Mike999

If you want to see some real stupidity...I'm addicted to the true-crime shows on the ID Channel. It's amazing how many times a pair (or more) of boneheads will literally plan a murder, using text messages on their phones. They have no clue that their phone provider backs up those messages, or a history of their calls. They also have no clue that their cell phone is a mobile GPS for the cops, pinging off cell towers wherever they go. One show a while back had a woman with an alibi that she spent the weekend in Texas, IIRC. Cell tower data showed that her phone was in Virginia...inconveniently in the same neighborhood where her ex-husband was killed.

Just found this thread. A couple of days ago, I got a shipment of Christmas gifts to myself: 1/35 resin stuff from Masterpiece Models in Vancouver, WA. If you've wondered about the company, I've bought kits from them for years and never had a problem. They make some things you just can't find anywhere else, like a Vietnam War PACV (air cushion vehicle), Tango boat, "Zippo" flamethrower boat and many others. In this load I got a 1/35 scale Quonset hut with extensions, a Japanese palm-log bunker and base, a pack of individual palm logs and this wrecked Zero. The Zero comes with a sheet of photo-etch for the fabric flying surfaces:

Along with the 1/8 scale resin Alfred Hitchcock figure...this is one of my weirder ones. The "Aurora" resin Hanging Tree, in about 1/16 scale. According to legend, this was supposed to be the second kit in the "Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum" series, after The Guillotine. Aurora cut the molds for the Hanging Tree, but cancelled it after the uproar over The Guillotine. These resin kits were reproduced directly from the original Aurora molds, according to the write-up at Monsters In Motion (which still sells this kit).

Thanks for the reminder. A bunch of those "Racket Squad" episodes are on YouTube. From 2005-07, NatGeo Channel ran a great series called "Is It Real?" (The answer was usually "nope.") That show investigated all sorts of supernatural phenomena and showed them to be completely natural. One of my favorites was the show on alien cattle mutilation. A rural sheriff in Oklahoma got tired of hearing about that nonsense, so he went out and bought a dead cow. Aimed a motion-sensitive camera at the cow. After several days, he had proof the cow corpse was mutilated by hungry nocturnal critters. But it looked exactly the same as the dead cows allegedly mutilated by space aliens. Believers in that sort of stuff complained to NatGeo that the show was "too skeptical." There ain't no such thing.

AIEEE! RUN! Insane eBay prices are spreading GLOBALLY, like a World Zombie Plague!!! Checking "Ending Soonest" this morning, I saw a listing for Tamiya kit #35023. That's the 1/35 scale kit of the BMW and Zundapp German WWII solo motorcycles (without sidecars). That kit has been around since the 1970s. It's very common and several are nearly always available on eBay. A seller in Japan offered the kit with FREE SHIPPING. And an asking price of $144.11! Uh-oh. Looks like a couple of American sellers also got infected with the World Zombie Greed Bug. A seller in Chicago was asking $180 for the same kit, while another in Indiana wanted $75.00 + $8 shipping. Reality Check: the kit recently sold for $3.35, and it took 4 bids to even get that price. Another one went for $6.99 with only 1 bid. Sheesh. I guess Peteski is right above, when he said these sellers "simply don't care" and are looking for "a fool to buy it." I just find these outrageous prices fascinating. I can imagine Mr. Spock, glaring at eBay and mumbling, "Totally illogical."

And both equally fake. :-) Predictors of the future just make stuff up. They depend on a well-known human tendency: we tend to remember their "hits," or what looks like a hit. We tend to forget their many misses. The Talkers To The Dead have 2 basic tricks: hot reading and cold reading. You can find out all about those with a quick internet search. The Los Angeles Police Department...it's tempting to add "naturally"...did 2 scientific studies on using psychics, in 1979 and 1980. Some in the LAPD were hoping psychics might reduce the time and manpower spent solving crimes. That sure would have helped during 1979-80, when California had multiple serial killers all working at the same time: the Hillside Stranglers, Rodney Alcala, Gerald Gallego, Doug Clark & Carol Bundy, etc. And how did that study work out? The psychics produced tons of empty verbosity but no helpful results. Zero, zip, nada. According to Dan Cook, head of LAPD public relations: "The LAPD has not, does not, and will not use psychics in the investigation of crimes. Period. If a psychic offers free information to us over the phone, we will listen to them politely, but we do not take them seriously. It is a waste of time." http://daktologistindustries.com/totse_archive/en/technology/science_technology/lapd.html Speaking of the LAPD...IMO, it's sort of a sad commentary on us citizens of 2017 that all the fake-psychic tricks are shown in "Bunco Squad," a quickie RKO crime movie. It shows up on Turner Classic Movies occasionally. "Bunco Squad" was made in 1950: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042289/

