randyc

Nice! And thanks for the groups photo. So, my BIG takeaway from this and from watching ebay lately is to watch the auctions and see if you get lucky. Not sure how often that will work, but I do see better prices on cars in the SOLD listings that were bid out. If it's on a bid auction and no one else is looking, you can come out with some great deals. I watched a 57(?) Cameo that was as nice as any of the current listings go unnoticed. It was listed in a different Franklin Mint section than cars usually are. I coulda had it pretty reasonably, but too many of these have paint/metal issues, so I left it alone. Nice collection of AB/Bud trucks.

Looks good - reminds me of the local VFD vehicles.

NIce additions, guys. I have bought a few new pieces. Will be here by end of week hopefully. 59 Impala convertible, 58 Thunderbird, and 54 Bel Air by the Mints. Will get photos when they arrive. Reasonable prices I guess. less than ebay. There is a guy on Facebook - John Schoonover - that has several cars for sale on the franklin/Danbury Mint sell page. Looks like reasonable prices on some fairly nice pieces. Might go back for more later. Try this link. https://www.facebook.com/groups/736971649771825/1776471002488546/?sale_post_id=1776471002488546&comment_id=1779307165538263&notif_id=1581731753107264&notif_t=group_comment_reply He has two different posts. One has loose cars on a shelf that are rougher than the other post that shows cars in a case.

I have been fooling with my kit a little. How would we represent the smoked Chrome? Clear with a drop or three of gloss black? The grille on ours is even a darker chrome. Might use gunmetal metallizer, polish and gloss it? We have the espresso/gray interior which has NO gray in it at all. From a modeler's perspective, it is Testors rubber for the espresso. The gray is "light rubber". I think I can make it with rubber and white. Intersting that the seats are molded so carefully as to probably not require any filling of seams. The fake wood grain looks sorta metallic when you open the door. I'm thinking gunmetal here too maybe. Or titanium? This may require some thought and mixing or drybrushing., We'll see. Just needs a different finish for that little bit. The tinted rear glass section will hide a lot of the interior, but it's not that exciting I guess. Our fronts are tinted from dealer, but I may leave them clear to be able to see the detail of front compartment. Solar tint would be cool, but never have achieved this very well. Not many people have - Juha Airio maybe? Bill Geary? Also wish the kit included proper masks to help paint the black. Our wheels are the standard 18" wheels - I think the kit wheels are the 19" turbo version. Ours is the regular GDI engine, so different wheels. I'll paint them up and let it go at that. Ours is the Limited, so it has the big moonroof. The model has the full roof. I sanded the ribs off last night and will have to scribe the panel lines in up there. I think Arctic Blue or Olds engine blue will match up pretty closely to the "stormy sea" without having to buy more paint. And I can paint those old enamels fairly well. I suppose next time I work on it, I should start a workbench thread. Not many will care, but I will put the same effort into this one, maybe more, than any other build. My Santa Fe has to be as nice as the wife's right?

I'm not sure I've ever noticed that truck before. It is lovely. How about a group shot of all the Bud trucks?

I have a 1/43 2007 Ford Edge that came from the Quantum of Solace movie. In the same kind of display case. And I can't remember if there was any other information on the base that gave up who made them. But that is the ONLY version of hte Ford Edge I've ever seen. My came from UK. And there are a LOT of cars available with Bond tie ins. Some good, some not so good. Nice GT40, but looks like off road or rally tires?

It is doomed. Thanks for trying though.

Dang! Both of those are cool. I have the FG Speedway Studebaker - 2 of them - 1 to repaint someday and one just for the speedway markings. BUt these are sooooo nice. Gramps and Tim. can you imagine how slow 78 hp would propel these? No getting in a hurry to deliver, eh?

I think the real reason is that the IT guy doesn't want to fool with it. I have to work within that framework. I think we're just going to set my old machine up in a separate office to draw on on the rare occasions when I need to draw. Transfer the files to flash, then to server. No time to deal with today unfortunately... maybe back to it in a few days.

