RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

Big edit here from the moved FS thread...thanks Todd

Trey

Did tomahawks come with gear cases from the assault? I thought they had a scorpion gear case

One of my Tomahawks has the same gear box, also came with 10mm shocks and spike Sand Supers.
My guess is Kyosho was using up parts.

If anyone sees this post and is confused its from my FS thread I asked to be moved, just figured I'd leave it mostly intact...

Hey guys, its entirely possible that I got screwdrivered on the original purchase. I bought it as a roller listed "new build tomahawk". I have never seen one listed NIB ever. I have seen NIB Scorpions, but the lowest price I've seen for them was in the $1000+ range. You are probably right about the re-re Scorpion effecting the price of something like this, but I would keep it before I sold it for less than what I have in it. And as far as $200 bottom end price lol you can try that with someone else! I do appreciate the comments guys, all of them. But I guess I will just hang on to it and let my little boy decide weather to run it or shelf it in 5-10 years or when I say its his to do with as he please.

Trey

I guess it's not hard for people's comments and opinions to come off seeming a little offensive, sorry for that.

It all comes down to reality though, doesn't it. The reality is that in 2014 the vintage enthusiast now has a wide varirty of vintage buggy rereleases to wet their appetite. Whilst a lot of us have paid a whole lot for things in the past I guess it was only ourselves that we have to blame. Long forgotten, retail prices have no longer the bench mark as demand drove prices sky high in many cases and many of us have spent up big just to have something that we really desired. It's the age bracket too with disposable income being greater than what we had access to back in our childhood we now had the opportunity to collect and now own all the things we weren't able to back then.

So what do you do with your Tomahawk? Keep it! Sadly the high end buyers are growing fewer and fewer now with reproduction lexan bodysets available and the rere Scorpion so those who want to experience these old gems can now do so at a greatly reduced price from that which we had no choice to pay but a year a go.

In my opinion the car you have might well be worth more to you than it will be to someone else AND that;s coming from someone who really loves these Kyosho's.

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Hey guys, no offense taken at all! Lol I'm 40 years old, I would rather hear honest opinions than bs so no worries there. And really, I likely way over paid for this. I bought it before Kyosho announced the Re-re scorpion. Had I known that I'd likely be posting along with you guys to someone else asking high dollar for their Tomahawk. I am honestly into this thing as it sits for over $600 at the moment. By the time I bought the roller, had it shipped, picked up the esc and over seas purchased the motor, bought various 32 pitch pinions to learn I needed a mod 1 1/8" shaft pinion which was a pain to find... see what I mean. The $850 starting price was sadly only about $200 over what I have in it, with lots of room for negotiating and I am here. I don't regret it, its a neat car that is totally new...lol I only wish the shocks would hold oil while on display Anyways its been a learning experience. I have been into this stuff for near 30 years, and while the vintage collecting part is really cool, I think after this, I'm more inclined to do vintage runners in the future

Trey

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It is a great looking buggy and I can say from experience, it doesn't take long to rack up the $$$ when restoring one back to new.
I am almost (99%) finished with mine and I have at least $400 invested in it already. You can look at my thread and see how much of it I already had. That is just the cost of the rest of the parts I had to track down to finish it. I can honestly say I would NEVER build another, LoL. My advice would be to keep it. Don't let the Son inherit it until he is old enough to NOT want to play with it.

Anyone can make one now with the re-release of the Scorpion, but would it be an original? No way! That probably won't matter to most people, but knowing you have something that old and all original is special. I for one am glad I finished mine before the 2014 Scorpion came out. I was afraid of getting new part @ vintage prices, but Kyosho did a nice balance of modern/vintage with the new Scorpion (IMO).

Its really nice Treystoys.

Thanks again everyone. I'm gonna hang onto it, probably going to swap out the Novak esc for something a tad more vintage, and pick up an early 80s radio set then leave it all on my little boys dresser for display. TM I checked out your thread last night, very nice build you have there as well!

Maybe one of the mods should move this thread to the Kyosho section and I'll just delete all the FS stuff. I even already have a thread in there for this car, may as well just add these posts to that one.

ttyl guys

Trey

I certainly would just keep it before losing money.
I am going to update my build thread with finished pics as soon
as I get the decals on the body and finish the wheels.
Good idea about a vintage speed controller. I know those things were junk,
but they are a must for a Tommy on the shelf
Mine was outfitted with Airtonics equipment, so I kept it original.
The Tx I have for it probably doesn't work, but great for display!

