My stash just grew again (2016)

[PR19_Kit]

How cheap are these discounted kits at Home Bargains then?

[Chris Payne]

How cheap are these discounted kits at Home Bargains then?

£2.99 each.

[JayBee]

Well I have three Home Bargains within easy reach, 1 in Irvine which is about 9 miles, then go East about six miles to Kilmarnock where there are two branches.
To-day is Sunday which means that as we are in Scotland they are all open, so this morning I did the rounds of them.
Not a single £$%&+^"! model in any of them.   

[PR19_Kit]

According to the Home Bargains web site the nearest branch to me is 13 miles away in Stroud, but they're ignoring the fact that there's a darn great river in the way! So Mrs_PR19 and I went to the one in Cwmbran today, which turned out NOT to be where they say it is, but we found it eventually and I denuded the place of every Airfix kit they had, all three of them........... 

So I got a Spitfire 22, a fabric winged Hurricane I and an old type Spitfire V, but I like that one anyway. And what a bargain price too! 

[Weaver]

Well I have three Home Bargains within easy reach, 1 in Irvine which is about 9 miles, then go East about six miles to Kilmarnock where there are two branches.
To-day is Sunday which means that as we are in Scotland they are all open, so this morning I did the rounds of them.
Not a single £$%&+^"! model in any of them.   

The one in Edgeley near me never has model kits in when the rest do. I think the managers have some discretion.

[The Wooksta!]

A solitary Airfix Spitfire F22 from Home Bargains, Gateshead.  They had plenty of Typhoons and Dauntlesses.  Tempted with the Typhoon briefly, but I've got one Airfix new tool plus a few Hobbyboss ones.  It's not an aircraft that really floats me boat.

[NARSES2]

Well I tried Home Bargains in Sunderland and they didn't have any kits at all. When I asked the young last stacking shelves she didn't seem to understand the Queen's English 

We don't have any down my neck of the woods so it doesn't look as though I will be taking advantage of the offer

[Martin H]

The Wellingborough branch of Home bargins was raided this morning.

I gained 3 Typhoons Ib's and an FW190A8 as a result. My dad picked up some targets as well.

The only kits it had left post raid was a bunch of Cromwell tanks.

[The Wooksta!]

Well I tried Home Bargains in Sunderland and they didn't have any kits at all. When I asked the young last stacking shelves she didn't seem to understand the Queen's English  

We don't have any down my neck of the woods so it doesn't look as though I will be taking advantage of the offer

You're wrong.  They had a solitary PR19 when I got there around 2.50ish.  I looked about four times and a store assistant picked it off the shelf - it was end on, hence me not seeing it.  Needless to say, it's now residing with the rest of my Home Bargains swag.  As for them not understanding the Queen's English - this is Sunderland we're talking about here!  

God, what an awful journey that was. Possibly the longest metro ride ever and Sunderland train station, despite being given a makeover, is even worse than when I was last there in 1997.  Really dark and dingy.  The best bit of the whole thing was the journey back, travelling through some nice countryside.

Today's haul (I'm off for two days so trawling the north east...)
Whitley Bay - Hurricane mk I and a Spitfire VB (I bought another 3 Hurris, but they were passed on 5 minutes later)
Sunderland - the aforementioned PR19
Jarrow - 3 more PR19s

I did try two other stores, but they had no Spitfires: W/Bay and North Shields had the mk V and I really have enough of them - actually, I have multiples of most marks but I've done what I want to with the mk V and the more recent toolings are far superior kits - whilst Gateshead* only had Dauntlesses and Typhoons.  What's more, I doubt anyone has looked through the shelf since I was in yesterday as I recall putting a Typhoon back upside down and it was still that way.  I'll hit them again in a week - they'll need time to recover from my strip mining them last wednesday.

Chris, Whitley Bay have Typhoons, Hurricanes, Mustangs and 190s, plus a few Dauntlesses and the Spitfire Vb, ditto North Shields.

