Mike999

Suddenly it's 1960! Today's haul from the local flea market. That sad Danbury Mint 53 Buick Skylark was only $3. Bought it mostly for the nice wire wheels/white sidewalls and other parts. The Gold Rush van is complete. The 1960 Ford pickup is a real rarity - the gas cans, tools etc. were in the bed under the tonneau cover. And nothing had ever been glued down. Couldn't believe it.

I can also vouch for HobbyLinc. Last year I relocated from Los Angeles, where I had several great hobby shops close by, to Upstate SC. Where there are none close to me. Needed to order some Alclad paints, Tamiya lacquer thinner and various arcane stuff. So I sent a big order to HobbyLinc - something like 20 bottles of paint, 2 thinners...I don't know what all. I expected they would goof up and miss something, or send me the wrong item. Nope, everything arrived just a few days later. Nothing missing, no goofs. I've since ordered from HobbyLinc several times with the same result. Orders always correct and FAST shipping. They also have great Clearance sales on models. e.g., the AMT 1/25 Avanti for $11.00, IIRC. I've also had good luck with MegaHobby. And for that weird foreign stuff that's so hard to find - HobbyLink Japan, Lucky Model, and Tokyo-Hobby, who you can find on eBay. I see many Japanese vendors charging very high prices + shipping for things like 1/24 Aoshima curbside kits. Tokyo-Hobby usually has the same kits for much less. They also ship very quickly.

A Hobby People store near me had a clearance sale of Jada stuff, a few years ago. I picked up several of their 1/24 '53 Cadillac convertibles to fool around with. Some were in the "Road Rats" box with extra wheels, some were plain stock versions, loose with no box. They are nice models.

Thanks for the responses from me, too. I relocated back to Upstate SC last year, from Los Angeles. Suffering "show withdrawal," since the LA area had KCI every 4 months, ModelFest and ValleyCon every year, and quite a few others. I plan to attend that Simpsonville show unless something drastic happens. It's about 50 miles away from me, but sounds well worth the trip.

Here's what Repstock, from this board, did with that Hess toy. Amazing conversion to a stock GMC Motorhome, with detailed chassis and interior: http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Repstock/library/GMC%20Motorhome%20Project?sort=3&page=1

Today's haul from the local flea market. Yes, the Hess Training Van is missing the door (like many of them). But for $10 I can make a door. Then I have to track down an old Toronado/Eldorado kit for a detailed chassis. And interior parts to make it a stock GMC Motorhome... Also found a vendor selling #61-80 wire gauge drill indexes. Bought several of those, since the little ones break so easily.

You want a stock 48 Cadillac? Here you go! And it's a 4-door too! Features: --Rare "taller driver with hat on" custom roof panel. (Note difference in the 2 roof sides.) Possibly suggested by K.T. Keller of Chrysler. --Celebrity body mastering by Stevie Wonder --Custom two-toning guide molded into resin (passenger side only). --Blank metal chassis plate awaits your super-detailing efforts. Bonus: exciting "blood poisoning" option! Yes, this is from TKM, a company discussed on these boards many times. If you see one of these on eBay etc., possibly with a nice, flattering photo...well, this is what you'll REALLY get:

I've bought a couple of kits at swap meets etc. that had been "re-sealed." Didn't know it until I opened them and found parts missing, but it was too late to do anything by then. One was an original IMC "Touch Tone Terror" missing the telephone for the phone booth, and some other unique parts. That was irritating. But once at a swap meet, I saw the ADV-Azimut 1/35 German Command Trailer in a "junk box" marked at $5. That's an expensive resin kit. Opened it up and it had 2 left trailer sides but no right side. The sides don't interchange - one has a door in it and the other doesn't. But it did have an Enigma machine and some other very nice, useable interior parts. So it was worth the 5 bucks. Later I bought another one for a decent price, so I could cast the missing side myself.

I recently found a mint/untouched wood and glass version at a local flea market for $6. This is Tonka #7018, "Four Alarm Call." The car is molded in red plastic to represent a fire chief's car, and it comes with some not-very-good fireman figures molded in white plastic.

Title is "Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans." I watched it and probably will again. And again... Here's the ImDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3504604/

Here's another great on-topic BBC documentary - "Grand Prix: The Killer Years." The Fifties and Sixties, when GP cars amounted to 4 wheels, an engine, and 2 30-gallon gas tanks...with the driver sandwiched between them. Spectators could (and did) wander onto the track pretty much whenever they felt like it. Jackie Stewart says his GP car had one piece of safety equipment - a wrench taped to the steering wheel. So somebody could hopefully remove the wheel and get him out of the car before he burned. And he had to buy the wrench himself.

