Tom Geiger

I'd be pleased as punch if someone... anyone... did a Valiant of this era. There was someone on the board a while back that was doing a conversion to the Duel Valiant. I helped him with some reference photos, darn if I remember who, but he wasn't in the USA. There is a resin kit of an Australian Valiant 4 door sedan of this era. I'd been hoping to get my hands on one of those to attempt a conversion back to it's US roots!

With the Nova pix, here's one I own. I got it at a show years ago. I guess I need to get some better pictures taken soon...

Why do I even bother posting on this board? That is a photo that Dave sent to me to post on another board years ago. I don't know the background on it.

You are right, there are some dreadful models. The tough part is figuring out who the builder is.... are they a youngster or other newbie who needs, and most importantly wants, guidance? And it depends on how that guidance is administered. When I was new, prior to the Internet, I joined a club to enjoy the hobby and most important, to learn to build better models. There was one guy in the club who was very harsh and would criticize the model with statements like "We disqualified your model from the club contest because you used Krylon paint. You're not allowed to do that!" and his tone wasn't encouraging, more like superior. I almost quit the club subjected to that. Then there are guys who are handicapped or have other limitations. It's good to know who they are so we can praise them appropriately. Those results may have been hard fought for. And the last category... as you said. Those who don't have much invested in the hobby. They slap stuff together and really don't care about improving their skills. Where there are those amongst us who treat their building as art, these guys are a step above assembling puzzles. We had one in our club. He was a middle aged guy who cranked out a model or two a month. He wasn't into quality, that would have slowed him down. He wanted to see big results, like half a model assembled, each time he'd sit down to build. He'd brag about getting the whole thing painted in one sitting and things like that. One of those guys who would assemble his whole interior and then spray the entire thing with hardware store black, and not even paint any details. He never did a lick of body prep, brush painted all his parts on sprues and his bodies had one uneven coat of hardware store paint. He never added a wire in his life. He wanted no input. He didn't want to grow his skills. That would have been fine, but he also wanted to win contests. He'd complain that ALL contests should be judged with the hoods shut 'to give everyone a chance'. He wanted our club contest to be that way, but he also suggested that the peoples choice be done from a distance... not up close. So maybe you'd stand five feet away from the table so his stuff would look good. He said everyone should take turns winning. These are the guys you just want to smack!

Sounds easy! I can say that the tools that are in China are the ones that are complete and in good condition. These are the ones that have been run since production was moved there. The tools they're still looking at are in various states of decay from up to 50 years of hit or miss storage. I was told that some tooling sat outside for years. So much of it isn't in any condition to toss onto a press and run a test shot. Besides, I don't even know if they have an injection molding machine where the tooling is stored in Iowa. The model molds are a complex piece of tooling. There are moving parts, some of them are ejector pins and slides that all must be in working order to squeeze plastic through. Think of it as taking an old engine you've had out in your yard and starting it up! So there can be a significant investment just to make a complete tool work again. Where some of the gold is being found is mismarked tools. Remember back when they announced they were releasing Hemi Under Glass, only to find the tool they had was the Fireball 500? So we figured the HUG was gone. And later they found that one too. Other gold are in tooling inserts that are sitting in tools but have their runners welded off so no molten plastic goes in those areas. Round 2 has been grinding those areas out, resulting in parts and such we haven't seen in eons. Things like the missing custom parts in the 1960-1 Ranchero have been restored that way. There were other surprises they didn't know until they released kits and we told them. I forget which kit, but an early Ford kit had some Ala Carte parts on the trees. In these cases they need to see how much of an old kit they have, and if it's financially worth it to reproduce the remainder and offer it as a kit. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In the days of Learning Swerve, they wouldn't make any investments. Model King made some small investments then. When Round 2 was leasing the tools, they were limited as to what they could invest. Now that they own them... well, the future is wide open now that we have an astute owner! Catering to the Baby Boomers is a brilliant strategy. It's a growing market in the respect that more and more of us are retiring every day. Guys who have the required years of service are retiring in their 50s out of fear of pension / retiree benefit reductions if they wait. I can name a bunch of well known modelers who went on Social Security recently. This is a market of folks who have money and now have a lot of spare time. Let's sell 'em product! This market is probably good for another 20 years, until we all die off. And this market should carry the current model company management through their own retirements. Still, Revell just announced a new line of kits aimed at the young novice builder, so they aren't ignoring younger consumers. We at NNL East have just added our first new display category... ever... "Sports Compact" to welcome younger builders into our ranks. There is a club in NJ called Diversified Scalerz, who are mainly young tuner builders from their teens to their thirties. Last year they emailed us asking for a modern class. It made a heck of a lot of sense so we've joined forces to promote the hobby to younger folks.

