Collectors Dilemma: HG 1/144 Gundam Exia

Got myself a HG Exia recently as OG was having a 20% discount sale and I've been wanting to get myself a HG kit to fix up and compare the differences between those 1/144 kits from 2002/03 and that of the most recently released.

I actually contemplated getting a KO Exia kit from that KO kit selling shop at Vivocity there called Miniature Hobby. It was selling like for almost half the retail price at SGD$11.90. Asked around and found that the plastic was very much inferior to the actual kits. The plastic seems to be made of softer PVC instead of the normal ABS used in official Bandai kits. Lots of sanding, filing and puttying would be needed to make the KO kit look good.

Paid SGD$20.76 for this HG Exia compared to the retail price of SGD$25.95. Still not that cheap IMHO as Gundam kits here are sold pretty much at inflated prices...

Finished building the kit, but didn't really pay too much attention to the details though. I didn't do any sanding, filing or puttying at all. As for the paint job, I only painted very minutely for this kit, the yellow and black portions for the cheeks, the rear of the GN drive though I did do panel lining with a Gundam marker and 'silvered' the GN Blade, GN swords and shield with a silver paint marker. Haven't had the time to do some cleaning of paint blobs too...

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with the articulation of the kit, it's way more articulated to the kits from 6~7 years back. This was more of a test kit as I'll be getting the HG 00 Raiser, HG Cherudim, HG Seravee and HG Seraphim kits soon to do. (Thanks to HY for helping me get 'em and making me gian to start doing model kits again after I quit 'em in 2003. XP)