Mark

The company doing the promo would have the more accurate kit for that year.

The sink marks on anything are usually in thick areas, or where there is a quick transition from thin to thick. Probably a tooling design thing, not much to be done about it.

Especially '71-'72.

Actually, no. A guy I went to business school with (he was a "born again") actually invited two JW's into his house many years ago. They always go in pairs; while you are replying to one, the other is formulating the next point to hit you with. He actually debated them to a standstill, one versus two, until they got discouraged and left. Never came back. I just tell anyone handing out material of any kind that I'm glad they are happy in their lives, I'm also good, so let's just leave it at that...

No Soliciting signs posted at my home, and for the most part they have worked. Only two bell ringers in the last 5 years or so. The town/village/city cannot ban solicitors completely, as apparently that infringes on their rights. But they can allow the signs, and enact ordinances to get the solicitors to observe them. Only two have ignored them so far: one handing out religious pamphlets, the other wanting me to switch cell phone providers.

MPC did '67 and '68 kits. Jo-Han did '66-'72. '67, '68, and '70 are in AMT boxes but were manufactured by Jo-Han. Jo-Han did all promos except '67. MPC's '67 is the more accurate of the two, Jo-Han's '68 will be more correct than MPC's.

Before there were texts, back when more people had telephones wired into their homes, there were phone calls. My mom got them every so often, even though she never set up online banking nor ever used an ATM. She never fell for any of them, she'd later tell them "I couldn't give you an account number even if I wanted to, I'm legally blind and couldn't read the small print on the bank statement". After a while they seem to have stopped trying. I picked up a couple of the phone calls. They'd say "we are calling from your bank", not mentioning the name of any bank. I'd ask them the name of the bank, and they'd try to bluff their way around it or not answer. After I asked them to go outside and check the name of the bank, they'd finally give up. I can’t believe anyone would give information to strangers that easily, yet here we are talking about how it still works every so often...

Expensive as it is on this side of the ocean, I can't picture too many people spending that much on a spray can only to decant it...

Building a back story can inflate the selling price, this tactic is often employed during the buildup to the car hitting the auction block. The Tucker "convertible" that was created after the fact, the "Tobacco King" '64 Galaxie that got built but never did anything, and this Challenger (how many of us ever heard of it before now?) are three such examples.

That particular Ferrari looks like it could have been cribbed for a fiberglass body (for a VW Beetle pan) back in the day. It's surprising nobody did one.

I think Revell still had people writing letters to them asking for "parts packs", so they brought those out as opposed to reissuing the early Sixties parts packs. Those wouldn't have sold at that time; department stores wouldn't have stocked them as the small packages would have been easy to shoplift. Besides, custom vans and pickups were The Big Thing at that time anyway. Those packs didn't work well with Revell kits simply because many of the items in them were duplicates of parts already in Revell pickup and van kits. MPC's van kits (Dodge, and later, Ford) had interior detail but the AMT Chevy van did not. MPC never got around to putting fender flares in their Dodge van kits. So there was something of a market there. The pickup parts pack seems to have not done as well, as they turn up more often today. I never saw those packs in any department store back in the day. I forget when those came out (1976-77) but they were a one-shot deal. I didn't remember Auto World ever carrying them...looked in their catalog for whatever year that was...AW wasn't carrying any Revell items that year! The van pack has some interesting items and might be worthwhile if you find one at a reasonable price. The pickup pack, not so much. I don't think Atlantis could do much with these if they have the tooling...don't think they'd sell well at today's prices (probably pretty close to what a complete car kit would sell for).

The '62-'65 Continental kit engines (don't think the '61s had an engine) look a lot like the FE series engine in the same-year Thunderbird kits. '66-'69 Continental kits had a different engine, all plated and on one parts tree. But that's a later engine. I don't know of a decent MEL engine in 1/25 scale. The AMT '58 Edsel mill looks undersize to me.

If the last issue of the retractable was indeed molded in Poland (I don't have that issue so I can't verify) then Revell would still have that tool. From what little is known about the Revell/Atlantis deal, the latter company bought tooling stored in the USA that the new Revell organization had no intention of doing anything with in the future. When thinking about what Revell/Monogram/Aurora/Renwal items could be reissued by Atlantis in the future, the first question should be: "where was the last issue of that kit produced?" If the answer is China, that's a definite "no". USA = "maybe". Until Atlantis announces a particular kit, there's no guarantee.

The most recent (current) reissue of this kit is in replica 1964 packaging. I'd expect the instruction sheet to be that way also, as it indeed is. The instructions illustrate every part in the kit and explain logically how it goes together...what else is there to be expected? In fact, there are only three reissues of this kit. Two were/are in original annual kit style packaging, and the third was done during a time when the (then) people running the AMT brand really didn't care too much about it.

My reply was in error. With the older chassis (originally '66, updated through '69) being the incorrect one, if not swapping to the new-tool '66 piece I'd probably just leave it alone. Using the newer '66 pieces gets you more detail and accuracy all around. You do still have to keep the '69 engine however.