...what else are your hobbies, what else do you collect ?

now this forum here is thought for the boombox/walkman- generation. in all those many years i‘ve been here (very old, old and actual forum, since 1999), i‘ve wondered why i got „stuck“ here...

it‘s not only my focus on boomboxes and walkmen only, i think it‘s my craze for tech in combination with retro, but i‘m not sure, maybe it‘s just another non-curable virus ? anyway, don‘t need no cure

knowing, we had similar freds in the (very?) past, i would like to know for what reason you folks collect boomer, walkmen and what else is out there that you collect.

it‘s not necessary to post thousands of pics here but also not forbidden, let me carefully start with my hobbies:

- walkmen, clonemen, boomboxes
- portable reel-to-reel recorders, all kinds of (so called) spy-recording
- vintage hifi
- record players
- units from german brand UHER
- elder shortwave receiver (tube)
- vintage music amps
- pinball machines
- wristwatches
- vinyl and shellac records
...and if i forgot something, i‘ll complete the list later


ah, and i have a passion for cars and play drums...

i‘m not hoarding things off each, of some positions i have many, some others only one or two...

 

I collect a lot of other things!

Tamiya R/C cars



Lego, I have loads! Mainly the Speed Champions line (I have a full set bar one that was a McLaren employee set and goes for CRAZY money!) Also like the Technics line and the Architecture line too, so have quite a bit of that too.

Retro Games Consoles/computers, currently stands around 140ish units! My favourite is my Vectrex, the only games console to use wire-frame graphics.



This is my old 'man cave' until my nan passed away and I had to put 90% of my stuff into storage.





My brother is worse than me! He collects 80's toy lines like Transformers, He-Man, Star Wars, anything like that. These are old pictures and it more hectic now, but a few shots of his bedroom!

 

That an astonishing amount of Tamiya cars and other items. I think you are the first person to beat my late Fathers Toy Train collection.

In the 1980s kids used to look in Beatties and dream of owning one Tamiya Radio Control car. My best friend back then, who regarding his credit card limit as a target, bought himself a Wild Willy which was fun (until the NiCad battery went flat after about ten minutes). I now have one rally car, bought for me as a present about 23 years ago. It is probably an antique in its own right.

I still have all my original Lego and kept each set together in its original box. At the age of about 10 I think I had worked out what sets I wanted for Birthdays and Christmases up to the age of about 20 ! Of course by the age of 12 I had moved on to wanting things like an Electronics Set. About ten years ago I did buy a couple of sets to fill in the gaps. These were are before the invention of Mini-Figures.

You will be pleased to hear that Lego (trains) were one of my Fathers best investments.
In the space of about twenty years sets like the one below, which I sold went up in value about 500%.
Of course, like I have seen with old but sealed Tamiya car kits, the dilemma is whether to open the set and lose a lot of its value.

Actually, he had two of that set, this sealed one which I sold, and one which he built (which I have kept for myself).

To show that you are better organised a picture of my Fathers loft


He did actually used to exhibit the trains at exhibitions and lend some of them to museums.
Last year we found that Gloucester Folk Museum (which closed down) had had a car full of his stuff since the 1980s!

That has just reminded me. My latest Lego purchase was a Hogswart Express, which is still sealed in its box up in my loft. Either an investment for my retirement, or something to play with when I have time on my hands.

p.s. Due to my obsession with prices it didn't take me long to find
https://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.asp?cid=100647&sid=17179

Definitely 1980s as the real Renault 5 Turbo was only announced in 1980.

I like the comment about "Hard Core Modellers" I think we have some Hard Core Collectors here

Back to Tamiya I can just imagine a conversation at the end of 1980.

"Dad, can I have a Tamiya RC car for Christmas"
"I'm afraid that is way out of our price range. What about one of those new Sony Walkmans"

 

If you would like a closer look at some of my R/C collection, here is a link to my Tamiya Club 'garage'!

https://www.tamiyaclub.com/member.asp?id=24472

I'd love the Renault 5 or the Mk1 Golf that shares it's chassis, but prices are crazy! I do have the Re-Re version of the Mk1 Golf, chassis is all built, but not been brave enough to paint the shell yet! One-day...….

I got into Tamiya a similar way to you, watching the videos in Beatties, such a shame they closed down. I bought my first Tamiya, a Lancia Delta Integrale when I was 16, I saved up for a year and bought it from my then local model shop, sadly another shop that closed down when the owner retired.

 

I used to collect stamps, banknotes and wristwatches in the past then I switched my hobby to collecting vintage electronics (boombox, walkman , portable record player, radios...).

 

Stamps (space and jets), pins, plastic model kits, Discmans, boomdoxes, CDs (esp. mini-LP CDs from Japan), Swiss wristwatches. Actually, wristwatches was my 'payback' to The Boss when seeing how she spends my hard-earned cash . BUT: once she noticed my IWC gold watch, she hit me so hard with her own purchase that my collecting-bug got crushed

 

what was her purchase ?

 

Before we went off on that rather enjoyable Tamiya tangent, I was going to comment that I have been a licenced Radio Amateur (Ham) since 1983,
although my interest in that has reduced over the years.

The UK licence states that the purpose of Amateur Radio is "for the purpose of self-training in radio communications, including conducting
technical investigations", and back when I got my licence you had to take a City and Guilds technical exam. Consequently many people become
Radio Amateurs as a result of other technical interests like audio and gadgets. Often they have technical jobs, which leads to an accumulation of gear as the companies they work for throw it away.

