Offbeat Places You Have Purchased Model Kits?

[Shafter44]

My brother in law is from France and in 1989 he and my sister decided to move back to the area he was from. My then wife and I used this as an excuse to go on a European vacation later that year and while visiting my sister we happened upon a clockmakers shop in a village not to far from their home. Inside the shop high up on a dusty shelf I found 6 unopened JO-HAN kits still priced like it was 1975. Needless to say I purchased them all, for even less than the stickered price, because the owner was happy to be rid of them. My bro in law translated the story to me that they were all left over from the son of the previous owner who had apparently tried to start a hobby shop inside his father's store at some point and when the current owners had bought the business they had found a few kits and supplies left over and they had no need for any of it and what I purchased were the last remnants. I still have all of them displayed just as I found them because even after all this time and a messy divorce I just can't bring myself to open them. 

[unclescott58]

A chain store called Spartans. Man, they always had a great selection models. And not just cars. A bit of everything. The local Spartans was replaced years later by a Menards hardware store/chain. I've purchased a few die-casts there. But, never any kits.

I never bought one. But, I remember at Christmas time years ago, Radio Shack would advertise that they carrying a very limited supply of models. The main one that I remember them advertising was that they had Revell's 1960 ('59?) Corvette.

Scott

 

 

[HomerS]

Kids toy resale shop.  Per the clerk, the person didn't know who would take these.  Nothing special other than a good price

[Mike999]

Fort Dodge, Iowa, 1994 - on a business trip, found a one-chair barber shop. But half of the place also functioned as sort of a hobby shop. Kits, many of them old, were stacked all over the place.  I remember buying several old AMT kits that were OOP at the time, like the 32 Ford roadster.  Also remember picking up an ESCI 1/48 S3 Viking - the "COD" version that dated to the early 80's and was very hard to find. I boxed up my haul and shipped it back to myself in Los Angeles.

I spent a lot of time working and traveling overseas, so I've found stuff in some truly weird places.  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia had one pretty well-stocked hobby shop with lots of old kits gathering dust.  I remember buying 2 ERTL Mack Cement Mixers there.  Also 2 of the REVELL 1/12 Ferrari 275 kits, the infamous ex-ITC dog with the real car on the box that looked nothing like the actual kit.  Also found many old ESCI 1/24 Range Rovers, Land Rovers, Mercedes G-Wagens, and even a couple of the ESCI 1/9 Kettenkrad half-track motorcycle.  I sold a lot of those on eBay thru the years, but still have some of them.

[wayne swayze]

Bought my 1st kit ever in 1959 at a small store in the downtown of my city. The store sold newspapers and tobacco mostly. The owner lived across the street from our house, so I felt I should buy stuff there. He had a fairly good selection of kits back then. 

[Rob Hall]

I remember buying kits from the Winn Dixie grocery in Marathon, Florida when I was a teenager there in the 80s.   Might be the only time I saw models in a grocery.   I vaguely recall getting models at a small town Ohio hardware store in the '80s also...

Edited January 14, 2017 by Rob Hall

[vintagedragcrazy]

I remember the old Sears Christmas catalog had models in it!

vince

[Xingu]

As a kid, I bought models from the old man down the street.

 

He happened to be the toy buyer for a large store. Once he learned I liked to build models, he would bring a few home every month or so and sell them to me $5 each. They generally sold for $7 or $8 in the stores at the time.

[ChrisBcritter]

I believe this was when I was in fifth grade around 1970-71, when a classmate invited me to his birthday party. His father was a gearhead and I think had a hobby shop at some point; had a big 1/32 slot car track in the basement and a blue Chevy-powered '36 Ford 3-window in the garage.

Afterwards, we boys all got party favors: AMT kits from the Flower Power and Baja series.  He had a couple shelves full of them! Thus I got my first '62 Electra 225. One of the other kids later gave me his '59 Buick - no, I don't have either of them anymore...

The family name was Petropolous (sp?), if that rings a bell with anyone from Northbrook or Prospect Heights.

[oldcarfan]

I found some at a small convenience store, also a book store that just closed a couple months ago had a small selection of mostly model car kits and a decent amount of building supplies.

[signguy2108]

Back in the late 60's, 70's and early 80's everybody had model kits, five and dime, grocery stores , drug stores, I bought a good many of my truck kits from Al's truck stop in Lake Village Arkansas, late80's, early 90's, long gone now. Wish I could have seen into the future!

Edited January 15, 2017 by signguy2108
wording

[Don Sikora II]

I remember buying kits from the Winn Dixie grocery in Marathon, Florida when I was a teenager there in the 80s.   Might be the only time I saw models in a grocery.   I vaguely recall getting models at a small town Ohio hardware store in the '80s also...

Here in Wisconsin, we had a grocery store called Eagle that had a surprisingly good selection of kits back in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Later, I heard that Eagle had been bought by Odyssey Partners, the same firm that combined Revell and Monogram. In the late Seventies, I remember my mom letting me get the Lindberg 1/32-scale '77 Thunderbird kit at a Piggly Wiggly store too.

[mikemodeler]

Growing up in Northern Illinois, there was a paint and wallpaper store in downtown Waukegan called Larsen & Petersen Paint. My mom would go in to look at paint and wallpaper samples for decorating ideas and in their basement was a huge selection of models of all kinds as well as the latest Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars! Whenever we were near that store I would beg to go there and look!

I also remember there being a hardware store in Monroe Wisconsin that had a very large hobby selection upstairs and any time we were in town I would stop in and gaze!

[Zarana-X]

I bought an imported mecha kit at a comic book store in 1987. Orguss Tank by Imai, at Lone Wolf Comics in San Bernardino.

