"Do you Remember Your First Visit to a Hobby Shop?" Topic

I woke up this morning, and for whatever reason started thinking about the hobbyshop I went to as a small child. It was the 1960s and the shop was Mosblack's in Steubenville, OH. I had probably just turned 4. I don't remember the first visit distinctly, though I suspect my strongest memory (they are faint and shadowy) was near the first. It was an old time shop in a typical pre-1920's storefront. I remember a sense of awe and excitement, an almost religious experience, but the only items I specifically recall are Matchbox cars. I remember a dimly lit old store, being lifted up to see over a glass counter, a smiling older woman helping us, and picking out Matchbox cars. For a couple of years, my Mom would take me in and buy 3 or 4 Matchbox cars every now and then. I remember looking around and being overwhelmed by the other treasures in the store, but cannot recall what they were. I remember being told that when I got older, I would be allowed to buy other things there. Unfortunately, it would not happen, as the owners sold it about a year before I got my first plastic kit. Though I don't really recall them, I know that they carried plastic kits and model RR. I wish that I could just stand there again, while a little boy picks out Matchbox cars, and see all of those things that left me with a sense of amazement and awe.

I remember walking into My hometown hobby store, early 70s, and the first thing I saw was boxes of Arifix 1/72 soldiers right in front of the cash drawer. They sold plastic models and such but that what struck Me first.

Mine was called Evertons in the middle of Grimsby UK and Mum and Dad took me in to buy fireworks.

The shop was very long and dim inside full of wonderful toys and games stacked high on glass fronted cupboards full of planes and trains and figures and dolls and kits and bits and bobs and tools but best of all fireworks.

Over the following years I learnt this treasure trove had more than fireworks it had bikes and pushchairs (ughh sissy stuff) but also had this wonderful pile (no order) of boxes marked Airfix and they had tanks in them.

From there one it was a steep slide into the depths of modeling of WWII bits and bobs (Tamiya / Revel and even Hasegawa) – many a happy hour spent gluing myself to hulls and melting tracks with a hot knife (daft idea melting the studs to hold them together).

Next step in my addiction was infantry (Africa Corps) and then parachutes and Falschrimjager and a book called Lord of The Rings.

Before I could control myself Evertons was left behind for a tatty shop near the railway crossing selling Minifigs LOTR and Valley of the Four Winds for 8p each (10p for mounted so did not have many of them).

How I miss the innocence of Evertons – thank you for prompting me to dig those happy memories up

Andrew
kings-sleep.me.uk

Mine was the Lebanon Hobby Shop in Lebanon, Ohio circa 1976. A big rack of Airfix HO/OO plastic soldiers and Bandai 1/48 scale WWII models. If I saved all the extra change from lunch during the week and scraped up another 30 cents, I'd go to the store on Friday and buy another box – $1.06 USD including taxes.

No games that I can remember, but many fonx memories of sitting at the kitchen table using one of Mom's 'good' steak knives to cut the figures off the plastic sprues.

I remember every little thing,like it happened only yesterday. Actually I recall going into a shop in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan with my aunt. They had a large assortment of Tri-Ang Minic ships and that is waht launched me in the hobby. Those ships have just recently been discovered when I was packing up my old place and now provide enjoyment for my eight year old grandson when he come for an overnight stay.
I also recall visits to Polk's Hobby Store which was on Fifth Avenue and 32nd St in Manhattan. That place was on the must see list for just about any hobbiest who visited New York.

My first was to the original Games Workshop in Hammersmith, London.

The whole range of wargames rules (of all periods), boardgames, figures (some of which were Citadel) was very impressive.

Nuff said.

My first was Dibble's in San Antonio. I recall digging through a box of 15mm figures to find two drummers and a fifer, just like in the famous painting (to the mind of a 6-year-old). My dad was (and is, to an extent) into trains. They still have a fair amount of trains, plus model kits and gaming stuff.

My first specifically gaming-related purchase was at Yankee Doodle in Kansas City. A set of pre-painted orcs. Yankee Doodle is closed now, sadly.

No…

I think my first was Lancaster Model Shop, on China Street. We used to get Airfix figures and kits from there. Also in Morecambe there was Edmondsons and Richard Lancaster.

All gone now sadly.

