Ones That Got Away...

[Hibernaculum]

In case this topic hasn't been done before...

What are some vintage cars you've wanted to buy, but missed out on?

And did you ever end up getting them?

Some examples.

1) I remember back in 1999 I bought a NIB original Grasshopper off a guy in Japan and during our email exchange he offered me a NIB Celica GrB kit for a mere US$200 or so as well. I declined (!!) because for some reason my tiny brain skimmed his email and didn't pay attention, and somehow it (my tiny brain) thought he was referring to the Celica GT-Four or whatever it's called, that came out in the early 90s. By the time I realized what an idiot I was and wrote back to change my answer to "YES!", he'd already listed the kit on eBay and it was already bidding higher than US$200

2) Another time was just a few months ago when I bought a NIB Kyosho Gallop MkII from a reputable seller. Except the seller's account had been hijacked by a reputable scammer. The kit never came, and luckily Paypal refunded me, and so the quest to own a NIB Kyosho Gallop MkII continues...

3) Oh, and another classic. I remember about 17 years ago I was in a hobby shop that had this nice looking model Cheetah on the shelf, new-built. It was for sale for $70. I actually didn't know what it was at the time, so I left it there. Yeah, nice work! When I realized a few weeks later and went back to buy it, it was gone.

cheers,

H.

[NJhopper]

I ran a wanted ad on a site and got contacted by somone claiming to have a "tamiya buggie". I replied to the email and it turns out it was a good looking Sand Scorcher. Well it turned out it was his Dad's from back in the day and he really didn't want to sell it it turns out. I was really bummed... Why contact me if you don't really want to sell it

[Hibernaculum]

Ack, this thread sank...

No one else has an amusing story about something they really wanted, but missed out on?

I think I've had dozens of missed chances over the years. But in most cases ended up eventually getting the car/part/item I was after at a later date.

[mr_pushrod]

I nearly managed to pick up a ragged but restorable Blazing Blazer that was pretty much complete for £70 about 6-8 years ago off a racer in my local club. Unfortunately I was unable to raise the cash before he'd looked on Ebay and raised his price by quite a margin! In the end it was for the best though, it turned out he was supposed to be doing some work on it for a friend back in the day and had never finished it or given it back. When this friend decided to take up racing again, he was very quick to ask where his vintage Tamiya had gone.........

[94eg!]

I saw a NIB re-release Dyna Storm sell on ebay for $90(us). Didn't have money at the time...

[dazaa]

Missed out on a MASSIVE load of tamiya stuff afew years back listed as rc parts on ebay...afew srb's...959 and boxes more stuff......could have been mine if I placed a bid £1 higher....Needless to say I was gutted. Think it ended for around £111...

Also missed a mint sand scorcher with a rough rider, ford 150 AND super champ shells aswell as loads of nip parts. I bid £100...ended for £110...reckon the body's alone would be worth more than that!! Seriously dissapointed on that one...and it still annoys me!

I also remember not bidding on a nice 959 project listed as rc car for parts, sold for £35. All because I didn't want my dad to look at his 959 and notice I had accidently broken the technigold wire off...This was about 5 years ago...and I have since found a replacement technigold...along with 2 more cars!!

One I wish I had missed out on...my first srb a super champ on ebay.com at £50 with hours to go. It was a right mess but I didn't notice any of the problems when I was watching the auction. Ended up getting it for £80...not bad....PLUS £20 postage...ok £100 was abit too much but still reasonable...THEN I get stung for £35 duty...needless to say I have not spoken about that deal since....

dazaa

[markbt73]

A whole hobby shop's worth, actually...

When I was a kid there was a shop in the local mall that had EVERYTHING. I can picture the back wall in my mind and I swear there was one of each of the first 30 or 40 Tamiya kits up there (what number was the old Lancia? That was about the newest one they had). All of them were priced at full retail, so needless to say, they were all there for years. The store owner was kind of a jerk, too; he had a strict "no touching" policy, so I never even got to see the sides of the boxes.

I eventually got my start in RC with a Grasshopper (but not from him) and had a few other cars before I got my driver's license and turned my attention from RC cars to my "real" car, a VW Scirocco.

