Unpainted Ford die cast race car-1991 T-Bird by Revell

[Vietnam Vet67]

Picked this up this morning at local shop along with a bunch of other older die casts..........never saw one like this before.

[cobraman]

I believe they sold them like that so you could order your choice of which decal set you would like to use.

[Dave Van]

Those are pretty common.  Here is the story if you want to know.

I was partner in a hobby shop in Charlotte NC. We started getting race teams and marketing companies calling and visiting wanting to get short runs of models made for sponsorship proposals or even corporate  gifts.  We had worked with Bob Johnson then at Revell. We worked it out that they would run 5K Thunderbirds in white and 5K in black. (we did the Lumina later too) We took a good number of them.....we even made 500 Trop Artic #66 for Phillips. A vast number of them were sold through our store. We wholesaled to many stores so they can be found all over. If I had to give a value I'd say about $5 or so.....

[Vietnam Vet67]

1 hour ago, Dave Van said:

Those are pretty common.  Here is the story if you want to know.

I was partner in a hobby shop in Charlotte NC. We started getting race teams and marketing companies calling and visiting wanting to get short runs of models made for sponsorship proposals or even corporate  gifts.  We had worked with Bob Johnson then at Revell. We worked it out that they would run 5K Thunderbirds in white and 5K in black. (we did the Lumina later too) We took a good number of them.....we even made 500 Trop Artic #66 for Phillips. A vast number of them were sold through our store. We wholesaled to many stores so they can be found all over. If I had to give a value I'd say about $5 or so.....

Thanks for the info...................every day you always learn something!

[randyc]

On 12/6/2017 at 6:41 PM, Dave Van said:

Those are pretty common.  Here is the story if you want to know.

I was partner in a hobby shop in Charlotte NC. We started getting race teams and marketing companies calling and visiting wanting to get short runs of models made for sponsorship proposals or even corporate  gifts.  We had worked with Bob Johnson then at Revell. We worked it out that they would run 5K Thunderbirds in white and 5K in black. (we did the Lumina later too) We took a good number of them.....we even made 500 Trop Artic #66 for Phillips. A vast number of them were sold through our store. We wholesaled to many stores so they can be found all over. If I had to give a value I'd say about $5 or so.....

Wow.  Were you with Spectra?  That may have been the distributor.  I bought several of those when I owned an LHS.  Wasn't there a Grand Prix as well?  I did one for my (now ex) wife who managed a jewelry store Pineville, NC for their window display.    It still turns up in my kids' stuff once in a while.  

[Dave Van]

14 minutes ago, randyc said:

Wow.  Were you with Spectra?  That may have been the distributor.  I bought several of those when I owned an LHS.  Wasn't there a Grand Prix as well?  I did one for my (now ex) wife who managed a jewelry store Pineville, NC for their window display.    It still turns up in my kids' stuff once in a while.  

I worked was partner in Deb's Model Car Emporium on US 74 Matthews.  Spectra was Bob Johnson and Co they had offices off South Blvd in Charlotte. The start of all this was the 500 Black die cast Thunderbirds we needed for a project. 500 alone was not viable coat wise so we decided to make alrger runs of the black and white.....making them affordable.  Before the whole thing ended we did Pontiacs and Lumina too.  Good old days....

[randyc]

I have my time frame wrong.  When we were living in Lancaster and she was in Pineville, that was BEFORE my LHS.  So I would have bought that from a hobby shop somewhere probably.  I was building a LOT of NASCAR models at the time.  I owned a small graphics shop and was doing a lot of real dirt cars and some of the models too, when I could find them.  I wish I would have realized Bob Johnson was "the man" at Spectra when I did have the hobby shop.  I had a sales rep, that's all.  

[Dave Van]

Do you remember the die cast model store at the mall in Pineville??? That was a Spectra idea.  That was the pilot store for a chain of like stores. But the DC bubble burst and that was the end of that.  The Pineville mall had that cool DC store AND the great model train store at one time.......

[randyc]

On 12/14/2017 at 1:25 PM, Dave Van said:

Do you remember the die cast model store at the mall in Pineville??? That was a Spectra idea.  That was the pilot store for a chain of like stores. But the DC bubble burst and that was the end of that.  The Pineville mall had that cool DC store AND the great model train store at one time.......

Wow, just got back to this one.   I am assuming you are referring to Carolina Place in Pineville.  That's where my (ex) wife managed the jewelry store.  I'm not sure I remember the DC shop.  I sure would have went there, even though I wasn't so into DC at the time.  I am still building kits I bought back then.  I usually hit the big one in Rock Hill when we were in that area.  95 or 96 maybe?  They may have been after that.  I was the LHS in Mt Airy, NC in 2000 ish - 2003 ish.  And the economy here tanked with the textile mills moving offshore so my customer base dried up.  Can't eat toy cars.  Spectra was the supplier for Rose's chains when I was using them. That was kinda cool.  I had same access, even though Rose's got better pricing.