Mike999

Last year there were no kits at my closest Wal-Mart. After somebody posted about it in here, I got excited and ran over to the store. Looked all over, and finally asked an employee if they had any plastic model kits. She looked at me like I had 2 heads, and neither of them was speaking a language she understood. As somebody else said, this seems to be a regional thing.

"TEEN-AGE TERRORISTS BURNING UP THE STREETS!" From 1956, "Hot Rod Girl." Featuring Chuck "Rifleman" Connors. I love those cheap, quickie hot rod movies from the Fifties. Along with the cars, we get to see a lot of vintage Los Angeles scenery.

You're right, that Revell '32 Highboy is really hard to find. I haunted eBay for months, trying to find it at a decent price. Last year one popped up, still shrink-wrapped for $15.00 + $7.50 shipping. Almost broke my wrist hitting the "Buy It Now" button. It seems there are always plenty of the 3-window and 5-window coupes on eBay, but the '32 Roadster and Sedan kits are a lot more rare. The Rat Roaster's not the same kit, as others pointed out. I got one of those when they first came out. Wanted another for parts, but they disappeared quickly too, after that first issue. I got lucky and found another Rat Roaster at a local flea market for $10. Open but still sealed inside.

Long as I'm dreaming, I'll dream big...just add the garage/shop truck accessories back to the '75 Dodge van, and glass to the Autorama set...

Good find! All those Revell "Classics" kits had very high retail prices originally. Revell released a bunch of them in all different genres: cars, missiles, aircraft, armor, etc. All the kits had that medal on the box, announcing they were limited to a run of 5,000 kits. According to Scalemates, the Mercedes was re-issued in 2008. Flea Market Day for me today, and probably the last one unless it warms up. It was around 24 degrees there, with not many sellers. I found an AMT-ERTL '71 Duster with the inner bags still sealed. The older issue with the red car on the box.

You're most welcome! Glad you found us. And thanks for the extra information. If you have the time and inclination, maybe you should write an article with all your Palmer/Pyro info and post it here. I'd love to read it.

A Mercedes shop in my old Los Angeles neighborhood built itself a "Merc-amino." An '70's (?) era Mercedes station wagon converted into a pick-up truck. Wish I had taken some pix. This wasn't a hack job. The conversion was very well done, looking like something the Mercedes factory might have built. It was painted dark blue with the shop name professionally lettered in white. I saw it running around for years, parked at the shop or hauling parts. Then I didn't see it any more. One day at the local post office, I ran into a mechanic who worked at the shop. Asked him what happened to the Merc-amino. He said it started costing more in repairs than it was worth, and the shop junked it.

I found these 2 pictures on an old H.A.M.B. thread about police cars. They're 1960 Pontiac Catalinas, "mildly built" and equipped with roll bars, used by the Los Angeles Police Dept. A poster on the board said they belonged to the LAPD's special Freeway Pursuit unit. That unit was in charge of chasing down scofflaws on the freeways running thru Los Angeles, until the California Highway Patrol eventually took over that job.

Awesome early Christmas gift! Some of those are hard to find, like the Aurora M2 Mail Plane. Years ago I built the Airfix 1/72 Cessna O-1. It was a quick, fun build. I wanted some stowage inside, but 1/72 Vietnam stuff was hard to find. I finally got a set of ESCI soft plastic Vietnam figures, carefully sliced a couple of packs and an M-16 rifle off the troops and put them inside.

Upstate (S.C.) Update: the '60 Chevy pickup/go-kart is finally showing up in the Hobby Lobby stores near me. At least it's in stock at 2 stores, I haven't been able to check the third one for a couple of weeks. So if anyone else is looking for one at your local Hobby Lobby, maybe you'll see it soon. I had already got tired of waiting and ordered a Chevy pickup from Scale Hobbyist. Decent price, but not as decent as the 40% off at HL. Hobby Lobby has been running the 40% off kit sale every other week. So I'm guessing this will be an "off" week, unless they do a Black Friday sale or something.

A black 1960 Ford F-100 pickup. Unrestored with lots of "patina." It pulled up beside me today as I was leaving the local "Convenience Center" (a/k/a the garbage dump).

