89AKurt Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 I missed out getting one of the Performante kits when it was released, now they are gold plated. Yea I could save $28.64 for the lower one, but come on man! ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deuces ll Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 That's gotta be a typo.... LOL..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikemodeler Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 I'm guessing that is 8,800 Yen for shipping. Someone forgot to do the conversion, but it still works out to $83.72, a bit excessive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCRWDRVR Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 Learned that lesson long ago but wow that’s crazy, I hope it is yen then it don’t look as bad lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vintagerpm Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 Or you could order one from Hobby Link Japan for $38.69 plus shipping (which won't be $8800). https://www.hlj.com/1-24-scale-lamborghini-huracan-performante-aos05600 Just have to look in the right place. Aoshima loves to rerelease thier kits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodge Driver Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 Good advice in the heading. That auction site seems to be loaded with kits of all kinds sold from Japan. Said kits feature inflated selling prices along with exorbitant shipping costs. As noted above,there are reputable Japanese sellers with fair prices and shipping rates to conduct business with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike999 Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 1 hour ago, Dodge Driver said: Good advice in the heading. That auction site seems to be loaded with kits of all kinds sold from Japan. Said kits feature inflated selling prices along with exorbitant shipping costs. As noted above,there are reputable Japanese sellers with fair prices and shipping rates to conduct business with. Amazon has the same problem with some Japanese model kits. The price and the shipping get translated straight over from Yen (badly). So a kit that obviously should sell for $45 becomes $4,500. Tokyo-Hobby is a good Japanese seller on eBay. When I search for a specific Japanese kit, I often get a page full of eBay listings with those "inflated prices and exorbitant shipping costs." Then I see a sane price and think, "Bet that's Tokyo-Hobby." It usually is. Another good one I've dealt with is Xfree Hobby. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carmak Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 I bought some kits this spring from "Hobby Search" in Japan. I got seven kits and the shipping worked out to be about $6.50 a kit. I ordered them just before Covid hit and the shipment was held up two months. The kits were worth the wait. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
89AKurt Posted October 7, 2020 Author Share Posted October 7, 2020 Appreciate all the comments, and advice. I've bought from Hobby Link a few times. On 10/2/2020 at 6:12 AM, vintagerpm said: Or you could order one from Hobby Link Japan for $38.69 plus shipping (which won't be $8800). https://www.hlj.com/1-24-scale-lamborghini-huracan-performante-aos05600 Just have to look in the right place. Aoshima loves to rerelease thier kits. Let's hope so! This item is discontinued and is not expected to come back into stock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 While I was in Kowloon, Hong Kong last year I found a lot of hobby shops over there, I've forgotten just how many there were, but I was amazed that they were all pretty busy, however they did specialise in different subjects, a few selling nothing but bus models, one I was impressed with was RC Jaz, I've had stuff sent over since getting back, shipping is very reasonable, if I can't see what I'm after on their website I get in touch to see if they can get it for me, never let me down, how I'd love hobby shops here in the UK like these. https://www.rcjaz.co.uk/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Geiger Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 3 hours ago, GeeBee said: While I was in Kowloon, Hong Kong last year I found a lot of hobby shops over there, I've forgotten just how many there were, but I was amazed that they were all pretty busy, however they did specialise in different subjects, a few selling nothing but bus models, It’s cultural. The Asians build models more than Westerners. I’m not sure the amount of modelers in Europe, but USA is a very small percentage of what it once was. Seems it’s still booming in the East! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vintagerpm Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 13 hours ago, 89AKurt said: Let's hope so! This item is discontinued and is not expected to come back into stock. Dang! That went away fast. They must have only one in stock when I looked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSheep214 Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 Wow. I’d have a field day in hobby shops in Japan and/or Hong Kong. LOLOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 (edited) 9 minutes ago, BlackSheep214 said: Wow. I’d have a field day in hobby shops in Japan and/or Hong Kong. LOLOL! I didn't get too much time to visit too many hobby shops in Japan, as I was working both times, hopefully if all goes to plan, I'm back there in 2023, this time it will be a trip to celebrate my retirement, the ones in Hong Kong are superb, I think I found around 8 of them in Kowloon itself, some specialise in R/C stuff, but still sell model car kits, it's all the other stuff you don't see this side of the pond from Tamiya and Mr Hobby that I purchased more of, Hasegawa kits were around £22.00, which I did buy a couple of the BMW 2002 models. Edited October 7, 2020 by GeeBee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike999 Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 18 hours ago, BlackSheep214 said: Wow. I’d have a field day in hobby shops in Japan and/or Hong Kong. LOLOL! You can add South Korea and Taiwan to that list. Back in the 1990's I did several business trips to Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, etc., so things may have changed. But... Seoul had the Academy outlet store and a Tamiya outlet store. Both were located in the humongous toy marketplace, near the Olympic Stadium at that time. There were several dedicated hobby shops right in the area of my hotel. Most toy stores also had a good model kit section. Taiwan has a BIG model community, and the manufacturer AFV Club is based there. So Taipei had many hobby shops, often carrying obscure resin kits or conversions that were locally made. The shops were usually small with great stuff stacked