3 AMT-ERTL kits from the 1990s at a local flea market. All 3 are open, but complete with all the inside parts bags still sealed. Price was $8 each: AMT-ERTL #31926 62 Chevy Bel Air - stock version. AMT-ERTL #31741 65 Chevy El Camino - for anyone wondering, this version does have the big camper. Though it's not mentioned on the box. AMT-ERTL #38373 66 Nova, 2006 "Resto Rod" issue - I always buy these Novas when I see them cheap. The chassis can be used under older kits, and it has that neat engine stand and stripped small-block Chevy.

Sorry, I know how aggravating that is. I'm now very careful with anything in a tall, skinny bottle. MicroSet and MicroSol are also good potential spillers. But at least they don't glue stuff together.

So who wants to "mix and match" and end up with this real-life Munsters Coach? It is a real car, a custom-built Hispano-Suiza that belonged to an Indian maharajah, IIRC. He had a horse-drawn coach he really liked, got a new motorcar, and so... Note the huge carriage lamps, "mother-in-law seat," and big horn on the running board.

Multiples here, and it's even worse because I also build...well, start anyway...armor, aircraft, figures, dioramas etc. Sometimes I tell myself I'lldo a quick, "weekender" right out of the box. That never seems to work. e.g., I got the Heller '34 Hispano-Suiza K6 kit cheap and decided it would make a great quick build. As the car of a former famous Hollywood actress that had been abandoned when the engine blew. And was later adopted by a surfer, who installed a Chevy 6. There is no quick way to do 6 or 7 varying levels of rust and have them come out right. And what would the adapter plate look like for Chevy 6 to Hispano transmission (which also controlled the servo-assisted mechanical brakes thru a bunch of rods and cables)? I may ditch that trans for a High School Shop Class lash-up of a used hydraulic brake system. Or something. Then I re-watched "Sunset Boulevard" and got inspired by Gloria Swanson's Isotta-Fraschini. And decided the model really needed a cheetah-skin interior. And in just a minute, I will quit wasting time on the Internet and get back to working on it. In just a minute...

A couple of days ago, at the local Flea Market... 1. Testors #376 46-47-48 Ford Coupe: In the long, flimsy flat box that was seriously crushed and beat up, as usual. But the kit is fine, with most sprues still sealed in the original inner plastic bags. Even the Mylar "chrome" sheet and adhesive whitewalls are still in there. May cross-kit it with the new Revell 48, or just build it. I built one of these MANY years ago and managed to fumble-thumb it together. But I do remember that multi-piece body being a challenge. Cost: $10. 2. Italeri #769 Platform Trailer: 1980's vintage. Basically a flatbed trailer with low sides. I can do something with it. Cost: $12 And yesterday, courtesy of the Hobby Lobby Clearance aisle: Revell Snap-Tite 63 Corvette ($10.99) and AMT TeeVee Dune Buggy ($14.99). Also used the 40% off coupon for the AMT 63 Corvette re-issue. For anyone else in the area, this is the HL in Anderson, SC. Also in the clearance aisle: AMT '53 Stude "Mr. Speed" and AMT 1/32 Avanti. Almost grabbed that Stude, but I already have several. And a resin pillared-coupe body for one of them.

Congrats on finding the wants! I recently went looking for some junker 1/24 Monogram classics. Needed wire wheels for a project, and didn't want to rob my unbuilt kits. Found a lot of 3 built-ups on eBay - the Packard boat-tail Speedster; 1934 Duesenberg roadster; and Mercedes 540K. Opening bid $17 and no one bid against me. All were carefully built with some minor painting. The glue was so old they came apart easily. So now I have a bunch of nice-looking wire wheels and other parts. And I've always wondered about grafting the Packard boat-tail onto that Duesenberg. Also, I'm pretty sure I can do something evil with hot rods powered by those massive straight-8 engines. The 540K might donate parts to building Rommel's Rod as a "stock" desert exploration vehicle. The French really did explore the Sahara with Citroen-Kegresse half-tracks in the 1930's, IIRC. I've been buying and selling on eBay since 1999. It has changed a lot and mostly not for the better. But it's still a great source, if you avoid the hucksters and ignoramuses. Which is pretty easy to do. ("Rare factory promo, all custom parts glued on and decals applied, minor paint on body/interior/chassis, opening bid $800.00.") I remember a story about the time when Meg Whitman left eBay. I forget the name of her replacement, but he came in and made a statement to the press about "we need to make more changes. This place looks like a flea market." He immediately got a bunch of emails saying: "eBay IS a flea market, you idiot."

