1/64 Model Collectors Thread

[a6m5]

Hmmm...... More than I wanted to pay(by $4.50 lol).

 

[CodeRedR51]

You seen how many of those things are on eBay? I swear everyone that has an RLC membership bought more than one just so they could flip them for a quick buck. Screw the rest of us.

 

[a6m5]

You seen how many of those things are on eBay? I swear everyone that has an RLC membership bought more than one just so they could flip them for a quick buck. Screw the rest of us.

You are right, and I'm guilty of that. This last fall, as you are aware was my first membership, and by my observation, if it's a hot item, 3,000, or whatever, Mattel just do not produce enough to even come close to having some available for Non-RLC members.

Realistically, Mattel would need to produce these cars in 10,000+ to make it available for everyone, at least in my opinion. Either that, or limit one membership-per-home, and one purchase-per-membership. However, I have read on that site about the concerns that not all cars sell, and as you are well aware, their shop is still stocked with some really old inventory.

P.S. I did a price search on eBay and looks like I got the lowest possible price with the $49.50, so I'm VERY pleased.

 

[AOS-]

Yeah but then you have to drill it out again if you need to take it apart for any reason.

Which, if you make solid plans, won't ever have to do such a thing. Have you ever had to reopen any of your cars before?

 

[a6m5]

Which, if you make solid plans, won't ever have to do such a thing. Have you ever had to reopen any of your cars before?

Bah, people's taste change, and you never know when you may need that car, or wheels for something else. I get what you are saying, but I do think it's an advantage to have that ability to change it up.

 

[AOS-]

Of course it's an advantage. I just don't think it's that strong of one. Then again, not everyone has a huge stock of wheels.

 

[a6m5]

Then again, not everyone has a huge stock of wheels.

Nor as decisive, or experienced, etc., etc.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Which, if you make solid plans, won't ever have to do such a thing. Have you ever had to reopen any of your cars before?

Many times. Maybe for a wheel change, or I forgot to do something that requires it to be separated. Only reason I would ever use rivets would be to seal cars I may be giving away for contests or whatever. (not that I would ever do that)

 

[Cano]

Had a great day at a new meet I assisted today, sold off $100 worth of cars and traded loads of vintage loose Hot Wheels for M2s and Retro Hot Wheels and more stuff. Even a mexican HW fell in my dirty paws.

Sadly, no all-red Miata, Jason. Will keep an eye open for that one at the next meet due in two weeks.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Had a great day at a new meet I assisted today, sold off $100 worth of cars and traded loads of vintage loose Hot Wheels for M2s and Retro Hot Wheels and more stuff. Even a mexican HW fell in my dirty paws.

Sadly, no all-red Miata, Jason. Will keep an eye open for that one at the next meet due in two weeks.

I might just snag that one on eBay that's packaged with a yellow hub car for $12 if it's still there next weekend and then just have you send what you have for me now. If it's sold then I'll wait.

 

[Johnny1996]

Okay, so I did not go back to the toy sale, but did go to a dollar store. Pictures will be posted once they are uploaded on Tinypic.

EDIT: Here are the pics!

I got these two MBs for my loose collection. 1969 Chevy Camaro and Bentley Continental.

These two cars were purchased for customizing purposes. The Jeep (if we want to get technical, we can call it by its actual name of "Custom Ford Bronco") will be fully customized, while the Lamborghini was purchased strictly as a donor car for the time being. The Bronco came in a five pack, which is the only vehicle in that five pack I was interested in.

And finally, the rest of the cars from the aforementioned five pack. I don't want them, but I don't know what to do with them.

 

[a6m5]

Awesome Bronco, but yes, let's never refer to Bronco as a Jeep.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Just spent the last 3 hours taking, editing and uploading photos for my collection site. Going to try and get at least one page up per day this week. Think I finally have a good procedure down for editing the photos too. Example:


DSCN6297_E by JaMillPhoto, on Flickr

Not anywhere near perfect but my camera sucks so I try my best.

 

[DwightSchrute12]

I'm worried I'll never see it because the first couple mixes of Cool Classics are still warming the pegs around here.

Same here, though only about 3 or 4 stores carry them total, out of 8 or more. Actually, not a SINGLE premium Hot Wheels line has been stocked with new cars since maybe late October. I wanted to collect several Retros and Cool Classics but have since given up. Damn shame that Mattel has little-to-no control over their product actually getting out to stores and instead being limited to hobby/online dealers. Maybe they don't care, I don't know.

You seen how many of those things are on eBay? I swear everyone that has an RLC membership bought more than one just so they could flip them for a quick buck. Screw the rest of us.

I bought more than one. Suck it!

no intentions to resell whatsoever though, I occasionally buy two, one to open. And I opened one and datsun 510 opened is

You are right, and I'm guilty of that. This last fall, as you are aware was my first membership, and by my observation, if it's a hot item, 3,000, or whatever, Mattel just do not produce enough to even come close to having some available for Non-RLC members.

Realistically, Mattel would need to produce these cars in 10,000+ to make it available for everyone, at least in my opinion. Either that, or limit one membership-per-home, and one purchase-per-membership. However, I have read on that site about the concerns that not all cars sell, and as you are well aware, their shop is still stocked with some really old inventory.

