Mike999

Well, that's fine. But I consider this a hobby/pastime I love, not a "business opportunity." And before the Junior Milton Friedmans start yammering about capitalism, I don't mind anybody making a profit off their stuff. I do it myself on eBay. But there is a limit and that particular seller exceeds it every time, IMO. As I've said before, I'd never buy anything from that guy. Aside from ridiculous prices, his listings are long, ranty whines about how hard he works to find these Very Special Parts and provide them to us. He also often refers to potential customers as "stupid." Way to build good-will, dude! People selling at reasonable prices are also "stupid." Because it takes SO MUCH TIME to hunt down his Very Special Parts. And he has to take photos! And write long, ranty listings! His hard labor just goes on and on! Oh, the humanity! IOW, he has to do what every other eBay seller does. His listings often contain something like this: "If you don't like my prices, go buy from somebody else who works for free." Thanks, I'll continue to do just that.

Speaking of expensive hobbies...back in the 1990s, a family friend was looking good for retirement. He had about $200,000 in personal savings plus his 401(k) etc. He was always conservative with his money and locally famous as a tightwad. Then the Video Poker craze swept South Carolina. In an incredibly short time, he had vaporized all his savings, borrowed from his 401(k), and ended up filing bankruptcy. I couldn't believe that. But it happened. The state banned Video Poker in 2000. For many years I lived in Los Angeles, a pretty short drive from Vegas. I'd be Trump-rich if I had a dollar for every time somebody told me about a sure-fire scheme to beat the casinos. Always some can't-fail Blackjack card counting scheme, or doubling down on Roulette, etc. etc. Forgetting that the casino has virtually unlimited time and money, and the gambler does not. There's an old story about a woman in a Harrah's casino. She lost a lot of money, and saw Bill Harrah himself on the casino floor. She went over and complained to Harrah that his slot machines weren't paying off. Harrah said something like: "Sure they are! See that expensive carpet you're standing on? See those crystal chandeliers up there? Don't tell me those slots aren't paying off."

No REVELL '30 Ford coupes at my closest HL, either. I was looking for one myself. So we're probably safe and they just haven't arrived yet. Over in the Clearance aisle, this HL still had a couple of the '23 Ford Model T "Nestle" trucks, marked down to $14.39. Tempting but I already have several. The only other car models in the Clearance aisle were a lonely pair of AMT 1/32 scale Avantis.

Sorry to tell you this. But I bought the same kit recently and saw the same problems you did. The nose fit is fixable, I guess, but sure is irritating. Mine has a "step" no matter how I position it. The left (driver) side almost looks like it's a short-shot, the fit is so bad. And the location pins on the nose definitely have to go. When I align the pins with the body, it REALLY doesn't fit. Sanding down the fenders to fit the nose will probably look goofy. So maybe I'll build up the nose with epoxy putty or Bondo. I'm already planning to build mine as an abandoned junker. I live in Upstate SC, so there's plenty of 1:1 source material around.

Hobby Lobby in Anderson, SC - the MPC "Fuzz Duster" '80 Volare and '60 Corvette 7-way kit. With 40% off coupon, of course! It looks like HL has done a reset. Neither kit was on the shelves the last time I visited, a couple of weeks ago. Also new (to me) on the shelves: MPC 69 Barracuda; MPC "Deserter" GMC pick-up; MPC '70 Bonneville; AMT Der Beetle Bus; LINDBERG '67 442 in a new box; REVELL 57 Ford Gasser. And most likely a few others I forgot. During the last HL clearance, the Barris Surf Woody was knocked down to $13.19. I bought the last one I saw at that price. Today one SW was back on the shelf, but at the regular price of $29.99, IIRC. All the new kits seemed to be $29.99. Michael's - no new kits but they were selling Ott Lites at a big discount. They also let me apply a 50% coupon to the sale price. The Ott Lite I bought was originally priced at over $60. Got it for $21.00. Woo-hoo! Ollie's - the big scale model sale is down to seeds and stems. Only saw a few SSR and LINDBERG Crown Vic kits and a few other cars. Still had plenty of the LINDBERG aircraft, SdKfz 222 and tuna-boat kits, though.

