Tom Geiger

Craig, I remember the year you and your wife were there!

Why not put a short mason dump on the crew cab... that's what local landscapers use for the crew.

Yea John, it could show up at your shop for electrical work! Imagine coming in on a Monday morning and finding that in your bay.

I don't think so from Meng. They aren't doing these kits for the US market, but for the rest of world, or just China. Note that new Fords are wildly popular in China right now. Yea, they love American cars... which is a good thing.

Last I looked they were in the middle of reorganizing the site. You'll find some of the stuff in the new structure, but there's still as much back in the old set of folders. It is cool that all that's assembled in one place. It almost makes it too easy!

I don't think that was a slight against Ed, they were just looking for ways to extend the tooling life. Bob Paeth spoke at length about how back then they were in the toy business and never thought anyone would want their work in a year or two. It was either find some new way to sell another run of kits to the public... who were mainly schoolboys back then... or scrap the tooling. Bob took blame for destroying the Revell VW bus, turning it into a custom van thingie. He said they had no crystal ball and thought nobody would ever want a kit of a VW bus again. The whole idea that the work they did back then was now revered and collected absolutely amazed Bob and he was honored to participate in the hobby and GSL right up to his death. End analysis is that it's good that they did those things to the Roth kits. It preserved them and they've been reissued as Roth cars in the past 20 years, so we can all have them. Otherwise, those tools would have been scrapped back in the 1960s and every Roth custom would be a $500 kit today! If we want a straight story, Jim Keeler was there too. Jim is a good fun guy who started at Revell right out of high school. He was on this board this past week, so he's approachable!

Sad to say that these have gone from popularity and there were way too many made for the market to absorb. Dealers would give them to us as door prizes for our show and we had trouble giving them away. After dragging them to a few shows and storing them each year, when they were left over the last show, I just saw kids in the crowd and tossed them at them!

I just found these pictures while looking for something else... My friend Bill Barrett and I decided to go to GSL in 2001 to get it off our Bucket Lists. So we made plans. Dave Pye, sent me an email inviting me to breakfast the first day of the show. I thought that was nice. But we were bowled over when we got there, all this in one room! Note that this was our very first impression of GSL, man were we happy we went! Here's Bill and I before the breakfast. Man, we had hair and it's not gray! I'll start with those facing us, the others are in the coming photos... Jim Keeler, who worked for Revell in the old days, Rene and Andy Kallen, Dave Pye (standing), Rik Hoving and Norman Veber Paul Anastopolis, Pat Covert and Ric Golden of SE LTD Rik Hoving, Norm Veber, Bob Paeth, Bob Korunow and Paul Anastopolis Augie Hiscano (in left corner), Marc Havacan, Gregg Hutchings, Bill Barrett and Kirk Bell Dave Lindsay and Juha Airo Gregg Hutchings of Model Cars and Kirk Bell of Scale Auto. KIrk was editor at that time. Sad to say we have lost several of these participants over the years, but we sure had a great time in 2001!

I was thinking that we should just let the government issue everyone names. Then we'd all have names like Cabbage Patch dolls!

Here I am on Christmas Day 1969 in Pirmasens, Germany with my brand new Raleigh Chopper. Back then I wanted a Schwinn Orange Krate or the Sears version. My parents said I had to wait until we got to Germany to get a bike. So we went to the PX and they had these neat Euro spec Raleigh Choppers! I wanted one and true to their word, my parents ponied up the $$ for it as my Christmas present. What makes it a Euro bike is the center hub of the front wheel is a generator. With bikes being considered transportation in Europe, standards were that they had to have generator run lights front and rear, as well as rear reflector and the ones that became customary everywhere eventually on the pedals. This specific Chopper got stolen in Germany, and it was replaced with a yellow one, that did get shipped back to the USA with us. Once back in the states in 1972, I learned that the spyder bike craze was over (who knew?!) and everyone had 10 speeds. I didn't get a new bike for another year when I got the Peugeot Tour De France 10 speed in 1973 with $200 of my lawn mowing money. My sister had the girls version of the Chopper (low bar) in red with a white seat. I thought these two bikes were safely stored in the back of my father's garage (you couldn't see that far back so I didn't doubt they were there!) until I went to retrieve them as an adult. Then my father admitted that he gave them away years ago! Argh! My father never parted with anything! The one thing HAD to be my beloved bike? I do still have the Peugeot. I have wanted to replace the Chopper so I keep an eye out. They are quite popular, especially in Europe. There is a whole aftermarket and you can buy nearly every part new. Today a bare frame goes for $100, and I've seen battered survivors in the $300-500 range. Minty clean ones are near $1000. One of these days!

