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Getting anything vintage for Christmas?

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Simple question... anyone putting any original vintage items under their tree this year? If so, what cool things have you found?

(Doesn't have to be Tamiya, and doesn't even have to be R/C - it would be nice to hear of any vintage toys or other gear you're looking forward to).

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I will surprisingly find a Mk1 Hotshot and a nib vintage Acoms AP-235 radio set under the tree.

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Well, my recent Fox purchase was technically my birthday present, even though that's not until January... and I'm planning to make some of my mom's old Christmas cookie recipes, and they're definitely "vintage," even written on 30-40 year old index cards...

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I got a broken down rubber band from an old toolkit I can throw at the Christmas tree. Does that count?

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Picked up a used Bush Devil (blue ORV Super Blackfoot) for my son... Working on getting back to working order now...

Terry

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Maybe not "vintage", but definitely "older" - I bought myself an original, complete, boxed Tamiya Jeep Wrangler body set, part number 50542 B)

I've always had an off and on love/hate feeling toward the CC01 Wrangler. I had an original NIB 58141 kit for awhile, way before the re-release, never could get myself to build it, so I sold it on. I built and modified a re-release Wrangler, but then sold it on, I couldn't get over the whole "IFS on a Wrangler" issue.

I have built and sold on two re-release Pajeros, and then missed them. I currently have a NIB re-release Pajero, plus a bunch of hop ups in my "to build soon" stash.

Maybe the Wrangler shell will end up on the Pajero, or maybe on a scale chassis? I will probably build/paint the Wrangler body set first, then decide :D Or, it might just get left in the box, probably not :blink:

Having (x4) 1;1 Jeeps (x3 older CJ8's and a 2005 LJ Rubicon), just felt like I needed a Tamiya Jeep kit, besides my original Wild Willy ^_^

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No. Haven't found anything I fancy. After restoring the vintage Bruiser - I really don't want to play (mechanically) with anything else :(

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Actually this relates to a phenomenon I just noticed for the first time this year but makes perfect sense. I reckon the same thing happens every year around this time. The market for vintage R/C stuff grinds to a halt in the few weeks leading up to xmas. Even good deals on vintage stuff selling on ebay linger much longer than usual or don't sell at all. Sellers apparently start getting more desperate for cash and you start to see some rarer / nicer items percolate to the surface. Major swing into being a buyer's market as funds that would normally be circulating in the vintage R/C ecosystem dry up and are diverted into xmas shopping.

It makes sense since:

  • The vast majority of vintage R/C junkies are men, a large percentage of which are fathers of younger kids
  • When it comes to a family with young children it makes perfect sense for most if not all the xmas presents to be for the kids (not the dads!)
  • Even if the dads do get xmas presents, most of the time xmas presents are meant to be surprises and chosen by someone else (spouses, usually)
  • I'd say the fraction of cases where the spouse is knowledgeable enough to confidently shop for vintage items for him unaided (see above about surprises) is extremely small
  • In general people tend to select new, crisp items to give as presents - this may cover contemporary NIB kits sold by major retailers but not the true vintage market
  • Anything used, projects, parts, are in limbo until...
  • i predict a rebound effect that builds in the weeks following xmas as disposable funds re-accumulate when dads start making up for lost time (at the same time) causing a swing to a seller's market in Jan/Feb

So - it would be a smart time for buyers to take advantage of the weak market during this time, before supply dries up, and quality of items goes down as sellers find it easier to liquidate less precious items, and overall demand spikes as a wave of buyer flood back into the market. It would also be a good idea for sellers to get ready to list auctions starting mid January, to take advantage of the competing demand to drive up bids - particularly for desirable rarer items that don't show up very often and won't want to be missed.

This also raises an issue that's entered my mind from time to time that won't make serious collectors, who take for granted that their collections will continue to grow in value over time, very happy: there may be an unsustainable bubble in the valuation of vintage R/C stuff. The reason being kind of obvious but hidden in plain sight while the bubble stays inflated. The same demographics that drive the vintage market to a halt at xmas time will kick in on a more permanent basis as the generation who are motivated by their personal experiences with R/C from the 70s/80s/90s age and die off. There will still be demand for the highest-end examples from history-buff types, and these may continue to grow to staggering prices - but the size of the overall market will shrink, demand will erode, liquidity will dry up, prices will collapse and very likely once the prices a seller can expect to be paid for a vintage R/C item get low enough the value placed in them by people without any personal nostalgia for them will evaporate also and the majority will be built or tossed out to make room for the new vintage stuff of the next generation (ie, stuff that's new right now - you may want to stash away a NIB game console or two).

