Show Report: First Annual Summer Plastic Meltdown
For ten years, the Northern Illinois Modelers Open (NIMO) had been a fixture on the Chicago area modeling calendar. However, rising costs, the large amount of work involved in running a full blown contest and swap, led to most of the NIMO committee being burned out. So this year, a scaled down event, the Summer Plastic Meltdown, took its place. Hosted by IPMS CARS in Miniature, the Meltdown was an NNL style show and vendor trunk sale, held August 14 at the Algonquin Township Office in Cary, IL. GTR member and CARS president Steve Jahnke, aka Captain NIMO, led the organization of the event and gives us this report.
Summer Plastic Meltdown: Son of NIMO by Steve Jahnke
CARS decided to proceed with plans for the first annual Summer plastic meltdown show using our own club space provide to us by our local township office. While the space is large enough for the NNL display, it was not big enough to include vendors in the building. Since the Meltdown is a summer show, the solution to this problem became obvious: we would have a “Trunk Sale” swap meet in our spacious parking lot. A trunk sale is just what the name implies: vendors sell out of the trunk of their vehicle. To entice vendors and their trunks to the show we offered them vendor space for free. On show day we had a total of 12 vendors, and there were plenty of good deals for the attendees and plenty of action for the vendors.
Show admission was $5.00 which included admission to the show, free unlimited model entry and all you can eat pizza…beat that with a stick if you can.
For ten years, the Northern Illinois Modelers Open (NIMO) had been a fixture on the Chicago area modeling calendar. However, rising costs, the large amount of work involved in running a full blown contest and swap, led to most of the NIMO committee being burned out. So this year, a scaled down event, the Summer Plastic Meltdown, took its place. Hosted by IPMS CARS in Miniature, the Meltdown was an NNL style show and vendor trunk sale, held August 14 at the Algonquin Township Office in Cary, IL. GTR member and CARS president Steve Jahnke, aka Captain NIMO, led the organization of the event and gives us this report.
Here are a few statistics from the show.
Models on the display tables: 101
Models on CARS club table: 150
Pizzas served: 10
Vendors: 12
Trophy Winners (as voted by the participants:
Best Automotive Don Molitor, 1967 Petty NASCAR Plymouth
Best Aircraft: Terry Meisle Lockheed PV-1
Best Military: Don Norton “Into the Berach”
Best Ship: Matt Wieczorek USS Olympia
Best Sci Fi: Matt Wieczork Godzilla
Award Sponsors: IPMS Lakes Region Scale Modelers, Lake Michigan Model Car Club, and Starship Modeler Webzine
