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Ever wondered what happened to your old cars?

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I’ve been thinking about cars I’ve owned & wondered where they might have ended up over the years. With a fairly tight knit RC community a few cars do seem to pop up every now & then that look familiar or are instantly recognisable.

Now a long, long time ago I did work experience for a model shop in Whitton (about 1/2 mile from Twickenham rugby ground) when I was only 13yrs old, it was only meant to last a couple of weeks but ended up with me working there for nearly 3years & in the process getting sponsored by the shop & having some of the most cutting edge race cars  of their day.

Now bearing in mind how old (young) I was, I ended up with a Bosscat works spec, Cougar 2000 works, & CAT 2000 team works spec for racing, all of which cost well into the £1000’s, but I worked & paid for all of it... With a lot of help thanks to sponsorship of course.

Now fast forward to 1996/7, I was older, the model shop was closing down to be turned in to flats (typical), & my attention was turning to other things that would eat my cash - girls & real cars! I stupidly sold all of my RC cars to a friend for peanuts when he moved up North to Newcastle & I never saw them again. The money wasn’t entirely wasted as I bought my first car with the cash - a 1969 MK1 Escort which I spent then spent 2yrs restoring...

Now fast forward again to a couple of years ago when I started to get back into RC, I was going back through old photos of my younger days & realised I had no pictures of my old Schumacher cars which was quite disappointing considering how much effort went into them at the time.

Well as they say, what goes around comes around, and tonight I nearly fell over backwards when my old CAT2000 made a re-appearance in almost exactly the same condition I sold it in 22 years ago! I know it’s mine as it’s very distinctive paint scheme & my name is still on the nose cone! I’ve contacted the current owner & am looking at potentially buying it back (no doubt at a highly increased price over what I sold it for)

All of this has left me wondering who else has been in a similar situation with models they’ve sold, or whether there were any models they regretted getting rid of over the years?

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Thats really great thats its still about all those years later!!!! Sadly I imagine lots end up in land fill as its only when you get older you re-see the value in them again (mmmm nostalgic)

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I always wondered who on tamiyaclub bought my monster beetle with  a thorp  and a bunch of other hopups and my super sabre in the early 2000s long before i got back into the hobby

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I sold my Kingcab, the only Tamiya from my youth, many years ago.  When I was browsing member's rides here a few years back I saw someone owns it and intended to restore it.  I sold it with some spares and the box all in really nice condition so its possible that it is still in good shape today.  Part of me wants to ask them about it.  I think the safer option is to assume someone else enjoys it and keep my wallet in my pocket.  I'll be forever holding onto hope for a re-release of course.

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I've bought and sold a lot on here over the years and I usually forget who I buy and sell from.  It can take several years from opening a parcel to posting an update on TC, by which time I totally forget who I did the deal with, so I can't even reference them in the showroom entry.  Which is a shame, I sort of like the idea that we could tag or link people in showrooms.

Some of my vintage cars have come through friends that got them from other friends.  I have a much-modified Top Force with a HPI chassis (from the old days when HPI only made hop-ups), white suspension arms and various other interesting vintage non-Tamiya bits.  I got it from a friend, he got it from someone else in the scene, but there the chain ends.  None of us originally built it, we can only assume that the original owner was a racer from the days when the Top Force was a contender in 4wd racing.  I love to speculate about who might have owned it, if they are still into RC, if they have ever heard of Tamiyaclub, if they regularly hit the A finals in national events or if they were a local heat C driver.

Once I was browsing the latest showroom updates and saw someone had posted a body that I used to own, which I had sold on in a clearout a year or two before to someone else.  Was great to see that it had moved on again and gone to someone else on TC.  Other stuff I've sold to TCers and never seen in the showrooms, but I don't check every day so probably miss a lot.

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I wish as many of us have done over the years wished I'd never got rid ( let go due to parental pressure ) all of my cars. I let go of in order, Sand Rover, Ferrari 312, Ford Ranger, Porsche 935, Wild Willy.

Of those the only one I have a hope of tracking down is the Wild Willy which one of my mates from school had the last time I caught up with him. Yes I will try to buy that back, it wasn't abused.

 

Great thread.

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their is one i would like to get my hands back on (well 2 really but the other i know i dont have a chance of finding it ) my manta -ray i brought back in the early 90's and started the conversion to top-force.

well at the time i was selling all my rc's and this one i ended up selling to a mate then in the same breath ended up with a pair of jamo speakers in the swop/sale.

know i know he dont sell stuff so i have a pretty good chance of him still having it so i have to find him as i aint seen him for over 20 years and hope he still has it and try and get it back of him.