all over the place. It was like a treasure hunt. Tokyo was just awesome. It had a whole chain of stores, Yellow Submarine, that only sold figures: horror, sci-fi, anime etc. I found a Tenshodo hobby shop in the middle of the high-rent Ginza district and bought 2 of the Aoshima 007 Astons. I found one whole store (a small one) that only sold 1/35 scale resin kits and conversions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSheep214 Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 Man.. I'd be bankrupt before leaving the country to the USA. LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 5 hours ago, Mike999 said: Tokyo was just awesome. It had a whole chain of stores, Yellow Submarine, that only sold figures: horror, sci-fi, anime etc. The Yellow Submarine store I found in the Akihabara District of Tokyo sold pretty much every kind of model imaginable, but Yellow submarine are a chain of stores, I forgot the name of the store I found that had a good selection of car kits offered a tax free discount if you spent over 6000 yen, of course no visit to Tokyo is complete until you go to the Tamiya plamodel factory. You will run out of time and possibly money if you try to visit all the model stores there, of course no visit to Japan would be complete until you have been on the bullet trains, in the shadows of mount Fuji is Shizuoka Hobby square, absolutely breathtaking, as was the view of Mount Fuji, roll on 2023, when I plan on returning, this time to the northern island of Hokkaido. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, BlackSheep214 said: Man.. I'd be bankrupt before leaving the country to the USA. LOL. Back in 1993, visiting Des Moines, Iowa and spending time travelling around the Midwest, I'd never seen hobby shops so large and full of models, and yes I pretty much all the cash I'd took with me, had to get some more travellers cheques and cash wired to me, one hobby shop in the middle of nowhere in Iowa looked small from the outside, but when you went inside, it went back quite a lot, owned by an older gentleman, he had a good selection of fujimi kits that had probably been sitting on the shelf for a few years looking at the layers of dust, he also had a few truck kits from Amt/Ertl and Revell, I think I made his day when I bought the lot. I'm not sure what the percentage of the population here in the UK that build models, but we've just never had such big hobby shops that pretty much sell everything from R/C, model trains, cars, aircraft and military. When I'm travelling with my partner I'm pretty much banned from visiting any hobby shops. Edited October 8, 2020 by GeeBee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSheep214 Posted October 9, 2020 Share Posted October 9, 2020 Whenever my family & I plan a vacation getaway for a few days, I always check to see if there’s any hobby shops wherever we’re going to. The missus hates it when I mention “ Oh there is this one hobby shop like to check out...” ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike999 Posted October 9, 2020 Share Posted October 9, 2020 14 hours ago, GeeBee said: Back in 1993, visiting Des Moines, Iowa and spending time travelling around the Midwest, I'd never seen hobby shops so large and full of models... Ha! I was in Fort Dodge, IA, for a business trip in April 1994. (Easy to remember, I was there the day Kurt Cobain died.) The town had a little one-chair barber shop...that was also a sort of hobby shop! All sorts of kits--cars, aircraft, military--that were old and out of production in 1994, stacked in the back. No kits as old as the 1960s or '70's, but lots of old ESCI stuff and others from the early 1980s. On my days off, I roamed out of Ft. Dodge and hit other small towns in the area. Some of those towns had classic, locally-owned Five & Ten Cent stores that still sold model kits. I remember seeing a stack of the AMT "Customizing" and "Prestige" kits, circa 1986, in one of the Dime Stores. Japan again...we took the Bullet Train from Tokyo to Gifu Prefecture, to visit the big Mitsubishi plant. The plant entrance featured a huge display case, with scale models of every aircraft Mitsubishi ever built. Awesome. Sadly, that was in early 1995, right after the monster Kobe earthquake. Train schedules were often disrupted because the Japanese govt. seized trains at random, stuffed them with emergency workers and supplies and sent them to Kobe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted October 9, 2020 Share Posted October 9, 2020 4 hours ago, Mike999 said: Ha! I was in Fort Dodge, IA, for a business trip in April 1994. (Easy to remember, I was there the day Kurt Cobain died.) It's a Small world, I was back in West Des Moines in August 94, then Ankeny Iowa in 1996 and 1997. A few small towns such as Ames and Boone had hobby shops and small junk shops that usually had a few older model kits gathering dust, I was shipping them home by the box load, all sent back to me in ?? using my friends name and address and sent over as a "Gift" they usually took around 6 weeks to arrive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carmak Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 On 10/9/2020 at 11:55 AM, GeeBee said: It's a Small world, I was back in West Des Moines in August 94, then Ankeny Iowa in 1996 and 1997. A few small towns such as Ames and Boone had hobby shops and small junk shops that usually had a few older model kits gathering dust, I was shipping them home by the box load, all sent back to me in ?? using my friends name and address and sent over as a "Gift" they usually took around 6 weeks to arrive. Did you ever go to the Ertl outlet in Dyersville? I remember getting kits there for as little as $.50 each in the mid 90's. I did work with the local injection molding companies so I was up there at least once a month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeeBee Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 (edited) 8 hours ago, Carmak said: Did you ever go to the Ertl outlet in Dyersville? I remember getting kits there for as little as $.50 each in the mid 90's. I did work with the local injection molding companies so I was up there at least once a month. Yes, I've been there 3 times, luckily I was good friends with the staff at Hobby Haven in Des Moines who saved me some of the big shipping boxes, I was sending big boxes of models back home, shipping via the "Surface mail " took around 6 weeks to arrive, Oh the good ole days...... When you had the tour around the ERTL factory you got an ERTL dollar coin that you could spend in the outlet store, but I've kept all mine. I've still got the keyring i bought from the outlet store in 1993, it's got the keys to my office on it, so it gets used every day. Edited January 6, 2021 by GeeBee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.