A good route to take if your serious about realism would be to decide on a particular tank you like. Say you decide on a Tiger I or even the Bovington Tiger featured in Fury. Research it, find photos of the real item, there's no shortage of info on that particular one, you can get a 1/35 kit and build it to practice painting, etc and apply all to a really nice buildup in 1/16.
In that case, I'd go straight Tamiya. If gives you a metal torsion suspension and the Tiger I is their best kit in my opinion.
I second Banzai Hobby, I bought my Tamiya
JS-2 from them. Shipping seems high, but it was in NY from Japan in 2 days. Tamiya includes the Futaba Attack Tx/Rx and a battery/charger for the Asian market, but nowhere else. That's roughly $150 worth of stuff included in the box.