Contemplating a big change in direction in the hobby

[THE H.P FREAK]

HI!... 102 cars in my collection. Only 6 are ever driven. The rest are shelf queens and that's the way I like it. After all the countless searching for parts and pain staking building and refurbishing I shake at them ever being used just to damage them.

[jkelm24]

Interesting conversation...

I'm actually headed in the opposite direction in this hobby. For years I was giving attention to 'runner' RCs that rarely got used. I didn't have any emotional attachment to them, so I finally decided to turn my attention and money to the cars that I actually wanted... those that I salivated over as a kid!

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=28956

But, I've had to be very disciplined and have managed to stay focussed only on the cars in my wish list. The only car that's taken me off track so far is the Nix91, but the Stealth was the car I wanted most as a kid, and it fits in perfectly with my collection.

I think in the end, I'll end up with my shelfers that have an emotional attachment, and maybe just one or two runners/bashers (maybe a beet up RC10 and a Traxxas Stampede or something)...

But, I completely understand the feeling of having 'X' amount of dollars tied up in something that doesn't get used, or that has no emotional/nestalgic attachment. I've gone through that experience with several hobbies myself.

[RC10th]

My favorite part of the "collecting" side is having an example of the evolution of buggies, trucks etc. IE 10T, 10T3, 10T4, Early GT, Mid GT, Late GT or 12L, LW, LS, LC, L3, L4 etc. I've often thought of thinning it out to one clean example of each and using the proceeds to buy the missing links.

When I was younger it was all about the modifications, now it's the originality.

[LTO_Dave]

For me, it's been the thrill of the hunt that's kept me interested in vintage RC collecting. I've spent years tracking down certain parts and complete cars, so there's no way they would ever be ran. And besides, there are no tracks near enough to me to warrant running my shelfers. I occasionally try to talk myself into selling things, but I realize how long it took me to find something and how I might never come across it again. So I usually end up hoarding everything.

I've been into RC crawling over the past several years and finally went balls-deep with an Axial Wraith build. But I honestly don't think I'll ever get tired of this vintage stuff...at least I don't want to anyway.

[Daryl Lane]

My collection is rather small compared to most here, but each one has a little blood sweet and tears in it. Not sure I have any that could be called original examples of a production kit, just lots of custom thoughts and parts.

I have been thinking of selling some just so they do not get garage sold when I get to old to remember what they are...LOL

Like you Dave I do not have any tracks close enough (5 miles or so) to take the time to go out and run one - I have gotten lazy I guess.

[slapshot1979]

LTO-Dave nailed it for me, RC10eh and I have talked about the same thing many times. Its the thrill of the hunt....finding something on the local buy and sell from some guy who built it with his Dad in 1983 and its been kicked around since 1985 and wants $30. get it home rub your hands raw polishing- hours spent surfing here waiting for that 1 missing part to come up, to be able to finish-beat fists on chest feel pride and put on shelf to be looked at once in ahwile.
I still enjoy it but an more choosy about my projects. Just picked up a BBT rc10, I don't need it but DAM it looks very nice to its shelf mate BBT losi.
Nice to hear you'll offer up to your internet vintage brothers first

[markbt73]

You know, it's not even really shelf-queen-vs-runner. I would have no qualms about running any of my cars; I just... don't. To a larger extent, it's more that I came to RC cars from static models, I never really got good enoguh at racing to have developed a sense for RC race cars as vehicles in their own right, so I still think of them as models. But they're models of cars that never really existed. I tend to get more attached to the ones that are scale models of real vehicles. (Or the ones that I had as a kid; no one is getting their hands on my restored Blackfoot until I'm six feet under.)

And please don't think that I'm going to suddenly let loose a bunch of museum-quality dislplay pieces here. Most of my cars are nice, but not anything special, in terms of either condition or spec. They could be brought up to a higher standard, I'm sure, but I have no interest in doing so.

WHat's odd is that the Land Rover that I'm building from scratch probably will spend most of its time on a shelf. And it hopefully won't be the last scratch-built model I build, fully RC, completely capable of moving under its own power, but rarely doing so. In fact, tht's kind of where I see my interest going. I love workbench time more than anything, but cleaning up old parts and screwing them together just doesn't engage me the way it does some people. And missing a critical part and having to go searching for it is my idea of frustration, not fun. I'd rather figure out how to make something that will work than comb ebay and BST forums trying to find the "right" part.

But hey, that's what makes this a great hobby. There's more than one way to get really deeply involved in it, many different possible goals, and as many ways of accomplishing them. Racers, restorers, collectors, bashers, scratch-builders: we all have a seat at the table, and thanks to forums like this, we all have a way to see what one another's up to, and go "wow, cool!", even if it's not something we would do ourselves.

[romulus22]

And missing a critical part and having to go searching for it is my idea of frustration, not fun.

I feel the same way here. I'm an instant, now type person. I lose interest if something takes too long.

[biff85ta]

I have two shelf cars but if I had the electrics both of them would be runners and three race cars. I alternate between off road and on road when I get frustrated with one or the other. I might quit racing at some point but never again will I sell all of my RC stuff.