The global conspiracy to prevent me from finishing my pit row grandstands continues! 😀 The latest roadblock I’ve run into is something I never saw coming: difficulty getting enough spectators!
The first such stand was completed spectacularly as I showed here on Independence Day, but since then I haven’t been able to get enough sitting figures to fill the other two! I thought I had plenty at first, but then realized that the lots of 100+ of these cheap figures I had bought, which were sold in bulk on Amazon as “1:76 scale,” they were mixed poses, with over 2/3 of them being standing figures. I bought a couple more, and same thing: just a few sitters amongst the standers. DRAT!
So I went to ePay for the rescue and that’s where things got more confusing. I have a bunch of stuff on order, but if you look at these screen shots, you can begin to see the problem I’m running into.
The sellers are all over the map on these figures: some are described as “1:50,” some as “1:87”, some as “HO” (which is 1:87), some as 1:72, some as 1:76 (which was the description of the ones I bought on Amazon which were an excellent size for my 1:64 diorama). It probably goes without saying that NONE of them are described as 1:64 or S-scale! Well, of course not!
Now, you might think that I should just take these descriptions at face value, but if you think that, re-read above: the figures described as 1:76 were perfect for my 1:64 layout. I don’t know if this is a “cultural thing” (as in, converting metric to English/SAE), or just sloppiness on the part of the manufacturers, but as I’ve discussed ad-naseum since I began this project in 2020: a scale description on almost any product seems like a crapshoot; you never really know what you’re going to get!
Is it just me? Maybe I’m just an ijit: maybe I’m not paying attention to the right things or not making connections that would be obvious to other people. I worry about that a lot; I have to admit, your humble blogger can be remarkably dense at times. But I’ve had enough experience now that, I doubt it…I think this scale stuff always has to be taken with a grain of salt!
Well, now I’m WAITING again, for all these latest purchases to arrive. The good news is that this stuff is all pretty cheap, so I’m using a “shotgun” approach and just buying lots and lots of these figures with different descriptions from different vendors to see what works. I suspect a lot of the stuff will wind up being swept into the trash can, but it’s no big loss if that happens; I just want my damn grandstands DONE already!!!
I can understand this and I’ve had trouble with scales as well with cars and scenery stuff that I’ve bought. I even have the same problem with close where one medium is different tan another. I hope you get some worthy peeps soon and can imagine how much you want the grandstands done. I know this key part has been a long time in the making!