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So, I was out of town yesterday and decided to see if there were any hobby stores nearby. Sure enough, there was a Hobby Town there.

So I go in and notice that the store is kinda small and everything is spaced out.

So I ask the one person there (the owner) if he happens to have a stash of older Associated parts anywhere. I swear that he tells me that he has never sold Associated cars or parts. Whatever look I gave him couldn't have been good because it looked like it made him uncomfortable.

So I made a quick look around to see if there was anything I wanted (nope!) and left. My wife wasn't impressed either.


Comparatively speaking, my local Hobby Town is about twice the size and easily has 3X+ as much stock. It also has several employees and there are always several customers there.

I created a perceived demand for Dean's 4 pin connectors at my local Hobby Town by buying the couple of pair they had on the shelf and then ordering another 10 pair. After that, they restocked and increased the price from $2.89 a pair to $5.99 a pair. They regularly have higher prices than their corporate website.

I do like the practice of scouting for hobby stores when traveling. I just started and it can be cool to see what they have tucked away.

Here in the Richmond, Va area, they recently closed down the only two smaller HTs and opened a single much larger one. It is probably 3-4 times the size of either of the original stores. Their RC staff is actually pretty knowledgeable and friendly, and I can't really complain about them at all.

They do seem to carry much more stock than they did before, although there isn't much beyond paint, building supplies, and Infraction parts that I go there for. Biggest pain is one of the smaller stores was about 20 minutes from me, and now the big store is about 40 minutes.

I do fear that they made this big investment during the height of the RC Covid boom, and with that dwindling, can they support such a store. I would hate to see them go away entirely.

There is only one other very small hobby store in my neck of the woods, and it filled with Traxxas and Arrma parts for the most part. Very little of what I am interested in.

My local Hobby Town is 60 miles away and is quite a large store. The RC department takes up 1/3 to 1/2 of the space in the store and there's always at least half dozen employees working every time I go in, which at least 3 or 4 of them are typically behind the very long RC counter. I've found out most of them are quite impressively knowledgeable about modern RC stuff, but certainly not so much when it comes to vintage RC. Which isn't surprising since the employees all seem to look to be in their 20's. One cool thing about the store is that their "in stock" items are typically slightly cheaper than what the online prices show.
There are also 5 other Hobby Towns in the Chicagoland area, which I avoid like the plague, that are all within 65 to 115 miles away. Needless to say I've never been to any of those Hobby Towns.

In recent years I found out there use be a bunch of privately owned RC hobby shops back in the 80's and 90's within about a 30 mile radius of my surrounding area. Unfortunately their all gone

morrisey0 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 10:37 am There is only one other very small hobby store in my neck of the woods, and it filled with Traxxas and Arrma parts for the most part. Very little of what I am interested in.

This place was pretty much Traxxas and a few brands of crawlers. They also had some drone stuff and a few train items.


I have recently learned of another local place. It is a carpet on/off road track about 20 minutes away. It looks like they also have a small hobby store as well. They are only open in the evenings when the track is open.

I really miss all the privately owned stores back then. So many around our area and so much fun just to take a day off and look around. One had 4 floors off hobby stuff and they always had new and used collections of rc and model kits stacked 10 ft high and hung on all the walls. Planes hanging from the ceiling everywhere you looked. All gone now sadly. All we have now is a poorly stocked Hobby town which I hardly go to. They don't even have a complete set of rc paint available. Its better to see the kits in person rather than looking at a web store.