The Anchorage House of Hobbies (AHH) is a family owned and operated business that has been serving Alaskans since 1964.  It was started in  the Spring of 1964 by Raymond and Ruth Raffuse, shortly after the Great 9.5 Earth Quake wiped out Anchorage as well as another hobby shop on 4th Avenue.

Our founder Raymond T. Raffuse was born in Wallingford Connecticut in 1932 and at the age of 18 he joined the Navy and  was stationed in Pearl Harbor Hawaii where he was a Submarine damage repair man. While stationed in Oahu he met his wonderful future wife Ruth and got married and had two children Joan and Jim.  After being honerably discharged they later left the Islands bound for San Diego CA  by Navy ship.  Later they moved to Seattle where he got a job working for Boeing Aircraft, where he learned electronics and after a couple years there he joined the Airforce and they moved to Spokane WA. were he bought his first house, while  stationed at Giger Field where he was working on the electronics of F-102 and F-106 fighter jets.  After the Airforce tour of duty he took a job with RCA in 1961, left his family in Spokane and was staitoned out at the end of the Aleutian chain of Alaska for 18 months straight.  After that he moved to Anchorage and brought the rest of the family up from Spokane to live in Alaska in 1963

The first store was in one of Anchorage's original  buildings, in a small side room of the Jonas Brothers Taxidermy and Wild life museum which was an old log cabin building on G st. at 5th. Ave.   Today there is a hotel now standing on that location, it was also across the street from the old Anchorage High school which was then a community parks and rec. center and Anchorage city gym.  There was a 1/24th slot car track downstairs in the city Gym which helped to bring in slot car business.  However it was the love of leather tooling  that was Ray's passion at, the time, so he sold leather crafting supplies and leather as well as slotcars, plastic models, wood models, control line airplanes, and radio control airplanes.

Our staff is made up of experienced enthusiasts who are happy to share their knowledge with the budding hobbiest.