Thanks to the OP, and I love "stupid eBay seller" threads. That is all.

HBO is currently re-running this 2008 documentary "Dirty Driving: The Thundercars of Indiana." It's about the short-track amateur stock-car races in Anderson, Indiana. A former GM town that fell on very hard times when the car-related plants started closing. Even McDonald's and Taco Bell left town. As one resident says: "We can't build cars here anymore. But we can still race 'em and wreck 'em." Worth a look just for the amazing Figure-8 School Bus Race. And for the awesome Alice Riall, frequent race winner and a grandma who's been tearing up the track since 1977. I even got some modeling ideas from this one - Chrysler Kit Car...76 Dart...hmmm... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1331305/

plastic-mechanic wrote: "a lot of shows were sponsored by the Big Three from Detroit. ever notice a majority of the cars are from the same manufacturer? Dragnet was notorious for it." Yep, lots of shows and movies. Buried deep in the end credits, we often see a line that says "Transportation Provided By..." or something similar. Ford provided vehicles for most of the early James Bond movies. That's why Felix Leiter and the CIA tooled around in those T-Birds; Oddjob crushed a Lincoln then (improbably) hauled it off in a Falcon Ranchero. Etc. etc. And who can forget the famous scene in "Diamonds Are Forever." Sean Connery enters a narrow alley with the Mach 1 up on two wheels. But when he exits the alley, it's up on the OTHER two wheels. A classic continuity goof! Something fun I sometimes notice in movies/TV shows: the good guys all drive cars from the Official Transportation Provider. The bad guys drive (and wreck) cars from the competition.

Haven't seen this one mentioned yet and it's full of Car Porn. Not surprising, since it was made in 1985 and mostly filmed in a junkyard. Junkyards in 1985 still had LOTS of really vintage cars hanging around. "Roadhouse 66." Extremely low-budget flick starring two newcomers: Willem Dafoe and Judge Reinhold. Reinhold is driving cross-country in his '55 T-Bird when local punks shoot out his radiator. He hooks up with Willem Dafoe. And they run into a pair of smoking-hot sisters who just coincidentally...RUN A JUNKYARD! That probably makes it sound like a pretty bad movie. And it is. Still worth a watch, though. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088008/

"Armored Car Robbery" (1950) - vintage cars, armored & not. Also starring 1950-vintage Los Angeles! "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) - with a garage full of British sports cars AND a 1954 Corvette. Also more vintage L.A. Much of the movie was shot around the old Bunker Hill/Angel's Flight neighborhood, back when it was a low-rent area full of retirees living in cheap rooming houses. One kid who grew up dirt-poor in Bunker Hill - Jack Webb. "Viva Las Vegas" - we see about $1 bazillion worth of cars in the garage scenes - Ferrari 250 GTO, several original Shelby Cobras. Including the Cobra driven by Elvis Presley, towed behind his flamed and hoodless '56 Ford. Look closely at the first scene where Ann-Margaret visits the garage and you see a real rarity - a Daimler SP250. Which did have a Hemi V8, even if that V8 was about the size of a shoebox. And there's the immortal "Drag Strip Girl..."

