niteowl7710

Don't forget replacement decals for both BTCC Volvos exist from Shunko Models & S.K. Decal, so finding a mint one with "good" decals (if any of them have good decals 25 yrs later regardless as to how they were stored) isn't a necessity. I haunted Yahoo! Japan Auctions for my kits and I might have $60 including all the fees and shipping in both Volvo kits plus another $30 in S.K. replacement sheets.

While I appreciate when people reply to a reply, quoting something out of context from 4 months ago is sorta odd. The point I was making in my post is Japanese kit manufacturers somehow manage to reissue kits that are nearly, if not actually CHEAPER than the original issue of the kit, especially when adjusted for inflation. Consider the follow examples... The Fujimi Enthusiast Series BMW M635CSi kit was released with an original Yen MSRP of 1500 in 1986. That works out to about $13.xx US more or less as it was after the Plaza Accord was signed and the value of the Yen to USD had flipped doubling the value of the Yen, and is slightly more than the present exchange rate of 105 to $1. (At 100Y to $1 you would just put a decimal into the price). The last time the kit was reissued was 2007 at that time the MSRP was raised to 3200 Yen, and when it was just reissued LAST MONTH (11 years later) it's price is again 3200 Yen. When you adjust 1986 dollars for inflation it works out the kit should cost $31 - which is effectively EXACTLY what the kit now costs. Plus if you were to buy it directly from Japan the sales price is around $25 making it cheaper than inflation dollars. Consider they had to get fresh brand new 2018 BMW Licensing for the kit, new box art, all the 2018 molding costs, et al. There is also the likely factor that you as an American couldn't have found a Fujimi BMW in 1986 unless you had a superbly stocked LHS who could order things from overseas as I don't think most Americans were exposed to the kit until Testors reboxed it, plus it was competing against the Monogram Exotics Series kit which was selling at relatively normal U.S. pricing at the time, which would have made the Fujimi priced Bimmer at $20-25 (figuring for export costs, LHS overhead etc) out of this world expensive by comparison Now lets look at the AMT old school tooling of the 1957 Chevy. That kit cost $1.99 in the 1960s, has been reissued a bajillion times by every company that has subsequently owned AMT (as opposed to three reissues of the above BMW), and in it's most recent "Pepper Shaker" reissue has an MSRP of $31.95. That $2 adjusted for inflation is $14. Are you SERIOUSLY going to tell me the reason that kit is priced at DOUBLE the inflation costs is because the value of the tooling - which has been paid for by AMT, Lesney, Ertl, Racing Champions, Tomika, and Round2 has DOUBLED? I mean let's be realistic here, the value of that tooling is basically whatever the price of scrapping steel would be at this point. After 4 intervening ownerships regimes since it was created (and undoubtedly paid off back in the Troy, MI days) there is no tangible value to that physical asset, or most of the rest of the tooling catalog at AMT/MPC. Of the purchase price maybe 35% (and I feel I'm being generous) was the cost of those hunks of steel, the rest of it was for buying the name & trademarks of AMT/MPC. Much like Revell, which if were to be sold tomorrow in Hobbico's bankruptcy, would be less about the model kits and more about owning the Revell/Monogram name. If you were to win the lottery and buy either, and then rename it Horsepower Models - your sales would be an incredible uphill battle to convince people the new name was something that could be trusted. Look at the fiasco Oakey went through over JoHan, and that is almost SOLEY about the name of the company since there isn't even tooling to speak of involved in that sale. What it boils down to is that the cost of reissuing a kit, is nominal per kit. When you buy 6k identical boxes, 6k identical decal sheets, 6k identical instruction brochures (which at Round2 aren't even being done fresh in terms of hiring someone to make new ones) you're talking a couple of bucks per kit in costs. I can sell you 26 tons of plastic pellets for around $40k delivered to your front door, which means the value of the plastic per kit is maybe...ehh a quarter. There's a reason that reissues are considered to be "printing money".

Tooling money usage - A+. But it seemed most people here wanted custom 1957 Chevy parts, not some generic seats and lake pipes. Not sure the entire combination is worth $15 - which is the Auto World Store price - the actual MSRP is $17. At that price you're creeping up towards what the entire '57 Ford costs if you attack it with a 40% of coupon ($19.17)...

This sorta makes this reissue of the '72 Vettes sort of a given...

Somehow I don't think this is exactly what you guys were expecting with this...(March Release) AMTPP018/24 57 Fantasy Parts Pack The Kats from AMT introduce the 57 Fantasy Parts Pack. It features specialized, gleaming chrome parts and pad-printed tires for customizing almost any 1/25 scale 1950s car model: side pipes, bumperettes, baby moon wheel caps, rolled rear pan, custom shift lever and diamond-tuft quilted quad seats. Best of all, a set of four Firestone Supreme tires with an exclusive pre-decorated white and gold pinstripe design are included! Features: • 1/25 scale, skill 2 • chrome plated customizing parts • add style to almost any 1950s model car • set of four Firestone Supreme tires with special white and gold pinstriping

Poor guy, hope he never reads all the hate he gets everywhere from what he wears, to what he says, to people blaming him (elsewhere) about what Round2 is making. Just the other day while making a video I said Fujimi when I meant Tamiya TWICE in a row while looking at a photo with a giant Tamoya logo in it. Word soup happens to us mere mortals. No one noticed the giant sticker on the box lid that says 50 Years of Edsel that he just read out? Sure blame the video guy, not the marketing and art department for no one in the entire approval process knowing how to math. I mean if you guys all hate this poor schmuck so much that every one of these monthly videos gets turned into "lob flames at the Round2 guy", why don't you all just save yourself the stress and not watch it? Or at least sling some arrows at the editing department who when they were watching this thing in Post Production didn't realize he says Olds Superbee or '69 Pontiac either. Thank God none of y'all perfect folks EVERY mispeak in this sanctum of perfection.

