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Tom Geiger

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Everything posted by Tom Geiger

  1. Happy Holidays to all my friends in the hobby, spread world wide but like one big family! May 2015 be prosperous to everyone!
  2. Very cool! And he will remember this the rest of his life! It's times like this that confirm that it is better to give than receive!
  3. Correct. Many years ago there was a lot of concern for the major model companies. Learning Curve had AMT etal on the sales block, and fear was that they'd give it up and scrap all the tooling. Same with Revell / Monogram with the crayon folks. As everyone was crying that the sky was falling, I wrote an editorial that IF there was a market for models, some smaller and nimbler companies... those smart enough to work to today's market, demand and numbers would emerge to fill that void. And what happened? Just that! Both R/M and the AMT / MPC etal were sold to companies that really understand the market and have learned to focus on the realities of this market. Smaller companies like Moebius and a few new ones like ICM that look promising, have just come out of nowhere. As Dave said, the big company with a wing filled with design folks went the way of 500,000 kit runs. As he described Moebius, that is the model for operating in today's market. Plain and simple.
  4. Harry and Jeff have it right in their posts above. But Dave's point that I've quoted here basically says that a company like Moebius (or Revell or Round 2) cannot afford to build and finance a factory operation, based on the volume of product that our market will absorb. The concept of outsourcing, whether domestic or international is based on buying the resources, just for the time needed to produce your product. That's what makes model kits feasible in today's market. The vendor in China that they employ not only produces Moebius products, but has other clients that fill it's schedules and make it's venture profitable. And that is a whole 'nuther business!
  5. Nuthin wrong with a little snow to add color! I said "a LITTLE snow."
  6. Back in the day, my wife's sister, brother and us had all just bought new cars. As we looked at them all in the driveway at a family event, my brother in law scolded me that he'd never buy an American car, since I had bought a Dodge Grand Caravan. I replied that his Honda and my sister in law's Camry were American cars... but my Caravan was Canadian! Neither of them believed me, both thinking their cars were made in Japan. Even further back, spring of 1992 my company credit union advertised car loan rates 1% cheaper for American cars. I was buying my Geo Tracker and they said it was Japanese and didn't qualify. So I asked about my Dodge Caravan, yes they'd give the discount on that one! So I told them that both cars were built in Canada... they gave up and gave me the discount! And it is a world market. My company colleague in China is proud to drive a Buick Century. I asked my French colleague if he had a Peugeot, a Citroen or Renault.... he replied "Toyota". Still, we'll be seeing both my wife's siblings tomorrow. I'm sure one of them will make a remark about my Buick. Funny thing, I never considered a foreign make this time around... my short list was Buick LaCrosse or Chrysler 300.
  7. That makes for one good looking convertible! Nice work so far!
  8. Black Sharpie over BMF can give a purple tint, rather than the black you are looking for. Testors makes "gunmetal" as part of their metalizers. It's very dark and I use it mainly on suspension parts to give different assemblies that are dark colors a slightly different appearance.
  9. This argument is worse than the guy who argued that Time Magazine sells for $2 and is thicker than Model Cars Magazine at $5. Totally different financial circumstances.
  10. He has to like it! It's downright wonderful!
  11. I love the contrast between your two cars! Great builds, especially starting in the parts box for the custom!
  12. Nice ending to a great build story!
  13. Guess you didn't read Dave's posts. There is no one company in the USA that could produce turn key model kits today. And your $25 kit would probably be a $50 kit if produced here.
  14. I've found that some of the recent ROG releases are excellent. I have the Mini Cooper, the 1968 era VW Beetle and both versions of the Trabant. I've found them as good as any Tamiya kit. The detail is great, and they have things you just don't see on other kits like shoulder belts. I'm working on the Trabant Universal and it nearly builds itself. Everything fits very well, even when I was looking at engine parts that at first glance looked like they were dissimilar but suddenly just snapped in place. I'm enjoying the build very much. I have found the tooling well defined and the kits I have are molded very well. They are doing their molding in Poland. On the down side, I've found them to be over detailed, like some Japanese kits. Microscopic little parts, such as the fender top trim that should have been molded as part of the body, and a trailer hitch that has a separate ball the size of an ant! They could have made the kits a bit simpler.
  15. Brand new headlights! Got them installed yesterday before the rain came. 100% better looking than the fogged up old ones, and should improve my vision 100% too.
  16. Robin Williams used to own an old Land Rover. He said he liked it because you never knew what would happen next! And if you think I'm funnin' on ya... remember I own a Jaguar!
