Why is it Maryland has only 4 hobby shops and Cailfornia has 11or 12?
Maybe the fact that California has 39 million people and Maryland has 6 million has something to do with it.
California has a population of 39 million and Canada has a population of 35 million and I know we have more than 12 hobby shops. Some are even within driving distance. I feel so blessed.[(-D]
Don’t feel bad. Here in the nearly 111,000 sq mi worth of Nevada, we only have 4 hobby shops as well, 1 in Carson City (the one I go to) and three in Las Vegas…400 miles to my south. This state is creeping toward 3 million pop., but sadly the most popular hobby here is gambling. Go figure.
I think a large part of it is population.
Mark H
Because Maryland is very small and most of it is within driving distance of another state.
What are hobby shops? [:-^]
Whatever they are, we have none in our area.
Rich
Hobby shops are retail establishments greatly affected by the internet. All sales have price as the driving factor. supermarkets exist because people want to check the produce and meats. Hence not subject to internet competition. The addage is want go broke try a hobby. Want to go broke quickly service the hobby.
Ahhh, now I get it. Thanks. [(-D]
Maryland has more than 4. Just not every one lists in MR. Probably true for California and other states as well.
Enjoy
Paul
Maryland has MBKein. That’s my (Central Texas) LHS.
Only if they stick to old business mode and cuss the internet instead of embracing it as a business tool.
A successful hobby shop will have a web page and a e-Bay store to sell his old stock.By doing this he will gain hundreds if not thousands of customers that look over his web page and e-Bay store and buy his new and old merchandise.
Remember “record stores?” They are gone too, mostly.
Dave Nelson
Mainly because their product doesn’t exist any more.
M. B. Klein is mine, too…
Oh, they exist…but they’re now considered “specialty shops”…and they’re few and far-between…with prices (usually) quite high (vs. what we paid for them in, say, the '70s…!!)
Sad to say, I sold my vinyl collection some years ago…along with my AR XB turntable-- the moving-coil cartridge on it was nearly TWICE the price of the turntable!!
May your freight ALWAYS roll smoothly…and ON TIME!!
I’ve heard on the radio a few weeks back that vinyl records have made a sort of a come back, albiet of course, as a limited specialty. IIRC, the program featured a company that was pressing records since there seems to be a clientel which still is interested in the medium. Back when I lived in Indiana and knew a couple who ran a business selling records and it was going strong when I moved away long after CD’s had taken hold - they had a catalog mail order business which they sold to customers who still preferred records over compact discs. Cottage industry.
I go to the Train Shop in Santa Clara, CA. Doesn’t seem like its growing by leaps and bounds but its thriving. My kids love to go there to see different things on the shelves and some times we buy. I got a couple used items from ebay and look at the M.B.Klein site a lot, but lately I just by local. I even just placed an order for a Mantua switcher there, something that I did not think I would do. Cost me $20 more but this is a discretionary expense and so I will just buy less, but buy here.
The kids definitely enjoy going there and checking all functions of the engine and putting it in the box. They love to hold the box while we drive home, they even take turns holding it.
All that is priceless. I hope there are more like me … It’s not higher prices, it’s admission fee for a happy afternoon hour.
NP.
The “local” hobby shop seems to be harder to find. I imagine if you looked a copy of MR from 1975, you’d see maybe 30-40 hobby shops in California alone. I was very lucky growing up in Richfield MN that I was only a block or two from the original Hub Hobby (when it was in the Hub Shopping Center), so could walk or bike there when I needed something. I could bike to another hobby / bike shop about a mile away, and a short bus trip to Lake St. in Minneapolis got me to Woodcraft Hobby Shop (who sponsored their own Saturday afternoon TV show!)
Now to get to a hobby shop I have to go from my work in downtown St.Paul a couple miles west (the opposite direction from where I live) to get to Scale Model Supplies on University and Lexington.
Course the good news is, now I can leave my car in the ramp in downtown St.Paul after work, and take the light rail to the hobby shop and back, since there’s a station across the street from my office.
[A]
Ha’ well remember Woodcraft Hobby on Lake St. Back in the 50s ,I and a friend were even on the Tv show once with a diorama we had built. Loved that store.
Remember when you could go to a Heathkit store and build your own computer? Now we really ARE dating ourselves.
Back when I was in college at CSUS in Sacramento - as long as we are dating ourselves - this would have been around 1978/79, memory is fuzzy, I recall people were building terminals from Heath Kits so they could connect the PDP 11/70 Time Share computer on campus, using dial up modems. Yep, the kind you put a hand set into. Dumb terminals but pretty cool to have. And the funny think is some agencies are looking at going full circle to something called zero client - sort of back to a terminal again because of all the high maintenence of keeping an O/S ;patched and up to date. Wierd eh?