Stopped at the Ollie's yesterday in Anderson, SC. It had loads of Revell Police '48 Fords, AMT '55 Corvettes, and some of the 2012-up Vettes, Camaros etc. Also the ex-ERTL International Transtar 4300 Eagle. Going off-topic, plenty of Revell 1/48 scale Focke-Wulf Fw-190's, Lindberg Tug Boats, Mars Explorer missiles, Civil War Cannons and Stagecoaches. There was one lonely Lindberg "Big Red Rod" 1/8 scale bucket T on display. If the store had any more of those, they were buried where I couldn't see them. Or maybe the store only brings out one of those at a time, since they take up so much room.

Thanks, I completely forgot about the 1/35 kits. Another good source is the Ukrainian company ICM (which has also upscaled some of its 1/35 kits to 1/24). Here's the ICM "Stalin-mobile," the 1936 Packard Twelve in 1/35 (pic stolen from internet). That 12-cylinder engine should look good in a hot rod project!

I quit selling internationally on eBay quite a few years ago, because as you said, it just got to be too much hassle. Warning to new eBay sellers: when you fill out the eBay Listing Form, eBay's International Shipping Program is selected by default. If you are selling internationally and don't want to use it, you'll have to uncheck that box. Even more dangerous, shipping to the whole world is also selected by default. If you don't want to ship internationally, you have to manually exclude all the countries you WON'T ship to. Selecting "North America" means you will ship to Canada and Mexico, so exclude that one too if you don't want to ship there. I also put a note in every listing, in ALL CAPS, that I only ship to the USA.

Heads up if you're close to Upstate SC! The Ollie's in Anderson, SC had a big stash of Revell '48 Ford Police coupes when I stopped in today. Two came home with me. Also plenty of '55 Corvettes, late-model Vettes, Camaros etc., and the International Transtar 4300 Eagle. This store had ONE Lindberg "Big Red Rod," the 1/8 scale bucket T. Price $49.99. At least I only saw one on display in the store. This Ollie's was damaged in a big fire months ago, and just recently reopened. Hobby Lobby: finally found an HL, also in Anderson, with the '60 Chevy pickup and go-kart. The same store had the "Supernatural" '67 Impala, the Revell 1/24 '70 Firebird and other recent kits. Off-topic impulse buy, since it was 40% off: the 1/48 scale Revell P-61 "Black Widow." That was one of Monogram's best kits and the ONLY 1/48 P-61 for several decades. In the past few years Great Wall Hobby and Hobby Boss have done modern P-61 kits. But that old Monogram kit still has a huge amount of aftermarket support. I might even try to find one of the conversion kits to make it the F-15 Reporter recon aircraft. I will need new display cases...BIG ones...

Back in the 1980's, I was in the big Kit Kraft hobby shop, in Los Angeles. (Or Studio City, to be picky.) An employee told me the JoHan '60 De Soto was one of their biggest sellers. Even people who didn't usually buy model cars bought that kit, maybe just to display the box in their rec room. That was back when the JoHan "USA Oldies" were available in almost every hobby shop, priced cheaper than other kits. As I remember, they started disappearing from the hobby shops around 1988. About that time, I saw a guy at the Pomona Swap Meet selling USA Oldies for some outrageous price, like $20-$30. I thought, "He's crazy. Those JoHan kits are still easy to find." I sure was wrong about that...

LOL! Or they could have used the alleged quote from Henry Ford II, when The Deuce saw his first VW Bug: "Americans will never buy that little s--t box." In 1946, Ford was offered not only the VW Bug, but the whole Wolfsburg factory. He turned it down.

That '62 T-Bird lures me in every time, too. Just can't pass them up. Found one in Ollie's recently and it came home with me. Even though I already had 2 of that newer version. And 1 of the original release, with the red T-Bird on the box which didn't have the stock 4-barrel and other parts in the re-issue. Oh, forgot. Now I have TWO of the original release. At a flea market, I found a cheap AMT "Value Pack," with 3 kits, a tube of glue and paints. The 3 kits in that Value Pack are all great parts sources: the '62 T-Bird, '69 Olds 442 and the '66 Buick Riviera.