Like it was yesterday. 1988, at the Valet d'Coeur in Montreal. In those time, it was a true hobby shop, with the full plate mail in the front, a huge showcase of miniatures painted by the staff,an entire section dedicated to RPG's and racks upon racks of miniatures in the back. I was home.
Good times.

I remember my fist FLGS visit. a friend told me of it and we took a bus to the end of its route then walked. I complained the entire time wanting to stop at Mc Donalds for a soda . On the way back My friend had to lend me money cause I spent everything ..even my bus fair .

Paul's Hobby Shop in East Rutherford NJ.

They had everything from Airfix, to die cast from Germany to every model kit on the planet, rockets, trains and even sold fishing equipment and motor boats. I still remember them having 3 or 4 boats on display along with all the requisite sailing gear.

I also remember the family that owned it watched kids like a hawk all the time.

I am not sure when they closed it but it was at least 20 years ago.

Mine was a model shop in the centre of Croydon. I don't remember its name (it closed many years ago – I bought their entire stock of Airfix Napoleonics when they did, several thousand figures). Anyway, I remmeber it being one of those relaly old style model shops with the walls filled with old stuff. The reason we went was because they had Roco Minitanks. I came away with a jeep +recoilless rifle, a M8 armoured car thta aso has bits to make it into an M20, a US surfce to surface missile launcher (Hinest John I think) and a Bellona fuel dump. I must have been about 7 at the time.

The first one for me was The Last Grenadier in California…
I have no idea why we went there, I think my mother thought it was a toy store.
The place, and the staff, kind of disturbed her… but I was instantly smitten… it was the first time I ever saw miniatures, the first time I ever saw Dungeons and Dragons.
I came out of there with some old Valley Of The Four Winds minis and a hydra that my dad put together for me.

MY first visit was to a shop in Lorain Ohio when I spent a couple of weeks with my cousin and his family on vacation. I recall the shelves stacked with boxes of model kits – planes, tanks and a lot of ships. I remember a model of a Great Lakes ore carrier displayed on the wall (Lorain's port had a lot of Great Lakes ore carrier traffic). Great place. That got me started to riding my bike with my pals to on what I thought was a huge trip to the Maple Heights model shop on Warrensville Rd. (The trip was really only about three miles, but when you're that young, you'd have thouht I travelled around the globe). Great store packed with planes and tanks.

I would take the bus (more like 3 buses) and visit the stamp shop in Peckham Rye and gawp at the beautiful figures painted by the owner (I am getting old because I cannot remember his name – somebody help me on his name please…Bill (?)) and considering I would only spend pennies, and that I was a spotty little yob, he would put up with me and my mates spending way too much time in there asking him questions.

Happy days.

My memory is from much later, as I came to the hobby through D&D. Sure, there were toy stores and the K-mart toy aisle with the big stack of Colonel Steve Austin Six Million Dollar Man (with Bionic Vision!) boxes in the front (the first "I want that" big impulse buy from my Mom that I can recall— but I digress). My first real "hobby shop" was the Bicycle and Hobby Shop in Florence, Alabama. I'd been in there before— I think for model rockets— but in this case I was by myself, I was fourteen, and I wanted a game I'd heard about called "Traveller." I can still see the small black and red box sitting on the shelf behind the counter (why there rather than out front, I'll never know). I still have that box, much the worse for wear, and some Gamescience polyhedral dice I bought for use with D&D. A few years later I even sold the owner an ad in my school paper (complete with coupon). I did the artwork— a space-suited figure holding a raised cutlass and a laser pistol (my artistic specialty at the time)— and won a statewide award for the ad. I think I even have a copy of the paper with the ad stored at my parents' house.

That shop is long gone now, and never had much on the side of wargaming. But that was my first real hobby shop.

1974. On vacation in Monterrey CA and stopped for gas in a little town, Cambria.
Across the street was a strange little store called the Soldier Factory*. Walked inside and that was it.
Fellow named Jack Scruby :)

link

The first hobby store I went into was Hobby Mart in Riverside California. I was into many different things then, models, stamps, trains, but one day when I was 15 I bought my first board wargame. Certainly I had purchased airfix from KMart, but never saw rules for or any mention of miniatures gaming. Then I started buying Fire and Movements and discovered Wargamers Digest, all in the same store. It was one of those stores that were just crammed with stuff. Anyway it wasn't till I returned from the army and went to another store in Riverside, Daylight Hobbies, and met my close friend Terry Boldt (RIP) that I was introduced to the wonderful hobby of historical miniatures.