About a year later, I was in the mall and saw a "store closing" sign in the shop window. He was going out of business at pretty much fire-sale prices. He wanted something like $30 for a Holiday Buggy. All the old 1/12 cars were dirt cheap, too. A friend of mine got a Willys Wheeler from him for next to nothing. But I couldn't see "wasting" money on toy cars when there were so many things yet to do on my Scirocco. I think I bought a static kit or two from him (for like $5 each) and left.

If I could go back, I'd smack my teenage self on the back of the head and tell me to buy just one or two, and stick them in a safety-deposit box somewhere...

[Dirbee]

Only a few weeks ago, I missed out on a "good state" Fast Attack Vehicle and "less good state" Wild one. Both complete with electrics for 150,- pounds.

The guy was advertising them on a lizzard-forum in the Off Topic Classified's section. I couldn't reply 'cause I wasn't a member, so I quickly became one. It however took longer then expected, so by the time I was a member and could reply he had just sold them... Pretty painfull....

I hope someone here got lucky!!

[mosiac]

I've got 2.

First was about 18 months ago with 2 scorcher chassis (SP. is there a plural or does it have enough S's in there already?) and 2 bodies, 1 original and 1 lexan.

I happened to be first to spy it on auction site at $40 start and instantly asked about a BIN price, he came back with make an offer so I said $200 not wanting to either insult him or get a dose of bad karma the follwing week and then waited and waited till 12 minutes later when someone else placed a bid and he could no longer add a BIN. Went for just under $800 as I recall.

Second was only november last year when a mate was round and saw my budding collection and said a mate of his had one the same as my MB but it was broken, Smelling a bargain I got his phone number and gave him a call and explained why I was calling etc. He says "Oh, I sold that to a guy last week for a tenner" I was going to start at $25!!! Turns out he snapped chassis (there that word again) about 1990-91 and it had sat since, body hadn't been used as he had a pick up body he liked the look of better...!!!! I just mumbled something like "OK thanks see ya" and hung up so I could beat my head against a wall.

Cheers

Hamish

[B.M.T.]

Back in 87, a guy turned up at my club and raced his Dogfighter SE that he'd been hanging onto for a few years at the time. I noticed in the back of his car a new built Wheeler, but not stickered or painted. I asked, and he said, "I was hoping some one would want it", and said he's let it go for $80.... I said I would have the money for him next meeting (before the days of ATMs...).

He never came back

[tamiyoman]

This is not a car i missed but it is tamiya!.

About 4.5 years ago a Supplier I had previously bought from contacted me and asked if I would be interested in a load of vintage tamiya decals, they were wanting a quick sale as they had no use for them as they had just been found in their warehouse, so they sent me a list!.

On the list were about 700 decal sets ranging from 58025 Golf racing upto 58111 Mountaineer, suffice to say they were worth a fortune!.

From memory i recall there were 5 of each Golf and renault 5, 11 Fast attack, 23 Monster beetle, 20+ Blackfoot, 19 Rothmans 959 plus 13 Racing 959, 15+ Egress and also were 31 Avante and 29 Top Force evo, cant really remember many of the others, but as i say there were about 700 of them in total so I made my offer to them (quite a low offer really lol) and they came back and asked me to make a better offer, so I doubled my offer (we were now at the heady heights of about £2 a sheet!), then i went on a pre-booked snowboarding holiday for a week, I came back and saw an email from them so I opened it and in the email it said , "could you please contact us regarding the decals, we have received another offer and we want you to buy them but the other person has offered 25p per sheet more!" (although in the email it said thy would prefer us to buy them having dealt with us before!). So i rang them back to let them know I was happy to pay 25p per sheet more than him/her (him probably, no offense ladies!) and they said they had sold them the day before i got home!, AAAARRRRgggghhhhhhhhh. Apparently he walked in with Cash and paid over the counter the previosu day ( I BET HE DID LOL!), to say I was gutted was an major UNDERSTATEMENT!.

I think looking back and looking at ebay prices now for these decals they were probably worth £22-25,000GBP comfortably and I could have had them all for approx £1750GBP, that was probably the worst deal i ever missed out on.

Suffice to say now when i go away my parents access my emails daily to check for mails from suppliers LMAO.

Not all bad news tho as 3 weeks later I found a large warehouse full of old stock and got it for a very good price, maybe that was karma!.

Anyhoo, i have my suspicions about who bought those decals but I suppose I will never know, although im not overly concerned now, time has healed me lol.

Cheers

[TamiyaDan]

.

