Shell Valley Co. is no longer in operation.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by dlampe

...and realize the impact you have had on our hobby.

That's the problem -- this is a hobby. A very expensive, and totally expendable, hobby. A bit of fun for a very small segment of the populace. Be it Lionel trains, Faberge eggs, or Cobra replicas, it's almost impossible to make a consistent and lucrative living out of other peoples' hobbies year after year after year. You've got to carve out a real niche; that's hard to do, and even harder to keep doing. But you see it in other forms of business -- you know, the guy that always wanted to open a shop dealing in this or that, or a restaurant that has a this or that slant to it, or a curio shop... and they end up going out of business in a year or two or three. It's not terribly difficult to make money in America, even without advanced educational degrees. Pick a service that people pretty much have to have, preferably one that other people don't want to do, and one where there's a limited amount of competition, and then work like he11. I wouldn't dream of going in to the Cobra replica business (unless it was purely for fun); on the other hand I might dream of going in to the septic tank cleaning business -- and it wouldn't be for fun.