[Snake45]

I remember the old Sears Christmas catalog had models in it!

vince

Huh. I don't remember that, except for maybe the big Monogram 1/8 T, Deuce, Corvette, and Jag, perhaps. But my local Sears always had model kits in the toy department, especially around Christmastime. I have a distinct memory of seeing a bunch of the AMT Reggie Jackson series kits there, and the 1/16 Mustangs and Tri-5 Chevies. That would have been, what, the '80s?

[Mike999]

Huh. I don't remember that, except for maybe the big Monogram 1/8 T, Deuce, Corvette, and Jag, perhaps...

Some years ago I bought a really fun book, "The Big Toy Box At Sears (1951-1969)." It's a repro of the Sears catalog toy section for those 18 years.

The book is at my Mom's right now so I don't have it handy.  But I remember catalogs from the 1950s selling the Gowland & Gowland "Old Timers" 1/32 cars (later Revell).  Also some Lindberg aircraft kits.  And in the Sixties, the Monogram 1/8 scale kits. 

I well remember Sears selling models around Christmastime.  They had one of the biggest selections here in the rural South and I spent many hours in that aisle. 

[Mark]

I well remember Sears selling models around Christmastime.  They had one of the biggest selections here in the rural South and I spent many hours in that aisle. 

I remember seeing model kits in Sears around Christmas every year too.  One year (probably 1969) I wanted to buy one the day before Christmas.  Had to have it, the box art was so cool.  My parents told me "you'll probably get a few models for Christmas", but also said I'd saved the money so I could spend it on whatever I wanted.  So I got my AMT Chevelle "Surf Wagon" kit that day.  I did get a couple of kits for Christmas, but not another Surf Wagon.  I don't think I saw that issue again in any of the department stores, and didn't see another one until many years later.

[Mark]

I well remember Sears selling models around Christmastime.  They had one of the biggest selections here in the rural South and I spent many hours in that aisle. 

I remember seeing model kits in Sears around Christmas every year too.  One year (probably 1969) I wanted to buy one the day before Christmas.  Had to have it, the box art was so cool.  My parents told me "you'll probably get a few models for Christmas", but also said I'd saved the money so I could spend it on whatever I wanted.  So I got my AMT Chevelle "Surf Wagon" kit that day.  I did get a couple of kits for Christmas, but not another Surf Wagon.  I don't think I saw that issue again in any of the department stores, and didn't see another one until many years later.

[Don Sikora II]

Growing up in Northern Illinois, there was a paint and wallpaper store in downtown Waukegan called Larsen & Petersen Paint. My mom would go in to look at paint and wallpaper samples for decorating ideas and in their basement was a huge selection of models of all kinds as well as the latest Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars! Whenever we were near that store I would beg to go there and look!

I also remember there being a hardware store in Monroe Wisconsin that had a very large hobby selection upstairs and any time we were in town I would stop in and gaze!

I remember Larsen & Petersen too. The hobby department in the basement was fantastic! Was only at the downtown location a few times, and remember buying the then-new MPC 1983 Dodge Charger 2.2 kit on one of my visits. Later they moved to a much-smaller location on Grand Avenue and had a hobby section there too....maybe into the early 2000s. Went there a few times too, and remember finding one of the Jo-Han Cadillac ambulances there when they were already getting very hard to find.

[lordairgtar]

During my many travels around the US in the early seventies,  would chance upon the odd model here and there. A truck stop out side of St Louis yielded an AMT Dump Truck kit. In Weldon Illinois, I was working with the Christ Is The Answer Ministry and the small town had a little grocery store that sold kits. That one yielded up the AMT 63 Vette. A small hardware store in Braidwood Illinois yielded two Ertl IH Farm Wagons.

 

[Richard Bartrop]

In the early 70s when I first discovered the Monogram Classics,  I managed to track down a Mercedes-Benz 540K in a hardware store.

When I moved to Calgary, there was this one professional building downtown.  I'd passed it many times, and one time I went upstairs on a whim, and there's this one office with no labels that's an Aladdin's cave of out of production kits.   Turns out the guy was selling off his collection, and the place was gone in a matter of months.

Don't Hobby Shop was unusual in that it also sold magic and theatrical supplies.  Eventually, they moved out of downtown, and decided to speciaize in costume supplies.

Uncle Bills was a well known hobby shop to the Calgary,but at one point in was buried int he bowels of a medical centre, so you had to go into the basement, and down a long corridor past warnings about the X-ray machine to get to his store.

[Super Mario]

My grandfather was retired military and we would go to the  BX / PX every weekend at a large air force base in IL. They had a ton of models, paint and glue when I was a kid  in the 90's, especially cars and US jets. Ironically after the Cold War ended it seemed they carried more military stuff; especially Russian armor like Mi- helicopters. I believe they stopped selling right around the 2000s.

[Earl Marischal]

In 1967 there was a joke shop/fancy dress hire shop opened up in my old home town of Slough, by the brother of a famous British comedy magician called Tommy Cooper. For some reason he had a stock of AMT 1/25 car kits, several of which I bought after pestering my mother for the money. One I definitely remember buying (and building) was a '67 Corvair Monza Coupe.

There was also a newsagent/sweet shop near where I used to leave that sold Pyro 1/32 scale cars and their 1/16 scale motorcycle kits.

steve

Edited January 15, 2017 by Earl Marischal
Accuracy

[fumi]

The Ramen Museum in Yokohama has a slot car track/shop.  At the back of the shop was a whole wall of discontinued model car kits.  Bought a Tamiya 300ZX convertible there a few years ago.

[Steven Zimmerman]

Cracker Barrel ! Wife and I went out to et there, browsing through the gift shop I found the Lindberg '61 Chevy Impala, both hdtp and conv...That was several years ago, never found another model kit there...........'Z'