Traxxas gas powered radio control car, $10.

There are countless thousands of fanatical radio control hobbyists on eBay, just waiting to pay you well for finding them what they want. As you read this entry, please keep in mind that radio control cars aren't the only models these people are after. Today, you can get radio control cars, boats, airplanes, gliders, helicopters, tanks, submarines and almost anything else you can think of! And the more familiar you are with these different areas of modeling, the more money you stand to make when you see them.

Nowadays, we're used to seeing these little electric radio control cars all over the place. My ten-year-old neighbor runs his around out in the street all the time. Cheap electronic technology combined with cheap Chinese manufacturing means that you can pick up a little radio control (or 'r/c') car in any Walmart for next to nothing. Because we've become so accustomed to seeing the cheapo imported versions of these toys all over the place, these are what we automatically think of when we spot a radio control car at a yard sale. One of your most powerful tools in this business is the ability to see money where everyone else sees junk, and here's a perfect example of what I mean.

You may have noticed something unusual about this car - it's powered by a gas engine (well, it doesn't actually use gasoline for fuel, but it is an internal combustion engine that operates just like larger gasoline engines) instead of the little electric motor that we see on most radio controlled cars. In the photos, you can easily see the cylinder head (the round blue thing with the fins on it), the air filter and the muffler. Needless to say, an electric car doesn't have all these components. The engine in our example here is started by a small electric motor, which can be seen mounted right next to it. To start this car, you simply plug the starter batteries (contained in the hand-held unit seen in the top photo) into the socket on the rear of the car. After the car starts, simply unplug the battery pack and you're off and running. It's interesting to note that if this car were powered by an electric motor, the motor that drives it would look very much like the starter motor in the above photos.

In the field of radio controlled model cars, the two modes of propulsion you'll run across are electric and gas. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but when it comes to raw power and the real thrill of exhaust-belching, piston-powered racing, the little gas motor is the way to go for many guys. A very important point to keep in mind as we discuss this car, is that although the electric versions of radio control cars come in both the cheap Walmart models as well as higher-end models, the gas powered versions are usually confined to the more expensive cars like this Traxxas. A couple of other interesting things about this car is that it has a two-speed transmission and is also four-wheel-drive, as evidenced by the belt running up to the little transmission at the front of the car. The more closely you look at this car, the easier it is to see how costly it was.

I like to run across this more expensive radio control equipment, simply because there are so many hobbyists on eBay who go after this stuff like crazy. And as for the fact that it doesn't work, what the heck do you think these hobbyists do with these machines? These guys live to drive the heck out of them, break them, wear them out, repair them, modify them and then drive them some more. So, what we may see  as a broken radio control car, the die-hard hobbyist sees as an easy fix in the best case, and a collection of expensive spare parts in the worst case.

It really pays to familiarize yourself with radio control cars like this Traxxas, as well as with the other expensive brands. After all, you are going to see them. Why miss out on a good profit just because you don't know what you're looking at?