I don't remember the name now, but it was a shop on Congress Street in Portland, Maine in the '60s. It was on a second or third floor of a building of mostly professional offices, next to the Porteous, Mitchell, and Braun department store. It was cool to ride the elevator up to the shop!

I got my first HO trains there, and Airfix figure sets, and Roco Minitanks. When the Congress Street stores and downtown Portland faded away in the '70s, after the Maine Mall was built, the shop moved out to Westbrook. But it's gone completely now.

About the same time, we would regularly stop at a little shop in Woodstock, VT, when we were traveling. It carried Britains, Ltd., and each visit, I'd get to pick out a new set--with my mother somehow secretly stashing one of the big boxed sets away once a year or so, for Christmas.

Allen

Mine was Fields in Buffalo NY, around 1966. My dad was just coming off being badly burned, and he was told to build models to exercise his fingers. He got an ocean liner, a pirate ship and a 4-pack of 1/24 scale cars – two of which I remember – a Corvair and a Valiant. I got a Revell 3-in-a-box fighters of WWII – a Hawker Hurricane, a Brewster Buffalo, and I do not remember the third. I remember the Hurricane was a light blue plastic, and thinking "fighters weren't this color!" (I was about 6).

There was also a store on Ontario Street in Riverside (part of Buffalo) that sold matchbox cars. The boxes covered one whole wall. I don't remember if that was before or after Fields, but it was pretty close in time.

I first discovered models around 1973, and the first hobby shop I visited (and my favorite at that time) was The Hobby Hub at Seminary South Shopping Mall in Fort Worth. The store was rather small, as I seem to remember, but packed with models, and moved around 1980 to Arlington into a much bigger space. It had a couple of sister stores, at Forum 303 Mall in Arlington/Grand Prairie, and at Ridgmar Mall in west Fort Worth. All three were closed by the late '80s-very early '90s.

Hopefully, the era of the hobby shop hasn't passed.

Scoonie Hobbies on Perth Road in Dundee, sometime in the 1970s. SH was a 'proper' model shop in that you could hardly move for fear of demolishing a stack of boxes. I'm not sure if I was in this shop first or their (main) shop in Kirkcaldy, but it was in the latter that I recall buying the Airfix WW1 horse artillery set. Sadly the Dundee shop closed in the early 80s leaving Sherrif's in the Cowgate as the sole model shop in the area.

For me, it was a shop called Cordova Toy and Hobby in the local mall. They sold typical toys and some of the earlier video games (Pong/Atari 2600 era), but what caught my attention were the miniatures, primarily Ral Partha and RAFM at the time. I bought my very first miniature there at age 8 – it was a lead figure of the Enterprise A from the figure line supporting the FASA rules system for Star Trek battles. I was too young to know about superglue and have a distinct memory of trying to put it together with regular white school glue, and experience which actually taught me a lot about working with miniatures.

The Clyde Model Dockyard in Glasgow. Embarrassingly it is now to be found as an exhibit at the Glasgow Museum of Transport on the 'street full of shops from past times'.

Norell's Hobbies and Crafts on Merivale road. I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong. It's been closed for years but I used to save my allowance for either a box of soldiers or DnD books.

I still think about it every time I drive by.

Can't really remember when it was – we're going back nearly 50 years – but I can remember going into a shop with my mother for some paints for some of the new Airfix 1/72nd kits.

Unfortunately, neither of us realised at that time that poster paints were not very good at painting plastic kits.

Walked into The Compleat Strategist (yes, the name is spelled right) in Durham, NC, sometime in the mid-80's. I remember thinking at the time that it was the holiest of holy's. They had everything. Boardgames, miniatures, RPG's, dice, anything related to gaming. It only lasted a year or so. I played D&D there religiously while it was open. I've been to other game stores since then, but none have been like that one.

As far as hobby stores, there was one in Raleith, NC, when I was little. I don't remember the name, but I would stand for what seemed like hours staring at their working HO scale model railroad layout.