[tamiyoman]

Ok here is a good one.

Back in the 1980s i raced Tamiya hilux, rough riders, superchamps, and sand scorchers. from 81 till about 83. yhea we raced them, broke them modified them and beat the poop out of the them.

I had a junkyard, actually i still do. Tamiya was an import company and were very bad with parts support, so i had about 5 or 6 basically parts cars that i would trade parts back and forth to keep our rides going.

This was before Rc-10s and before CRP parts really started selling everywhere. so for about 2ish years everyone was heavy into racing them. by the end of 83 i switched to kyosho optimas and MRP shotguns due to parts issues with tamiya's back then.

Then they came out with classes 4wd and 2wd. before everything was always mixed. so i'm going through the ranks like everyone else. 4wd i'm going through hotshots, boomarangs, bigwigs, avantes, 2wd i'm going through foxes, frogs, in there throw a mix of kyosho and even some mauri cars, depending on the track you would take a certain car and i went through races on the east coast and west eventually everything is either Associated or Losi cars this is by the 1990s.

So i became obsessed with restoring my old racers from the early 80s. I would go from hobby shop to hobby shop basically buying up anything i could find. I would find stashes of parts here and there. Then in the early 90s hobby shops started going under. My father got involved in my new hobby also. we became Tamiya american pickers, going all over the place hording rare tamiya parts.

keep in mind this is before the internet, before ebay, the world of parts back then was VERY small to your region.

so the economy in the early 90s was terrible and hobby shops began closing down. here is where the story of the one that got away comes in.

were in Jamaica, Queens , NY, USA we get word a hobby shop 'Jamaica hobbies' is calling it quits after 15 years. i knew the owner and Got down there ASAP the place was packed with people and open boxes all over the place.

I've got a pile of sand scorcher and hilux parts and i'm digging through 100s of boxes and i moved a display case to get behind it when i discovered a NIB Sand scorcher still in the MRC/tamiya plastic wrap.

Well Holy cow i just about lost it i was so excited.

So keep in mind its 1991, no kid back then knew what the badword a sand scorcher was, nobody wanted these things, I had raced them years ago, and this was like finding gold.

so i've got about 200$ worth of old parts and i'm making a deal with the owner for everything and i tell him i want the sand scorcher NIB also. he hems and haws, he used to race them back in the day also

he tells me he wants a lot of money for it and its mine, but he also wants to ask his father about it... The guy was about 40 at the time his dad must of been about 70.

So they bicker and he comes back and goes i want 120$ for it.

Great i throw the cash on the glass counter. He sees how commited i am to it and goes, AH AH Let me think about it, and quickly pulls it behind the counter. ARUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

long story short, I called those guys everyday for a month until the phone was disconnected. they never returned my phone calls, and that is the one that got away.

It was during this time, i earned the name Tamiya Dan,, and my buddy earned the name Kyosho Bob.

what a time...

Nightmare!, well i was fortunate enough to find a NIB Sand Scorcher about 5 years ago, I bought up all this suppliers old stock and just as i was arranging the bank transfer he called me to say he found few kits and would i be interested, he came back offering 4 kits in total, a NIB 58172 Taisan Porsche a NIB Hilux Monster Racer and NIB King cab and the NIB sand scorcher, I paid £75 each for the other 3 and got the NIB sand scorcher for £35 as he had no idea what it was worth (big bonus for me, although to be fair at the time i did not know how much it was worth either lol).

I kept the King cab and Hilux Monster racer, sold the 58172 a few months back when i found a replacement and the Sand scorcher was sold to a "Collector" for £2300 which almost paid for all his old stock i had bought, i was a very happy chappy lol

[TamiyaDan]

.

[Saito]

There were alot of closeout sales in the early 90's but the timing was bad for me. I was spending most of my money on my '71 Chevy Nova as I had reached driving age. I missed out on a $79.00 Astute and Hi-lux Monster Racer. The killer was a new Egress for $99.00. Oh, I kick myself over that one to this day . I remember the price of Avantes dropping like a brick after they were out for a year or so and racers realized that they didn't hold up so well. Hobby shops around here couldn't unload them. Just sat about with ever falling price tags.

When I was quite young, I saw a Wild Willy 1 a hobby show for $90 (the going rate was about $119 back then IF you could find one). I begged my dad to loan me the money (which I had at home) but he didn't care for its cartoonish looks. Needless to say when I got back into collecting, that was the first kit I tracked down .

