Actually, they were to a degree. Back when I started modeling, I cut my teeth on the old AMT 3-in-1 kits. There were a few kids that went down to the local car dealers and bought the pre-made models of the various Chevies, Fords, Pontiacs and Studebakers. Many of these flywheel "models" were of body styles that the 3-in-1s didn't offer, station wagons, pick-up trucks and Studebakers. Some brought them home and kitbashed with a similar, existing AMT kit, but a lot of them went on the shelf. A friend of mine converted a '56 Studebaker into a really nice rendition of a dirt-track racer. Came out looking great. The original was driven by his father on weekends.
You can still get the old kits even at hobby shops. The Testors/Hawk
1/48 scale stuff has been reissued several times, and is still available at less than ten bucks a kit. Those are the very kits I started plastic modeling with, and they are exactly in line with inflation. Of course, they are not super detailed, but hey, they weren't back in the old days either :-)
I bought the large scale airplanes primarily on the fact that I have no time anymore. I bought a 90 year old house 2 years ago and every weekend since then has been taken over by this money pit. Building is just a distant fantasy right now....
Mad-Modeller wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nextline.com:
Where do you folks live. We are contemplating moing away from the DC area and we saw some very nice Victorians in Louisville. I thought they looked exaclty like a house should look but they are bordering on a 100 years old. Still my wife is swooning over mulitple fireplaces on each floor and the big wraparound porchs. The square footage is impressive, too.
The cost of upkeep will impress you also. A friend of mine bought a house in Gettysburg when he retired, he's a civil war buff and it was his dream home. House was built in 1876, not long after the battle, it actually was included in the cyclorama painting because the artist didn't realise it was "new". You want his e-mail addy, you can commiserate in the years to come! :-)
Bill Shuey who wants to get out of the Baltimore area.
Don't I know it. Getting a taste of this collecting thing, I discovered early on that the big money went to the cleanest, most mint kit available. Built-ups were for those who couldn't afford buying a kit. E-bay has turned all that on its head. Built-ups are bringing in the bucks and kits are a hard sell, no matter the age or rarity. I guess it's another symptom of this 'instant gratification' thing.
My sympathies. I know all too well the 'fun' of repairing a Victorian barn. Everything costs too much, nothing was built to standard sizes, everything needs replaced, updated, etc. We spent $2,000 right off just to get the toilet to flush.
Yep, that square footage can be impressive. Our prize cost between $600-800 to heat each winter in the '70s. I pale at the thought of what it runs now although the succeeding owners made improvements that we could not afford.
Ours was just a Victorian row house complete with a mansard roof on Orange St. in Lancaster City. They like to promote city living around here but my experience of 20 years living in the city was similar to a dairy cow's on the farm. They lead you in, hook up the tubes and proceed to milk you of cash.
The idea that you actually own something is a hoot. There are so many restrictions on what you can do and how you can do it that you get the impression that only the outlaws enjoy life in there.
be really carefull and get an appraiser with knowledge. or even higher a specialist . vics are hot and the sleaze out there will eat the unwary alive. a few thou on the eval can save your savings and sanity.
I'm in Albany, CA. Right across from SF. Prices are high but then we pay for the location. We can walk to everything, the weather, except for last week, is perfect....
All we need now are two professional football teams and then we would really have something.
Frank - Having owned an antique home for a while (before moving into a "newer" 50-year-old home), I have to tell you this. Those "mulitple fireplaces on each floor" were there for a reason; those older barns tend to have a ~lot~ of cold spots in them during the winter because the house outdates the heating system. On the other hand, they do tend to have some room in them, probably for the Victorian-sized families.....
i really learned to love the triple deckers. they were built as three seperat one floor apartments but some people make one big house and some make 6 apartments. they have front and rear porches, flat roofs and were also drafty. but modern windows and insulation can make them snug. i had a floor in my last boston house. 3 bedrooms, one full bath and a wc, big kitchen/dining room and a great living room with bay windows. i was there for 10 years having moved in after a major remodel and i heated the whole place with one gas burner in the living room. cheaply. there was a heater built in the kitchen stove but i only needed that when it was below 10f. i loved that place. if it was here at the rent i payed then.....
I have to disagree with this part. My kids (ages 9 to 14) do lots of activities that require time, effort, skill, and attention to detail. They are just different activities from model building. My two sons, age 10 and 12, spend hours on pencil drawings and computer artwork. They also build intricate Lego models, both the "pre-designed" modern kind and the "freehand" kind from just basic blocks. One close analog to model building that we did not even have as an option is computer modeling. They like to build added features to use in various computer games, using computer art programs and 3-D modeling programs. They can spend just as much time and attention on these as someone might on building a model kit; the main difference is that they don't have a tangible result to set on the shelf for display, instead it is only visible in the game or other appropriate viewing application on the computer.
I don't have as much disagreement with this part, although as someone who makes and sells model kits I certainly hope it is a long, slow process.
Chuck
-- Don's Model Works
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I've thought of that before, and I wish I could think of a good way to do a tie-in of some kind. That "IL-2 Sturmovik" combat flightsim was a very popular game, and we actually make kits for both the IL-2 and IL-2m3, so I'd be very happy to sell some of those to some gamers if I had a good way to reach the ones that might actually be interested. I guess one reason I have put it off is that those two are both pretty much bare-bones kits, and I've thought I'd wait until we upgrade them with some nice detail parts and decals before putting a lot of effort into pushing them. But if you have any ideas on that, I'm all ears!
Chuck
-- Don's Model Works
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See our online catalog with photos and info on:
- all Wings Models kits (including Eagles Talon kits)
- all Wings Models decals (now available individually)
- over 250+ rare and hard-to-find model kits, including foreign and out-of-production kits.
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