P.S. I did a price search on eBay and looks like I got the lowest possible price with the $49.50, so I'm VERY pleased.

Yeah, like you said if they did 10k of a casting and it didn't "click" they'd be stuck with a lot of stock, as you can see in the shop. I think they decided they would rather piss off a few people and have guaranteed sell-outs than get stuck with inventory sitting around.

I don't know what people see in that Drag Bus, but they could probably sell 15k runs of that one. I only bought the Gulf Drag Bus to complete my Gulf set, it's one of those castings that board members "stain their pants" over but I just don't get. Yeah it's heavy, but so are several other ones that look a lot better.

But I mean even that bland-o buick grand national (like the car, but they've done it before) and the honky tonk texas car both sold out on their first day if I remember right. Almost everything was a guaranteed sell out.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I bought more than one. Suck it!

no intentions to resell whatsoever though, I occasionally buy two, one to open. And I opened one and datsun 510 opened is

I'd like one to open but I can't waste $50 on a car at the moment.

 

[AOS-]

Not anywhere near perfect but my camera sucks so I try my best.

No excuses, son. I've made do with point-and-shoots before.

Image > Adjustments > Highlights/Shadows. That will fix up any photos with very intense highlights or shadows.

Auto Color Balance if you're lazy, or manually do it if you get what it does and know what to do. I notice your photos got reds in it. Not that there's anything wrong, but if you want to turn that backdrop closer to a white than a dim-lit red, you can play around with the highlights here. Personally I prefer a blue bias, but lately I've been keeping the shadows more blue/cyan and midtones red/yellow. The highlights will still be cyan/blue to maintain an overall cool tone, but the focal point will then have warm colours which stand right out.

Unsharp mask just to bring out the details. I noticed you sharpened that G up there. 👍

Quick and dirty tips. Example of the warm/cool thing I do with colour balance:

Notice the overall cool tones of the darker spots and all around, yet I make the hot spot (on the rear wheel arch) have a more warmness to it.

 

[yabiggoose]

Found all these beauties today, $3 AUD each

Edit: can take close up photos if anyone wants.

 

[CodeRedR51]

No excuses, son. I've made do with point-and-shoots before.

Well your photos (like that one) can be quite dark sometimes, I need nice bright photos to show the colors, etc on the cars. I'm no photoshop expert either, so I just messed around with what I thought looked right. Didn't touch the sharpness on any of the photos, including the G37. First I do Auto Color, then mess with the saturation depending on the car/colors. Then I do a Replace Color on the background and lighten it about 20 points depending on how dark it is. Seems to work alright, though my camera doesn't like certain colors so I have to bring them back with editing. I don't want to spend 20 minutes editing each photo so quick and dirty works for me.

I think after I dropped my camera a while ago it stopped doing some things 100%. Like, I can't zoom in too far or it won't focus, and the color isn't right sometimes.

 

[AOS-]

though my camera doesn't like certain colors so I have to bring them back with editing.

Manually doing color balance can restore a lot of colour to what it should ideally look like. I highly suggest getting the hang of it as you'll be through one photo in 1-2 minutes. I don't put that much effort into my photos as much as I may make it seem. I have a ton more cars than you do so I'm sure you can understand when I say I wouldn't choose to do 20 minutes per car.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I might try that on the 510 Wagon photo as it lost it's original color and I couldn't figure out how to bring it back.

 

[AOS-]

Mind if I give it a go? I treat these things almost like a puzzle.

 

[Cano]

I think after I dropped my camera a while ago it stopped doing some things 100%. Like, I can't zoom in too far or it won't focus, and the color isn't right sometimes.

That's not because you dropped it, without the propper lens no camera will zoom in on such a small subject and still focus, and even less so in such light conditions. That's perfectly normal. The color thing could be because of white balance, altough you can play around with settings all you want and some times some colors won't be picked up at all, even by pro-grade cameras.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Even in broad daylight it won't focus, I don't think it's a lighting issue.

 

[Cano]

Yeah, as I was saying, it's a type-of-lense issue, but in dark ambiences it struggles even more to try to. It just won't happen un less you have the right kind of lens.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Well it's a point and shoot without the ability to attach lenses. So unless they purposely designed the camera to not focus at close up range, it's broken.

 

[Cano]

they purposely designed the camera to not focus at close up range

Bingo.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Bingo.

How stupid.

 

[Cano]

haha, it isn't that it's designed to fail, it's just that it can't focus on such a small object when zooming in.

 

[AOS-]

There's a point where the camera can't focus on an object that's too close. Pull the camera back, set it to create a high-resolution photo. Don't worry if the car's this tiny thing in the photo. You can always crop it later.


On another note, the Lot of 91 (now Lot of 93), starting price $20, sold for $27. Shipped it just now. That's one more Toyota Truck out of my inventory, and more than half of the junk collection out of the house.

 

[kennylmao]

Well it's a point and shoot without the ability to attach lenses. So unless they purposely designed the camera to not focus at close up range, it's broken.

Doesn't your point and shoot have a macro mode?