That kit was one of his lessons! Although a few vocal folks wanted that kit, it was hard to push a run of them on the market. I don't think Dave did another large scale after that one! Dave has twin sons and the irony is that neither of them are into cars or models! Back when they were teens, if they were grounded Dave would bring them to our club meeting as punishment!

The eBay truck dropped this off today! A bit OT but cool and to give you all an idea of other things I collect. This is a postcard that was actually carried by the Graf Zeppelin Hindenburg in 1929. It originated at the air station in Lakehurst, NJ and went to England by way of Friedrichshafen, Germany. It was back stamped upon arrival there, A very cool piece of history that was actually there! I just love holding history in my hands. I was very surprised to win it at the $9.99 opening bid. Folks were sleeping, these usually sell for much more!

You are right! There are times I see a model without knowing who built it and I can pretty much guess from the "signature" work. Me? If it's rusted and has Suburbanite snow tires on it... it's probably mine!

And did'ja see the idiot proofing on the new gas cans. I bought one a couple of years ago... plastic of course... and it has a child proof cap that makes the ones on medicine look easy! And then there's a nozzle lock that almost immediately malfunctioned. So I found an old cap and nozzle I had in my garage.

I didn't sleep well last night. I had a weird dream that I was at a model show outdoors and it was snowing heavily. The show was over night and I remember being cold and having to move snow off my models. Don't ask where that one came from! I guess I've had enough snow and need a vacation.

And that's why I collect this stuff! It's just neat! That wagon is wild. It started out as a 1960 Ford convertible. The stretch and roof are made from balsa wood. When I got it, it was missing two matching wheel covers (see back one) and someone on the boards donated the right ones. Someone pointed the model out to me on eBay and I knew I needed to own it. So I put a $100 bid in my snipe software so I wouldn't lose it. I think I did get it for around $25-30.

Looks good! A lot of old built ups have multiple layers of paint. I have a 1962 Buick convertible that's burgundy, but there are both red and green coats under that. I remember being a kid and having limited resources as well as limited kit availability so I'd rebuild models over and over until I wore them out!

Very cool!

Yup! I was at Liars Challenge last year and I saw a guy sitting there changing film. I walked up to him and said, "You must be Charlie." and it was!

Just a few I own... it is possible to obtain great old pieces if you put the time in! I just love the mystery as to who built it and where it's been. Was it a local hobby shop show winner in it's day? Was it in one of the magazines? The very idea that these were built 40-50 years ago and have survived intact makes them worth preserving. This is the folk art of our youth!