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Hot sure if this is considered vintage, but it has been on my wish list for a long long time.

This is probably one of my last additions to my rather small group of Tamiya's.

img39372_25122015065154_1.jpg

img39372_25122015065154_2.jpg

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img39372_25122015065154_4.jpg

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wow that NIB monster beetle i linked to was listed for $400 BIN. i guess the seller decided he wasn't quite that desperate after all. hope so b/c that won't be selling anytime soon for $900.

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The same demographics that drive the vintage market to a halt at xmas time will kick in on a more permanent basis as the generation who are motivated by their personal experiences with R/C from the 70s/80s/90s age and die off. There will still be demand for the highest-end examples from history-buff types, and these may continue to grow to staggering prices - but the size of the overall market will shrink, demand will erode, liquidity will dry up, prices will collapse and very likely once the prices a seller can expect to be paid for a vintage R/C item get low enough the value placed in them by people without any personal nostalgia for them will evaporate also and the majority will be built or tossed out to make room for the new vintage stuff of the next generation (ie, stuff that's new right now - you may want to stash away a NIB game console or two).

Quoted for truth. There will come a day when our toys and nostalgia find the trash heap. Sad to think about, but that's the reality.

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wow that NIB monster beetle i linked to was listed for $400 BIN. i guess the seller decided he wasn't quite that desperate after all. hope so b/c that won't be selling anytime soon for $900.

That looks like a "honey I put the car up for sale" price.

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Quoted for truth. There will come a day when our toys and nostalgia find the trash heap. Sad to think about, but that's the reality.

Just curious... What precedents do you guys feel already exist among other types of toys, whose collectors have passed away, that suggest vintage R/C models will be worthless in the future when most R/C collectors pass away?

Because while I can't predict the future, I just don't think the future is as simple as that. But hear me out...

Vintage toys of all kinds go through popular phases, sure. But as the decades pass, vintage toys contrast more and more sharply with the contemporary toys and technology of the day. This contrast makes them more noticeably "vintage". More curious, as mechanical or recreational relics, to new types of people. The earliest model trains and teddy bears are remembered first-hand by almost nobody left alive. Yet look at their value. They are fascinating to many for being among the first, and for what they reveal about the culture of the day - two reasons that are quite separate from personal nostalgia.

Sure there will be less collectors in the future. But that's just the nostalgia collectors.

Any toy that was once popular, was particularly well made, and which exists in limited supply going forward (eg NIB or new built original Tamiya), will still have value in the future.

What that value will be I don't know. But vintage Tamiya cars do not have that much to lose anyway. In most cases, the NIB vintage kits we see as being "expensive" are literally worth the exact same amount they were in the 1980s - once inflation is taken into account. Such toys are never going to fall much below their base product value - that is - even someone with absolutely no interest in a large, boxed, impressive R/C kit toy is going to assume it is worth less than "a few hundred bucks". So a baseline value will always exist. We will never be tripping over vintage Tamiyas in the street just because all the collectors have carked it :)

Long term, the collectors of the future will come from more diverse backgrounds than the (mostly) pure nostalgia we see today - historians, engineers, car buffs, general toy fanatics, fans of Japanese culture, fans of buggy culture, fans of particular full scale cars (Jeep, VW, Toyota, Ford) etc. I already come across quite a few people from these areas of interest.

Anyway, just throwing all that out there :) You guys may still still disagree, but I'm pretty optimistic about the future of vintage R/C collecting. At the very least, there will always be vintage 1:1 car buffs, and there's very few 1:1 car fans who don't appreciate model cars of all kinds... especially working ones.

Cheers,

H.

PS. I was patient enough (I honestly don't even know how I do it) to store away some purchases throughout the last few months, and had (as usual) a very vintage R/C Christmas...

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Just curious... What precedents do you guys feel already exist among other types of toys, whose collectors have passed away, that suggest vintage R/C models will be worthless in the future when most R/C collectors pass away?