  17. Gary, I've been a student of eBay from before it was called eBay. I was a seller at the very beginning and have followed their growth and change all these years. eBay has long abandoned the collectibles market, chasing Amazon to sell consumer goods to the masses. They don't give one iota as to what happens in the model car parts category, because the over pollution of duplicate and over priced items is a very minor annoyance as compared to the same in other hobby categories. I am a stamp collector and that category is overrun with people listing worthless stamps at enormous prices, pretty much the same thing as our parts vendors. I see the same stuff listed over and over, some of it for many years. There are several things I recognize as being listed prior to my move to PA, and I've been here 4 years! And in the stamp category, when something is over priced, it's over priced by hundreds of dollars! There are a few interesting items that I keep bookmarked hoping the seller comes down to earth eventually. Then go into the consumer merchandise categories. I bought some headlights there the other day. What a mess the auto parts categories are! You cannot even get down to real parts for your car since every seller of generic parts like shiny bolts has keyword spammed every car name in existence into their ad. In my quest for headlights there were over 10,000 entries for Dodge Caravan lights. Over 1200 ads just for headlights. And the same ad over and over, from the same and different sellers with different pricing from $62 to well over $250 for the same pair of headlights. Very quickly I recognized that they all used the same photos and descriptions... yes, they were all drop shipping from a single fulfillment house. So I sorted those 1200 entries down until I got the cheapest price. Now that was a pain in the tail. And if eBay is allowing that mess, we have no chance of any change in a small obscure hobby category!
  18. because you just sit there in your driveway trying to get it started!
  19. Or the review could've been written by a competitor to make the restaurant look bad! I recently looked at Yelp reviews for our favorite restaurant. We go there often, the food is great and the staff is friendly and efficient. Same staff have been there forever so the owner must be doing something right by them. There were a lot of reviews, but some of them must have been from another planet! Ranting about meals we have eaten that are delicious, the "uncaring and surely staff"... makes me wonder if they were ever there or what kind of crazy they are!
  20. I was at a global conference at work in October. My colleague from China was proud to tell me he drives a Buick Century! GM sells more Buicks in China than the USA
  21. Because I like them? The Celica is in the garage at my NJ house, waiting until I get to restore it. Runs well, just needs body work and paint The Tracker and Jaguar (30,000 mile car) are my collector / fun cars The Caravan has a handicap seat in it for my in-laws, and I do use it to move things The Breeze was my wife's car, prior to that my daughter's car, and I use it to commute from PA to NJ to keep the miles off the good cars The LaCrosse is our new family car, my wife drives it daily. What does my insurance bill look like? It's 8 1/2" x 11" printed both sides, with a tear off tab at the bottom! actually around $2000, about half what I paid in NJ. All of my cars are paid for and old enough that it's not worth carrying collision. I buy low mile clean used cars. I just bought my wife a 2006 Buick LaCrosse CLX with 32,000 miles on it for $8000 cash. It looks and drives like a new $38,000 one.
  22. Wow Bill, you are ranting in this thread too? Your blood pressure must be through the roof!
  23. Michael, I never did get to see East Germany. We lived in West Germany from 1969-72 and the closest I got was standing at Checkpoint Charlie after visiting the Escape Museum. Even then there were East Germans who worked in West Berlin, and I remember watching those Trabants headed back home through the Checkpoint. A lot of the American kids I knew did get to tour into East Germany, but my family couldn't because my father held certain US military clearances.
  24. Silly... There was a guy in our model club who was offered a ride to a distant show. He declined because I have a Dodge Caravan and he wouldn't be seen dead in a non-Ford product. And I'd be damned to change my plans and drive my Crown Victoria to please him! My current fleet has cars from many manufacturers.... I have a Toyota Celica convertible, Dodge Grand Caravan (number 3 of these!), Plymouth Breeze (we had 2 of these), Geo Tracker (Suzuki titled as a Chevy), a Jaguar S Type and I recently purchased a Buick LaCrosse. My daughters have a Ford Fusion and a Fiat 500 convertible. Not trapped by any silly allegiance to any one manufacturer. If I see a car I like, I'm inclined to buy one.
  25. I personally want to thank the board "jack wagons" for their efforts in running Dave Metzner off the board. If I was him, I wouldn't be back. You guys must be really proud of yourselves and how you put your personal interests and amateur opinions ahead of the good of the board and the hobby. There are those of us who enjoy that inside view of how things happen in a model company. There are those of us who have done professional project management, who are amazed at what results they are able to achieve with the limited resources they have. For those who will reply that you are "entitled" to your opinion, that you are "entitled" to perfect model kits, or that you are the one person who is right, well go back to your delusion. Not one of you showed respect or stopped for one second to think that Dave wouldn't want his competitors trashed in a thread that he has started. For the record, that is a small community and Dave has the greatest respect for those in the business. To trash this thread like that is thoughtless and selfish. And for those who felt the need to illustrate your idea of a "bad kit" none of the minutia you mentioned, including the roof height on the Mustang matter to 99% of those who buy model kits. The fact that you had to go back to use AMT kits that were developed two, maybe three owners ago shows your desperation to always be right. AND for those who wanted to use AMT kits as examples, I guess you don't know the business well enough to know that Dave worked for AMT under Playing Mantis and was involved in some of those projects! So thank you very much.
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