Wild Bill's Hobby Shop

[scapilot]

After being ready to prod my eyes out at the meager and identical selections of Hobby Lobby's here in the Ft. Worth area, I have recently been trying to track down any sort of off the grid hobby shop that is a true modelers place to go. There is a Hobbytown out in Arlington with a great selection, and one recently opened here in Ft. Worth that...to me is a waste of leasing space for any true modeler looking for anything. I'm amazed at the 30-35% markups on their stuff at Hobbytown. I'll literally sit on my phone and look up the identical kit on a preferred web site for modeling, and find it for 20 bucks cheaper. Shame.

Anyhow, I stumbled across Wild Bills, and a friend and I decided to take a 30 minute road trip. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere in regards to a hobby shop, but it was an experience.

When I walked in, I wasn't sure if I was in a hobby shop, or about to be hosted on Hoarders television show. lol. No one ever said modeling had to be clean. Out of fairness, those guys have stretched the use of their building to the extremes, although it looks like in the process they haven't done much dusting, or cleaning up around the join in about 20 years.

All that set aside, they had some really cool selections on kits, and might I also add...their prices were very fair.

I didn't really go looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to browse, and perhaps not have to look at the same played out hobby lobby selection of the same 12 kits. To my surprise, I was able to find the now elusive Revell F-14B, and re-release D model that both came with the drop tanks, and A/G weapons. I bought this kit off of spruebrothers about a year ago, and although it went together like any other stock R/M kit, I was happy at the updates that were found in the B version. So happy that I went back to order a couple more, only to find that it was discontinued. <_<

I've ebay'ed the kit a few times, and the folks who still have them are charging as much for one as a Hasegawa kit....um....no thanks.

I was excited to find them both somewhat close to each other here, and at 29 bucks a piece, I made em' both mine. They were selling on some of the more affordable websites for kit shopping last year for 23-27, so this wasn't a crazy mark up. With it being a brick/mortar store, I was easily guessing that they'd ask at least 40 for them.

All in all, it was a good find, and the store (albeit a little cluttered) is really cool to check out, and they've got a ton of stuff to sort through. Be careful when pulling boxes off the shelves though. You may just find yourself in a life or death game of Jenga.

Highly recommended.

[Chorse6]

It is a little gem, though confusing and disorganized. I took a buddy over there. MALs is not too far away either. Neat little store. All local DFW stores are here.

http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=102832

Edited March 26, 2013 by Chorse6

[carlizle84]

Wild Bill's is a great little hole in the wall hobby store. I usually only went there to buy paint since they have a good selection of Testors, Tamiya, and Alclad. Some of their kits are marked up a bit much, and you are right, they really need to dust in there. I dont mind the clutter since I know pretty much what is where in there. And I always go to the back corner and play the RC plane simulator game they have there. And it's a good thing they have that game, because I SUCK at flying RC planes lol