Mike999

Thanks. Interesting, but like Dave said...an odd collection.

That is some great work. Right down to the "oh ####" expression on his face. I have a couple of these Mini Art 1/16 figures, including the "Roman Legionnaire - 1st Century." Your work will be a real inspiration when (if) I paint them, and I will shamelessly steal your ideas. ? Verlinden is out of business now, but they did several different Roman figures in 1/16 scale. Just for comparison, here's the Verlinden 1/16 Centurion. I like the Mini-Art version better, it's in more of an "action" pose. (This is NOT my build, I stole the pic from the internet.)

Thanks! I did not know any of that and it was interesting to learn.

I just thought it was funny that 3 parts sold for almost as much as a complete kit, with all 3 of those parts attached to it. In this case, it wasn't a seller being greedy and I should have mentioned that. The seller started the valance panel at $3.95 and the 2 bumpers at $4.95 each, which are fair prices for 60-yr-old items. The buyers bid them up to those final prices, which is just the way eBay works. I like that when I'm selling, not so much when I'm buying. As mentioned, I'm getting ready to put up an eBay sale, which I've been doing since 1999. It is more work than people realize who've never done it: write listings, take photos, get a shipping box, weigh and measure the box. Then people often win more than one item and you have to re-pack, re-weigh and re-measure the new box. Since shipping prices are always going up and I want to keep them as low as possible for buyers, I don't charge any extra fees for packing or "handling." Probably the only way to make a profit selling old model kits on eBay: find a barn full of mint-condition early 3-in-1 kits and buy them for $1 each. And we all know how often that happens.

Thanks for the tip. I think I've seen that set and it was mostly guns from the Gangbuster kits and police cars. I'm looking for stuff from the early 20th century. If anybody else needs a 1/24 scale vintage machine gun, these Lewis guns from Gaspatch are great. They're resin and come in a pack of 2 with 8 ammo drums (4 regular and 4 aircraft type with a carrying handle). The ammo drums are even detailed on both sides, so the individual rounds are visible on the bottom of the drum. You can find them on eBay, in several different scales if you don't need 1/24 scale.

Detailing a 1/24 scale Winchester lever-action rifle. For a build I hope I'll finish soon, which needed some vintage weapons. After checking dollhouse companies, resin figures, soft plastic cowboys and everything else in the known universe, I came up with one sorta-workable Winchester: from the Revell 1/24 "Big Game" GMC pickup. But it's molded into a gun rack and had to be cut away. It's also very blobular and needs a lot of general sharpening up and fiddly work to look good. I did find one 1/24 resin figure with a Winchester, a nicely detailed cowboy. But that figure was $25 and I had the Revell rifle already. While looking for vintage guns, I did find these nice 1/24 scale white-metal double-barreled shotguns. They're from a dollhouse company on eBay and come in a package of 2, for about $10.

I tried to figure that out, but it was a while ago. As I remember, I checked his eBay seller page and it suddenly went "Inactive." I suspected he might have finally got booted for the long rants in his listings, calling buyers "stupid" and griping at length about eBay policies. Which WILL get a user kicked off eBay. But that is just my suspicion and I don't really know. We should probably be careful. He is, or was, a member here. He signed up just to post the same kind of angry screeds he put into his listings, when he found out we were talking about him in here. IIRC, he barged into this group once, said he had a lawyer and threatened to sue the board owner for "slander and libel." He must have the world's dumbest lawyer. Slander is knowingly making a false SPOKEN statement damaging to a person's reputation. Libel is a false WRITTEN statement. Anybody who ever watched a TV show about lawyers should know that.

I'm getting ready to have an eBay sale. While researching some stuff I'm selling, I ran across this: An SMP '60 El Camino front bumper got 6 bids and sold for $13.50. The front valance panel, often missing in built-ups, got 5 bids and sold for $9.05. A '60 El Camino rear bumper did even better. It got 7 bids and sold for $16.50. That's a total of $39.05 for 2 bumpers and a valance panel. Plus $4.50 shipping. A complete '60 El Camino, built and painted with a clean, unglue-bombed bed, sold for $47.55 with 19 bids. It did have some emblems sanded off, which is often the case with these kits. A resin '60 El Camino body, with valance panel, front/rear bumpers and tail lights was also on eBay for $50.00. It was from Vic's Resins and looked pretty good. But you'd have to do your own chroming, the bumpers are white resin. Maybe I'll forget about stocks or bonds, and invest in 1/25 scale '60 El Camino bumpers...

