Hi to everybody, I'm a modelgun/dummy replicas collector from Italy, new to this forum, where I have been lurking for months before registering. I'd better say that I had been a collector, since I started my collection in '88, when I bought my first replica(MGC 1911A1-67 caliber 45 US ARMY MODEL, what else?
) with my (draft) soldier's pay, continued it few years later with a MGC CP M16A1 abs and a Marushin abs Browning HP inglis canada (all of them bought by mail order from militaria/hunting/survival shops of that time) and ended it in '93, when I found in my own hometown, through a minuscle ad in a sell/buy/trade magazine, a warehouse that happened to be of the then exclusive italian distributor for RMI/Collectors Armory replicas (or so they claimed to be...), who were selling out their remaining items in stock.
There I bought something like 36 replicas
(1/3 of them were copies - both black finish and nickel finish - of the 1911 and SAA for my collection of holsters that never was, among the others there were some police revolvers - metal MGC and abs Kokusai, a western arms ruger blackhawk .44, and only two long guns, the winchester '66 with octagonal barrel and the M1921 Thompson with vertical/ganster grip and military magazine).
Unfortunately I missed all the most sought after items: M16, C.A.R. 15, M1 carbine, winchester '73, RS31 pump action, sterling, Uzi etc., they were gone. I hadn't a steady income when they were still around for sale way back in the late eighties and I hadn't foreseen that they would have become so rare within a few years or I 'd have done an effort to buy at least a few of them. I tried to track them down putting ads in various guns/militaria magazines but they were nowhere to be found, collectors were keeping them for themselves, so I moved to other interests.
It's only in recents years that my interest for modelguns has rewamped, when I first discovered some UK sites who were(and are still) selling modelguns and, some months ago, this forum with its tremendous amount of data and facts about modelguns.
I have been surprised, to say the least, that modelguns were (and are) still in production deep in the 21st century, since I believed they were completely gone, replaced by the (then) hatred Airsoft, and I'm still shocked, too, of how many models were produced by various brands, with most of them that probably never made it to the italian market
.
Some questions have arisen in me, for which I'm looking for some answers, namely:
1)when actually RMI/Collector's armory ceased to import modelguns from japan and exporting them to the rest of the world?
2)how did distribution of modelguns to Europe(and Italy) work in the past and for how long? anyone out there knows the backgrounds about it?
3)why modelguns currently produced in the far east (e.g.: Wa Shan/Metal Y.T. Corp) are not exported on a large scale as it happens for Airsoft? it's because of the lack of an international distributor? of the lack of request? it's due to the hassles they cause with customs?
I also wonder why some brands like WE(who can be considered the MGC of airsoft), so skilled in doing GBB guns (the closest thing to a modelgun replica), don't do modelguns as well: I don't think the manufacturing process is more complex or expensive than doing arsoft guns. is the reason the same? lack of request from the market?
Thank to all of you who will endure reading this long first post of mine, and to those who'll be able to help me with some answers.
Best regards
Davide
Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:47 am
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), but if you say that you shipped regularly to my country I'll put an order from you sooner or later (when I find something interesting at a bargain price, that is