No it's a straight reissue of the GT/GTA kit.

I'm not sure you'll ever see that one come back, the engine was made out of white metal which was all the craze for about 20 minutes back when Gunze was doing that to a bunch of their kits as well about 25-30 yrs ago.

It should be noted that ONLY the Lexus kit comes with the LHD parts. Neither Soarer from either has them.

There's nothing new about Hasegawa's venerable 2000GT other than the resin female figure.

Alright now after sitting down and actually looking at it, the BOX ART car is a 2016 24 Hrs of Le Mans car, the TEST SHOT build is a 2017 24hrs of Le Mans car...which is also missing the 24hrs of Le Mans logo on the number placards, but whatever it's early run decals. But the rest of the sponsorship and the placement of the numbers on the built kit are definitely the 2017 car that finished 2nd. Soooooo which kit are we getting exactly, as you can't split the difference and deliver an accurate kit of either if you try to include livery for both, unless there are two rear splitters and headlight choices in the box.

So long as they actually tooled up the later spec race parts. There is a pretty significant difference in the rear splitters between the 2016 car and the '17'/'18 car, along with different headlights and a few other tweaks here and there. Ya know Ganassi ran FOUR of those in 2016, and both the livery shown on the box, and the one that's built are the two worst finishing cars. They didn't even podium in their class, why show those two off when you'd have to hope the 68 & 69 placards are in there to do the 1st and 2nd place cars....(third was a Ferrari).

The only version I have is the 1/24 kit. The 1/12 never interested me that much, even though it's still not THAT big considering how tiny the real car is. I just never dug the weird juxtaposition of diecast and plastic of the large scale kits.

The kit replicates one of the first Caterham Super 7s, which at the time was a complete kit car as Lotus had been selling - with a more powerful Cosworth engine. They ran out of the Lotus supplied kits in the late 1970s after about 6 years and have been producing their own "replica" versions ever since.

Yeah well going to most hobby shops will net you a slew of kits that are 6 or more years old in terms of their release date, and I'm not talking about the myriad reissues either. There's no demand for any more C7s beside that odd half-promo glue kit made, but there's a rabble at the gates demanding a 120+ part, 3 season old Ford GT GTE car?

Well those Corvettes are also 6yrs old for the Coupe, and 5 yrs old for the twin-pack. I'd want them gone at pretty much any cost too if I had a bunch lying around my warehouse. That also tells me Corvettes have at least as much interest as those goofy "show rods", which everyone always wets themselves over whenever those reissues are announced...

Looks like pricing is gonna be right up against $180-200 in Japan based on what some of the European places that have it up for pre-sale are trying to charge.

Well ya know how it goes, some people don't care, some people insist the difference between 24th and 25th is a like 1/35th vs. 1/72nd...

Not only did this kit never get reissued, Revell shortly dropped their entire Ferrari licensing shortly thereafter.

The parts to build the FF were already in the Ferguson kit, this is just a package with two complete kits and the book. Within the actual 1:1 the TE was built in England, the FF in France later in the production run with completely French sourced parts, so it had a different seat, steering wheel, front wheels, headlights, and distinctive paint job.

Because I don't take the whole "I'll buy a case of those!" thing lightly...

FWIW the new Welly '15+ Chargers are NOT 1/24 scale by a large margin. Which isn't surprising for them, as seemingly nothing they ever do really is...heck the box art says "1:24-27" on it...I guess it's a sliding scale now? Definitely is on the 1/27th end of things.

The issue with that is, unlike GT3 customer racing there's only 1 Ferrari F1 team with two cars, both of which are represented by the effectively the same livery. Much like Fujimi's recent McLaren-Hondas where the only livery decals were for all the evil tobacco & alcohol companies we had to save the children from... I'd also expect this to effectively be a curbside as the recent trend in "super secret" F1 engines has made a full detail kit out of the realm of reality the last several kits from both manufacturers starting back with the Red Bull Renault.

The ceiling of the courtroom will also be several scale inches too low...

I like the double speak of saying that customers won't be impacted, but they also don't know if the entire thing will be sold as one chunk, or split apart - which no matter which nice business speak you want to call it - is called liquidating assets. They can call them underperforming and dump all the dinky little companies that don't impact the bottom line by in large, or like Revell which is profitable, selling off the stuff that gets them the most money to dig themselves out of this huge hole they bought themselves into trying to be everything to everyone's hobby. Sell the R/C stuff to Traxxas and kill off the lawsuit in the process since they it's hard to sue someone over using your IP when you then own the IP...that might be cheaper in the larger picture than whatever punitive settlement of all past sales profits or the like. If someone were to pick up the entire thing and it's debt load they would of course ransack the management (which sounds like it's needs a good going over anyways) and then anything becomes possible in terms of what stays and what goes. As far as the generalized broad numbers, that's all bankruptcy speak. Just like when you answer a survey and it asks which your household income is and you're given a range. They're worth between x and y, and have between x and y amount of debt to between x and y amount of creditors.