is more important for me when there are so many good models to buy. That means my purchases weren't hitting the most expensive models listed - but there was still plenty of choice.

I splurged on 13 747s at this sale - the cheapest of which was only USD$18 before discount and the most expensive $45. Compared to some of the models going at around $100 (still a good price) I was slumming it a little and my haul reflects that a bit. Here's what i got:

I'm intentionally keeping it a little vague so the future blog posts keep their freshness but as you can see the breakdown by manufacturer was:

• 3 Aeroclassics
• 1 BigBird
• 7 Gemini Jets / Sovereign
• 1 Dragon Wings
• 1 Aviation 400

The Geminis were all bar one on the newest moulds and I'm keen to see how they look. Personally I think the later Gemini moulds look pretty damn good. By region the breakdown looks as follows:

• 4 USA
• 4 Mainland Europe
• 3 Chinese
• 2 UK

How many can you identify from the above photo? There were lots of wonderful models I had to let go and I'm happy to see some of my friends snapped them up. I myself overspent quite drastically and unless I happen to find a few grand hidden down the back of the sofa I really need to tighten the purse strings! Let's see how that works out!!