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Future Value Of Late 90's Tamiya Kits?

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"they are relics that are not even good fun to drive".

You're right, they're not. They're hillarious!!!! ;) I wouldn't get rid of my Super Champ, or Sand Scorcher. they don't make me smile, they make me laugh, with they're antique, rubbish handling characteristics :P

I would love to own one, performance aside the SRB's look cool :P and that is enough for me..

Many cars listed/mentioned on this thread are not from the LATE 90's.. :(

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"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be"

That is my take on the collectables of all types.

The kids who look at XYZ toy on the shelf now, but can't afford it, will be the people driving the price of collectables in ~ 20 years. Who can say what will push their buttons.

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"Limited edition" and "collectors" kits from recent years will NOT have significant value. Simply because everyone who has bought one of these has either kept it NIB for the future or has it new built, these kits will have no rarity value.

Well, I think that certain re-issue kits like the 30th anniversary 934 won't reach the lofty heights of a NIB Bruiser or Scorcher, but they will definitely worth more than their original retail price.

What will be valuable are the kits on the edge of the mainstream, but which didn't sell particularly well. So kits with a desirable/interesting bodyshell, a degree of design originality, but not something that made a regular appearance on the shelves. Off the top of my head, some things like the Mammoth dump truck, or some of the TG10/TGX cars. In ten years time these will stand out as curios in the Tamiya range and will have the rarity to make them valuable.

Again I cannot see rarity alone as being enough to make something collectible. The kit has to be appealing to a wide range of people, for whatever reason, or people just won't be interested in it as a collectible.

The Mammoth Dump Truck was interesting. It has a rather complicated body parts which is appealing to people who like complicated hard body builds, it has an interesting tipper mechanism and it's unique in that it is about Tamiya's only RC example of heavy industrial equipment. However, this is offset by negative points. It's just not terribly interesting subject matter, you can only really paint it yellow because that's about the only colour these were painted in in real life, the chassis is rubbish, and when you build it as per the manual, you lock the front suspension by screwing the body to it. The 3-speed trucks with MFC on the other hand are far more interesting.

Another key indicator of the most desirable collectibles is their ability to draw people back into collecting. The SRBs do that, because people remember them, remember their friends having them or drooled over them at the hobby shop, and how special they were to own, and there's nothing like them still available. Even better, there's a set to collect, so someone might set a goal of collecting all the SRBs, for example.

The TG10 and TGX wer rather cool, but not really that unique compared to other nitro RC chassis cars available today.

- James

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