Darin Bastedo

I know a modeler who often sells his built models for $1,000 or more. There is a market for well built models, especially if the client can get one that exactly replicates his own. I'm no where near a pro, but I used to do commissioned work for about $300 dollars for an South Carolina restoration shop, and they wanted more than I could supply.

No bother I didn't take the question as literal as the others. The closest thing I think we have to that level though is bill geary's windows that roll down by the crank in 1/24

It's definately a kit cobra so sure paint it any way you like, but it is a bit garish for my tastes. and not just a little trite. Was the owner afraid that he just wouldn't get enough attention in a 427 cobra?

I always thought that it's "there is no such thing as a stupid question, Just stupid people asking questions."

I don't know, I painted my 1/25th bass boat with them and it looked perfect

Ummm. I know it now, and it's not here yet. Jus sayin'.

As far as 50's buicks go...I'll take anything that can form the basis for this. This actually several years of buick mixed. I'll also take a kit of a Mercury Breezeway please...

I tell you guys to act your age, I i'm afraid you would turn to oil!

It's entirely possible that the tooling isn't finished yet, from what I could tell this tooling is still in it's early development stages.

I find on my Oki5100n running it throgh on the transpaency setting

I did forget that one. That was nice. I would love to build one to set next to my Tamiya Miata seeing how it was inspired by the Elan

At keast for Lotus the kits we have are pretty decent. The Monogram Esprit is really nice, and the Tamiya Europa and Super 7 are really nice, and Tamiya's 1/12 7 is incredible. But you are right there are very few high quality kits of any British make.

What I want to know is where are all the Aston Martin Models? Aurora did a DB4, and doyusha did a DB5. In 1/32 Airfix did a nice one, but aside from the Tamiya DBS there isn't a modern quality model of any Aston Martin.

You mean this one? Yeah that's pretty cool.

Thankfully it is a fairly simple box stock build except for wheels, tires and decals. Though I might swap out the FI for a more correct single 4bbl

The station I listened to growing Up in Syracuse NY had a 1962 Corvette they called the "62 Heavy Vette". This car was at all the parades and car shows when I was kid. I already have the artwork ready for the decals, now all I need is the kit.

To make things worse we are always trading and selling the same kits back and forth to each other. Several times I have recived a trade or an ebay purchase, only to strip off several shipping labels to find one I put on years ago.

that is what I was saying, that those of us on the various boards are only a small percentage of the Model Car market place.

Because I was talking about the members of the various forums, I estimated the number by looking at the largest forum and took the membership number from that. Most of us post on multiple forums so I didn't use the total number of all forums. And while I know not all forum members are what O would call "serious model builders" in the context we are discussing here, I also took into account thet there are many serious modelers who don't participate in the forums so I think it averages out.

Ok, heres the expaination. You say each of us would "only have to buy 5-10 of each" to make a model kit a success to do a run of. Ok wellthat seems easy enough until you count howmany kits are released each year. Just to keep Revell afloat for the first half of 2012 if we each bought 5-10 of each 23 kits announced last weekend, each of us would be on the hook for 114-228 kits. Then we still have to take care of revell, mobius, lindberg polar lights etc. Of course a few of us might want some old stuff off of ebay or some Revell of germany, Tamiya, fujimi hasegawa etc. As you can see my figure of a 500 kits seems reasonable if we contituted the bulk of the model car market as many assume we do here. We don't very few of us even buy 100 new kits a year. We are the minority, no matter how vocal or enthusiastic we seem.

Thank goodness you told me. I was just about to mount the vent windows where the mirrors go and vice versa.

My point is that there are only about 10,000 -15,000 of us car modelers cruising the various forums. we are literally the tip of the iceberg. unless every last one of us buy about 500 new model kits in addition to any old kits we pick up, we do not represent the bulk of kit sales. that is why kits that we shoot down as inaccurate or ill proportioned etc. still l sell well. It's because the bulk of their customers simply aren't experts. These are not people who go home with their new model kit, and get out the reference pictures and the dial calipers and start measuring. These are the guys who twist the parts of the sprue and supply us with the seemingly endless supply of glue bombs on ebay and swap meets. Yes the Black widow is an obscure option on the 57 chevy, but to the glue bomb crowd it's a 57 chevy. they might not even notice that it has different side trim.

Why did the 65 chevelle, and the 57 Chevy 150 sell? Wow you got me stumped as of course there is absolutely no mainstream interest in Chevelles and 57 Chevies. The model companies must have been out of their minds to even consider such oscures subjects as those. **note that the sarcasim in this post is cutting, it by no means is intended to offend. please take it with the humor it was intended** on a serious note the choice of doing a Z-11 or a 57 150 makes sence. To the hardcore modeler these were highly desireable versions, to the masses who might not know the difference, they are still chevelles and 57 chevies. It's a win-win.

I didn't say the posts had to be current pick-up, but give the guys calling for new pick-ups, a chance to show there enthusiasm for scale pick-ups.

It is both. The idea is to get a handle on the whole scale pick-up thing. It would appear that the text I had in the original post did not show.