Thanks Charles,
There are still three maitime auction houses in London that have annual maritime sales, but I haven't sent anyting for several years. The reason was the cost of sending them, plus the high commission rates, and the high cataloguing fees (In one case £150 no-returnable fee for every model entered in a sale) that made the auction house end up with a considerably larger share than I got. Then the income tax took one fifth of what was left. It simply wasn't viable anymore. The demand for them by private collectors is as high as ever, but at the age of 75, I don't want to spend my entre life building them, to do so would take all the pleasure out of it. So I just build what I feel like these days. Also, over the years, quite a number have got damaged in transit, and I have been left with the bill because in the UK, distance selling rules, state that the seller is 100% responsible for getting items to the buyer in perfect condition. I lost over £400 when the last one got damaged in transit earlier this year, so that was the end of it. Completed models must be collected in person, and this has not actually reduced sales, and is a lot less to worry about. As you say, I used to post detailed build logs online, but this was a lot of work for nothing. All my building logs are now produced in the form of downloads, many of which are available online for less than the price of a cup of coffee, and this does provide a steady income. I know that most model shipbuilders would never dream of selling their work, but I can't see anything wrong with it. I left the "rat race" of full time employment at the age of 48, 27 years ago, for a quieter and less stressful life, that has generally worked out fine, and I have never received unemployment benefits of any kind. I did notice that years ago, when I was putting detailed build logs on Model Ship World, I got lots and lots of requests for plans and information. I generally stopped everything to provide these things free of charge, only to be met with silence in most cases, and even a simple e-mail "thank you" was very rare.
Here is another one of the above batch of models that surface the other day. I ran a detailed build log on Model Ship World for this one, but got banned from there shortly after it was completed!
Bob