A bit of background on Dave. I've known him some 30 years, back before we were in models. Dave and I both drove in the demo derby at Wall Stadium in the early 1980s. This is a bad old photo, but that's Dave's number 27. He always ran early 1960s Fords and made a science of making them last in the demo. Dave owned a junkyard back then. Here's a shot of Dave's junkyard back in the day. He eventually sold the business. When I first got back into models around 1989, I ran into Dave and remembered him from the derby. Model King got started in an interesting way. A group of us from NJ loaded into Joel Naprstek's old Ford van and headed up to the first Masscar show. I believe it was me, Joel, John Slivoski and Dave. Once there, Dave struck up a deal with a dealer at the show who said he wanted out of the business. He bought the guy's entire booth! We had a hard time fitting it all in the van, and we all rode home that night with boxes under our legs! So Dave started setting up at shows, and buying collections and such. He soon contacted AMT's then owner to ask about becoming a dealer. That was the start of it. He'd bring new kits to our club meetings and set up at a lot of shows. I remember AMT kits were then $6 each! I guess he got on board with Revell / Monogram as a dealer too. I don't remember all the details. Eventually he was talking with AMT's then current owner about what kits they had and what they should release. Dave's always had a keen sense of the market. They didn't have the resources to do everything, so unlike a lot of guys on the boards who will spout off "they should make a this..." Dave put his money where his mouth was and contracted with them to produce these kits. This was welcome business to AMT since the toy company was sucking wind back then. Dave's business was complete runs that were guaranteed sold! He never got that kid in a candy shop free run through the tooling, because that's not even possible. Model tooling is usually big metal boxes that are moved around with fork lifts. Most of it was in Indiana in an old dark warehouse on pallet racks. And if you look at tooling, it's not readily apparent what you are looking at in reverse. There have been times model companies had to do some test shots to see what was actually in the molds. He'd inquire about a specific kit and they'd go look for it. There were times they didn't have the kit, and other times they had it but it was in poor condition or incomplete. The pieces that are most likely to be missing from a kit are the tire, chrome and clear tools since those are actually separate pieces form the main tool. So Dave offered to make investments in some of the tools for a exclusive on them for a time period. There were kits like the '59 Imperial that was missing the chrome shot, that he paid to have the Chinese vendor reverse engineer by sending them a good original piece to work from. I won't get into numbers, but his runs ran from very small to decently large. Some sold well and went into a second pressing. He took his lumps on some others that were slow sells. The drag related stuff went well, some of the replica stock stuff like the '70 Buick, '71 T-Bird and even the '64 Comet sold surprisingly slow. When AMT couldn't find the box art for a kit, Dave had someone draw up a box. So he had some fun with it. Some of the early art was done by his daughter. The Racers Wedge/Camper box had some of his distributors pictured on it as a thank you. And as time went on to different artists. He immortalized his friends. One of the drag boxes with a guy starting the race is Bill Merz, and his box photo for the Hemi Under Glass was actually shot at NNL East. I built one of the box art vehicles on his 1979 Ford pickup kit, and my dog and I are on the box if you look close. Boxes of that era were photo shopped by Doug Whyte. There are also inside jokes and names on some of the decal sheets. Some of the race cars were sponsored by model friends businesses. Dave then started to contact some old time race drivers or their families. He found some difficult to deal with or not interested. He made some friendships with guys who accepted a reasonable amount as royalties, some just wanted to see their car on the box, or wanted a few cases! Dave stopped doing AMT/MPC kits when Round Two bought the company because they didn't want to have their kits out under different brands. Dave has done well. He's always been a savvy businessman. But he loves the hobby! When you talk to him about things he's doing, he uses phrases like "What's good for the hobby.." and "To give the guys something extra.." Another little bit of trivia, Dave was the first NNL East dealer and hasn't missed a show. Back for NNL East 3, when there weren't any dealers, Dave approached John Slivoski and asked if he could sell some kits at the show. John agreed and the rest is NNL East history! We had no idea where that would all go!

Hmmm, not really. Only your biased perception. Every company lives and dies by their budgets. Round 2 is spending theirs maximizing the investment they made in the old tools. Cleaning them up, opening up welded off parts trees and reverse engineering missing parts. Adding value in the box (and on it!) to get us all to buy kits that we already have! They are doing an excellent job. Revell on the other hand, has put their budget and focus into tooling new kits. Their strategy is to produce new tools of timeless vehicles that won't go out of fashion so they can use those tools for many years. We've gotten some really cool new kits in the past few years that everyone is building. I can't count how many new '49 Merc woody wagons I've seen on the boards. We have done well by them. When I've asked either company why a certain thing was done a certain way, the answer is always the same. Not in the budget. If you've been in business, your budget is your reality. You have to live within it and make decisions how best to spend that budget to benefit the company. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. Given free reign, without any boundaries, I am positive that both companies would do amazing things. The folks involved in them are really good people who know the business and want to do the right thing. They just have to bob and weave in a company, a marketplace and with consumers who think they know it all and never give them a break!

Ha Alan! You saw my mess when you were here! Good to see you on the board!

So you say! Back when I got into building, I had maybe 24 kits I had saved and bought over the years. I thought that was a lot back then but the guys in my newly joined club just chuckled. Now with over 1000 kits in my stash I understand! And many guys on the board have many times what I have!

In December I bought a Canon Powershot A2500 with 16 megapixels and a 5x optical zoom. I got it on eBay for $60 postpaid, and it literally was delivered within 24 hours. The actual camera was $50 but for an extra $10 the vendor gave me a small tripod, a camera bag, an extra battery and extra memory stick. I couldn't beat the deal. I did have AAA batteries in my old one, and that camera ate batteries all the time. This one has a rechargeable one and that battery lasts forever. I think I've only charged it three times and I take a lot of pictures. I've yet to unwrap the extra battery. So I'm very pleased with the battery and the small charger that sits on an outlet. The camera is amazing. You don't have to choose the macro, the camera decides when it's needed. A good feature since I'd sometimes get through an aisle at a model show before I realized that I forgot to hit the macro button! I can put the camera right up next to a model and it focusses well. It also focuses on portrait shots, but I was amazed when I went to take a photo of three people and the camera detected three people and three focus boxes showed up over each face. It has many features I've yet to discover, and probably some I'll never find. It's light years better than the camera I broke.

