Wotcha All,
What is it with all these instruction requests. Has the carpet monster mutated or has his bigger brother come to town?
regards Gary
Haven’t you heard? The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is coming out this month, signifying the return of Shredder.
My [2c]
Well, for the most part, folks are getting suckered into buying a lot of stuff “sight-unseen” over the internet, from people that are not established dealers, thinking they are getting a bargain.
Not long ago, one member here bought a Frog kit, only to find out that he bought a “counterfeit kit”, made up by the seller putting a lot of substitute parts in a Frog kit box.
What many here may not know is that the instructions can be sold seperately, sometimes for as much as the origional kit cost. This is especially true if the buyer is a collector that wants to proudly show “a complete unbuilt origional classic kit” off to his buddies.
There is a “good guy” in Edmond Oklahoma, who as of this writing, is honestly making money by selling the instructions and other stuff from kits he has already built to those folks who get shorted. His motto is that he is selling information.
This means that “conveniently forgetting them” can result in further profit for the seller, as he markets them to someone else seperately (which he may already have), or offers to sell those to the buyer seperately.
On the other hand, a lot of folks frankly come here to see how much they can get for free, relying on “modellers code”, that is “always willing to help a buddy”, instead of paying up front from someone like the guy in Oklahoma.
Yes, I know E-Bay has a complaint section, and supposedly they can banish someone who gets too many, but that does not make up for the fact you were stuck in the first place.
Tom [C):-)]
In case this is news to you…
There is a Japanese model dealer website that includes images of the instructions for many of the kits they sell. This is useful if you get ahold of a Hasegawa or Tamiya kit with no instructions. It’s also a really good way to find out what features and markings are included with a kit and what the paint color specifications are. Use the scrolling menu on the left-side of the page to search for a kit of interest.
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/plamo/
Martin
Martin-
That’s a great link! Thanks for sharing.
Well I can only speak for myself about this one. My request was the result of my own stupidity plain and simple. I lost em because I didn’t keep track of them when I moved. I’d probably be willing to pay for the instructions if I lost them. As it happens I was lucky enough that someone had instructions for a similar kit which looks like it will work out for me.
That website is fantastic by the way thank you very much for the link.
There’s a code? We have a code??? Why wasn’t I told!
What about the secret handshake and the password? realizes they don’t have a smiley to indicate insane, maniacal laughter
My Request for destructions is my own fault alone. I took them out to read, left them on the coffee table only for, she who must be obeyed, to tidy them in the bin lol…Guy
ARgh!
It got the headrest brace for my FW190!!!
ARGH!!!
It’s a lot sneakier than it used to be, that carpet monster!!
Basically, it is an ethic of generally seeking to help a modelling buddy in need, not seeking to take advantage of of the other guy’s grief by making a profit, etc.
It is more of a share-and-share alike ethic, based on the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” idea.
It get’s old, though, when you see certain people constantly seeking hard-to-come-by freebies, like they guy wanting some special Russian decals, and so on. It turns out I may have some, but I am not about to turn loose of my only set, when I have something in mind for them myself, and I am sure I would have to pay if I needed more later. [:-^]
Tom [C):-)]
From my experience here, I haven’t noticed people seeking hard to find items and requesting them for free. I have seen modelers asking for instructions, and where they can get hard to find parts. Everyone i’ve seen ask for instructions is perfectly happy with a paper copy, or a scanned set. If thye have to be sent thru the mail, most offer to pay postage. The people looking for hard to find parts offer to pony up some money for them as well. If someone does have the bright idea to ask for something for free, they are generally ignored. So I don’t see it as an issue. I’m more than happy to provide another modeler with a copy of some instructions, or a part i have in the spares box that I know I won’t be using.
Neither have I, although I have seen it happen a lot on another site I used to frequent.
I can only guess the staff members here keep that kind of thing more under control here.
I suggest you read my former post specifically regarding missing instructions, where it seems to be becoming nore of a trend with kits bought on E-Bay and the like, and as I tried to point out, it appears that there is a market for the instruction sheets by themselves developing as well, which makes this look like no accident in many cases.
Tom [C):-)]
That’s why we’re here, no charge for instructions after people try to rip others off[swg][tup]
I think you’re being quite pessimistic here. I’ve been selling on Ebay to supplement my income for several years now. According to my records, I’ve sold over 6000 kits (and still have a 100% feedback rating).
I know the modeling niche on Ebay intimately. Sure, there are people who post collections of instructions up there. They don’t sell. People also list old, damaged, and badly built kits there at outrageous prices, they don’t sell either. Sometimes I want to write the seller and ask them, “are you dreaming?”