Since I became a Radio Amateur I have been going to Ham Radio rallies. Due to the internet and Ebay these have changed over the years.
Before Ebay many wholesalers used to use them to offload customer returns and surplus stock on a "spares or repairs" basis.
I got my second personal stereo, a Sanyo MGP600D that way, paying about £3 from a seller who had buckets (literally) full of different players.
For some reason you never got the battery cover with them. I guess that was an easy way of ensuring that they didn't get repaired and then resold as new
The repair was one of the easiest ever. A piece of adhesive backed shielding material that should have been over the circuit board had slipped sideways
sticking on to one of the pulleys stopping it rotating. It took more time to unscrew the back than to diagnose and fix the fault. I then used that
player for years as it was better than the one I had paid £50 for a couple of years earlier. This is it now. It looked like new when I got it.


Sanyo MGP600D

Something that has never changed is people who are trying to have a clear out selling stuff at Radio Rallies, or sadly in some cases clubs selling a "silent key's"
Shack contents. Rallies are now closer to a car boot sale but with 90% of all the stuff for sale being electronic. I would guess that only 30% is directly related to
Ham Radio i.e Transceivers etc. Thinking about it over half my Boomboxes have come from Radio Rallies. I once bought three from the same elderly guy, who told me about the Shortwave capability of each one. That was obviously his interest in them.


Collectable Radios at a 2016 Radio Rally. I just realised I bought the Sanyo bottom left.

Only a small percentage of people could understand why I wanted them. Probably the same people who wondered why I bought five "spares only" laptops for £20. Two worked, while I sold the newest (non working) on Ebay for £100. It would have been worth over £300 working.


"Spares or repairs" customer returns at a recent Radio Rally

One year they had great idea of holding the RSGB (Radio Socity of Great Britain) rally at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on the same day a Vintage Communications Fair with the same ticket giving entry to both events. That was an interesting contrast. While at Ham Radio rallies the thirty year old "junk" tends to be relegated to dusty boxes under the tables displaying the newer stuff, the Vintage Communication Fair was full of Bakelite Radios and Telephones lovingly restored to better than factory new condition, but at over ten times the price of the Radio Ham's junk in the other hall.


Junk under the tables - Unless you are desperate for a Sony U-Matic "boat anchor" VCR for £3

For at least ten years I have organised the Local Amateur Radio clubs stall at the local rally.


Christchurch Amateur Radio Club stand at FRARS Hamfest 2015

On the plus side I get to see all the things club members bring in to sell on commission, and get into the rally a couple of hours before opening.
On the minus side we are usually so busy setting up then selling that i don't get to look at the other stalls until an hour after the general public come in.


Some recent rally purchases.

The blue speakers were obviously customer returns. The seller had at least twenty at £1 each. Most appeared to have the same fault which was a broken input plug due to the retracting mechanism. I mended these two with soldering and sugru. Neither of the shortwave radios was more than £10. In 1989 I paid £130 for a new but similar Sony ICF-7600DS from a shortwave retailer at a rally. At the time that seemed like a bargain.

Due to Covid restrictions and cancellations, this will be the first year I haven't been to a radio rally since 1983 .

 

I need to get me to a radio rally! They look like a great source of decent vintage electronics!

 

Welp, couldn't help grabbing this cool Scammell wrecker at Ebay UK today - have a
soft spot for lorries/trucks from 50s -80s.
Especially of such power special type.

Circa 75 - a real yet English made Matchbox.
Seemingly in a good condition.

 

And here you can see all the other cool matchbox cars from 1975.
https://www.flipsnack.com/matchbox/matchbox-collectors-catalogue-1975.html
I notice they didn't include the "Models of Yesteryear". Kids paying 2p of their pocket money wanted to see cool vehicles like dragsters and your Scammell (which would have been handy for removing dragsters when they crashed) not "Horseless Carriages".

I notice the Scammell is a Superking, bigger and more expensive than the standard Matchbox models.

Seeing this post made me thing of the Matchbox display they used to have in the local village Post Office which sold both Matchbox and Airfix kits in addition to the usual Post Office stuff like greetings cards. I recall something like this.

http://vintagestoredisplay.info/tag/matchbox/

A feast for the eyes for an 8 year old.

 

I was more into model kits and Lego than ready made cars. The bottom of the range Airfix kits came in a Polythene bag and only cost about the same as a Matchbox car

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Airfix-C...334264?hash=item289ff52238:g:t4MAAOSwNIZfibbA

On my 22" screen that looks to be about life sized.

I think I made the complete set of these ships which for years sat gathering dust on a picture rail height shelf in my parents hall. Back in the days when you always expected a free gift in with your breakfast cereal I can recall one series being tiny plastic model kits of vintage cars that went well on my 1/72nd scale model railway.

 

Thank you for this link.

How much was it back in 70s? 3 pounds or more?

What puzzled me really is that on the model Scammell is misspelt. (?) Missing one L.
Did they do it for purpose - copyright or what?
I noticed that as I read the history of this company.

 

Same here - I have a due respect to all cars but like those started from 40-50s probably, the same goes with lorries/trucks.

Ah, lads, that's turned out to be only a beginning. Shite!

I was so happy to discover that Matel didn't abandon the Matchbox Logo which I like a lot - so colourful, plus brings memories from the past.
Whilst HotWheeels meant nothing for me back in the day.
Today at Tesco my daughter showed me a box with discounted Matchboxes -1.25.
So here you can see the result, couldn't resist, 40 years ago it would have been a real treasure!

 

Are they of better quality than Matchbox?
The same small matching scale, of course. Not big ones, 1/18 or so.
Not familiar with them.

 

Yep, many are being sold quite play-worn.