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I would very much like to patronize my local hobby shop, but the closest thing we have to a full-line hobby shop in Nashville is pathetic. In the first place, it's a dingy, dirty store. Both employees are chain smokers, so clouds of second-hand smoke hanging in the air create a cancer hazard. Second, the store is stuck with a 1980s-era mentality of what to stock. There's lots of Athearn rolling stock and Atlas track. Looking for more recent products such as Spectrum and Proto 2000? Not there. It's like all of the product innovations of the last 20 years are missing. Finally, they charge full suggested retail for everything. I don't expect a hobby shop to match discount mail order prices, but there's a huge margin at full retail prices. A hobby shop -- and I've visited them in other cities -- that will charge about 10 percent under full price can get me to pay the premium over full discount because I want to support local hobby shops. Another factor beyond the owner's control is Tennessee's exorbitant sales tax, which we don't pay on mail order/Internet sales. Of course, the owner is probably opposed to tax reform. But that's getting into a political issue, so I won't go farther. Bottom line: I want to support local hobby shops, but the triple whammy of grungy store, bad inventory and high prices is sending me to the Internet more frequently. Someone want to open a good hobby shop in Nashville?
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