Sometimes kits end up sold without instructions. I bought one collection in which all the decals were separated. I had to go through every kit and return the decals to the kits. Sometimes instructions are missing. Things happen, they get taken out for review and lost, a kid or grandkid grabs them and runs off with them, or who knows. When I can, I make a photo copy of the instructions and include them. I have helped out several modelers here and elsewhere by mailing them copies of instructions for kits I happened to have in my personal stash, or in unsold inventory.
The only people who are going to want original instructions are collectors. I have become familiar with the collectible market too because I have come across some kits that are highly sought after by collectors.
Could the guy you refer to in Edmond, OK be John Burns? As far as I know, he wasn’t selling instructions. He compiled buyer’s guides for collectors. His guides are the bible for kit collectors world wide. I have a couple of them and use them for reference all the time.
If he was selling instructions, they would have been for the collectors market. I am familiar with a few collector’s forums. Two Yahoo Groups and a new website are dedicated to nothing but box art. They are trying to compile a catalog of restored box art from old kits going back to the beginning of plastic modeling.
Another Yahoo group is dedicated to discussing kits from the 50s and 60s. Right now they are debating some issues with when Olin became Lindberg (which I believe was settled as 1953) and when US fighters changed from the P designation to the F designation and what kits were released around that time frame.
I’m a bit of an alien there since I prefer modern mold kits and I’m a builder, but I hang out there to stay in touch with my potential customer base.
Anyway, if instructions are missing from a kit, the old axiom comes into play, “don’t attribute to malice what can easily be explained by something less sinister.”
Bill
Well Bill,
Frankly, you seem to be more of the exception then the rule.
As you may have noticed,I took the liberty of highlighting your unusual business ethic of going more then the “extra mile”.
Knowing that, I would not hesitate to buy from you, especially if I knew it was you.
Your business ethics are what many would call “Old Fashioned” nowadays, and frankly remind me of my favorite hobby store dealers in Los Angeles when I was growing up.
I just got through buying a couple of older kits from the guy (now in Las Vegas) who places the nice big ads in FineScale Modeller mag, and one kit had broken parts, and the decals were junk, and the other had missing parts, for which he charged me “top price” per Burns’ guide. He has refused to answer my e-mails or return my calls since he sent them to me.
As far as the guy in Edmond, you could be mighty close. [;)]
You see, I recently put out the total of $60.00 ($35+$25) for both his PAK-20 book and the alledged “updates”, which I do not recommend, as they contain nowhere near the volume or info the main book has, and frankly are dissapointing, especially since you are not getting half the info contained in the origional volume for two-thirds of the price. Also they did not have the specific information he indicated to me other the phone they would have. It seems to cover this and other “Senior Moments”, he frequently quotes his age and indicates he may “get out or the business any day now” (kind of reminds me of some small businesses that were "Going Out of Business for years in L.A., so that they could avoid any sort of customer satisfaction/return policy). [:-^]
He indicates that he might be looking for someone to “take over” his “Blue Book”, I would think you would be an excellent choice, Bill, as I believe your revisions would not be as sloppy as those he sent me.
In the updates package, he included some special sort of small catalog of junk he is selling off, and in it is an eclectic list of “odds and ends” packages he has put together, which include groups of various instruction sheets, etc., by manufacturer, and evidently it is finding a market for him, as he seems to “make no bones” and has a “take it or leave it” policy with his “grab-bags” (which is a turn-off for me, but I do not care for standing in crowds for “door-buster specials”, either).
On the other hand, when I mentioned I had Burns’ book to the lone LHS (their competition went out of business due to Hurricane Katrina) here in Baton Rouge that is in the habit of selling “recycled kits” out of their personal stash (which as the son of the owner he got for next to nothing by taking them off the inventory to avoid taxes) for inflated prices by indicating the kit as the pricier earlier release in mint condition, when it is neither; he indicated that he was not interested in personally dealing with me, as we used to “haggle” over used kits before his competition went out of business. This is in addition to the fact that every time a kit was missing something, or I needed a special order item, he would say “come back next week”, and after a few “extra trips” to his store, I got the message he was not going to get it.
Or, maybe he didn’t like it when he sold me an Italeri Messerschmitt Gigant kit, at the “new and in the wrapper” price (appearantly he has one of those wrapping machines that applies the plastic seal to boxes in his back room), and when I got home, and took the shrink-wrap plastic wrapper off the box I discovered that it in fact was not a new kit at all (no parts were in any plastic bags, all the propellers, and other “fun parts”, etc, were removed by someone’s kid and loose in the box, broken parts, yellowed decals, etc), so I told him it was not worth what I paid, and so he gave me my money back, although for half of what I paid in return I would have kept it.
So Bill, frankly, I would say that you are one of the few of a dying breed in this time of the “Generation X’ers” that confuses and seeks to redefine its ethics and morals through its appointed business degree major college grads, and although you might take your personal ethics for granted, I have not dealt with anyone who was an individual dealer like yourself who personally has your standards since I have gotten back into the hobby.
