"Hobby" stores here are for old people who like to build things in their spare time...................
Pretty much the same over here at the more premium hobby stores. In fact when a kid walks in, everybody frowns. As an older person, I still feel like a noob when I walk into one of those stores - dang, the stuff in there costs as much as a mortgage, and the guys that hang out there are usually discussing the kind of technical stuff about trains, and choppers, and even some obscure history fact about some part of the American Civil war because someone is building an 8 X 6 battleground. You really can't even touch anything unless you're ready to pay for it - and some of the stuff in the showcases are so locked up, the guy who comes over to open them looks like a jailer, keys and all.
Even worse, Jason, some of the stores are Niche stores, like they only deal with Trains and railbeds, etc, or all kinds of Air and Spacecraft - go into
that kind of place and you'd better not look like a noob. These guys can actually sneer at you.
I'm still not into that stage - though, actually, I hope to be - nothing more relaxing (though one does need lots of time for that kind of stuff) to putter around with that stuff. All I can do for the moment is just throw a picture against a wall, or turn an old shoe box into a look-alike building, so that when I take photographs of my cars they look more real than when they're stuck in a blister, or have a huge 'STOLEN from this SITE" stamp over it.
You guys over in the States are actually much luckier though - we never see the kind of JLs, or so many variations of HWs, even those tasty Greenlights - we never see them here. Or I'm in the wrong section of the woods.
Good thing you guys help each other out by such active trading, and information exchange - that's a
real Diecast Collector's community to me.
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Hm . . . now to whom do I suggest this new thread idea to.
