Tom Geiger

Agreed. eBay has been chasing Amazon for years as a purveyor of consumer goods, pretty much abandoning its collector market roots. As such, the demands for sellers to ship immediately, accept unconditional returns, paying postage both ways and the high fee structure have driven the casual hobby collectors from selling on the site. Never mind the abundance of like items, reducing the sell through rate to unacceptable.

We are seeing an influx of new and returning modelers on the boards and in Facebook model groups. We’ll have to see how many of them stick with it once the world opens back up.

Very nice Jim!

There is no incentive for sellers to scam on shipping costs anymore. EBay charges commission on the total, including the shipping charges. Today even if you sort by “lowest price first” it totals in the shipping cost. Back in the day, they only charged commission on the sales price so a lot of sellers were selling kits for a penny with $20 shipping to avoid fees. No more. Sellers are complaining that eBay is forcing them into eBay managed shipping and their calculator is screwing up postage estimates big time.

I did mean it when I said “Buy food”! If needy people took that $1200 and spent $100 a week on groceries, they’d be good for 3 months. But unfortunately people don’t think that way.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1023075077750267?ref=bookmarks its on Facebook, if the link doesn’t work, go to Facebook and search for Scale Survivors

Two Jeepster chassis cleaned up, assembled and painted. I also have the engines assembled, drilled and in primer. Two bodies are also in primer. I had to sand off the two tone chrome trim on one of them.. lots of imperfections to fix on those old MPC bodies! Typical kit of that era.. bed was flat, pictures of 1:1 show ribbing so I added it with Evergreen strips.

And cheese curls

I don’t think that will be happening with my hoard! Funny thing, there was a post on one of the Facebook model groups by a guy who posted, “I’m happy I stocked up for times like these!” His photo had less than 10 kits in it.

That made me think... this year I’ve completed five models so far.. and I have two Jeepsters on the bench right now. In January I pushed myself to finish my Blue Beetle before the 24 Hour Build, where a built a Falcon modified stocker. Then this whole covid mess hit and I built the three 1950 Chevy pickups. And as far as my purchase to build ratio, I’m up five and pushing for seven. If my supply order arrives with the Tamiya semi gloss spray, I could finish my Trabant for eight. As for new kit purchases this year... I’ve bought absolutely nothing! In a normal year I would’ve attended three shows by this time and would’ve bought a bunch of stuff, which would’ve blown that all to smithereens! Its gonna be an interesting year!

In 1962 I was four years old. My sister, mother and I lived in an apartment in Jersey City NJ across the street from my grandparents. My father was a career US Army officer and was in Vietnam that year.

I am working on a pair of Jeepsters and found six rifles and a surfboard! And in making your own accessories, I created the baby car seat to match the one we owned when my kids were little. I started with a small bucket seat from the Deora kit. I sanded the sides flat and added the side pieces from Evergreen sheet. The buckle was made from two small pieces of Evergreen strip, with edges rounded. Add two strips of ribbon and you have a convincing car seat. Teddy bear was an edible cake decoration piece, painted appropriately.

Bingo! Exactly what I was thinking! I’d use straight pins, you can easily cut them with wire cutters

For nuclear missiles

I think that tooling up the proper six cylinder engine was cost prohibitive. Note that the team at Round 2 is quite astute and no doubt considered this when doing the modifications to a 1960. How far do we go with upgrading a 1961 era tool that has seen modifications and considerable use over the last 60 years? Once you add the engine, now you still have the one piece chassis, originally a curbside, then hacked to accept an engine. And the body is 1961 era injection mold thickness and Steve pointed out isn’t completely accurate anyway. At this point they might as well have scrapped the tool and created a completely new kit!

I’ve had my 1960 Ranchero for 20 years! Every time I’d post it someone would correct me that the kit was a 61! Um no, this one is a 60. Before the 61 was even reissued since early 1970s, I had bought a junker bag containing two trashed Rancheros and a totaled and warped 1960 Falcon sedan missing its roof. I used the grille / bumper unit on this Ranchero!

I predict that Round Two will get a ton of parts requests for “missing” flat hoods that people will want for their 2 door hardtops! Thats what happened when Revell came out with 66 ElCamino..

Oh yea! As a kid I was in love with the 57 Nomad. I bought that fiddly kit when I was 10 and failed. I saw it again when I was 11 and figured I was a year older so I should be up to the task... wrong! Many old kits have vague instructions and parts without a sure fit. I’m working on the old MPC Jeepster and the grill shell is a thin little flat piece that is warped out of the box. It gets glued into the fenders by its thin edge! Slight bump on the fenders as a guide but nothing to hold it in place. As an adult I deduced I could tape the hood in place, tape the grill straight across the top to account for the warp and angle, then add gap filling super glue at the mount area, which had gaps. I had three of this kit. The one a kid had started back in the day had a ton of dried Testors glue there, the grill crooked and off angle. It appears that’s where he gave up!

That Foose chassis is very cool and just perfect for conversions. I used one under a Datsun pickup (with much modification) and have two more kits set aside for future projects.

I’d love to own one of these! Would get some interesting looks at car shows!

In 1/25 scale

Boiled in diesel

As said, the 56 and 57 kits are very nice. Created years ago and the tooling has held up well so they’ve been reissued over and over, through the years. Don’t pay too much for them. The 56 here was built by Harry and I bought it from his daughter. The 57 was built by me nearly 30 years ago when I got back to the hobby.

This was my first contest car built some 25 years ago. I came up with the concept of a VW kit car of a 32 Vicky. I covered all my details as a roadable functional car. As I thought I should, all the panels opened. I made a tilt nose and added the rear hump off an Anglia. The bucket seats even tilted forward to reveal.. A baby seat I scratch built from a Deora bucket seat. There were no details missed, steering column, master cylinder and even a mounted spare tire. The fuel tank was in the nose, filled via the radiator cap and is visible inside the tilt nose. And a fully wired VW engine. People were a lot less open minded then. I took this model to shows up and down the East Coast and didn’t even get a third place. I was in contests where they gave a trophy to models that weren’t even painted and I couldn’t place! I asked judges for a critique and got responses like, “Nobody would ever build a car like that!” (At the time one of the cars that was cleaning up at same shows was a 32 with a Ferrari engine). One judge told me they disqualified my car because I forgot to add a battery... um, it’s a VW, battery is under the back seat. My favorite remark from a judge was that my model was disrespectful to Fords and I was lucky someone didn’t smash it! Back then when I built my first complete and purpose built junked car, I had a guy yelling at me at a show that I ruined a perfectly good kit. My friends and I thought it was pretty funny. They even gave me an award for turning perfectly good kits into junk. We’ve come a long way!

Like food! I noticed my local Walmart is sold out of TVs of all sizes.