I don’t think that these people are intentionally maliceous, from dealing and workng with them, I feel that they simply they lack the ethics to have enough conscious to concern themselves with whether or not they are really doing the right thing as long as they see themselves making a profit at what they’re doing.
Sorry if this seems pessimistic, but this is the honest and true account of my experience and dealings recently.
Tom [C):-)]
I am probably out at the end of the bell curve as far as business ethics goes. I see it as not only the right thing to do, but also good business sense. A customer who walks away with a happy experience is much more likely to be a repeat customer.
My father has run a small business since before I was born. He was a commercial photographer and morphed the business into a photo supply company when his contacts within the ad agencies in Los Angeles started to retire. He started selling supplies full time when my parents moved to Morro Bay, CA in 1984. He turned 87 this year and finally decided to let the business go.
I guess I learned it from him.
I’ve bought kits on Ebay too. As well as other things. I’ve only run into one seller who I thought was an outright thief. She sold a phone as “like new” and when I got it, it looked rode hard and put away wet.
Sometimes things aren’t quite as described. Often the seller will work something out if I write him or her. I find that being polite and sticking to the issue goes a lot further towards resolution than a belligerant approach. (Though belligerism has it’s place. I had to get a bit het up at the bank today. They’ve been stealing money out of the account with bogus fees.)
The world has some dishonest people. There are also people out there who don’t pay enough attention and then try to avoid the problem when they get caught. It’s not blatent dishonesty, but it isn’t right either.
The story here is just as it seems. I have bought a couple of his guides and have subscribed to his newsletter for a few years. He stopped publishing the newsletter in February after 30+ years. He also started selling off the last of his kits and reference books around the first of the year. He really is shutting things down. He hasn’t said so, but I suspect his health may be failing.
As far as service is concerned, when I ordered my first book from him, I bought it with media mail postage. It didn’t arrive after a month and I contacted him. He sent me another one via Priority Mail. A few weeks later the original finally showed up. I was in the middle of something and ended up setting the other one aside for a while. When I got around to it, I sent him the money for the second copy with an explanation. He gave me a free subscription to his newsletter in return.
I did turn around and sell the extra copy on Ebay and made back my $30 and then some, but I felt I should pay for it before I sold it. In my experience, John Burns has been a very stand up guy.
I appreciate the thought, but I won’t be volunteering because I know several people with a lot more knowledge about the really old kits than I do, and I’m too busy with other things to take on such a project. I still need to make a living. I know it interferes with the fun stuff in life, but I also like to stay dry when it rains.
What you got sounds like a list of the dregs. In late December or early January, he sent out a catalog of about 60 pages with listings of all the books and models he wanted to liquidate. I wrote him the day I got the catalog with what I wanted and he wrote back saying that only two of the books on my list were still available. He indicated that the response had been heavy. I recall at the end there were several grab bags of miscelaneous stuff. At this point, what’s probably left is the debris. The original catalog had lots of quite nice stuff in it. Mostly books, but about 100 models too.
In some collections I’ve bought, there have been some kits that were rewrapped. I inspect wrapped kits for tell tale signs, such as tape residue on the box under the shrink wrap. It is quite possible that he got the kit shrink wrapped and figured it had never been opened.
Technically I am a generation Xer.
I’m not a big fan of business degrees though. An MBA has it’s application, but people with business degrees shouldn’t be running companies. Corporations are best run when the top people grew up in the business they are running.
It generally isn’t my experience. I’ve dealt with some dishonest people. The majority of people I’ve dealt with have been pretty decent and fair.
I also tend to have pretty good radar about people. If I get a bad sense about someone or a business, I tend to avoid them.
Anyway. Need to go off and deal with the morass that is my taxes. The downside of running a business, the taxes get more complex. Even worse now that our house hold has three businesses between the two of us. My SO is an attorney in private practice, I have my Ebay business, and we own a joint venture in the software business.
Bill
Hi all,
Wow, who dragged this one out the cellar. Funny how a joke turns into a deep and intense read. Now I`m not sure how you do your Ebah in the USofA, but I have bought and sold on Ebah in the UK for a couple of years and have never had any problems. All the kits were as stated and the only problem I ever had was with a kit that had been simply wrapped in paper with no bubble wrap etc that arrived a bit dented and one broken part. But what the hey, the posted was cheap and it was just one more part to stick together.
So lighten up guys. If you feel like your going to get ripped off dont bid. And IF your going for that rearly rare and precious Grail ask for more info Most dealers are happy to reply and if they dont , well I`m sure you know the answer. As a thought would you buy a house or a car sight unseen on a short discription?
Regards Gary[8-]