I miss Hotboat Magazine and Boat Trader

[Orange Juice]

I’m pretty sure its all RD’s fault. Along with the prices of new boats. 🫵

 

[Juan Indastïnk]

RD might have a bunch of them in his shop soon.

 

[C_J_J_C]

I can't believe it has been 14 years since the boat trader was last published in 2010. I still remember going to 7 Eleven Thursday mornings and the CALLING looking for deals. Boats and Classic Car trader every week.

 

[floatn turd]

100% What he said.

And
Ya only got one shitty little black n white picture to look at.

The good ol' days.

 

[DesertDog63]

still looking for Hotboat Magazine that has the Advantage Boats shop tour. Around late 90's?

 

[SOCALCRICKETT]

I can't believe it has been 14 years since the boat trader was last published in 2010. I still remember going to 7 Eleven Thursday mornings and the CALLING looking for deals. Boats and Classic Car trader every week.

Yep, I remember being a kid and finding the boats I want and trying to figure out how to make the money I needed to afford it.


I was 14 and made my must do list...
House in havasu, 72 2wd blazer, and a v drive schiada.


Now I'm 38, just bought a house in havasu, have a 21rc schiada with a sterndrive and a lowered 2dr 2wd tahoe.

Guess I'm not too far off

 

[DLC]

What about the cycle trader….

I would stand at the 7-11 mag rack scanning ads for hours back in the day….

 

[ChrisV]

Yep, I remember being a kid and finding the boats I want and trying to figure out how to make the money I needed to afford it.


I was 14 and made my must do list...
House in havasu, 72 2wd blazer, and a v drive schiada.


Now I'm 38, just bought a house in havasu, have a 21rc schiada with a sterndrive and a lowered 2dr 2wd tahoe.

Guess I'm not too far off

Need to appriciate that too. Sometimes I worry so much about work I forget what I have that i've been dreaming for.

My dad made my day when he brought home a Boat Trader catalog.

 

[Tuck646]

I’m pretty sure its all RD’s fault. Along with the prices of new boats. 🫵

I miss TRADIN TIMES , AND SELL IT, as well.

 

[Sleek-Jet]

Wait... Hotboat had a magazine?

 

[Rayson1971]

I used to have stacks of boat traders on my coffee table. Found some good deals in that book. Sold a few too. Was better if you sent the picture in with the add. If you had them take the pic, you would never get a call. They were the worst.

 

[renodaytona]

Found my first Daytona in Boat Trader and drove all the way from Vegas to Dallas Texas and back in a day and a half. Definitely miss thumbing through those. My pops has stacks of Hot Boat Mags at his house still.

still looking for Hotboat Magazine that has the Advantage Boats shop tour. Around late 90's?

I will look through his stack and see if he has that one.

 

[Badchoices03]

Facebook marketplace is the new boat trader....almost everyday I type "boat" into the search bar and scan through the listings....just yesterday my son looked over my shoulder and goes are you in the market for a new boat or something...and my wife says, no he just likes to dream....lol...

 

[bonesfab]

Or the Recylcler. No pics though.

 

[Eliminator21vdrive]

I must have been like Joe Dirt lol JK.

I bought my fist V drive cruiser off Boat trader (1999 ish) and had been looking for awhile.

 

[Taboma]

I truly do miss the Auto & Boat Traders, but the memory that truly stands out was from long before those "Trader" publications.
It was the Santa Ana Register Sunday Edition Classified Ads.

It was a winter ritual for this child "Boat Fanatic", to sit with my dad before breakfast every Sunday and study the "Boats for Sale" section of the classifieds.
We'd discuss each boat and if we found one of particular interest, my excitement level would begin to rise, we'd start discussing finer and finer details, and just like that, I'd be captured by the lure of "New Boat Lust" and my imagination would soar.

Dad would of course sense my rising level of enchantment, contribute more fuel and once again I was suckered into actually believing that he and I would be spending this beautiful Sunday picking up a new to us boat.

Nope, wasn't going to happen.
Once again, as I had for countless winter Sunday's, I'd fallen victim to this mental ruse and just like that, I'd be snatched out of my dream and squashed by reality.

Of course at the time I thought he was just being a mean bastard who just enjoyed torturing his son.
Years later I came to realize how he'd enjoyed those Sunday morning new boat dream sessions every bit as much as I had and how special those Sunday mornings were to us both.
With that realization came the knowledge that it was never about the boats, it was about those special Dream Sharing moments.

 

[bonesfab]

I still have a few boat traders that I bought my boat out of. Funny looking back through them with the adds.

 

[sintax]

Or the Recylcler. No pics though.

This was always my goto.

It had everything...

 

[RiverDave]

Loved the boat trader and the motorcycle trader etc.. looking at quads and boats etc..

It’s funny someone else said it.. I’d be in the ampm for like 15 minutes scanning them before I bought them.. I’d always buy em but was so interested in seeing what came new this week. Lol

I just don’t know if you could make a go of it with the online resources available now..