I had heard that he worked at Knotts, so I believe that's fact. Part of the lore was that once he went to Hells Angels, it was too nasty an image for Revell and they cut him off. I was told that was why the Surfite kit was so rare, that they pulled it from the market. Of course we know that Revell eventually reissued it, that was the version I built. I always liked the car and thought it intriguing to build a kit that only months before was a $500 model. I did talk with Bob Paeth who worked for Revell in that era. He told me that the Revell / Hells Angels story was bunk. He said the Surfite was rare because it didn't sell well and they only did the initial run because of that. He said that in their initial assessment of the kit, the Surfite was so small that it looked lost in the model box. They perceived that kids would think they hadn't gotten a good value since the box was 3/4 empty, so they came up with the Tiki Hut pretty much just to fill the box and add value. Even that didn't work, kids just weren't into the Surfite since it wasn't a big V8 car.

Shrewsbury... I always thought that should be an ice cream flavor! I assumed NJ since they were traveling from Brooklyn. I worked with a lot of NYers in that area of Jersey.

Gotcha Charlie! I've always worked in pharmaceutical companies, surrounded by PhDs. When ever we'd dig a pit on site, it was our safety procedure not only to put saw horses and tape around the construction site, but to post a guard there too. People asked me why and my response was it was either that or we'd have to pull all the PhDs out of the hole every hour.

The beauty of Bare Metal Foil is that it cuts evenly and perfectly with no to little pressure. I tell folks just to run your eXacto knife along the line, as if you were tracing it with a pencil. That's enough to cut it. And that saves you from digging down into the paint, or forbid, you slip and gouge the body. I can see that happening as you try to cut through thicker stuff. As far as availability, you can always buy BMF through the mail or whenever you get to a decent hobby shop or a model show. A lot of hobby shops don't even stock it. Rich Manson mentions that he will grab a few sheets at NNL East each year. I don't have a decent shop near me either, but I go to NJ (about 2 hr ride) once a month for my club meeting. I hit the hobby shop there when I need stuff.

I'm sure you ran into him professionally! And yes I understand those weird spelling folks looking to be different... at one of my old companies I knew four women named Karen, all spelt differently... and they'd get upset if you didn't know it was Carin or Karyn... thene there was Caron... she'd get upset if you didn't know to pronounce it "Corrine"

Interesting work and thoughts John! A lot of modelers don't realize that there are panel lines omitted from kits, mainly the fender edges at the rocker and panel between the hood and windshield (I forget the name of that right now, no doubt I'll remember as soon as I post). I always wondered why they didn't do these lines, then I recently was looking at a Chevette brochure for details on the one I'm building and it seems that Chevy airbrushed those lines away! Probably for a cleaner look in the brochure. And automakers probably told the model companies not to put them on the promos. The Chevette photos also deleted the antenna. So you can't go by the brochures for details. John is lucky enough to have a 1:1 in his driveway, but at least find some pictures of the real cars on the Internet for reference. John, you also mentioned the detail around the front and rear glass on Mopars of that era. I had many of them in my Valiants and Barracudas. Basically it's a thin mylar chrome strip that sits in the black gasket to hold it in place. Many of mine had aged and lost the chrome covering. On my first '66 Valiant, I actually painted the then beige and crummy mylar flat black. Later I noticed that someone discovered it was the same (or close enuf!) as that on later Chevy pickups. And I'm sure the aftermarket has figured that out today. So it is a challenge to model that detail. Keep going on this project and I'll see you and Amy in a few weeks!

