2013 Die Cast Buys of the Week

[KG_Jag]

We will start our eighth year of featuring certain, mostly military, die cast items each week. During 2012 we posted 200 selections, including a few items which appeared more than once (generally from a different vendor) over the year. Those selections came from 75 different vendors, which was no small feat given the contraction in the market in the last five years or so. Our mission is to provide an independent voice--highlighting some of the best values each week to the military die cast collector.

It is probably true that such an effort can never be completely objective. What we like, may not be exactly what you like, in terms of model type, scale, quality, manufacturer or other factors. That said; we try to include selections for both the most serious and budget minded collectors. We have certain dealers who have established outstanding reputations for product, prices and customer service. So these vendors probably receive more views than some others in the process of making our selections each week. Some dealers are outstanding in most respects--and may even have the very best customer service, but tend to have higher prices and few, if any, reduced price sales. As a result, their products tend to be recommended less than those with good products and outstanding prices, even if their customer service is of a lower quality.

There are currently two vendors who we will not consider for inclusion. The first of these we have never featured, due to poor customer service and relations experienced with him. The most recent culled from our list is a company whose owner or part owner (directly or through entities) was shown through reliable and public reports and sources to have not once--but twice used credit card fraud in attempts to steal money from a well known international celebrity. If you are interested, this celebrity is way above the Kim, Kourtney and Snooki tier.

It has not escaped notice that we have continued to lose vendors in 2012. Further many other vendors, it appears, have continued to reduce stock or even eliminate their military items that we feature here. In this adverse economic environment we are proud to say that we featured an almost equal number of vendors as we did in 2011, despite a year that was abbreviated by a web site change and personal issue. It's unclear whether we can exceed or even match those accomplishments in another year of this continuing bad economy, but we will try.

We use the term "die cast" somewhat liberally, as we feature not only traditional die cast items, but also resin, wood and mostly plastic items as well. The keys are that each featured item come pre-painted and requires either little or no assembly.

Let's start the ride for 2013...