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StrokerBoy

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Posts posted by StrokerBoy

  1. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.  You have lots of options (not all out of the box) to get the eventual look/stance right, depending on whether you want it to drive nicely or just look good on a shelf.  I built a Lowride Pumpkin but spent ages tweaking it to get the non-standard look I wanted, various sets of wheels, hubs, spacers, springs, uprights etc.

    wheels.jpg

  2. On 8/13/2018 at 10:30 AM, StrokerBoy said:

    How do you know the winning bidder didn't put a Max Bid of a million pounds ?

     

    On 8/13/2018 at 12:54 PM, Sammo said:

    I don't. But I'd suggest it was unlikely. 

    The point I was making is that you think you missed it by "a couple of pounds", but you might have been miles off.  You could have doubled your bid and still lost.  You'll never know.

  3. 18 hours ago, Fabia130vRS said:

    For auctions, I would say, best to start by 1/4 of whats it worth, put a huy now price pf how much you would like to get, and a reserve price, at about 2,5/4 of whats it worth.

    I thought I was pretty good at maths, but my brain has just melted.

  4. A mate texted me to say he'd seen I was into RC's via Facebook.  He said he was moving house and chucking lots of stuff out, did I want his old RC gear ?  Without knowing what it was, of course I did.

    A couple of weeks later, he turned up with this Skyline and Hi-Rider-2, plus a box full of wheels, chargers, radio gear, catalogues and spares.  I tried to force beer money on him but he wouldn't even take that.  :D

    dan1.jpg

    dan2.jpg

    • Like 6
  5. On 6/15/2018 at 4:37 PM, OCD said:

    However, he did make one statement that resonated with me -- his recollection of receiving exactly enough cash from his parents to be able to buy a new kit every week. That's 52 kits. Every. Year.

    52 kits that require: paint, glue, consumable tools, and more. I'm guessing he saw the inside of that hobby shop a lot. This was the kind of commerce that kept shops in profitable existence. While I'm sure the internet had a real impact on this traditional outlet, I think the biggest change is actually people's spending habits. Most of my friends' children received electronic devices by the time they were in their teens, which seems to have supplanted the traditional "cash allowance" kids used to typically get on a weekly basis. No longer is there the fistful of bills that could be spent exactly as the lucky child desired.

    Blimey. :o

    I was lucky enough to get a model kit (or the money to buy my own) at christmas, my birthday and maybe once or twice more a year if I was lucky.  And I considered myself lucky too.  We're talking a small Matchbox or Airfix aircraft kit by the way, I was allowed to look at the massive Tamiya boxes in the toy shop on a Saturday but I had as much chance of owning one as I did of living on the moon.  I never felt in any way deprived, but it certainly wasn't me keeping these businesses going.

    • Like 1
  6. On 6/14/2018 at 6:36 PM, tamiya_1971 said:

    I justified it by looking around for a complete Bruiser body set that was reasonably priced so I could tear it up when I run it. Is there one that is reasonably priced anywhere that isn't used and torn up? Not that I have seen. If I buy all the parts and piece it together, it is well over $150. This was $275. For the extra $125, I got a body, a radio  and a ton of parts. I call it smart shopping.

    Walking into a shop and swapping the price labels over so you pay £5 for a £40 item, is that "smart shopping" too ?  What about buying something from that furtive bloke in the pub, no questions asked, overlook the bolt-cropper marks ?  Some people are able to justify that too.

  7. Here I am doing a spot of hoovering in my 'man-cave' recently.  It's just a single garage with some useful storage space in the pitched roof.  It contains the 2 motorbikes you can see, 2 bicycles, lots and lots of bike parts, all my tools and accessories, crates of stuff I need for my bike club/shows, the obligatory cupboard full of half-empty tins of paint etc, 3 sets of ladders, and various oddball things we've collected (eg. the No Right Turn and Kawasaki illuminated signs).  Hanging from the ceiling you can see my 10 RC's and there's a pile of boxes of unbuilt ones stacked on top of the cupboard on the left.  There's a small workbench at the end.  There are a few pin-up girls on the cupboard, and my various karting and bike-show trophies.  Entertainment is limited to an old radio.  There's also a professional alarm system with an ear-splitting siren from an old factory.

    What you can't see are the other 7 motorbikes that also live in there, that have been temporarily moved out just so that I can tidy up.  That makes it difficult to do any work in there, as you can imagine.  A shed you say ?  There's a shed behind the garage, it's got 3 more motorbikes in it and lots more weird stuff my missus brings back from salvage yards.

    Our house is currently on the market and a need for more garage/workshop space is one of the reasons for that.

    hoover.jpg

    • Like 6
  8. "The Model Shop", Hull, England.  Above the door was signwritten "The most exciting shop in town" and they never had any arguments from Trading Standards about that.

    Opened in 1962, it was tiny, yet it sold everything.  A narrow central door, and a window display either side crammed with beautifully finished models.  There'd always be people stood outside admiring the display.  Inside there was a central unit with a small train set permanently running round, surrounded by accessories and rolling stock.  All the walls were floor-to-ceiling boxes : RC kits, static models, die-cast cars, Hornby trains, Scalextric, plus paints, materials, tools, catalogues, everything.  If there were half-a-dozen customers in the shop, you had to wait outside - it was that small.  I still don't know how they did it, if there was something you wanted, they always had it in stock somewhere, the old chap that ran it knew exactly where it was.  I bought my Pumpkin kit there in 1989, and countless static model kits before that.

    The owner retired in 2006 and it was taken over, but it changed direction (to compete with ModelZone, HobbyCraft and Toys R'Us ?) and was never the same.  It finally closed in 2011 (see pic) and is now an office for a local coach-tour business.

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    • Like 3
  9. It's definitely an original Pumpkin QD.  1) because you've had it 25 years, and 2) because they never re-released the QD version.

    QD was a simpler, cheaper version, more of a toy than the kit version you have to build yourself.  Some people collect QD's.  Much harder to find than the kit version, but much less desirable too.

    The other ones you've seen are the proper kit version, like the original one I've had since 1989 or any of the various re-released versions since (black, metallic etc).

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