Tom Geiger

I've all but given up myself. In the past month I had to replace a pool pump, a board in the pool heater, the compressor in our kitchen refrigerator freezer and now my Caravan is in the shop for complete strut replacement. No way to save money, things just keep breaking!

My Uncle Jules had a Checker wagon so I grew up thinking it was normal.

Decals argh! The Revell of Germany Trabant cars have tiny little decals for everything that exists on the real car. There are minuscule little ones on the wheel hubs that are like trying to mount fleas on little oval stages! I actually lost two of them out of four. Disappeared completely. And of course the Germans give you FOUR. They should print something like eight of them on that sheet. There's room! I'm fortunate that a friend texted me that he didn't use them, and is mailing me his sheet!

I mentally sub title those lists "How to put a model company out of business in 3 easy steps!'

Funny thing, now that I think about it. This is probably the first time it's been towed. I did buy it new in 1996. In all fairness, I did have to put a transmission in it at 140,000 but I limped into the garage with that one.

What pleased me? The right front strut on my Caravan collapsed! Bottom piece broke / rotted and the strut came right down through the spring. Why am I pleased? Because it happened right at the base of my driveway, pulling in from work last evening. And 5 minutes before that I was going 80 on the turnpike! Caravan has 193,000 on it, original struts. Bound to happen, probably should've replaced them a long time ago, but they weren't causing any issues. So I called AAA for my free tow and off it went to my favorite shop. Told him to take his time, Should have it back by Saturday. I don't have to be anywhere until Tuesday

Go back and read the old Scale Auto annual polls in the 1980s-1990s. We have kits of most of those top requests! The manufacturers do listen. And as far as threads like this one... I have no problem with anything anyone posts. As said, there are threads I bypass, but I'm fine with posting a picture of my dog or whatever. It's cheap entertainment for when I'm too tired to build, when my wife is watching The Bachelor / Dancing With The Stars kinda stuff.

You are as old as you allow yourself to be! I told everyone the story about my cousin with the Tesla? Well it seems he talked his 74 year old father in to getting one too!

You are correct for the most part... but there are stamps that are more valuable used!

Very cool matchbooks. I have always collected anything Valiant, so I have a few early 1960 matchbooks with Valiants on them. I've always taken matchbooks / boxes as souvenirs from restaurants and places we enjoyed. Above is one from the Trail Dust Steak House in Denver. I copied the logo onto decal stock on a xerox machine and put them on a Dodge Ramcharger. This was before we had the luxury of printer generated decals. I also have a few matchbooks from my favorite restaurant, Southern House in Point Pleasant, NJ... irony is that it burned to the ground!

People would rather ask the magic 8 ball a question, and be amazed when they get replies!

I had a thought... I wonder if antique hearse rental would be a viable business. Have funeral homes offer the service.

eBay has changed the entire collectibles market. Funny things happen when every collectible in the world suddenly appears in a searchable index. The rare suddenly is no longer hard to find. I can give a dozen examples of things I searched for years, at shows and in magazine classifieds, that now I can enter into an eBay search and several copies of it instantly appear. Sellers see that and price theirs a bit less than the one they see. Then the next seller does that and so on, until things sell for next to nothing. As said above, then it's not worth the effort to sell things. That has run havoc on the flea market industry, as well as toy and model car swap meets. The legendary Toledo Toy Show is a very small shadow of what it once was. I'm sure that is true in other hobbies as well. For those of you taking swipes at those posting the reality of this on sellers, nobody wins at the bottom of the market. eBay owns a site called Half.com. This is a book and media selling site. It's free to list and sellers pay a commission upon sale. The competition has gotten so bad that you can buy nearly any book for less than a dollar. When ever I want a book, I go and search. I buy one for a dollar and their standard charge of about $3 postage. Just like eBay it arrives in a few days. Usually brand new books, even hard covers. Selling for a dollar.

Many years ago a buddy-0-mine who builds big rigs did a purple tractor. The judge at a show told him it didn't place since nobody had a purple big rig. The next few weeks I could not count how many purple trucks we saw on the road! There are companies that take great pride in their fleet. Steelcase office furniture for one. Clean trucks with chrome, they see it as an extension of who they are as a company. Only makes sense since trucks are rolling billboards. There is Izzi moving / rigging company in New Jersey. They used to do work for me. All of their trucks big Petes with chrome, waxed and polished, and they bring them out to truck shows. Their corporate culture is that you care after your truck, and they have fun events for their staff around that. Click on their home page here, there is a slide show of their trucks... http://www.izzirigging.com/home2.nxg

That's about my experience. I don't even find the tools I'm looking for! We once joked that it was state law that every garage sale had to have a dirty baby car seat, a piece of exercise equipment and 8 track tapes. More like $100 each when I see anything!