I feel for you Scott, I had a similar neighbor at my old house. Our relationship started out nicely, I even put a gate in my back fence so his daughter could baby sit my kids. Then for reasons we never figured out, he started doing things to us. When we had a backyard party, he ran his lawn mower, left it on high idle up against our fence and went back in his house. He placed a garbage pail filled with dog poop behind a tree for him, but against my fence in full view of my sliding glass door. And it made my whole yard stink. Then he planted a large bush right in the middle of the gate so it wouldn't open any more, so my kids couldn't go onto his street to play with the kids there. When I asked why, he said he didn't want kids walking on his grass. He had huge oak trees in his yard that had several huge dead branches over my yard. When I hired a tree service, he refused to let them step in his yard, so they had to throw a rope up and climb the tree from my property to avoid confrontation. One night one of those huge trees came down and took out his roof and llving room... karma! He was a strange bird, so we just ignored him and gave no rise to his poking at us. Eventually he got bored and left us alone. I wish you the best. There's nothing worse than being aggravated in your own home.

Picture in the car? Guess that's one of those kits you can't wait until you get home!

Don't be so sure Nick! In my post I was referring to the one location in my town failing. Recently my wife went to the Acme Supermarket and found it had closed. So with the performance of this store, I wouldn't be surprised to drive by and see it boarded up. A lot of the Fridays locations are franchises. This past year an operator with 8 stores in New Jersey was fined for swapping cheap liquor into name brand bottles. So stuff happens and the store owners can cause their own holdings to fail. And a quick web search shows that the parent company of Fridays is trying to sell the chain since November. Theme casual restaurants have a life expectancy, they don't go on forever. Chains that were very popular like Ground Round, Howard Johnsons and others are all but gone. Ruby Tuesdays is circling the bowl right now, bankrupt and trying for a come back. New chains appear like Buffalo Wild Wings that take customers away from the old names. And the same franchise owners who have those older stale chain stores, will buy the new and happening franchises to replace the older ones. In my area (PA to NJ) the Jimmy Buffet, Cheeseburger in Paradise shut down. It had a nice atmosphere and seemed to do a good business. Some of the locations got replaced with Tilted Kilt restaurants (think Hooters with Kilts) and others became a new chain called "The Pour House". Out with the old stale concepts people have tired of, bring in fresh concepts that again will go through a life cycle. I do like business and try to follow trends and read a lot on the inside of different types of businesses. Just like I try to know the insides of the model companies. Here's an interesting one. When I first saw Buffalo Wild Wings, they had one in the Nanuet, NY mall and one in Brooklyn. I worked near Nanuet and went there for lunch. I thought it was a cool concept so I went to their website to look at their franchise deal. They had less than 25 stores open at that point, but the entire USA, except for Alaska and Wyoming, was sold out! So you know the franchises were instantly bought by large companies that owned a bunch of restaurants of different chains. And as they popped in, they were being put freestanding on the same lot as a competing brand. The one they built in West Chester, PA shares a lot with an Olive Garden owned by the same parent company. On Route 202 right over the Delaware boarder, there is a lot with four different chain restaurants on the same lot. No doubt common ownership again.

I agree Mark! I like all kinds of vehicles and have expanded my horizons due to my exposure to different things I see in this hobby and on the boards. I do like the unusual and like to replicate old history. The Saigon taxis were everywhere like gnats! They were in nearly every photo I found. With Viet Nam having a relationship with France in that era, many of the vehicles there were French. There were also a lot of US cars, back in the day when we exported cars worldwide. I would suspect that the Falcon in this photo was US military since I saw a couple of them across the photos. I just missed the tail end of the war and the draft. I was probably the first year that didn't have to register. But my father was a US Army officer and was in Viet Nam in 1962 in an advisory role prior to the war heating up. He was an avid photographer and took everything on slides. I just got 4 of those Kodak rotary slide carrousels at Good Will for $2 each, so I'm hoping to dig into his old archives. I think it would be cool to build a Saigon taxi. It would be neat to put it out on a show display table and see how many guys remember it from their tour there.

True, a Fridays runs on the cheapest labor they can find, and that goes for the managers as well. The guy I spoke to had no idea what he was doing, and no doubt earning a minimal salary. We got lured in with their coupon. The company deserves to fail. There is a local restaurant we prefer, that is run by an owner and we see the same staff for the four years we've been here, so they must be treating them right. The bartenders remember your name and what you order. The food is reasonably priced and we've never had a bad meal there. The other side of it is that they are wildly popular and no doubt profitable, so it's sometimes tough to get into! But we'll continue to go there because they treat us right.