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I got a reply back from the seller of my old car, I think he’ll be keeping it for the time being. It’s not badly priced, but it’s not great either. At least I know it’s still about & someone will definitely enjoy it if they buy it as it was like a compact rocket! 😁

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My first Tamiya, a 2nd hand boomerang was lent to a school friend while we still at school. When I got back into Tamiya about 2 years ago I contact him through our mums who are still friends and like me is a hoarder. I had his old blackfoot and he had my old Boomerang, so a swap was organised and about 30 years later my old boomerang returned to me. its my profile picture.

The returned Boomerang was in better condition that I remember with a new basher shell and a shock upgrade. It olny needed a few bits and a new shell and it was ready for the display case. I still need to fully rebuild it BUT not bad for a 30 plus returned car.

My Thundershot and Pumpkin never left me so all I had to do was get them working again.

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Owning, restoring, collecting, upgrading, whatever your passion is with these things, there is one thing I know - it's such a learning game. And you never stop learning about what to do with your cars. Everyone ends up with regrets because of foolish decisions they made years ago. Our perspective changes - one minute we lose interest in RC. Then later it comes back. And if you make rash decisions, you can end up with a lot of regret.

20 years ago I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. In fact, I was a fool :D There were many things I have owned and sold, and wish I still had. Couple of example stories.

On the positive side...

As a young teenager, I sold lots of other valued childhood possessions to buy a NIB Monster Beetle. I'm happy to say I still have that Monster Beetle. And after many years of half-finished paintwork, I even finished the paint job properly. My Dad originally sprayed the red body for me back in the day - causing a tiny "run" in one place (we were such amateurs). But that imperfection makes it mine. And it's now nearly 14 years since Dad died. So of course, I would never sell that Beetle for all the money in the world. And after I finally finished the paint job many years later, I think it came up reasonably ok...

image.png.2e0282755d5ef2f7ea16b91b7bd7327c.png

On the negative side...

Some years ago I purchased a particular used vintage Sand Scorcher that I did a lot of work on. I spent whatever money it took to replace many parts with NIP original parts. It came up amazing - mint original, MSC, period correct mint out of the box radio gear, etc. I spent weeks... nay, months working on it. I even had a NIB original body set for it ready to go. Then in a fit of stupidity, I decided one day to sell some non-NIB vintage cars out of my collection. So I sold the Sand Scorcher to another collector in Australia for around AU$1000 including the body set. The money went toward other cool RC things.... but....

Well, as the years passed since then, I kept remembering the hours I spent toiling on that particular model - polishing, cleaning, etc. And what really annoyed me after I sold it, was that I didn't value my own "effort" enough. Turns out my effort was worth more to me, than the market value alone. The memory of nearly wearing my fingers off, polishing parts with Autosol etc, night after night...

So that was another lesson learnt.

When you spend a heap of your own time and labour on these things, you should really think twice before selling them off. I have sold probably close to 300 R/C models over the years. Most I've forgotten, some I merely owned for a period of time, before opting to sell them in order to get something else. But the ones I regret selling - are the ones I put effort into, by stripping them down and restoring them.

Nowadays, I have a new “rule” - never sell a difficult resto car.

I have since written to the guy who bought the Sand Scorcher from me once or twice. And I have probably mentioned that I would happily buy it back :P But he's a serious vintage collector too, and won’t let it go. And I know it went to an extremely good home.

cheers,

H.

 

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I wonder about my Egress. I had a buddy airbrush flames on it. Very nice. So nice I never ran it and sold it. 

I also had a sweet Subaru Brat. Had all the JG parts and Thorpe. The thing ran like a dream with a Monster Mash motor. 

I wish I had pics of the rc’s I had more than anything. 

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I've sold loads over the years, many abroad, some do keep cropping up from time to time especially some of my old brats as I did some in unique paint schemes so easy to spot. I did get luck recently when I spotted my old xr311 on ebay, I knew instantly it was my old car, was used in the tamiya101 dvds, I was lucky enough to buy it back and arranged collection over postage. Thought it was amusing that the seller said he painted and restored it. Didn't burst his bubble, bonus was it came with radio gear this time and a kit box as I didn't originally sell with them. Still in mint condition and not selling this time round. A lot of the cars now in my collection are staying and not sold many recently... At one point I did discretely etch zakspeed on the body so if you see that will be one of my old builds... 

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