[Customs] Illustrious Series 5

This series will be meeting a premature end. For whatever reason, this batch was paused back in 2014 as far as I know, and sat in a bin for all the years, nearly finished and all. A long pause comes with a declined interest. These don't turn out as great looking as I imagined. The gold is flashy, but these somehow turn out less cooler than I hope for. For that matter, I'm also dropping a whole bunch of other minor series, and focusing more on the customs that demand more work and present more lavish modifications.

[Diecast] About a month later...

Walmarts here finally stock what the States got a month ago (or two).

chronological order: BMW M3, Ferrari 458 Italia, Ferrari Enzo, Lotus M250, Mini Countryman WRC, Plymouth AAR Cuda, Porsche 911 GT3, SWAT Truck, Subaru Impreza GRB, Toyota AE86 Corolla, VW Golf GTi, Salt Shaker, Toyota Land Cruiser, Tarmac Attack (PR5 variation)

If you noticed, the lighting set up has changed. Previously, I didn't light up the backdrop but this time I did with the different set of lights used:

One light was left sitting to the left, while I held the other over the car. I actually did a sweeping motion to start and then held it above right of the car so I could get a stroke of highlight across the top edges.

2.5s, f/9, ISO 200. 

The produced results differ from what I got the first time I played with them.

[Diecast] New Grabs for March

Got around to photographing the latest purchases. The Greenlight and Vintage Racing were purchased from one of my favourite eBay sellers carcraze7. He sells all his cars loose and as a result his shipping prices are one of the lowest I've encountered in the past year. He also opens the option to allow best offers so that's also great for those who want a better deal. Check out his stuff some time, even with the increased postage rates, he still manages to provide much lower shipping prices than a lot of sellers.

 I don't know a thing about Smokey and the Bandit but I do like the Firebird as well as black & gold colour scheme. I was happy to our Walmarts carrying a case because I feared Canadians wouldn't get them!

 I need more of these Vintage Racing cars.. especially that green Dodge Challenger!

 Shelby GT500 Super Snake. Love Super Snakes, even if the back wheels are too big.

Ford Edsel. From that Hollywood series... or something. Love the colour scheme as always.

2013 Hot Wheels Camaro. Finally got some!

 The Tarmac Attack is one of my favourite new castings of 2013. It's so cute! An idea of making a line of customs of these crossed my mind one day as a response to all the Kool Kombi customs I've seen. Darn shame I've never seen one yet.

 Cadillac El Dorado. Wasn't aware there was a Hot Wheels casting of this, but as soon as I saw one I just needed to have at least one.

 Custom '62 Chevy. It has no surfboard, but that's okay. The satin red paintjob is damn gorgeous.

 '59 Chevy Corvette. I still like '55 Corvettes more, but this Greenlight is fairly pretty too.

 Ferrari 612 Scagletti. It's from the exclusive Ferrari 5-pack, but I bought this one from carcraze7. I can wait for the 5-pack to hit stores here, but that may not be until May I'm guessing. The tampos on the headlamps are beautifully done. I like the overall finish of this more than the cheesy metalflake finish of the previous 5-pack. There's that level of "pop" a plain metalflake finish (with no headlamp tampo) can't achieve.

Lambo Aventador. The next colour in the Aventador line up. The black chosen isn't a flat black, but rather it gives off the same impression as a handful of watercolour paint layers. Describing it is a bit strange but I suppose one way to put it is that it appears like there's a lot of depth in the colour itself... if that makes any sense.

Didn't see any Treasure Hunts recently. Maybe next month. 

[Carded] Errors and Cards. Collecting at its Core!

Got a neat little update on a few cars today. Got in touch with a new mix in the area so I grabbed some extras for the carded collection. Will post new loose additions shortly.

CARDS!

2013 Camaro Concept. That same one featured in SEMA.

Mattel re-releases this guy. The difference between this and the one back in 2007's release is that the window is now clear instead of blue and the wheels are MC5 rather than 5SP.

Wasn't planning on keeping an extra but it turned out I already had a loose one expected in the mail.

 Love this casting! This version wit the PR5 wheels is what's shown on SouthTexasDiecast's website, so I assume this is the regular run, except I only saw one of these and about 4 with black OH5 wheels so I'm unsure which one is the wheel variation of the original casting. This one will be kept carded until it's been confirmed it's a common.

 

Kind of wanted a custom out of it, but also wanted to leave one in my Boulevard collection. Will keep it carded until I confirmed a custom I want to pursue.

ERRORS!

 Front wheels got black PR5s.

 Side stripe tampo is missing. 

A more believable mistake as the front wheels are meant to be yellow 10SP.

 Some would argue it's not an error (even I won't!), but if it's not meant to be there, I'll still call it one granted it's just not as cool as having wrong parts installed.