Generally true, but I still find flippable/keepable deals at the local flea markets. Yeah, those Ollie's/Hobby Lobby "pickers" at the flea markets are funny. "This kit costs $30 at Hobby Lobby!" "But it only cost $7.99 at Ollie's. Where you bought it with that big red sticker, then crossed out the price with a black Sharpie." I've been selling on eBay since the 1990's. Back then there was no photo-hosting, you had to provide your own. Also no PayPal. Payment was by Money Order, unless you were a merchant account that could handle credit cards. So after the auction ended, there was a wait of about a week before the M.O.'s came in and you could ship the kit. For all its aggravations today, it's a much quicker, smoother and better system.

Lindberg has re-issued at least 2 old PYRO 1/32 kits with engines, the '32 and '34 Plymouth roadsters. The engine is a straight 6. I think those were last re-issued in the '80s or '90s, but they're common on eBay and don't cost too much. Lindberg also reissued the ex-PYRO 1915 Model T not so long ago, it has an engine. Some of the Matchbox 1/32 kits had engines, like the Citroen Legere and the Rolls-Royce "Black Diamond." Both kits are well-detailed. Revell has re-issued the Rolls.

Can't pick just one. Somebody mentioned "Sunset Boulevard," which is high on my list. So is another classic film-noir made a few years earlier, "Double Indemnity." Fun trivia: when Fred MacMurray comes out of his boss's office, watch for the grumpy old guy sitting and reading a magazine. That's Raymond Chandler, the famous mystery writer. He co-wrote the "Double Indemnity" script with director Billy Wilder, who also directed "Sunset Blvd." The original novels for 3 classic crime movies were all written by the same author, James M. Cain: "Double Indemnity," "Mildred Pierce" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice." Cain also wrote the novel that spawned one of the worst movies ever made, "Butterfly." Which I griped about elsewhere.

You can catch this one on Turner Classic Movies. "Armored Car Robbery" from 1950. Check out those LAPD Fords! In the clip below, a detective's big touring car comes to grief after a high-speed chase thru downtown Los Angeles. The driver is stone-faced, gravel-voiced Charles McGraw, star of many films-noir in the late 1940s and early 50s. He always played either a cop or a gangster. His career sort of died, then McGraw came back in 1967 with "In Cold Blood," playing the father of killer Perry Smith (Robert Blake).

No contest, and I've seen a lot of bad movies. My girlfriend at the time forced me to see "Players." A relentlessly stupid rom-com of the older woman/younger man genre. And it's about...tennis. Boy, is it ever. For about 37 hours of its 48-hour running time, we watch tennis balls bouncing back and forth. I not only fell asleep, I nearly slipped into a coma. Best Worst Movie: the famous stinker "Mommie Dearest," played as a midnight movie in West Hollywood, CA. Audience participation was encouraged, the same as "Rocky Horror Picture Show." So viewers were treated to one guy in a blonde fright wig playing little Christina, running up the theater aisle. Chased by another guy dressed as Joan Crawford, waving a coat hanger and bellowing "No wire hangers!" That was a lot more entertaining than anything in the movie. Movie So Bad, People Got Up And Left While Making Puke Noises: "Butterfly" with Stacy Keach and Pia Zadora. I managed to stay until the end, barely. When she was 11 years old, Pia Zadora appeared in the...LOL!...classic Christmas movie, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." Later she married a very rich guy who was determined to make her a major movie star. IIRC, even he gave up after the weird and grungy fiasco that was "Butterfly."

The Rhythm Section, seen on cable last night. An everyday woman (Blake Lively) who lost her entire family to a terrorist airline bombing goes hunting for the terrorists. Trained and helped by retired MI-6 agent Jude Law. Produced by the same people who do the 007 movies, and it shows. Lots of globe-trotting and double-dealing plot twists. There's one great car chase thru the narrow, twisty streets of Tangiers. Not a movie I'd put at the top of a "Must See" list, but an OK time-filler. The title comes from Law training Lively in how to shoot: “Your heart is the drums, your breathing is the bass."