Do you remember the die cast model store at the mall in Pineville??? That was a Spectra idea. That was the pilot store for a chain of like stores. But the DC bubble burst and that was the end of that. The Pineville mall had that cool DC store AND the great model train store at one time.......
I worked was partner in Deb's Model Car Emporium on US 74 Matthews. Spectra was Bob Johnson and Co they had offices off South Blvd in Charlotte. The start of all this was the 500 Black die cast Thunderbirds we needed for a project. 500 alone was not viable coat wise so we decided to make alrger runs of the black and white.....making them affordable. Before the whole thing ended we did Pontiacs and Lumina too. Good old days....
Those are pretty common. Here is the story if you want to know.
I was partner in a hobby shop in Charlotte NC. We started getting race teams and marketing companies calling and visiting wanting to get short runs of models made for sponsorship proposals or even corporate gifts. We had worked with Bob Johnson then at Revell. We worked it out that they would run 5K Thunderbirds in white and 5K in black. (we did the Lumina later too) We took a good number of them.....we even made 500 Trop Artic #66 for Phillips. A vast number of them were sold through our store. We wholesaled to many stores so they can be found all over. If I had to give a value I'd say about $5 or so.....