More tomorrow after what will be a fun packed day of travelling round on buses!

*That store is really depressing, even more so than Sunderland, due to the number of people I've seen in there who are quite obviously inbreds.

[Weaver]

Lee, the ones around me have only yielded one Typhoon: since you seem to have a lot of them in your local stores, why don't you get some and straight swap them with me for my Spitfires? I've got three each of Mk.22, PR.19, Mk.9 and Mk.5. Might get a chance to check out some more local one tomorrow as well.

[The Wooksta!]

Sounds a good idea.  I'll go with that once I run the local supplies of Spitfires down.

[Dizzyfugu]

An 1:72 Italeri Saab Gripen A - primarily for the low-viz insignia, but I can see a future for this aircraft in a small Baltic air force... Latvia, maybe?
Also bought a Hobby Boss A5M and a Mastercraft MiG-21bis, both as conversion fodder.

[ericr]

it is sales time around here, so I am getting tempted (my stash had been reducing fast recently, but just got refurbished ...)

a 1/48 P-61
2 1/144 Tomcats
a Revell/Matchbox Buccaneer (wings detach nicely, to be fit to something else ...)
a Revell/Matchbox Twin Otter (for floats to be fit elsewhere ...)
a twin-headed dragon and a brachiosorus (for my windmills series)
a giraffe and two different octopusses (for my party-blowers series ; should get an elephant too, obviously)

[Gondor]

Rescued from the Sorting office  a box from Airline Hobby Supplies L.L.C. which consisted of

1 pack 1/144 GE TF-39 Engines to go onto my Anigrand C-5M to make it either an A or a B

Gondor

[The Wooksta!]

Day 2 of the Home Bargains Airfix Treasure Hunt!

A beautiful sunny morning started off day two of my saga.  This time I headed north, towards Cramlington.  It didn't go the way I expected on the map printed on the timetable and I ended up in another backwater - Blyth:  I'd got on the wrong bus, the X10 instead of the X11.  No Home Bargains there, so I paused to buy a lottery ticket and got the X11 back to Cramlington.  First stop was at the Brockwell centre, which were restocking the shelves with the same selection that had greeted me at Whitley Bay and North Shields. 

Back on the bus, down to the Cramlington shopping centre. The walk through it seemed endless but I got to the store and liberated a pair of Typhoons, a Spitfire F22 and a PRXIX.  They had Dauntlesses and a solitary Typhoon left.

Better luck was had at Wallsend, which one of my agents had reported yesterday was bereft of kits.  Not so today.  Interesting selection of Typhoons, Bf 109Es, Gladiators, Dinahs and Spitfire MkIXcs (the Closterman boxing).  Needless to say, quite a few of these came home with me - one each of the Typhoon, Gladiator and Bf 109 (which will be heading elsewhere) and no fewer than eight Spitfire mk IXs.

Back into town and lunch with Wor Lass before heading to Blaydon.  Again, an interesting time as a legless drug dealer in a wheelchair was regaling his friends about how he'd been smuggling drugs into HMP Frankland.  The heavens opened as I thankfully got off the bus and I fought through torrential rain to get to the store.  Again, this trip was worth it.  The selection on offer this time? Typhoons, Dauntlesses, Spitfire PRXIX and F22s, plus some gift sets - Tomahawks and Fw 190As - and some 32nd British infantry. I grabbed the Spits - 4 F22s and 3 PRXIXs.

Escaping back through the rain, I took the Metro back to Jarrow, expecting them to have restocked.  They had - Hawks, Vampires and Higgins boats.  None of which floated my boat - except the Vampire, but another of my agents has procured some from London: he reported that Houndslow and Southall stores have loads of them - so I came away empty handed and headed back up to Cramlington to see if they'd restocked.  No such luck, so I nabbed their last Typhoon, some smokey bacon crisps and a bottle of pepsi before heading home with my bag of swag.

A further injection of cash will see the saga continue tomorrow...