Central Hobby Supply - Closed

[lvrr325]

I found out today that Central Hobby Supply of Syracuse, NY closed effective Friday 8/31.

He was primarily doing mail order, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people here are or have been customers. 

Just decided it was time to retire, sold the inventory to other shops and called it a day, did it so suddenly and quietly I didn't find out until after the fact. 

But I don't blame him too much.  It's hard to cover the overhead and have any profit on the margins new items bring today, and with so many things now up in the air with the factory issues in China, he'd have half as many things to try to sell.  Much less frustrating to sit back and leave it to the other guys. 

It did leave a few people out in the cold on pre-orders, though, I'm checking now to see if I can pick up some things for one person. 



Someone else I know is thinking of opening a store with an interesting idea - a co-op hobby shop, similar to how indoor flea markets work, several guys each have their own section, but probably with one checkout and just keep track of who's things are sold.  The only issue there is it only works if everyone is honest. 

[bnsf971]

Sept 2, 2018 20:46:54 GMT -8 lvrr325 said:

Someone else I know is thinking of opening a store with an interesting idea - a co-op hobby shop, similar to how indoor flea markets work, several guys each have their own section, but probably with one checkout and just keep track of who's things are sold.  The only issue there is it only works if everyone is honest. 

If a person is relatively computer savvy, it ouldn't be hard keeping up with everything. Simply make barcode stickers for everything, and a scanner at the register. Each "owner"s stuff would have its own barcode, so sales, payments, and expense disbursments could go to and from each person.

[middledivision]

Central Hobby was a regular stop every time I was in Syracuse.
They always had a nice selection and some cool brass pieces.

[ambluco]

Once they moved to their last location (the move was years ago), I think things went downhill.

[cnsd60f]

I have been a repeat customer of CHS since I lived in the 'Cuse for a year and half during 2005-2006. Once I moved back home, I mail ordered from them all the time as they kept me up to date with what was coming.

The changing of the industry is doing in the brick and mortar shops as we all know. It happened here. Pre-orders taking 12-18 months, with gaps between. Trying to make ends meet with little to nothing to put on the shelves to sell. They did a good job despise this.

The owner did let their customers who had orders with them know what was occurring two months in advance. I can at least confirm that for three individuals. They were also trying to locate shops to take on existing pre-orders that would come in after closing. That says a lot in my book, as they could have done nothing but close the doors.

I did get stuck on one or two items, but with the Chinese factory issues, who knows when those items will show up anyway. It's an inconvenience, but with the sales being pre-orders up to a year in advance I don't know that I blame the shop. A lot can happen in a year.

In any case, it was a great shop, with good service that I hate to see go.

[lvrr325]

A big chunk of CHS inventory went to Penn Yan, NY with a seller who has a shop in a flea-market type place, the Windmill. He's been posting pictures to Facebook and I recognized a couple pieces because I sold similar ones on eBay at some point. No way would I do a store without eBay or train shows to use to dump stuff that's sat for too long. If it's sitting on your shelf collecting dust, you're not making any money.


There used to have as many as half a dozen train shops around Syracuse. But of that, three the owners died outright - with the son taking over one shop and he was who bought out the other two after their passing. Then he got a good full time job offer and sold out the business. The one other big store, I want to say closed because the couple who ran it got divorced - but the woman also passed away not too long after. The husband is still around doing shows as sort of a hobby.

So maybe there's a touch of "I don't want to run a train store until I die" in this closure too.


When you go to a train show and look at the ages of people buying trains, I fully expect that at some point the supply of trains will greatly exceed the demand for them simply because so many modelers will have passed on with a lot fewer younger ones to take their place. It's hard to say, because there's still old Lionel and other trains that have high value despite anyone old enough to have ever played with them have to all be dead by now.

[Deleted]

This is already happening. The supply of late model, never used stuff, both in online auctions and at train shows is very good, and in some cases is driving down the prices.

Lionel is only "valuable" to those who want Lionel, which is an ever-decreasing crowd. Otherwise there are people who don't want to spend that much. I am saying this because local stores in my area (multiple "local" stores) are reporting a decline in the interest for Lionel, across the board.

This is what is also generally happening to the brass market: more people are kicking off or otherwise liquidating their lifelong brass collections, such that at least the more "common" brass models are too common for the market to absorb, and only the "premium" models are seeing a value increase, because they are legitimately rare. Otherwise, the brass market has essentially collapsed.  There are more "common" lightly used models available on the market than there are actual, not would-be, buyers to purchase them.

To a certain extent, the older Proto 2000, Atlas, etc. diesels on the market can exceed the number of actual purchasers, unless the item is legitimately hard to find.  We are there now.  It is becoming harder and harder for me to sell any "lightly used" stuff that I have on Ebay, and it is in great condition.  Every sale, or buy it now/best offer transaction is becoming harder, taking more weeks before that item sells.  Nothing seems to be a sure thing sale anymore.  For me, interest in the 1960's/70's stuff on the secondary market is just not quite what it once was.

The brick and mortar dealers have to earn about 20% net just to pay all the bills. At less than 20%, they cannot survive. I have a friend actually buying one store now. Although he wants to expand internet/mail order sales he knows he cannot give stuff away at the more common 10% internet markup, because he can't stay in business doing that. He will have to continue the excellent friendly customer service for which his new-to-him store is known. All existing store staff is being retained, including the current owners. The customers will have absolutely no idea, zero, that ownership has changed--except for some new store displays and changes. He will have to continue excellent customer service. For him to make any money he has to increase over-the-counter sales volume from what it is currently.