And some more stuff to chew up bandwidth! I've always been intrigued by town names and postmarks. Armed with the 1976 Zip Code Directory I found that there was a Geigertown in Pennsylvania. I was 17 at the time, and I send a couple of postcards to the postmaster there asking for a postmark for my collection. They did so, even putting them in a special USPS postage paid envelope to protect them in the mail, along with a nice note inviting me to come there someday. Well, once we moved to PA, I came across the postcards and decided to see exactly where Geigertown was. Score! Less than a half hour from my house. I never would have imagined that in 1976! So we made a little trip there in December 2012 and presented this card to the current postmaster, along with the invitation to visit. They were happy to see me and stamped my cards with a current postmark. We also mailed all our Christmas cards there that year, thinking relatives would get a kick out of the postmark... wouldn't ya know, not a single one of them even noticed! How about a Charles M Schultz autograph on a first day cover? Back in 1975 when this stamp was issued, I was a budding journalist and I decided to send these out to well known people in journalism. I sent each two covers, one for them to keep and one to sign and mail back to me in my self addressed stamped envelope. I was surprised at both who responded and who didn't. Charles M Schultz was the first one back, along with a hand written note thanking me. The editor of the New York Times didn't respond, nor did the other high end journalists I mailed. But who did respond? Erma Bombeck and Ann Landers! Just fun stuff to have! Stamp collecting is like car collecting. The first question you usually get asked is "How Much Is It Worth?" So I'll show ya the money! I bought the above cover at auction when I was a kid for something like $50. It was auctioned as "probably a fake 318" which was the official government issue coil stamp. I did a bit of research on the subject, and uncovered history that these were another variety of the private perforations commissioned by Covel, and that the government issue 318 never existed. I did the research that Covel was on the same street as Shermack, who did the coils for affixing machines and vending machines, and Covel had them do their own variety. This cover is unique since it's real commercial postal usage (versus a collector sending it to himself or another collector). Put to auction today, it would bring $500-1,000. And to the average collector, this wouldn't stand out among a stack of dollar covers. I posted this one on another board, but I don't believe here. This is a last day cancel from St. Thomas, Nevada. The town was abandoned because it would be under water with the building of the Boulder Dam. These two pieces were inside the envelope and make the history come alive. Imagine that this cover was actually there! This photo was also in the envelope of the post office and the boat that was needed to escape the rising waters. Now for the fun part in this Internet age.. I looked up St Thomas, and of course there was a web site. It seems that with the drought of the past few years, the town has appeared from the receding waters. The site had old photos of what was there, and current photos of foundations of the old town that had been under water for 75 years. I originally scanned all this to send to the web master, and explorer who went there, who was happy to get the information. It's great that you can reach out to nearly anyone today. So those are the pieces I have to share in this installment...

One that got me a while back was on one of the court shows... there was a girl named Latrina. I started laughing and my daughter didn't understand why. I guess the younger generation isn't familiar with the word "Latrine". Even spell check wanted to change Latrina to Latrine! Maybe I can make up some names... it could work! Bit-0-trivia... the name "Wendy" was invented by the author of Peter Pan for a character in the book. And from that it became a popular girls name.

When we moved to PA we decided that we'd just use our cell phones since everyone important to us called us there anyway. The only calls we were getting on our home phone were from solicitors and other pests. We had a phone installed, that was necessary for our home security system, but never attached a phone to it. Last year when I was unemployed, I hooked up a phone so I wouldn't waste my cell minutes (PA unemployment is notorious for 1 hour wait times). Instantly, this phone that had never been listed anywhere, lit up with anywhere from 5-10 pest calls a day. Now that I'm working from home much of the time, I use the speaker phone for conference calls, but don't have a ringer hooked up to it.

