Online or local?
I buy most of my kits, books and AM stuff locally. All of my paints I buy locally as it is a hassle to buy online. I do buy hard to find AM stuff online. My LHS has a good but not great distributor so I have to troll through Ebay and other onlines sites (squadron.com and modelmecca.com) to find what I need.
I buy most of my stuff locally, I only go online if I need certain things that are out of stock/not offered at the LHS.
Local.
There isn’t a single hobby product that I cannot purchase locally.
Well, we don’t have Future here in Japan, but that’s not a “hobby product” per se…[;)]
squadron mail order or local drug store has a 1/700 uss arizona
I also use Squadron as my local has few selections.
LHS
and my hobby shop carries some good model ships at good prices
Local as often as possible, but I do occasionally order on line if my LHS doesn’t have
what I want.
No LHS within hours, that and the fact that I spend 12 hrs a day at the computer makes Mail Order my logical choice.
However, more than 80% of my on-line purchases are from ma and pop shops.
LHS
Combination of Online and LHS. One can find good deals at either place.
I’ll support my LHS as much as possible, but if they can’t order it I will go online.
-Dave
I generally purchase my kits locally, but there are not a lot of ship kits (except for a bunch from the Chinese Navy…Yuck). So far, I’ve been lucky enough to fiind one or two a year I like.
As much as I would prefer to buy my kits locally, I can usually find what I need/want online only. However, I do my all of my supplies locally. Brian’s too (future that is).
And as far as I’m concerned that IS a “Hobby Product”.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but it’s an interesting topic. I mostly buy online. I generally use greatmodels.com, as the price is right. That said, I support my LHS now and then, either because I get a sudden itching to have a certain kit NOW, or because I just think it’s right to.
Unfortunately, I live in New York, and modeling is not really big here, so the largest city in the country has probably one of the smallest modeling markets. The only really respectable franchise is called Brookhurst Hobbies, and they are too far away from me – they are the only shop I know of that carries stuff like AM.
I shop mostly at “The Red Caboose” on 45th St., which has a decent styrene kit collection, vastly overpriced, and occasionally buy something at “Village Comics,” off Bleeker, mostly garage kits of sci-fi/horror subjects but also a small inventory of military. I used to shop at another place called Jan’s, on the Upper East Side, also overpriced, claustrophobic, and very eccentrically run.
The LHS’s in my area are only good for paint and brushes and an occasional model so all to often its off to the internet
Was locally but will probably be squadron, verlinden, scalemodelingbychris and others from now on. My local shop guy was taking a poll the other day if we ever buy online. My answer was “some, did you ever get the Hasegawa VFA-82 F-18 that I asked about last month”. His answer was no, nobody else has asked for it. I answered that things like this was why people are going to the internet. They don’t have to wait three months for delivery.
Is it me or if you owned a hobby store and got deliveries every week that is customizable, wouldn’t you order whatever the customer wanted to keep him coming in.
He just got the Chevy SSR that I asked about in October. Why complain about other people taking your business away when you don’t make an attempt to keep it…
Exactly. That’s why I buy (what I do) online. I’d much rather give my hard earned money to my LHS.
I checked my reciepts
kits and after market:
55% mailorder Pacific Front hobbies.
15% Squadron mailorder
10% Ebay or Hobby link Japan
20% local hobby shop (well actually 1 is 20 miles away from where I live)
supplies:
70% Local hobby shop
20% Chain craft stores (Michels, Hobby Lobby, Crafts etc.)
10% Other
Coments:
I build mainly ship models of which 45% are resin. Frequently I buy kits of ships that are only availible in resin. [:D]