Chris, that's a superb engine bay on that Duster! I am working to put one of those in a Volare right now and it's a bit of a challenge. The Volare has the drive shaft molded into the transmission hump, so I removed it and redid the hump. I also got rid of the console molded into the interior bucket. Last issue will be the relationship between the transmission and the bottom of interior / chassis... MPC really made it tight, just not enough room for the tranny. So make sure your suspension sits, the driveshaft and engine / trans all sit right before committing anything to paint! I would've swapped out the chassis but the Volare torsion bars are completely different from the prior ones.

Wayne- That's exactly the thinking here in NJ / PA area. I had a neighbor who was a NJ state trooper and he said the same thing. They actually tried not to do traffic stops on the crowded interstates during rush hour, since it would halt the flow of traffic as rubber neckers slowed to look. He also said that since everybody was technically speeding, it gave him a reason to pull over any suspicious looking car.

How do you not have pool weather all year round? Here in PA we don't get a lot of 90 degree days, especially this year, it really hasn't been a hot summer. But we'll go in the pool any day it breaks 80, and I heat it to 90. I didn't even have a mail box then! Someone took it out sliding in the snow!

There is a slant six in the Lindberg 1964 Plymouth / Dodge kits. It's probably the best one ever done in a kit. There is also one in the Deora kit, which isn't all that bad either. Going back, there were versions of this engine in Revell 1962 Valiant kit, which had a big hole through the block for the metal axle. I believe there was a slant in the 1964 Barracuda kit, and maybe one of the Volare releases. Ross Gibbons also did a slant six in resin as part of his extensive engine line.

The guys posting about passing in the left and then immediately pulling back into the right (or center) lane must be from sparsely populated states, or have never driven rush hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike or NJ's Garden State Parkway. You have to know that the Parkway is six lanes in some places, and that doesn't keep traffic from stopping dead, then creeping along at 5 mph. At that point all the lanes have the same number of cars in them, since they're measured bumper to bumper. In this situation you are best to pick a lane and then just stay with it. You will soon see that each lane will pick up for a short time and then stop again. The cars you passed, will then pass you and back again. When I used to drive a car pool from NY state to NJ on the Parkway, there was a guy we worked with who drove a Miata and was a rather impatient driver. We'd leave work the same time as him and there he'd be zooming around cars, rocking from lane to lane to gain position, if one lane started moving, he'd cut someone off to get there. Then when that lane stopped, he'd zip back to the other lane. Funny thing? We'd stay constant in our lane, and we'd always watch him when he got off his exit. All that dangerous maneuvering and aggravation and he hadn't gained a car length! On a good day, the left lane will be moving above speed limit. My recent observations of driving the PA Turnpike has been that I'm in the fast lane going between 75-80, as said I cannot go any faster than the cars in front of me since this is a solid line of traffic. The guys I wanna crown are the ones that come up behind me, ride my tail and flash their lights for me to pull over. They will eventually do the dangerous maneuver of pulling around me on the right, and then attempt to squeeze in directly in front of me. What did you gain, one friggin car length?

Super build! I enjoyed the ride!

It's a different world from when we were kids. In the 1970s I mowed lawns and got $6 a lawn. Today kids get $30 or more. Kinda coincides with the kit prices you mentioned. In fact a friend of mine who worked in a hobby shop had the observation that our herd was cheap, didn't want to spend a lot on a model. He said the young guys who did come in would buy a Tamiya Japanese car kit to build a tuner, spend another $50 on Pegasis wheels and accessories, paints and supplies. He said they had no problem dropping $100 or more to build a model. As far as indicating vintage tooling, you do have a point but most of us don't consider the 1966 Nova vintage (gasp! In my world they just issued it! ) There was one issue with it when it first came out, they had molded the rear view mirror into the windshield. The hobby complained and it was immediately fixed. This kit was considered land mark new technology when it came out... full detail chassis and platform interior with separate side panels to aid in detailing. If you want to see old tooling, go buy the AMT '62 Buick. You'll be amazed at how simple this kit is. Round 2 had started to indicate vintage on their new releases, they were putting images of the kit trees on the bottom of the box so people would be able to see what they're getting. There is a vast difference in some of the tooling over the past 50 years.

People are just fatter so they hit the ground harder!

In the suburbs west of Philadelphia it has been a cool summer. Right now it's 68 degrees and drizzling. That stinks because this is the first time all summer we've invited a bunch of family for an over night, barbeque and pool time. The pool is heated to 90, so you can see the steam coming off of it! Not a great pool summer here!

Try eBay. The 1980 Volare kit was only done one year, in 1980. There should be some around.