This thread reminds me of a favorite quote from Col. Robert G. Ingersoll: "In nature, there are no rewards or punishments. Only consequences." As a geezer myself, I'll defend some of the Millennials. A quick internet cruise tells me that as of 2015, they made up about 2/3 of DOD active-duty personnel. Six people in that age group have won the Medal of Honor in Iraq or Afghanistan. Four won it posthumously. Other than that, I agree with most of this thread. Especially the dumbing down of the History Channel etc. with an endless parade of reality shows. One recent news report made me LOL: the Long Island Grifter...er, Long Island Psychic, Theresa Caputo is divorcing. Wonder if she saw that coming? MST3K: still a big fan. Think I have every episode + all the "shorts," except for one very early show from KTMA-TV. I hold my own personal Turkey Day Marathon every Thanksgiving weekend. One of my favorites is still "Giant Gila Monster," where you can see something truly amazing - unwarped PMC promos!

HOBBY LOBBY HAS ALL MODEL KITS AT 20% OFF TODAY! At least the HL in Easley, SC did. You can still use the 40% off coupon for a kit. I did that to pick up the Revell '70 Charger. Wasn't tempted by anything else, even at 20% off. Went down the road to a hobby shop and found a couple of the old Modified Stocker kits gathering dust on the shelf. They had their original price tags from years ago: the MPC/Model King "Rat Trap" Vega, and the AMT/ERTL '36 Plymouth. I never had any interest in these, until I started building the '34 Ford Modified as a quick-build, slump-buster project. Now I think they're pretty neat, with lots of scope for weathering and beating up. The store had a "10% off all model kits, today only," deal. Off-topic: the USPS delivered some 1/35 scale stuff from Masterpiece Models. Including this Wrecked Zero, in resin with photo-etched parts for the fabric flying surfaces:

Fantastic work! Armored trains are fascinating beasts. And stranger things than your back-story for it happened in WWII. e.g., the "Japanese soldiers" captured at Normandy on D-Day. At first the Allied troops thought the Japanese might be sending reinforcements to the Wehrmacht. That was worrying. ""Lieutenant Robert Brewer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, reported that his regiment had captured four Asians in German uniform after the Utah Beach landings, and that initially no one was able to communicate with them." They even brought in a Japanese translator, who said he couldn't help: they weren't speaking Japanese. They turned out to be Koreans who had fought with the Japanese, the Russians and finally the Germans. One of them lived until 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Kyoungjong

Great job! When I saw your first post, I zipped over to the Tower website, hoping to get one of these for $29.99. But the price was back up to $69.99. (Just checked, that's still the price.) I'll wait for the next sale.

I've been on eBay since 1999 and have the same memory. For a long time "Toy Models & Kits" seemed to be mostly people who were active in the hobby. Outrageous prices sometimes showed up, but those were outliers and easily ignored/laughed at. Nowadays those types seem to be all over the scale model category. But I can still get some good laughs out of eBay. I just saw an MPC Gold Rush van listed for only $179.99. But WAIT! That's 10% off the original price of $199.99!!! Whatta deal! A quick look at eBay "Completed Items" shows several Gold Rush vans have recently sold for between $20-30. I did better than that, and bought one at a local flea market for $10, still sealed. I think that's what surprises me the most about these sellers. They seem to think we're too stupid to look at "Completed Items," and figure out the real fair value of the kit or parts.

x2. Also wish they could dig up the '75 Dodge van, with Yamaha dirt bike and the "workshop" interior. The workshop part was pretty simplistic, with molded-on tools hanging from the pegboards. But that can be fixed. The side panel of the box showed how to build a garage diorama, using the workshop parts. I think the workshop parts were also in another Dodge van kit but can't find it.

The Japanese company IMAI did some exciting box art for their 1/32 car kits. The kits were simple curbsides, often motorized, and not so exciting once you opened the box.

Long as we're dreaming big (in more ways than one)...I'd love to have a '49-'51 "bathtub" Nash. With working reclining front seats, for the possible "traveling salesman" option. Other building options might include Police, since these things seem to show up as police cars in just about every movie made in the early 1950s. I guess we could do our own Demolition Derby option; Nashes were built like tanks and very popular for demo derbies.