Honestly I’m shocked that speedboat is still printing. Every other magazine is struggling or moving to online.

 

[Badchoices03]

We used to have to actually call about a boat/car that only had one pic in the trader...now if a listing doesnt have about 15 pics of every angle, we skip to the next listing...lol

 

[sintax]

Loved the boat trader and the motorcycle trader etc.. looking at quads and boats etc..

It’s funny someone else said it.. I’d be in the ampm for like 15 minutes scanning them before I bought them.. I’d always buy em but was so interested in seeing what came new this week. Lol

I just don’t know if you could make a go of it with the online resources available now..

Honestly I’m shocked that speedboat is still printing. Every other magazine is struggling or moving to online.

in a world of Amazon same day shipping, Netflix binge watching a full season the day of release, Uber Eats / Postmates, and just instant gratification in general I feel we've really painted ourselves into a corner.

I remember as an kid born in the 80s, I had the joy of getting to the liquor store and seeing that new edition of Thrasher or Trans-world, Dirt bike magazine, or whatever I was into at the time and being so stoked. Thumbing the articles, reading the content 4-5 times before the next issue showed up the following month. Now it seems all content is disposable, I'll rarely read it once and more often it seems content is coming across as AI generated or at least AI assisted. Yes its a thing, I just implemented a suite of tools that does this for our content creators at work here.

I'm officially old and want to find a time machine

 

[Sharp Shooter]

I have a few stored in the archives just because.

 

[Badchoices03]

I have a few stored in the archives just because.

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Its crazy to think that todays price on all those Ultras is probably more than what they are listed for new in 1991

 

[Wedgy]

Good post OJ. Loved the Traders. I like paper. Writing in cursive. My Mom's, and Dad would write the most beautiful letters. Nowadays, texting, emails as close as we kinda get.

Our favorite pastime at lunch on the job up in Newport Coast, was taking turns reading aloud the 'Business Personals' in the Orange County Register.

 

[jetboatperformance]

I got tons of Hot Boat/Performance boat Mags from the 80s and so forth anyone wants them

 

[HorizonsWest]

I have a few stored in the archives just because.

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I used to live in Florida, mostly in my early teen years, would flip through these hoping to come across my next dream boat, or at least just dreaming about it,. Oddly enough, me and my father never once bought a boat from this magazine, it was always through boat yards, word of mouth. But I love these magazines, I had about 15 of them in my collection, from 1994 to around 1998. When we moved abroad in 2004 we put alot of our stuff in storage, from there the magazines just got lost when we had the boxes sorted out by relatives. I have been looking around the internet for months trying to find archive editions from the 90s, then I saw this post, cant believe it, do you know where I can view these online? Do you have any Florida editions from the mids 90s?? Thank you, this post brings back good memories

 

[whiteworks]

Is the white sheet still published out at the River? A buddy of mine used to fix and flip Porsches, he would go to the main place that penny saver dropped first every week to get the edge. He said there would be a lot of dudes there all doing the same thing but with their respective interests.

The everything else section in the back of cycle trader was always interesting, I made a lot of weird trade deals cold calling people from those rags.

I loaned a guy some money once to pay his back property tax on his River place, took a bunch of guns as collateral, at some point he decided he wasn’t gonna be able to pay and wanted his guns back, we swapped for a motorhome. Then I traded the motorhome for a pretty cool baja bug that was in the cycle trader everything else section, eventually traded the Baja bug for a new roof on my house. Still own that house and that roof

 

[Ziggy]

Lol, funny thing is I got a Happy Birthday email from HotBoat last night.

 

[cyclone]

I got tons of Hot Boat/Performance boat Mags from the 80s and so forth anyone wants them

I'll gladly read those!

 

[cyclone]

Is the white sheet still published out at the River? A buddy of mine used to fix and flip Porsches, he would go to the main place that penny saver dropped first every week to get the edge. He said there would be a lot of dudes there all doing the same thing but with their respective interests.

The everything else section in the back of cycle trader was always interesting, I made a lot of weird trade deals cold calling people from those rags.

I loaned a guy some money once to pay his back property tax on his River place, took a bunch of guns as collateral, at some point he decided he wasn’t gonna be able to pay and wanted his guns back, we swapped for a motorhome. Then I traded the motorhome for a pretty cool baja bug that was in the cycle trader everything else section, eventually traded the Baja bug for a new roof on my house. Still own that house and that roof

every time I go to Parker or Havasu I grab the white sheet and scan it for old cars and boats. there's hardly any for sale in there now. most every used fb marketplace to sell their toys.

 

[HBCraig]

You can add The Recycler to the list here
New issue every Thursday

 

[RandyH]

Hot Rod just went to Quarterly. Wheeler Dealer . Farrah Fawcett, boat trader. Its all a young man needed.....

 

[Sharp Shooter]

….do you know where I can view these online? Do you have any Florida editions from the mids 90s?? Thank you, this post brings back good memories

Sorry, I can’t help you with that.