Our IT guy will not recommend the Virtual Box setup to the boss, so that's out. He says we'd have to buy a WIN8 license, then take chance on the old WIN securtiy issues coming up and biting us. For better or worse, we have to adhere to our IT guy's recommendation. Durn it. So to fool the system, it would apperently be more expensive than buying the new crappy Corel. Which the boss will do if we have to. He bought Corel 18 last year, which allows 3 separate installs, but only use one at a time. He put it on his laptop but we decided to wait on other machines and now we can't install on the other 2 machines - not available for d/l now. I found some workaround solutions that work for some, but apparently my machine has too new a build to allow the workarounds. And it is not an upgrade to 10, but a new 10 build. We do have extra monitors, so in theory I could set up my old PC to run only when Corel is needed and transfer files via flashdrive. Boss is very sensitive to security issues in the PCs. He's been burned before. So the saga goes on...

Ok, I'm looking at the manual for the VirtualBox. Do I have to have a Win XP (or whatever) OS install disc to make the older OS? Not sure if we have any of those around. My PC is a new build, so it's not an upgrade and many of those old Win discs were probably lost when we moved to this location. I know we did some serious "inventory reduction" when we moved.

Another nice piece. Thanks for sharing.

Yet another one I bought last year. Mine came in a wood base case with nameplate. My Hirihatat Merc lives in that case now and the 31 is in a regular case. Dod your barrells come in teh black rubber square? Looks like a TV remote, LOL. When I was opening mine, my wife was asking what is that remote? I was like huh? New car. Then we figured it out. The boxes were loose and once in a while I'll find one in a different car. I thought I had them all contained in a ziploc bag, but not all of them. At any rate, great little truck. That one might have been in a smoker's house? Yellowed lettering? Or displayed in sunlight? To crack the tire on one side? I'd really like a Good Humore truck to go with mine. I sold my HoJo 1/18 a while back and would like to have another ice cream truck for display. Have you tried more aggressive polishing on the chrome? In my experience, these have the toughest chrome - full nickel metal plating instead of vacuum plated like a plastic kit. They have always stood up to polishing with a moto tool and some chrome and plastic polishes. I've seen them like this and polished them up before. Like they have hairspray or someting sprayed polish on them.

That is why I had to update my PC. That and the end of support for whatever old Office version we were running. It was time. I was resistant. Just seems like I am so familiar with X3 and it's quirks that it is a shame to have to upgrade. Especially no more than we really use it anymore. WE try NOT to do drawings because they eat up time and money. I am the only one that really uses it at this point. Thanks for the input.

Wow! Those are nice. Marty Robbins has quite a history in country music. And racing. That's really a nice set of cars. I did see a 65 Galaxie racer diecast this weekend. NFS, but still got to look at it. Those are nice as well. Thanks for sharing your collection. I find myself looking at the backgrounds as well to see what might be coming soon.

Very nice. Quit tempting me with 1/18s

Nice!

Ok, you are correct. I thought I had seen that. Still not sure, but don't think the blue one had that. Thanks

Interesting.

Action was THE standard when this car was current. I have a few left from when I owned a hobby shop. The market for Nascar diecast has pretty much tanked since the early 00s. We were selling them like crazy back in the day. Nice car and great score for the price.

Beautiful! I have the blue version. The blue ones do no have the blanket or picnic basket oddly. Are you referring to the trunk when you say picnic basket? Blue ones do have the trunk and I can't remember what is in it. But I did get a set of golf clubs to go in the rumble seat. That yellow is a striking image. These are excellent models and process seem to be reasonable now.

I'll bring that up the the boss and computer guy. Thanks

I already have a PC with my Corel on it. So that wouldn't be an issue. It's just that Microsoft is no longer supporting Win7. Or at least that's what they are telling me. I don't pay attention to that stuff anymore. Just do what the boss wants and we're trying to figure this out. Thanks for the input

Hey guys, looking for an alternative to CorelDraw. At my current company, we may need 1 or 2 drawings per month. Sometimes simple, sometimes not. Corel X3 was stable and worked fine. But will not work on Win 10. So what suggestions might you guys have that are no more than Corel or even cheaper. We have to do sign and canopy image drawings for convenience store renovations. Usually permit drawings or proposed elements laid over a photograph. I like Corel, but hte internet buzz is that current version is unstable and Corel wants to force you to pay $200/year subscription fee. At our current level, not really worth it - may just set up an old PC to make drawings. No connection to internet or server for security. HAve to flash drive everything from PC to server. Any suggestions? Thanks.

I had the green one as well. I would recommend a good polishing on Tim's. I polished Todd's and it really livened up the green paint. It's amazing how dull these cars get over the years. But I could be wrong because Tim's photos always show up a shade lighter than what I see in the same cars when I have them. DM beats the FM Vettes in almost every way on every car I've seen.