Since you don't have an answer yet, it's 1/24 scale from Revell. Same as their Porsche Junior tractor, another fun build with optional parts. Here's one I built. Lost part of the exhaust pipe somehow, so I added a vertical exhaust stack.

I need to adopt that habit! This store had plenty of beer and wine. I picked up a bottle of Cabernet to go with the steak I did manage to find. I meant it was out of isopropyl alcohol. So is every other place I've been to around here. I use it for acrylic paint thinner but I do have some on hand. SC also has some archaic liquor laws. Hard liquor can still only be sold at "ABC stores." (Alcoholic Beverage Commission). When I was young, the drinking age for beer and wine was 18 in SC, but 21 next door in GA. There were drive-thru beer and wine stores right across the state line, where thirsty Georgians could load up.

I went to a Food Lion yesterday (Friday), pretty early in the morning. Not early enough! I wanted some ground beef, there was none to be had. All the meat/fish racks were almost cleaned out. The same for lunch meat, bacon and related meats. The cereal aisle was also nearly empty, and many of the frozen food freezers. Canned veggies, fruits and bread were all running low. This store hasn't had any alcohol or hand sanitizer for a couple of weeks.

So the Aztek airbrushes are discontinued. I've used one for years, along with a Sotar 20/20. I like the convenience of the Aztek but it's not the end of my airbrush world. I'm pretty good at taking Azteks apart and fixing them, thanks to some tutorials available on the web. If all else fails, I've been eyeing one of those neat pistol-grip airbrushes anyway.

Buy 2 of the '70 Galaxie kits and you can build this neat thing! Which I've always wanted to do. It's a 1970 Ford Galaxie stretch limo. You can see it in the 1985 movie "The Falcon & The Snowman," where it's a vehicle assigned to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City.

Before Tamiya settled on 1/35 scale, many years ago, it did a bunch of armor kits in the really oddball 1/21 scale. If they weren't Unobtainium and expensive now, I'd buy some just for the box art and hang it on the wall. That art was always dynamic, to say the least.

Need something to watch while housebound? Here are some LONG video projects that should keep you on the couch for a while: "Dirty Money" (Netflix documentary series, 6 hours): shades of the Corvair and Pinto! The first episode of this excellent series covers Volkswagen faking pollution and performance numbers for its Diesel engine. Other episodes deal with money-laundering banksters, Big Pharma, and the giant Canadian maple syrup heist. No, seriously. ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************** "The Assets" (Amazon Prime, 8 hours): who wouldn't want to watch the lowest-rated drama ever shown on network TV, in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic? When this series premiered on ABC in 2014, those numbers made the network execs yank the mini-series before it even finished. Ignore the whippersnappers in that demographic. "The Assets" is an awesome true story, about the CIA's hunt for one of the biggest traitors in American history, Aldrich Ames. They couldn't find him because he worked for...the CIA! His father was a "legacy" CIA employee and Ames was well-protected by Washington's Old Boy Network. I think it flopped because it's a spy story without car chases, shoot-outs or any 007-style shenanigans. But if you like the stories of John LeCarre, you should love this. It's about a small team of CIA agents, mostly women, trying to connect the dots by digging thru financial records and such. Grim Humor: after Soviet Russia collapsed, Ames' wife nagged him to sell some secrets to somebody, ANYBODY. They still had to make the mortgage and the payments on the Jaguar. ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************** "No One Saw A Thing" (Sundance, 6 hours): in the small town of Skidmore, MO in July 1981, local bad guy Ken Rex McElroy was shot to death on a street full of witnesses. Nearly 40 years later his killing remains unsolved, despite decades of work by Missouri police agencies and the FBI. A lot of other weirdness has happened in Skidmore since, and some residents believe the place is just jinxed. If you remember seeing a TV movie about that case, it was probably "In Broad Daylight" (1991). Which is also worth watching again. With an absolutely creepy Brian Dennehy, even creepier than he was playing John Wayne Gacy. He's supported by no less than 3 Oscar winners: Chris Cooper, Marcia Gay Harden and Cloris Leachman. (The real names of the people involved in the McElroy case were changed to avoid lawsuits.)

It is nice. I got laid off a few years ago. That was scary at first...until I talked to HR. I just barely got under the wire to qualify for early retirement and a pension. I was like: "What? You'll send me a check every month, to STAY HOME? Sign me up!"