And Chrysler had a LOT of Mod Top material left over. That wasn't a popular option. Well, waste not, want not. What to do with all that leftover flowery material? Easy - just dye it Burgundy. Then re-cycle it for the special burgundy vinyl roof of the limited-edition Sparkling Burgundy Metallic '71 Imperial. So Chrysler shipped all those spiffy new Imps, with freshly-dyed burgundy vinyl tops, to the dealers. Where they sat out in rain, sleet, snow... You can probably guess what happened next. But this article from the Imperial Club tells it a lot better: http://www.imperialclub.com/Yr/1971/Paisley/ EDIT for on-topic: here's a Houndstooth interior in the 1967 Mazda Cosmo 110:

Something I thought about doing with that TAMIYA/LEE Mercedes: drop the engine into one of the classic JOHAN or MONOGRAM '34 Mercedes. Also use the wheels/tires and maybe interior parts. I'd probably call it "Heresy." Or "Blasphemy." And today was Flea Market day. I got another REVELL Snap-Tite '05 Impala Police Car, shrink-wrapped for $5. It's worth that much for the back-seat safety barrier and other police parts. Also picked up the latest "Collectible Automobile" and "Rodder's Journal" magazines for $3 each. One vendor always has 2 or 3 tables full of new magazines very cheap. I guess they fell off a truck or something.

Here's a 2013 thread about those LEE kits. You're right, they're generally bad copies of TAMIYA stuff. Sometimes the kits are tweaked to take an electric motor and batteries. LEE has also ripped off quite a few TAMIYA 1/35 scale military kits. Several other Chinese companies did the same thing, including some that went on to become very big names in the scale-model world: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/70374-lee-kits/

Found one of these at the local Flea Market not long ago. Still shrink-wrapped. I had been trying to find one for years at a reasonable price. This one was $5.00, which I considered pretty reasonable.

This is a response to the question about the Heller 1/24 Tractor. Sorry, my "Quote" function is malfunctioning. The Heller Ferguson 1/24 Tractor is still showing up on the MegaHobby 2016 Pre-Order List: https://www.megahobby.com/categories/2016-pre-orders.html

I'm sort of surprised to hear that about HASEGAWA. I needed replacement parts for a HASEGAWA car kit a few months ago (I messed up the dashboard myself and told them that. It was from a discontinued kit.) Here's the email address I used: PartsSupport@unitedmodel.com That put me in touch with a nice woman named Mary Ann who helped out. In my email I gave them the kit name and number, along with the specific part number from the instruction sheet. They asked $9.95 for processing and shipping, and it did take a while to get the parts. About a month IIRC. Like R2 and REVELL, they sent the whole sprue.

A trip to the local thrift stores today took care of my flocking/carpet needs for a while. Found 4 different colors of Embossing Powder in one store (including black), all unopened for fifty cents each. In another store, found some really old adhesive felt, still in the package and unused. The felt is a light brown color I can use right away, as carpet on a van project.

Just got the second (passenger-side) recall for my 2008 Mustang this week.

Sounds right. The new Jeeps I saw in Egypt were all the smaller version. I think it was the one sold as the "Liberty" in the U.S. at the time. The older, bigger Jeep Cherokees were still very popular as staff cars for high-ranking Egyptian military officers. Usually tricked out with curtains in the interior, big bull-bars on the front and other custom touches. For lower-ranking officers, the most popular staff car was the Lada Niva - the little Lada SUV. One day I saw an officer heading toward his Niva, and noticed his enlisted-man driver fiddling around under the dash. Looked closer and the Niva didn't have a key - the driver was hot-wiring it to start it up. I sorta wondered about that...

Jeeps are also built (assembled) in Egypt. Or at least they were when I lived there from 2005-2009. Because of that, Jeep was the only American car in Egypt exempt from the huge import tariff on foreign cars. That tariff could be up to 100% of the car's price in some cases, I was told. The Jeep plant was in Cairo and even that was an interesting story with different versions. Just about everybody agreed it was an old Russian-built factory. Some people said the factory once built Russian missiles. Others said Russian farm tractors or cars were originally built there. One thing's for sure - the old Russian Lada was still a very popular car in Egypt. I lived in Alexandria and almost all taxicabs were Ladas. They still had the giant, cast-iron, knee-cracking taxi meters under the dash. None of those meters had worked since the Brezhnev Era. Since Alexandria is right on the Mediterranean, almost all the old Ladas had Flintstone Floors and various parts corroding off at random. I started to get into a taxi one day and the door handle came off in my hand. The driver just shrugged, opened the door from the inside, and tossed the door handle on the floorboard.

