The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Six Airfix old-style boxing (80s?). Cannot remember the third sailing ship.

It's a common occurrence to see unmade Airfix in charity shops, so I try to make it a habit to scan 'toys'.
CNG

Nice find there! I'm a regular trawler of charity shops with a few lucky finds like a Revell Lanc and Tornado . My two favourite treasures were the recent Airfix BBMF Fighter collection part started and bought for a tenner and my 1/24 Airfix Harrier GR.1 also acquired for a tenner. Worth checking the puzzles and games sections too.

They also sell kits on the Oxfam website although some of thier prices are not so cheep. Worth a check though!

They often go quite cheap as well due to the store owner not knowing anything about them and how rare some of them are.

Here in Farnborough, model kits are rare finds in charity shops. Any kits I've found in such shops have tended to be elsewhere. For example, I picked up the Revell 1/144 Mir space station in a charity shopp on the Isle of Wight a few years ago and last year I came across the 1/72 Airfix Spitfire PRXIX in a shop in Devizes.

I did find a Corgi Black Arrows Hawker Hunter in the Farnborough British Heart Foundation shop.

I did find the Airfix WASA once. Had it in the stash for a while so sold it!.

I regularly check out the local charity shops and, a couple of years ago, came across a sealed Airfix Vulcan and a Matchbox Victor amongst about eight kits. Unfortunately, due to lack of space, I bought them with the intention of immediately selling them on eBay. They went the same day for a total of Au$150 (about GBP100) which, seeing as I paid Au$30 for them represented a nice profit.

More recently, I was in my local charity shop and I spotted a plastic container stacked with models. Mostly they were bagged kits but I did get a boxed Matchbox EE Lightning and Me410 and an Airfix Firefly, an Academy Avenger and Wildcat and a couple of old Frog kits. And some kits from manufacturers I didn't recognise. There was also a number of Novo repops which all seemed to be from before they had screwed up the moulds. I am currently working on the Whitley. Oh, and some Squadron vacform canopy sets. I spent about Au$80 on 19 kits and three sets of vacform.

I was feeling really pleased with myself and I was talking to the woman behind the counter about how I regularly checked the shop for kits and she told me someone had been in three days previously and spent Au$450 (GBP300) on kits. God only knows what I missed out on.

Cheers
Springy

I've never seen any models in charity shops. It just doesn't seem to happen around my area.

I'm a charity shop hunter.
I've found a fair few but only bought 4, Airfix RAF Recovery Set, Revell Dambusters Lanc, FW190 and Hawk 200 both Matchbox.
I've seen a few others including an Airfix Buccaneer marked up at a hilarious £45!
I can't imagine they had any idea weather it had AM parts,masks and platinum plated pilots!

MDT wrote:They sell kits on the Oxfam website although some of thier prices are not so cheep. Worth a check though!

What do you type in the search box?

Several times I've thought that if Oxfam think it's a scarce item or collectable, they slap a tenner on it so it ends up being at a ridiculous price.

latest additions to the Charity Hunt List:
Hobbyboss F-16C £5
Italeri Horsa Glider £5
Italeri SR-71 £2
Airfix Gnat £3
Zvezda Mi-35 Hind £10
I've been looking for a Zvezda Hind for quite a while wondering which version to get and at just over half the price with paints for my Mrs and other bits inside I couldn't resist!

My best charity shop finds in the past have been an Airfix 1/24 Spitfire part started for free and a 1/24 Harrier boxed and not started for £7 I also found a Frog 1/16 Vauxhall Victor Estate part built for £4 so there are good finds out there you just have to keep looking and be lucky.

splash wrote:My best charity shop finds in the past have been an Airfix 1/24 Spitfire part started for free and a 1/24 Harrier boxed and not started for £7 I also found a Frog 1/16 Vauxhall Victor Estate part built for £4 so there are good finds out there you just have to keep looking and be lucky.

True words there Splash. You sift through a lot of 'looking' dirt before you find model gold. They don't turn up very often at all but when they do....
I found a 1/48th Revell Harrier GR.9 in the local Cancer shop. I nearly crushed it grabbing it from the shelf!!