I used to be a hardcore skin "collector"- I'd take just about anything I could get my hands on, in order to maximize my options. However, once I actually got into skinning myself, I started to develop a more refined taste, and a lot of what I had quickly got deleted for lack of quality.

Now, I'd say about half of the skins I have are my own, if for no other reason than I can make them the way I want them, and not have to think "gosh, I wish the panel lines were a bit more subtle, and this is just a tad too bright..." or anything along those lines.

That being said, I think I've downloaded everything I could find by R0NNC0- his stuff is the best by miles, IMO. I've also got quite a few skins from several of the skinners here- as many other people have said, this is where the best of the best hang out!

I love collecting skins but I also enjoy collecting any Japanese plane I can get. I love the PTO so whenever I see a new Japanese plane, I'm all over it.

SAS~Bombsaway

Hey Mark

Nice to see you here mate! I agree that Il2 is a collectors piece as much as a sim. I enjoy flying and making campaigns but also love to hoover up new stuff just to try it out occasionally.

Being a member of Axis and Allies has encouraged me to become more discerning though. I have weeded out a lot of skins since!

Simple: As kid I was a plastic-modeller and always loved the painting, the schemes, the weathering etc...

I collect skins to have as many different paintschemes as possible. Sometimes also because you can't really assess a skin untill you open the bmp and try it in game, so it was always a "download first, check later"... except with some usual crappy skins that are no more than a flat void painted in neon colors in less than 2 seconds work always wondered why they even bother to upload such shit.

The rest I mechanically downloaded and checked close up before trashing.

Also I simply don't have the time to produce amounts of skins, so I usually rather improve a bit skins of a paintscheme I want rather than trashing (like toning down colours and the like).

I love quality but sometimes I also need a bit of variety (of both schemes and styles). So as long as it doesn't look like something painted by a 5year old, and has something interesting in it, I keep somewhere.
But it is true that over time, and after starting texturing myself, I tend to get more selective than before.

crazyflak

I could have written this, Crazyflak says it all. I'm still a collector or perhaps more of an addict as I check all - sadly their numbers are declining - sites if there's any new skin around. I'm looking for 'historically correct' skin in order to get the complete picture in the game as historical as possible. Looking trough my collection I see (to) much variation in colours and some skins are so wheatered that it looks like they where dug up somewhere.