I got that same email this morning. Probably because I recently bought some 1/24 scale AK-47 rifles from a Shapeways vendor, Anyuta. (They look really good.) Along with all the car kits, the email mentioned some other interesting subjects - 3D-printed cats and guinea pigs!

That is sad. Thanks for letting us know. His Speed Classics were awesome.

Thanks, I've never seen that Matchbox/AMT Gullwing kit before. Complete with fun typo, "Turntable front wheels." I think they meant "turnable." Unless it can play 33-RPM record albums. Does anyone have this rare version of the Gullwing kit? The "Autobahn Police" issue, which came with a cardboard police checkpoint:

Thanks a bunch! A lot of those seem to be trade ads, aimed at retailers. Tons of interesting info in there. In the first ad, I'd love to find one of those '58 Chevy wagons, even if it is a "flywheel" model.

I've been wrestling with a Unimog snow plow for...well, a long time. They're not common in the USA but some do get imported, especially to mountainous, snow-heavy states like Oregon and Washington. Pic below of one with Montana plates. And here's a link to the Unimog Exchange, where you can find tons of reference material. I even found some good detail photos of a used Schmidt snowplow like the one in the kit, and I think they came from that site. http://www.unimog.net/exchange/

Totally by accident, I found a bigger version of that box art on a Czech site. Just for fun, I wanted to read the street sign. It says "Crescent St." Which is a small residential street in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles. A more likely hangout for Starsky & Hutch would probably be Crescent Heights, near Hollywood and Beverly Hills. There are more people in the original artwork, including that interesting couple on the left. And that does look like S&H at the back of the car:

One of the funniest posts I ever read on this subject (can't remember where): a guy wrote that he was at the workbench attaching some small parts. To make that easier, he put a puddle of super-glue on some tinfoil. His cat jumped up on the workbench to help. Cat's rear paws went into the super-glue. Cat then jumped to the tile floor...where its back paws firmly stuck. The builder grabbed the De-Bonder to try and un-stick the kitty. But the poor cat didn't know what was happening and freaked out. And its front paws were working just fine. He finally got the cat loose, but needed quite a few Band-Aids.

I saw that story on the Animal Planet show "Fatal Attractions." An old series about people who kept dangerous pets, usually with serious consequences. The show also covered a woman who lived in a trailer park, not too far from me in Los Angeles. Her trailer was stuffed with all kinds of poisonous snakes and lizards. Including a Gaboon Viper, which killed her.

The Gemini capsule contest, and what happened to the capsule, is fascinating. Never heard of it before, thanks! That contest went a lot better than one by Ford in 1958, when they realized the Edsel was tanking and got desperate. According to Ford P.R. guy Gayle Warnock, Ford had a big meeting about selling more Edsels. The story is in Warnock's book "The Edsel Affair." This is from memory, but pretty close, I think: One crusty old Ford veteran was in the meeting, and he had a running joke he always used: "Let's give away a pony." A younger executive in the meeting didn't realize it was a joke, and thought that was a great idea. Such a great idea that Ford should give away several ponies. Pretty soon Ford was negotiating with the delighted owners of pony farms all over the country. It got pretty expensive, since the critters had to be fed, housed and cared for until the contest. And the contest went pretty much the way everything Edsel-related seemed to go. The first kid who won a pony lived in New York City. In an apartment.

Saw one of these sitting at an intersection in town. 1950 (?) Chevy COE truck. The one I saw was in about the same condition as this one (pic from the internet). Rusty hood, dents, mud. Not just "unrestored" but still hard at work with hay and stuff in the enclosed wooden bed. That's not so unusual in this rural, farming area.

Fantastic work! Always good to see another Model T variation. On steering wheels: I found this request from master Model T builder Anthony Hazelaar on a forum 5 years ago. Naturally, I forgot to copy the link. He said the steering wheels in the original AMT '25 T kit were too small. And if anybody knows, it would be him: "Posted By: Anthony Date: Monday, 21 May 2012, at 4:28 p.m. Parts request: for my Model T projects I always use steering wheels with the correct size, but all the ones I'm stuck with are of the wrong size. They are simply waaay too small (see the wheel on the right side of the picture). As I'm running very, very low on my steering wheel stock (only one left...), are there any members who can help me out? The stock steering wheels from the '23 T Delivery Van or Depot Hack are just fine, but the ones from the '27 T Touring will also do..."