[TamiyaDan]

.

[OCD]

Like many of us here, my teenage self was too busy with 'real' cars to be be concerned with the 'toys'... *SIGH* If only I knew then what we know now!

... back then I would have jumped on these kind of deals, if I hadn't already wasted my money on this instead:

Fun car for a kid, but I'd trade my memories for a few $100 Celicas!

-S

[TamiyaDan]

.

[58065]

I have just started with my collection, and already missed a good buy. It was a Super Shot, new built and the box was included.

The good news is that the buyer was a friend of mine !

TamiyaDan : Mustang's is a fun way of "wasting" money, here is my 79 Mustang Ghia 5.0 Notchback :

Regards Arild

[Hibernaculum]

Great stories all. Thanks for posting

This caught my eye...

That spring i was back in larry's hobbies and the display case Gem was still there. So i went up and spoke to the owner again about it.

this time the guy was super annoyed i even asked about it, and he told me to just pay and leave. my dad was with me at the time and he was floored by the guys reaction, i wasn't mean or anything and i said maybe 2 sentences on the subject before the guy flipped his lid.

I had a similar experience only a year ago.

A hobby shop I went to had a great store room full of stuff where you just knew they probably had some old stuff lying around if you did some digging. I asked the guy at the counter if it would be ok if I had a look around in the store room. I said I had cash and who knows what I'd end up buying?

Unfortunately the guy refused point blank, saying it was all too hard to let me in there (didn't give any specific reason) and became quite rude. I asked again and tried to explain - but he only started to get even more angry. I was astounded.

So I walked out, and by this point I was really angry. This was a shop, right? Shops are normally HAPPY to SELL things. Especially old junk they've had for 20+ years. That's what shops do. So I thought, screw this. I went home, and wrote an email to the manager (the rude guy wasn't the manager).

Within 24hrs, I had an invitation to come back and spend all day in their store room if I wanted, and to buy whatever I wanted.

Which I did - the result was about $300 worth of vintage parts 959 parts, Bigwig parts, King Cab parts, Supershot tyres, etc etc. Manager and customer both had a win. And luckily, this WASN'T another case of the one that got away....

cheers,

H.

[Tamiya1/10]

I don't want to brag, but NOTHING can get away once my beety eyes are locked on to it. I recently paid $1,000.00 for a re-release hornet after I knocked $500.00 off his asking price of $1500.00 big one....see what I mean... or paid $300.00 for the bottom of a Blazer box...the seller assured me the top of the box was the Blazer, now I just need the top to have a complete Blazer box.

While I recall just a few years back, a ebay store in Japan had a NIB Super Champ for around $250.00, as I recalled. By the time I decided to buy it, it was sold and don't think one can get a NIB for less than $500.00 , unless Tamiya decides to do a re-re

[berman]

I think you mean beady, unless you've been eating too much beetroot...

I really like these stories, they remind me of those fishermen tales of "the one that got away".

I hope I have something to add to this in the future

[tamiyoman]

The one that almost got "Blown" away.

About 3.5 to 4 years ago i was in contact with a Tamiya wholesaler in the middle east and emails were going back and forth between us as I was negotiating a dela with him for his old stock. Well we finally got the figures sorted and i had over 100 NIB bodysets and about 300kg of nip parts so we were talking about roughly 50 boxes of old stock coming my way and a large chunk of money going his way. The items were packed by him and payment was duly made the day after his email confirming everything was ready. 2 days later he told me the tracking numbers and told me that they had been taken to Lebanon airport and were due to fly on a plane at 11.45am that next day (I think it was UPS or Fedex maybe?).

Anyway first thing the next morning i switched my TV on whilst eating my breakfast (as you do lol) I was watching CNN and "news flash" comes up, the Israelis have just bombed lebanon airport!!!, NNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

I was sat there thinking several things, I hope the guy was OK and his family were ok too and that my hoard of Tamiya was ok too (it was a lot of money!).

