Tom Geiger

It's good to see Dave's site is still alive. Yes, he was one of the more colorful Liars. Dave wound up with cancer. He talked to the doctors about his plight and found that he he had two choices. He could go through chemo etc and be in pain and it would buy him a bit more time. Or he could simply do nothing. Doctors told him he'd feel fine until near the end, then he'd suffer a short time before he died. He chose the later and I always respected him for this. He told everyone in the hobby his plight, and then said he didn't want to hear about it again. Just treat him the same. When I'd see him at shows I'd simply say, "It's good to see you!" He posted on the boards that he had a huge parts hoard and wanted to share it with people who would use the parts for builds. He wanted to watch the builds. John Agugliaro became the caretaker of Dave's "Da Deuce" (which Dave's family kept). Unfortunately John died in his 50s. I'm still in touch with John's wife Amy. She comes to NNL East to see everyone and I'm Facebook friends with her. I hope I remembered all this right!

Quote: "The white plastic drawers. Salvation Army for $2.99. Should be good for parts or whatnot. " It's origin is Walmart. I believe it was $5-6 new. That's where I got mine. Handy little unit. It's my sandpaper bin on my workbench. I made cardboard drawer dividers. I cut my sandpaper up to 1" x 1" squares on my cutting board.

About 25 years ago I was part of the team that bought a 100 acre office park with a lake in the middle of it. It had been unoccupied for better than a year so the geese had taken over. We did a serious renovation before we moved any workers there, and as we went from building to building on the connector paths, there were geese everywhere. If you ignored them and kept walking they would calmly part for you to walk through. One day the path was covered with at least 100 geese and a colleague and I walked through, then they would close the gap across the path again. At one point I said, "Stop, look around..." and we were completely surrounded by geese! One evening I was leaving as it was getting dark. There were a few geese on the path I was using to get to my car. I did the usual walk into them, and one goose had a fit and attacked me. I stood my ground and gave him a swift kick in the breast with my steel toe shoe! He ran off squawking and I ran for my car. The next day a group of us was meeting in a conference room with windows that viewed the lawn. One lady said, "Look one of the geese is limping! He looks hurt!" I didn't say a thing! He was gone in a day or two. Figure one of the foxes must've caught the slowest goose.

My first BMF job done some 30 years ago, still looks as good as it did the day I did it!

Nice tour Joe! There is history everywhere if one cares to look! Most don't. And it's only like 120 degrees out today???

Have a great show Alan! I'm sorry to see it ending.

Pretty much on topic! Note that people who want to use it as a blasting media will have the same issue if they don't clean the model super well. Are you sure you got it all out of the seams? Out of the cracks between two glued parts? Otherwise it can come back to haunt you.

Chrysler held onto those reverse threads at least through 1966.. all my Valiants had them. And when you'd buy one of those cars at least one lug was broken off! The last one I had was my '65 Barracuda. I changed the lugs on that car because garages kept breaking them.

Two Guys did have a great hobby department! The company is known as Vornado Reality Trust today. Originally the chain made sure they owned the property at their locations, rather than leasing. Over time they became property rich, that part of the business was worth more than their waning retail business. So they shut it down, and did very well leasing out their properties to others. Smart business.

It still absorbs moisture from the atmosphere. Which is why I recommended washing before painting. I have models that used baking soda as part of the rust job (recommended to me back then) and at summer at the peak of humidity there's a damp spot.

Back when I was a youth, there was a small office building across the street from my house. It was a sales office for a chemical company. They had a fleet of these Torino 4 door sedans, no doubt the salesmen's cars. They were all different colors, place almost looked like a Ford dealership.

It kinda goes like this: I have much better sources than my family. I cringe at the thought of them going into a hobby shop to buy a model I either already have or don't want at full retail. So I've told everyone "no model gifts". I have every model that I need. At NNL East I had a guy approach the raffle desk with a winning ticket. He complained, "Oh dern! I already have all this stuff." I just look at him and said, "Then appreciate how fortune you are." He stopped dead, then laughed and had to agree. And for everything else, I tell people "don't buy me presents". A nice card and well wishes is good enough. I have everything I need, and I don't like my kids, as they struggle for their positions in life, to spend money on me.

Just remember to wash everything really good. Baking soda is pretty much salt.

Joe, this has been going on as long as there were chains with buying clout. My grandfather and his brothers ran a local jewelry store that their father had founded in 1910. In the early 1960s a big department store for a regional chain called "Two Guys" opened up in the city. He went snooping and saw they were selling Timex watches cheaper than his wholesale price! When they put them on sale, he'd swoop in and buy them up. Timex had a fit and threatened to take away his dealership! My grandfather was a good businessman, so he shifted the business to selling and servicing high end jewelry. That got them through their retirement in 1973, where nobody in the family wanted to pursue the business. As for today, both Walmart and Amazon are getting to the point of dominating the retail marketplace. Remember back when the government thought AT&T had a monopoly and broke it up? I think it's time.

I just texted her... reply... "Forever a Toys R Us kid" (with hearts) Another thing that killed Toys R Us was that many of the large brands.. Fischer Price, etc made retailers stock their entire lines. They exempted Walmart from that, and Wally's only stocked the hot items and discounted them right under what Toys R Us could sell them for. Amazon sellers who bought distressed inventories and store return pallets at pennies on the dollar... which leads me to wonder where the Toys R Us inventories went... our store is cleaned out completely... and how that will all affect the toy market in the next year...

My sister in law did her college internship with Toys R Us main office. To graduate she had to do a business proposal, so we created "Geoffrey's Hobby Shop", as a branded aisle. This was 30 years ago, back when they still carried models. She not only graduated, but they gave her a job. She rose up through the ranks in marketing, usually working six months ahead on the sales flyers.. like she would've been working on Christmas right now! Toys R Us was riding high back then, and she made out like a bandit on their stock plan. She bought her house by cashing in her winnings. Good thing, since it later went south! My older daughter was young then, so she used her in store advertising for Kids R Us and Toys R Us. For the Little Tykes yard products, instead of having actual product on the store floor, they used large photos of each item with kids playing on them, like the Little Tykes playhouse. My daughter was in all those photos, which were used for many years! Another benefit was when there were hot Christmas toys, she'd requisition them for us right from their main warehouse. We also benefited from advertising samples that needed to be discarded.... like a full size swing set. She left the company to raise a family maybe 19 years ago when my twin nephews were born.

Thanks Mark! A shot in the dark. I was asking since Round 2 is likely to include bonus parts... and I was hoping the slant six!

These threads often go down the winding road!

Another great spin on the Foose truck! Super work!

I went to Staples this afternoon and the Toys R Us is right next door. This one must've closed earlier. I looked inside and it had been picked clean of product already. Appeared they were disassembling fixtures.

Nope. One of my favorite kits so I wouldn't have missed it! Also- the shelves were full of Revell kits like nothing was wrong...

Just back from the Exton, PA store. There were models on sale at $7.49, mixed in with the regular price kits. I bought the Porsche 914 and the '76 Torino. Left behind the McEwen Barracuda funny cars, Rx7, Datsun Z and the S&H Torino. They also had a couple AMT Dodge 300 super stock car, I know in the past they didn't put the slant six in the race versions... wondering if AMT did it this round? If so I'd buy them!

It happens. I got going on rebuilding an old Monogram Model A junker. So I got out more Model As from that series and the next thing I know I have three chassis completed on my work bench.