Glad you didn't get upset with these guys, they were just being brutally honest!
I know I could never get back what I put into mine, but I didn't build it to make money.
For me, it was something personal that I wanted to complete.
I've had that buggy down in storage since 1992. Didn't even know what it was until I came here.
I (STILL) have never seen it with wheels on it!
Hoping that changes very soon.

TM

Bit late to this thread...
Thanks everyone for the info here, really interesting.

J.M. wrote:So what do you do with your Tomahawk? Keep it! Sadly the high end buyers are growing fewer and fewer now with reproduction lexan bodysets available and the rere Scorpion so those who want to experience these old gems can now do so at a greatly reduced price from that which we had no choice to pay but a year a go.

I may be alone in this opinion, but the reissued cars have done nothing to change my quest for originals, nor the prices I would consider. The reissued kits are full of differences. Finances allowing, I respect that original cars have value. I also get regular requests through my website from readers who are searching for original kits too. In many cases, they are people who are first time collectors who really want to relive exactly what they owned in the 80s.

TM Ru22311 wrote:Anyone can make one now with the re-release of the Scorpion, but would it be an original? No way! That probably won't matter to most people, but knowing you have something that old and all original is special.

Agreed. This sums it up pretty well for me as well.

For another perspective - If vintage R/C collectors stopped caring about originals because of reissues, I think they'd be about the only retro collecting community on the planet who did so.

In every type of collecting hobby, people always want the original release. Star Wars, coins, stamps, care bears...reissues are everywhere, but they mean little. Book collectors pay thousands extra just to own first edition books, that sometimes only differ from other editions by as little as one printed line of text. My wife has collected a few, and the prices out there are incredible. Call it silly, but it's whatever makes people happy. And knowing you have an original example of something that went on to become a historically significant item, is simply fun.

Compared to books or coins, collecting vintage R/C cars is actually a hobby packed with tons of differences between originals and reissues.
When it comes to the Scorpion, it seems like practically the entire car was remolded, and then made in china. To me it's not really vintage unless it was made back in the day. And for this particular hobby there was a specific golden era when the hobby boomed, technical ideas were still young, everyone was still learning, and each kit was quite unique. If R/C were art, that era might one day be given a fancy name like "Renaissance Era" Typically we just bang on about "The 80s" or "Golden era". But there's no denying there was something special about that time, that will probably never be repeated.

There have been a lot of great threads on RC10talk that delve into changes and differences in kits over time. I mostly lurk, but it's always great to read when people go into such detail (thanks to Tamiyadan in this thread!)

cheers,
H.

tamiyadan wrote: the normal kyosho spec MSC for the day had reverse, neutral, forward slow, med, fast. the unit has 2 resistors.
The Tomahawk actually got the upgraded MSC, the PCB is the same but the wiring is different and the unit has 3 resistors.
you had Brake, Neutral, Forward 1, 2 , 3 and 4, giving you finer control.
outside of japan kyosho put the regular 3 step MSC in the kit and sold the 4 speed as a hopup. the hopup consisted of a wire harness with 3 Resistors and you had to desolder the original MSC harness and install the new one.

Actually, this bit may not be correct.

I have a NIB Kyosho Tomahawk from Japan. It even has the Goodyear block tyres, thus perhaps an 'early issue' (since later ones included Sand Super block tyres, or even Sand Super spike tyres).
This kit includes the 2-resistor set in the packet.

So it seems the 2 resistor set was not exclusive to Cox Tomahawks.

So here's another theory:

Early days - Tomahawks (both Cox/Kyosho and Kyosho) tended to come with Goodyear tyres for a while, and 2-resistor sets for a while. Because these were both standard equip on Scorpions.
Later days - Tomahawks (both Cox/Kyosho and Kyosho) tend to come with Sand Super (block or spike) tyres, and perhaps 3-resistor sets.

It seems Kyosho had a tendency to include stuff in kits simply because "we're already using it in that other kit over there...".

Hence early Tomahawks using Goodyear block tyres at first - which matches the box art.
Then Kyosho drop the Goodyear tyres entirely. And both Scorpion and Tomahawk kits start using Sand Super block tyres.
Then the Scorpion is discontinued, and the Turbo Scorpion comes out. So they start throwing Sand Super spikes into latter Tomahawk kits.

I think the same thing probably happened with the resistors.

Also, I have seen more Cox kits with the original Goodyear tyres (both Scorpion and Tomahawk), than Kyosho kits. Not sure what this says.