Hello from Florida

General Discussions Introductions
1

Hello my name is Ed, I live in north central Florida. I was building models since I was a kid. Back then I built a bunch of different models, from sci-fi, to cars. I built planes and battleships, and yes, I would float them in the swimming pool and shoot them with a bb gun.

I took an interest in armor when I became a tanker in the Marines, and from then on, I built a collection of about a hundred AFVs. At some point around 1996 I stopped. Life got very busy and I didn’t have time for it anymore. I got married, we had kids to raise, and bills to pay. We moved a few times, and all my models sat in boxes for the next two decades. Fast forward to 2024. My wife retires, and I am not far from retirement. The kids are all grown up and having their own kids, the bills are paid and now I am finally finding a little spare time for myself. So I open the boxes and pull out all those models. Surprisingly most of them are in good shape. A few need repairs, only a couple are damaged, but are repairable.

I begin looking at whats out there. I haven’t so much as looked at a model catalog and I feel like I just got out of prison. The model world has changed. The bad news, when did models get so expensive? I mean wow! The good news, holy cow! There are tons of kits now. When I was building tanks, the most common subjects were WW2 and Modern armor. They were just addressing WW1 subjects when I left. Now there are numerous kits representing every era, WW1, the interwar years, WW2, post war armor, and even early pre WW1 armor (early armored car era)

What blows my mind? 3d printed models. Sure I’ve heard of 3d printing but I never considered that it could be applied to models. I’ve already begun to buy a few 3d printed kits that I will stash away for now. One thing I miss, hobby stores. Sure we have online shopping now, but I used to love stopping by the local hobby stores and shop for the latest offerings, or replenish my supplies, or pick up a Squadron Signal book. Times have changed, but I am excited to pick up where I left off.

Finally I got a place to put these kits. I picked up a couple of 20ft conex, container units. Currently they are being used for storage, but I plan to convert one of them into my hobby shop and add a huge display so the kits don’t have to be stored in boxes anymore.

Edro

14 Likes
2

Hello.

So which side of Tallahassee do you fall on? I was born in Pensacola/raised in Gulf Breeze but schooled in Gainesville and lived in Orlando after. I live west of Atlanta now.

Nothing from my era is still open other than Colonial Photo & Hobby in Orlando but there are some places further south and at least one guy in Jacksonville, so I imagine most of your acquisitions will be online. I just happen to live near the nation’s largest HobbyTown USA (Kennesaw GA) but I buy most of my stuff online anyway.

3 Likes
3

A warm welcome Ed, and man have you come to the right place, talk about fitting the demographic. I’d say most of us can identify with your experience and perceptions, in any case mine was almost identical to yours albeit nearly 10 years ago. But where there might have been 3 choices back then for anything specific (kits/accessories/paints etc.), now there might be 10.

Which is great on the one hand, but as we age there comes a point where confusion/indecision takes over. And that’s one of the many merits of this forum – if in doubt, use the Search facility because it’s a fair bet someone’s already asked, and got the right answer or recommendation.

Otherwise, there’s no such thing as a silly question and the legion of guys here have a collective knowledge the size of…well, generally huge.

3 Likes
4

Hi Ed! Lovely to have you on board and a warm welcome from parts of the aus contingent!

2 Likes
5

Welcome along Ed!

2 Likes
6

Ah, childhood memories, we didn’t have a pool but a lake works just fine.

Welcome aboard!
:smiley:

Comparing an Italeri (I presume you remember the old spelling: Italaerei) or Tamiya kit from the 70’ies - 80’ies with a modern (expensive kit) is misleading. A modern kit can be the equivalent of 3, 4 or even 5 old Italeri or Tamiya kits.
Value for money? I think so, the quality of parts are higher and if we count the $ per minute of building joy (or masochistic pleasure as might be the case with some kits full of tiny fiddly parts) I think it is about even. Don’t forget inflation, rate the cost of kits in number of hamburgers …

2 Likes
7

Welcome to the mayhem Ed … Hope you enjoy the forums and the rest of the chaps here will help with any Q’s you may have … There are a few decent threads about how the site works with posting bits and pieces etc … look forward to seeing more of what you built / build :+1:

2 Likes
8

Welcome aboard Ed. I too found myself in very similar shoes and started back up last year. This is a great place to learn and ask questions.

3 Likes
9

Welcome to the party Ed. Great folks here. Lots of knowledge, lots of support, and lots of good stories.

2 Likes
10

Welcome to the “Big Show” Marine, right off the bat there’s some here that are gonna be envious of the 20’ container for storage/workspace. Presumably your track time was spent in M60’s/ M1’s? I’m sure you’ll fit in real comfy here.
Glad to hear your models survived the shuffle.

Cajun :crocodile:

4 Likes
11

Hello from MN

2 Likes
12

Welcome from a one time Crystal River Pirate. Your story is so similar to a lot of our stories. Girlfriends, wives - sometimes both, careers, and other distractions kept us away for a long time.
And then…

I’ll look forward to seeing some of those old builds once you’ve gotten them back in shape.

5 Likes
13

Hi. I just joined a month ago, couldn’t even log in anymore to the other site. Folks here have been amazingly helpful.

4 Likes
14

Welcome to the dark side.

3 Likes
15

I’m west of Gainesville. We move here from St Petersburg about 8 yrs ago. Looking around, the only place that has model kits is the local Hobby Lobby and they don’t have very much. A few car and aircraft kits, a few paints, and tools, but not much more.

Jacksonville is about an hour from us. I don’t go there very often, but if there’s a good hobby store, I may have to make an exception. But yes, Ebay seems to be my friend at the moment.

Edro

1 Like
16

Funny backstory to add, a couple of years ago, my wife and I built a 16 X 32 shed with an upper loft area. I wanted to turn the loft area into my workspace. However, my wife has her own hobby. She loves to sew. Well we knew that she would be using the majority of the floor space for all of her sewing stuff, but as it turned out, she took over the loft too. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

I came across the two containers a couple of years ago and had them placed on the property, but both ended up being used for storage. The unit I will be converting already has shelves and so the kits are in there. But I’m going to be moving everything into the other unit, add some more shelves, some lights and a window, or a sky light.

I served on the M60A1

Edro

2 Likes
17

Pics!

1 Like
18

Sadly I don’t have any. In those days I used to buy those cheap disposable cameras. I took a bunch of pictures but I never got around to developing them. Then somewhere along life, I lost them. I think they were thrown out by accident but I was never able to find them when I went looking for them years later.

Edro

1 Like
19

Hurricane Hobbies is the one I know of in Jax. They have mostly car kits but there is a decent amount of other subjects and they special order. It isn’t too far from the Chamblin Book Mine which is a huge used book store. They have an enormous military section; I picked up about a dozen titles on various aircraft and armor my last visit. Only book store I’ve seen with so many book on Hitler and the Third Reich that it was its own section; not just a few shelves.

Near Ocala is a guy who has a small shop but it is primarily filled with railroad gear; he mostly orders kits on demand. Hobby Lobby has more on-hand inventory. While visiting a SIL in Sarasota I had trouble finding anything along the I-75 run south between there and Tampa but I have not been to the Miami area since 1995 and Kendall in 1999 so I have no idea what is down there but I doubt you’d drive six hours to buy one kit.

Sad thing about Gainesville is that they used to have what would be considered the equivalent of a HobbyTown USA nowadays while I was attending U.F. (1984-1988). I used to buy AD&D miniatures and even bought my first Dragon kit there; the original Tiger 3-in-1 kit with all the PE and Magic Tracks. But it was gone before I moved in 1994.

2 Likes
20

Welcome to it
Crayons on me

2 Likes