Ha! Thanks! You must have posted this before I caught my goof, sneaked in and changed the time to "12:04." And don't even get me started on scale figures, a subject just about as touchy as armor. I've seen incredibly long, bizarre, multi-page arguments over who wore what, and exactly when, in WWII.

Or any armor board! (And I have almost as many armor kits as cars.) It starts with laying out $50-100 for the latest superkit from Big Lizard, Hornblower, WildHorse etc. etc. That kit comes with resin and photo-etched metal parts, and is pronounced Most Accurate & Wonderful Kit ever. For about 2 days. Then Der Experten notice that the shovel mounting bracket is only correct for tanks produced in Nov. 1942, not Jan. 1943. And the spacing on the idler-wheel bolts is off by 0.000015. Basic kit is now the Worst Thing Ever and we should immediately nuke the Chinese plant that produced it. But you stick with it, and lay out another $50-100 for upgraded resin and PE parts, plus $25 on eBay for a rare decal sheet only issued once in 1994. (Which falls apart when you try to use it). Finally, with immense pride, you post your completed model of Sgt. Kowalski's M4A3 Sherman, EXACTLY as it appeared at 12:05 PM on August 3 1944. Only to have Der Experten pop up and note that your model is all wrong. Because the ammo crate you added on the engine deck fell off at 12:04 PM. And he has a photo to prove it. I may be exaggerating. Slightly.

Hmm. You made me wonder about that. Here's the results of a quick, unscientific survey of eBay "Completed Items" for MONOGRAM 1/24 Classic kits recently. Note that these are unbuilt/unstarted kits that actually sold, and their prices: 41 Lincoln: $7.49 - $19.99. 30 Packards, Boattail/Phaeton Speedster: $9.99 - $29.99 Cord: $10.75 - $49.00. That $49.00 was a Buy It Now, not an auction, for the white-box "Museum Pieces" reissue from the 1970s.. 32 Cadillac V-16: this seemed to be the most plentiful Monogram Classic. They went for prices ranging from $8.00 to $29.98. Duesenbergs, Phaeton/Roadster/Town Car: $9.95 - $43.00. The Town Car seems to be the rarest, and brought that $43 price. But another Town Car sold for just $9.95. Personal Buying: In Dec. 2015, I scored the Cadillac V-16 and Packard Phaeton Speedster in a lot for $21.99. In Feb. 2016, got the Duesenberg Town Car and Packard Boattail in a lot for $30.00. Also in Feb., I won a lot of 3 Classics, built but unpainted - the Packard Boattail, Mercedes 540 and Duesenberg roadster. Price was $21.99. I wanted those Packard and Duesie engines for possible street rods. And the Mercedes to do something with a Rommel's Rod, maybe,

These BRONCO Fiats are in the wrong scale (1/35) but sure are neat! They are very complex little kits, with full engine and suspension detail. The Perth Military Modeling site says this is the "A" version, produced from 1937 to 1948 with only minor changes. The very similar Models B and C were produced from 1948 up to 1955. Some on-line vendors are currently blowing out these kits at less than half their original price. Along with an Afrika Korps version, BRONCO has done several stock civilian versions like the one in the pic. They also did the delivery van version, with a load of milk cans. And a 1/35 scale nun!

Same here! Rumors say the molds might have been destroyed. Or it was such a sales flop, REVELL keeps the molds under guard in rented space at Area 51 and never speaks of the kit. I sold one of these on eBay long ago for $75. Regretted it. Then found another at a swap meet for $15, which I still have. Nowadays they're very expensive on eBay and don't even come up all that often. Which should be a big hint for REVELL, if they do have the molds.