I emailed the guy and no reply for 8 days then i get a phone call from they guy "your stuff is all OK" he said "it was stored in a bunker overnight and was 45 minutes from being taken out of the bunker and loaded onto the plane, your very lucky as it would have been destroyed if it was out of the bunker" He then told me that all internet coinnections were down and that he could only call and assure me and that he had confirmed with the shipping company that everything was ok. Anway it sat in that bunker for nearly 6 weeks before the rest of the world asked the USA to instruct Israel to cease fire (Thats what i read in the paper anyway!). Suffice to say nearly 2 months after I had paid the items arrived safely and without any damage which made me feel a lot better.

I still get emails fromt he guy now and again when he finds more items either in his warehouse or in a shop in the middle east somewhere and i have done several more small deals with him since that time all without any wars/bombings.

Cheers

[john893]

It was the Frog for me...

My brother and his friends got me into RC cars at a very young age. I think I was like 6 or 7, not exactly sure. I remember when my brother got his Hornet, I asked and asked if I could watch him build it, but like most older/younger brother relationships, we didn't get along all the time and I was a bit of an annoyance. I remember sneaking into the room he was building it in and trying to spy on him. He had some issues with the gearbox that required some runs to the local hobby store to fix. So in the end he got it running and I remember seeing the Brat, Frog, Fox, and Hornet (my brothers car) running around the neighborhood and thinking how cool is that. I was much too young to afford one myself and I think a little too young to build one. Remember "Toys There Not"

I remember sleeping over my buddy’s house whose brother had the Frog and just staring at the thing. His brother was very meticulous with his stuff and his Frog was perfect box art painted and looked amazing. His brother never let us play with it, we could only watch him use it and look at it on the shelf, which at the time was enough for me.

By the time my friends and I were old enough to get a Tamiya car (7 year difference between my brother and I) the Brat and Frog were discontinued. Something about the Frog just made me want one soooo bad and I could not get it out of my head. I called tons of local hobby shops and most of the places in the mags asking if they had any NIB Frogs lying around and no one had them. So I ended up getting a Lunchbox for Christmas of 1991 and from there I got a Hornet, Blackfoot, Clod, and Hi-lux monster racer before moving onto RC10s' and 10T's. But the Frog always had a special place in my heart. One day my buddy's brother gave him his Frog. The kicker was that this particular kid never got into RC cars and didn’t own one, so it was odd that his brother just gave it to him. So of course I asked him if he would sell it to me. He thought about it and said he couldn’t that it was still important to his brother and so on… well of course I asked him weekly and eventually he said he would sell it. I asked him what he wanted for it. He said $30 and my compound bow that was like $20 so I said SURE. I thought I am finally going to get my Frog, he had the box, manually, all the extra parts. It was as close to getting a new one as I was going to get. While we were working out the deal, my other friend showed up (who I drove with a lot and had like 5 cars of his own) said what are you guys talking about? We told him that we were making a deal for the Frog, and he said I will give you $75 cash! And the kid said SURE!!! I was like what the badword just happened? I couldn’t believe one friend was not going to honor the deal that we just made and my other friend just bought my holy grail of an RC car.

So life moved on and me and the kid that bought the Frog from under me would drive together and one night he got ******* off at the thing and threw it across the street and in horror I watched it explode into a couple of pieces! I couldn’t believe he did that to a Frog!! After that night the car never drove the same. That was about 15 years ago and we still talk about it to this day.

A few years later (1999) I was working with a guy that was into RC cars and he told me about a web site called eBay. He said you can get almost anything on it and told me I could get a new Frog. I told him he was nuts, and that I had called every hobby shop in the US (I thought 10-15 was every hobby shop when I was 12) and no one had a NIB Frog, they simply didn’t exist. Well 2 minutes of searching eBay and I found a couple NIB’s and within 2 weeks I had my very own and first NIB Frog! I have had it for 10+ years now and I still open the box and look at it all the time. When the re-re got announce I was soooooo excited. Now I have a re-re sitting on my shelf, a re-re that I drive and my original NIB!

John

[Hibernaculum]

That's an awesome story John. So glad you finally got a NIB original Frog. That car is an absolute icon, and I had a similar experience (dreaming of owning an original unbuilt kit for about 15 years after it was discontinued, and never even thinking it would be possible to find one....until eBay came along).

Elsewhere, I have to ask....

I don't want to brag, but NOTHING can get away once my beety eyes are locked on to it. I recently paid $1,000.00 for a re-release hornet after I knocked $500.00 off his asking price of $1500.00 big one....see what I mean

Why would you pay $1000 for a re-release Hornet?

cheers,

H.