Yep. Or if I'm planning a 1/25-ish diorama, it will certainly involve figures I don't have and can't find. Which means I end up hacking apart little people. Usually ending with the ruination of some of the few figures I do have. I grab in-scale figures whenever I can and have hoarded some for years. But as we've seen before in these forums, there ain't a lot of them. Most resin 1/25 figures, IMO, are pretty bland. Except for female 1/25 figures, who look like a high-school boy's fantasy. With their toothpick legs and massive breastworks, if scaled up to human size they would fall on their (bland) faces. Of course, there are thousands of great figures available in 1/35 & 1/32 scale. I've wished for years that some company would do a set of 1/25 figures like the old Airfix 1/32 "Multi-Pose" kits. IMO, the best figures come from the German company Preiser. That's because Preiser models its figures on real live human beings. Their "Adam" and "Eve" sets are academy (nude) figures of men and women. Available in 1/24, 1/22.5 G scale, and 1/32. You have to add your own clothes with epoxy putty or some kind of similar sorcery. But in keeping with the theme of this thread...Preiser figures are expensive and can be hard to find in the USA.

"Go Back To Your Pontiac" Recorded by The Darby Sisters, 1959. From the great collection "Girls in the Garage Vol. 2."

Here's a great 2002 documentary on the same subject, "Yank Tanks." Featuring a guy who makes new asbestos brake shoes by hand. The filmmakers gave him a mask and some other safety equipment, which he'd never had before. Amazing. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312048/ I saw similar things when I worked in Egypt. A '49 Chevy still in daily use as a taxi. Several '55 Chevy 4-dr sedans in daily use. Someday I will get ambitious and post pics of those cars. As in Cuba, it's not unusual to look under the hood and see a Russian truck engine or something similar. And if you need motor mounts or anything else fabricated, every little Egyptian village still has at least one blacksmith. Usually running a shop that has been in the family for generations, with the blacksmith's young sons already working in the shop and learning. Those guys do incredible work.

Thanks! I need to read that book again. And back on-topic, I guess: according to his friends, blues great Robert Johnson used to admire a 1935 Hudson Terraplane parked in their Memphis neighborhood. In 1936 he recorded a song about it, "Terraplane Blues:" And I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan Who's been driving my Terraplane for you since I been gone? I said flash your lights, mama, your horn won't even blow Somebody's been runnin' my batteries down on this machine I said flash my lights, mama, this horn won't even blow Got a short in this connection, well, babe, it's way down below... https://youtu.be/It-tJ8DOjIk

How about a reverse car song? A car built because it was inspired by a song. Pontiac guru Jim Wangers did that in 1972, when he had his own Chevy dealership in Milwaukee. At the time the Elton John song "Crocodile Rock" was a huge hit, with that line about "an old gold Chevy and a place of my own." Wangers decided to create his own Old Gold Chevy to promote his dealership. He was having trouble selling Vegas, so that became the target car. Then Wangers found out something strange - black wasn't a standard Vega color in 1972. Customers couldn't order a single black Vega even if they offered to pay extra. Wangers: "The only way to get the car painted black was to order 50 of them at once, and then Chevrolet would build them at no extra charge. So I did...I ordered 50 black Vega coupes and wagons (no 2-door sedans)...I painted the wheels a bright sparkling gold, added a matching gold accent stripe, and an attractive gold decal emblem. The emblem featured dancing musical notes surrounding the words "The Old Gold Chevy"... We sold them all in just three days, and took enough orders for 50 more. The factory loved me." From Wangers' book "Glory Days: When Horsepower and Passion Ruled Detroit," pp. 242-246. I could not find a single photo of the "Old Gold Chevy" Vega online. Or even any references to it.

"Ol' 55" wasn't written by The Eagles. It was written by Tom Waits, and he wasn't singing about a Chevy: http://www.tomwaitsfan.com/tom%20waits%20library/www.tomwaitslibrary.com/cars.html Just for the record, Waits hated the Eagles version of "Ol' 55." In fact, he hated The Eagles generally. He once said that Eagles albums were only good for "keeping the dust off your turntable."

I did see some of those on eBay once, but it has been a while ago. I think they were listed as "Japanese Carnival Booth 1/25."

OK, I seem to have everything but a Tofu stand. Here are 4 Japanese carnival booths, (I think), two shops, and a food cart. All are allegedly 1/25 scale. The carnival booths include a ballon stand, mask vendor, meatball stand, and corn-on-the-cob seller. Then there are a couple of shops. With guard dogs! I bought these many years ago, when 1/25 figures and accessories were hard to find. Thought I would part them out, but just never could bring myself to do it. Some of these even have little packs of static grass inside. And they all have that dorky little tube of glue that used to come in Japanese kits. All the carnival booths were made by Yodel Model, the lunch cart is by Model-Kawai. I also have some similar 1/32 Japanese kits. One was posted in here not long ago - the woman bathing with the guy behind the fence.