I don't believe you can. Assume they're all prone to it. But I would dig into that very old stash, pull out the tires and seal them in small ZipLoc bags. You can get big packs of different sized ZipLoc bags very cheap at Michael's or Hobby Lobby. Several people I know finally found their Holy Grail kit from the 50's or 60s. Then opened the kit to find a tire melted right thru the roof, the trunk or the glass. Also be warned about old Heller kits. Heller used to put the clear parts and tires in THE SAME sealed plastic bag. That's a disaster waiting to happen. I cut those bags open and put the tires in their own ZipLoc bag. At least in some kits, like their Mercedes Gullwing, Heller tires are made from a really gooey kind of material that exudes a sticky black oil over time. Some Revell-Germany kits had those same kind of tires. Like their big European fire truck kits.

For anyone else wondering about Motor City Resins, I recently posted in a different thread but will repeat here: Just a few days ago I ordered the '41 Plymouth 4-door sedan. Jeff e-mailed me the next day to let me know he got my order. He also warned that it might take some time to cast and deliver, especially given the current national situation.

Yep, Jeff Ballard is still in business. He posted on this board not too long ago, in the "Resin" group. I ordered the Plymouth 4-door body a few days ago, and got an email from him the next day. Here it is: "thank you for your order. due to very high order volumes, please allow 10-12 weeks to cast, cure and ship. also, due to a possible statewide or national shut down, it may take longer. i will ship your order as soon as i can. jeff"

Ha! I posted a picture of that real built-up kit, back on Page 1 of this thread. You may not be able to recognize it as a Mustang, so just scroll down until you see a large baby-blue blob with a peeling number "3" sticker on it. Here's a minor gripe in the horror that is Palmer. But the '70 Mustang box says "Loads of Chrome Goodies!" That language was really out of date by 1970 and belongs more to the late 1950s or early 60s, when Palmer started using it on all their kit boxes. By 1970 most people didn't want "loads of chrome goodies" cluttering up their cars. Unless they were still ordering chrome fender skirts and such, from the Honest Charlie or Warshawsky catalogs.

The Monogram-Revell '40 Ford pickup has that "beehive" oil filter. It has very fine fins on it. I just checked the kit I have in the stash. It's on the chrome tree. Here's a not-so-good pic stolen off the internet. Look on the right side of the pic and find the pair of pliers. The second item up from the pliers is the oil filter.

Miniman Factory in Austria has done outstanding 1/35 scale resin kits of both CUCVs, the Blazer and pickup. They also do many other unusual 1/35 vehicles in resin and photo-etched metal. Their kits can be hard to find in the USA, though Sprue Brothers carry some. The Miniman website shows all its kits as "currently available." They do nice work and the chassis are VERY detailed, better than many 1/24 scale plastic kits. But because everything is resin, the parts are fragile and delicate. Especially things like leaf springs. http://www.minimanfactory.com/en/minimanfactory-m1/vehicles-1-35-p1.2/

Well, thanks! I still have enough left for a while. This is not a day I'd want to run to town. It's cold and pouring rain with occasional thunderstorms. Probably not a good day to be painting with water-based acrylics, either. And the cloudiness means no natural light coming thru the basement windows. Maybe I'll work on that eBay sale I plan to put up soon, and weathering that ICM 1912 Commercial Roadster...

Thanks for the badly-needed laugh! I stole that and passed it along to another modeler. He got a big kick out of it. And thanks to everyone else for sharing their stories. I hope you all pull thru this. The virus isn't affecting me so much. I'm an old retired geezer who mostly stays home. I do miss going to the big Wed. flea market, where I often found model kits. The flea market has been closed the past 2 weeks because of the virus. I feel bad for the owners of that flea market. Even before the virus, they were hammered by a huge rain and windstorm that caused a lot of damage and forced them to close for repairs. Then the virus came along. I am running low on one of my favorite acrylic paint thinners, 91% isopropyl alcohol. There's not a bottle of alcohol, of any grade, to be had in any of the stores I've visited around here. Stopped at a CVS on Sunday, the alky shelves were bare. An employee said they should get a shipment today.

Blister Pack Coincidence! As relief from a long, grinding 1/24 build, I started working on that handsome fellow shown below: an Airfix 54mm French Foreign Legionnaire (1908). The date on it is 1976. Airfix did several series of these blister-pack figures, from the English Civil War, Napoleonic Era, American Revolution etc. Like this one, they all had optional poses and parts and go together easily. I have the sub-assemblies done and am painting it now. It's a lot of fun. Trying to stay straight out of the box...or blister-pack...but I may add a few photo-etched buckles and such. Airfix did sort of skimp in that area. But these sold for $1.00 each new, and were definitely worth that. I still pick them up on eBay, if they're cheap.