Happy to see Tom K brought this thread up top again! Yes, less than three weeks away! ACK! Most everything is done, we have our final planning meeting tomorrow and our team will stuff the Goody Bags. One point I like to make is that we do not want to grow the show larger, we feel it's the right size. Any larger and we'd lose that NNL feeling that we strive to preserve. So we don't advertise anywhere. We do our annual postcard mailing, we have our website and do mentions on the boards we all inhabit. Each year more and more folks are coming from further away, and that's the growth we want. People interested enough to travel, who will stay the whole day and participate. And with that I constantly remind our team that if people are spending their vacation money to attend, we really have to make sure it was worth their while! So in our quest to make the show a better experience for everyone... One of the things that bothered us was the posts after the show that people didn't connect with folks they wanted to meet. Even at the show, we'd get people asking, "Can you point out Joe Smurf? He's a fat guy with gray hair." Well, we may not know that specific person, and that's the description of about half the guys there! So we added a few features this year... Official NNL East name tags! Everyone can have one, be sure to spot people you wouldn't recognize but would love to meet. We revamped our "Parking Space" . Now there are spaces so you can list where you are from, so other local guys can discover you. There's a space for your club affiliation. And most important, there's an optional spot for your cell phone number... so people can contact you during the show! Speaking of the largest model display in the country... we have added a dozen tables this year, adding space to categories that overflowed previously like Replica Stock, Competition - Open Wheel and Competition - Closed Wheel. We have also added a display category (remember this isn't a contest!) called "Modern Sport" AKA tuners, in collaboration with the Diversified Scalerz club of North Jersey. This is a group of younger guys who mainly build modern subjects, and we are working together to bring more young guys into the hobby and the show! We are also looking to up the participation of folks who bring and display models. Remember the whole idea of NNL is that it's a cruise night for models! We found that there were a lot of very good modelers who just weren't bringing anything. So we're bribing ya! See below, last year we started giving out a special NNL East logo tool or toy just to folks displaying models. You get it when you turn in your registration form. Last year we gave away these spiffy NNL East Official Model Car Brushes. This year we have another great tool for you. What is it? You'll just have to register some models to find out! For our annual raffle to benefit the Model Car Builder's Museum, Ed Sexton had the entire project team sign a 2015 Mustang! This is a one of a kind collectible I'm sure will be a big success. And a new cool souvenir item this year. Hard to imagine that we've been doing the color postcards for six years now! People have asked about getting nice clean ones that the post office hasn't damaged, so we've heard ya! Here's a complete set of six in a special commemorative envelope for only $3. Proceeds go to our favorite museum too! And we have buttons as always! A few years ago we lost our supplier, so we went back to do the years we missed. When one of our members moved, he found extra supplies of many of the early years, so come to the club table and complete your set! We will also have our NNL East t-shirts for this year, and some going back years. And free swag for everyone! We have the annual souvenir license plates sponsored by Model Car Garage and you can have a souvenir pen too! And don't forget to look inside your Goody Bag! It contains your model voting ballot, raffle ticket for our never ending kit raffle, the Show Program with floor plans of all the rooms, model display categories and exactly where your favorite vendor is! This year we asked all our aftermarket and manufacturer vendors to put something in the bag, so you never know what's in there. AND we have a cool new thing this year... We have placed a very cool NNL East Wooden Nickel in random bags, and if you are lucky enough to find one, it's worth $5 at any vendor. So join us and have some fun! Website address is below for the latest info!

There was one of these for sale on eBay the other day... was it this one?

It seems this question pops up about once a week here. There is no substitute to Bare Metal Foil IF you are trying to build a nice clean model. At $8 a sheet, you can get 3-4 cars. Isn't it worth $2 to have perfect trim?

I came close to meeting Ed Roth. I was going to the GSL for the first time and he was supposed to be there. He died right before the show! Very nice build on that finicky Revell kit! I do own all the Roth kits, thanks to reissues, and I built the Surfite. Man! Nothing fit, I added plastic to the interior edge where it meets the body to fill in the gap, same with body parts. I was gluing them on and puttying the gaps to then scribe a correct one. As mentioned, a lot of the parts were very ambitious for Revell in thickness and scale fidelity but didn't work in practice. And every part had massive mold seams and ejector pins all visible, especially on chrome parts. I built mine before Alclad so much of my chassis was done in Testors Metalizers. So while I love the Roth cars, and would love to have them all on the shelf, every time I look at those boxes, I kinda shiver!

Changing the subject... I get irked by the names people are giving to kids! And they grow up and walk around with those names! This morning on TV someone admitted to having a daughter named Sloan... "um yea, my parents named me after a plumbing supply company!" Then on a show my wife is watching there was a conversation between Shay and Creek...