Category: Hobby Shops
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Wait. What? Chapter 2…
Got a definitive answer on the Testor’s question. The shops here are selling out of their stocks because Testors refuses to ship to Australia. Too far? Too high a cost? Too small a market to justify keeping staff busy? Advice from some new MBA in the accountancy department? Boss had a bad experience in Queensland…
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Every Puppy Poopy Has A Home?
I visit shops with an air of wonder. Sometimes it is wonder at what they have for sale and sometimes it is wonder at why I am there. And occasionally it is wonder at who could possibly want the stock. This was the case when I was in the retail photographic trade as a shop…
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Wait. What?
I have just been given a conflicting story and am in the process of processing it. Pardon the odd sounds coming from my brain. Some of them are gas and some of them are suspicion. The basic problem surfaced a few months ago when I went to my local hobby shop to get another bottle…
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Boeing B-17 – Part One – Why Do I Buy Famous Airplanes?
Why indeed, if I don’t intend to build the famous version? Because the famous versions are what sell to other people and that’s what the kit makers manufacture. The best I can do is look at the basic structure of the thing and see if it conforms to my plans …or can be modified enough.…
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When You Cannot Figure Out What It Is…
You’ll know this one. You go to the tool section of the hobby shop, possibly with a definite purpose. You have need of a tool and possess sufficient spare cash to be able to afford it. You rush to the place before the family demand money with menaces ( school shoes, food, medical attention…). As…
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The Plastic Casino
Are you an inveterate gambler? Are they always hauling you out of casinos and racetracks and putting you on 12-step anti-addiction plans? Well cheer up – you can put the cards down, throw the dice away, and say farewell to the horses. I’ve got a new outlet for your mania and it’s all legit. Betcha…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part One – Katyuska
I was on tenterhooks when my daughter came back from Japan recently – I had tasked her with getting me a nice 1:72 model aircraft kit that we couldn’t get here in Australia. She obliged by searching out both a major and a minor hobby shop in Tokyo and bringing back 4 models – all…
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Play It As It Lays
That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
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Back Yards Were Bigger Back Then…
And so were the manufacturers of scale models who conducted their businesses out of them, it would appear. And we didn’t realise it… I am not going to mention big names here. Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg, Airfix, Tamiya, etc. Their local representatives can breathe out again and put the axe back on the table –…
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Not Quite So Many Paints
Well, another day and another visit… I strolled down the paint aisle today to discover the SMS paints that I had reviewed yesterday gone from the shelves – an empty paint rack with their name on it where they once were. Leading me to a series of speculations: a. Did they not sell? They were…
The Little World 