Wizard's Workshop in Billings, MT in the early to mid 80 's. It was a little shop inside of a mall downtown. It was quite a ways to travel and I was mostly interested in the comics available at the time. I did buy my first RPG's and miniatures there though eventually before they closed (much to quickly).

Not the first, no.
I have fond memories of going to the Ryders in Flint with my Grandpa when I was little. He was big into the HO trains, and I was impressed and awed by the terrain and buildings.

I have no idea how I wound up with the hobby I have now. That seems odd…

Yeah, I remember… but my hand is bothering me too much to type about it.

Good memories.

The Hobby Shop was on Price Hill in Cincinnati, very near St Lawrence church (?), and it was great. I was looking at 1/24 & 1/25 scale model cars, more than I had ever seen in one place before. I went back there several more times. I do not think they are still in business.

Benner's in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Yes, going to Grand Forks was a vacation for us. Benner's had lots of models and stuff I had never dreamed of before. It seems the best hobby shops have the most eclectic selection of stock. Sadly, Benner's is long gone, a family-owned business as I understood it. The memory lives on though.

If we aren't counting toy shops which sold Airfix then it would be the Post Office down the road which doubled as a model shop and which I worked in from about 12 years of age :-)

I enjoyed my first vists to gaming store back in the early 1970s.

I think I was nine. Ten? Maybe eleven. Don't really remember. I was young.

Mom was in the hospital, in Victoria, Texas, and we were taking turns sitting with her. It was my shift -- afternoon -- and she dozed off, leaving me bored. I left a note and wandered out of the hospital and across the street to a shopping center.

There was a hobby shop there. I didn't really know what a "hobby shop" was, but through the window, I could see planes hanging from the ceiling. This seemed intriguing, so I walked in.

This would have been the mid-seventies. They had, I think, every fraggin' Aurora model kit ever made. "Prehistoric Scenes." "Frightening Lightning." Even a few "Monster Scenes." And, of course, the Spindrift, the Seaview, the rattlesnake-vs-micro-people from "Land Of The Giants," and the dreaded saucer from "The Invaders." Many were out of production then, but this store still had them. Like Dibble's, it was a hobby shop where time stood still. On a shelf above the counter, they had the old Hawk "Weird-Ohs" from a decade before, the old "armored knight" models, and all sorts of amazing things, all expertly painted.

I about lost my mind. To this day, I wish I'd had the money to buy the place bare to the walls. This was where I learned about Airfix 1/72 scale plastic figures from every era of humanity, and so much more.

If I had a time machine, it was one of the first three places I'd go, right now.

Marshall's toy shop in Gerrards Cross, England. This was back when my Dad was stationed at High Wycombe Air Force Base. We lived in a rented house in Gerrards Cross. I was finally old enough to cross the A40 and the Gerrards Cross Common from Dukes Wood Drive to visit the toy shop. My savings always went toward Britain's "Swoppets" and "Eye's Right" figures. I still have them.

I was probably five, six, seven when I went to Stanton Hobby in Chicago. I think it was on Milwaukee Ave then, and still is, though not in the same location. It is primarily an RC store although they did carry the HO plastic tanks.

A couple of years later when I was introduced to board wargames, I found them in toy stores and a model shop in Harlem-Irving Plaza. Then came a small shop on Central around Barry that carried miniatures. Let's see, around the same time Gamer's Paradise opened in the Plaza and not too much later, I discovered Emperor's Headquarters and I was like a kid in a candystore.

The first real hobby shop would have been 'James & Lendons' in Llanishen, Cardiff, first visted back in the very late 1960's. Model railways mostly but with plastic kits, (Airfix naturally) & the like. I was last in there about 10 years ago & I'm delighted to see that they're still growing strong (as Lendons). lendons.co.uk

Not really. I got into the hobby through a friend at school.

There was a model railway shop in town, but the only thing for wargamers / toy soldiers was Airfix boxes and kits, sold in a variety of toy and department stores. Humbrol paints were sold in equally odd places. There was a rack of them in a photo shop in town.

Even today, still the only real hobby shops I've seen are the GW ones. Far more significant for me was my first copy of Military Modeling. That provided the inspiration, eye candy and addresses to send for goodies.