Hey H - well it isn't so much that, given a particular item, in X number of years that particular item will be worthless. Certainly, as I mentioned, there will be cases where the value of highly collectible examples continue to climb. But in order for items like this to hold value there needs to exist a healthy market of buyers willing to pay meaningful prices for them relative to the supply. It then becomes a question of motivation - in order for a buyer to be willing to pay some price for an item they have to be motivated by... something. The reality is that all of us here who currently make up what is a fairly healthy market in buying and selling vintage R/C stuff, if we look to our left and to our right at the collectors we buy from and sell to the vast majority of them are interested in these items based on their own personal experience and nostalgia. If you take the average age of people in this market, you will find a definite band of ages of those willing to inject money into the marketplace... and it isn't tied purely to having money or even to the amount of disposable income spent on toys, etc. If it were we would see an even distribution of vintage R/C collectors spanning down into the early 20's age group. This doesn't seem to be the case. Anecdotally we all know this, even if we don't really think explicitly about it.

So when that highly concentrated demographic ages, loses buying power and dies they will likely leave behind some supply of vintage R/C items, but not so for the demand, that they will take to the grave. Sure, we all hope to pass on interest in this stuff to our kids... maybe some will have some success, but statistically it won't matter too much. When our generation dies off the healthy market we know and love goes with it. There will still be people who like things just because they're old, or they're old toys, or they're antiques or what-have-you... but the scale of this market in terms of its impact on the remnants of the current R/C market is going to be much smaller as vintage R/C is only a tiny slice of those wider scopes.

On the high end, some of the rarest and most valuable items may end up in the vaults of wealthy people next to their signed Babe Ruth baseball and original Andy Warhol painting - things considered 'investment grade' collectibles... but not if there are hundreds or thousands of examples of the same item floating around: these wouldn't make the cut. Which means, of all the hundreds or thousands of examples of items we TCers collectively own, only a handful would ever really end up being Sotheby's material... because if there were many, many examples the rarity wouldn't justify high enough prices for them to be interesting as high-end investments.

Here's an article about whether, even for high-end collectibles, it can be assumed they will gain in value: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324662404578330651775508058

All that being said, after a certain amount of time - after supply crumbles away - the remaining vintage R/C items will still have some value. After all, someone was willing to pay almost $300 for this 1962 Gaylord the Walking Dog toy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1962-IDEAL-GAYLORD-THE-DOG-EXCELLENT-W-LEASH-BONE-BOX-/161929234347

He even comes with a bone of his own!!

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Gotta love that Gaylord dog... :lol: I've seen those before, but I'm actually not surprised something like that would be worth a bit to people, just because... what a classic 60s toy.

I definitely see your point though. I just think there's a lot of guesswork involved... (on my part as well).

And while there are cases of once collectible items falling out of favour due to shifts in fashion (I can think of examples in pottery, ceramics, fashion and celebrity-based collectibles), I'm not sure I've seen a case where a once popular toy category has plummeted in value due to it's collectors growing old and dying off. Perhaps there have been cases, I'm just not aware of any. The earliest popular mass-produced toys - trains, bears, dolls etc, are for the most part, still valuable.

As you say, the market will narrow and change, relative to the people who currently collect R/C. But it's not like KISS collectibles where, once those collectors die off, the value of things like KISS underwear may be negligible to anyone who wasn't a KISS fan. Vintage R/C models have qualities that can transcend nostalgia and familiarity, to include people from other fields. There's an engineering value to many of them. As time passes, I think they can and will be appreciated by new people. Not in all cases, but in many.

As some evidence, I give you the world's biggest R/C collector. I'm sure you know who I'm referring to. I was once told that he did not collect his amazing collection out of nostalgia at all... In fact, he was introduced to Tamiya models only at the inception of eBay, some 15 years ago. Impressed, he went on to amass what (hopefully) will one day be the museum we have heard about.

H.

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As some evidence, I give you the world's biggest R/C collector. I'm sure you know who I'm referring to. I was once told that he did not collect his amazing collection out of nostalgia at all... In fact, he was introduced to Tamiya models only at the inception of eBay, some 15 years ago. Impressed, he went on to amass what (hopefully) will one day be the museum we have heard about.

H.

Unfortunately - I do not know who you are referring to?. Links/Hints?

And I'm old enough to (could have) been a KISS fan. I certainly don't want the underwear :P

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