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Ships for sale.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sutty
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Sutty

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Hi. I have completed 6 ships. Has anybody tried to sell there completed ships.
 
Sutty said:
Hi. I have completed 6 ships. Has anybody tried to sell there completed ships.
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Yes, I have built and sold numerous tall wooden ship models: HMS Mayflower, Cutty Sark, (2) USS Constitutions, HMS Victory just to name a few and have shipped them through out the U.S. and a few to Canada. I have also built R/C boats that I have sold, traded and donated over the past 30 years.
 
There used to be a internet site called Tall Ship Models inc. that was owned by Morey Benton in Canada, which went defunct a few years ago. You could post picture of your built model on his site and once it sold, you paid him a commission of 15% if memory serves. I received commission work from his site as well like building a USS Constituion for an Insurance Corp. in CT. Another USS Constitution for a Internet Software comp. in New Jersey. But the trick is, you have to Package and ship them, which I quickly got very good at. Back then shipping was not nearly as costly as it is today. I could pack and ship a model through UPS, FEDEX from $50.00-$75.00, but now it would cost three times that price. The last R/C boat model I shipped last year cost $150.00 that doesn't include packing materials.

Now The rule of thumb for pricing a built model back in the 90's was 20 times the cost of the kit, but now a days with kit prices 4-5 times the cost that they were back them is not justified. To give you an idea of what I usually get for a finished model breaks down to about $1.00 an hour for my time.But this is only if it's a build that I chose to do. Now if it's a commission build, my fee is around $5.00 an hour for my time. So if I built a Cauldercraft HMS Victory, which can easily take 1500 hours, my price would be $7500.00 plus the cost of the kit and additional supplies, so the total could reach $10,000.00. Don't be fooled by those ship models you see on ebay for a few hundred dollars and free shipping, they aren't the same quality by far.
 
Even $5.00ph is pretty cheap, isn't it, more love than money. I don't think I'm anywhere near the selling or being commissioned league anyway, but I was just curious as a while back a company asked if I might make a model for them (using 3D design and printing) but backed off very quickly when I started explaining that the 3D design work alone was likely to take hundreds of hours. Neither would I relish the packing for a finished ship, I break things on my current project just by looking at them!
 
Yes, in some ways $5.00 an hour is cheap, but to make any money on a hobby that you enjoy doing is quite exceptional.For the right model to the right person, they would be willing to pay up for it. I had built a Billings Danish training ship called the Danmark and kept it for a few years on display. I later listed it on Craigslist and a CEO of a Danish west indies trading company bought it. He flew a plane into my local airport, where I met him on the tarmac and transfered the plane to him, he loaded onto his private plane and I then watched him take off.
 
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