eBay - PayPal - Tyranny at work          04-20-2017

The tyranny of eBay and PayPal. Are these helpful services??? Sure, but just how seller friendly are they? We went behind the scenes to find out. To start with eBay has some support although the customer service reps are often hard to understand, and vice-versa, unless you happen to get lucky and get someone in England in which case you will most likely be happy with your support. PayPal on the other hand only has a very minimal and poorly trained third party support service which often takes 20-60 minutes just to get to someone, who most likely will end up transferring you to someone else, big waste of time, you are much better off writing a letter and mailing it to them, same works for eBay as trying to get ahold of anyone at their corporate headquarters is comparable to winning the lottery 3 times in a row, which would be easier by the way, so take the time, type or write it out, look up their respective headquarters address and mail it away. It will be less frustrating, save you more time, and probably get better results, just make sure you send it first class with signature required.

MTH Collectibles & HajeksHobbys        01-20-2017

Slot Cars are back and we carry thousands of vintage, unique and custom slot cars in stock and have hundreds listed for sale online so get ready to browse. If you don't see something you are looking for then contact us at MDH1948@CenturyLink.Net  or DVHajek@Gmail.com and we will be happy to help you find the car or collectible that you are looking for, thank you and see you at the track.

LeMans is here                                       11-05-2016

The Scalextric name stirs fond memories of fighting with your siblings and friends on the track. Courses that spanned from room to room and place to place with fun and wonder. Do not let your children (or yourself) pass this opportunity by to once again battle on fun tracks, car against car. This year Scalextric will offer a LeMans set for a reasonable price, usually starting around $149.99, which makes a wonderful holiday gift for the entire family. The set includes two LeMans Prototype style cars and nearly 15 or so feet of track, with additional expansion packs available for the more experienced builders. This track by itself is capable of being arranged into four layouts which make a nice beginning to your track adventures. There are loads of track expansions and the number of cars you can now get is nearly unimaginable. Don’t be afraid to jump in and ignite that passion for racing and give your children or yourself something that you can use for a lifetime. Checkout our expanded list of cars and remember just because they are a different brand does not mean you cannot use them on this track, most slot cars will run on this great Scalextric track regardless of the brand IE: Carrera, Ninco, Fly, Eldon, Strombecker, SCX, Hornby and many others so get started today with this LeMans Track pack.

                                                                                                                           05-12-2016

We know that sometimes you just want to look at one category of items so we have setup a additional site just for slot cars at http://HajeksHobbys.com and we will only list Slot Cars on this store to make it easy for you so head on over and take a look, we look forward to helping you find the slot car('s) thats right for you.

Here at MTH Collectibles we strive to not only find, restore, repair, and customize new items but also create fantastic new items like this 6 car three team pit garage with 2^nd floor VIP level. Once complete it will contain lighting, posters, signs, figures and crew and more, so check back soon for the first completed pit garage. Contact us if you have any special requests or would like to buy one as soon as it is complete.

MakerBot Troubles and possible fixes                 07-27-2015

It is sad as they seemed to have started out with some forward thinking and good intentions but then they were bought out, or sold out, and the new CEO and new parent company Stratasys seems to be conscerned only with getting as much money out of people for products that DO NOT DO WHAT THEY ADVERTISE so that they can continue their research. I have asked to be part of any BETA program as I have done this with Intel, AMD, Samsung and a few other companies, they send me confidential pre-production products (usually for 30 days) and i test them and write a report back about what issues, bugs, problems, etc i found and then they take my report along with the report of others in the beta programs and improve the product. This saves on R&D and having to pay employees to do all the grunt work and it give's a limited few the chance to test out new potential products (after you sign confidentiallity forms and the such) and there is some stuff that you can say, like how i got to test the intel Hex core series of CPU's way before they came out, kind of like my friends at MaximumPC and PC World, were you can tell people, "hey look out for a possible new CPU, it should be really great" and leave it at that, unless you are Future Media or some other publication and you have a little more freedom as to what you can say about the products but MakerBot refuses to do any such program which is just a darn shame as it could help them tremendously, especially being a Mechanical Engineer with a minor in Electrical Engineering and lots of real world practice, i would have no problem signing a confidentiallity form or something if it would mean getting to test out and report on new products, and make suggestions on how to make them better. Also with the Hobby Shop we have access to all kinds of tools so we could even make rough prototypes to send back with our suggestion forms to show what works, what doesn't, what is good and what is a useless feature so common MakerBot, get you act together and develope a program like that so this giant community can help improve and develope products with you instead of you hiding products behind closed doors and then rolling out Alpha, or Beta versions of products as "New Products" when you darn well know there are serious problems. So that is more thoughts and suggestions. 

Keep the comments coming here and on Facebook.

MakerBot or MakerNot                                            07-26-2015

MakerBot Digitizer, Biggest POS I have seen in a long time. The construction is very flimsy, and the lasers are surrounded by a rubber padding that continually misaligns your lasers, this is why MakerBot tells you to recalibrate about every 20 scans. Next the housing and screws for adjusting, these are T-15 Torx screws and one wrong slip and you have stripped them and you are stuck with a very pricey paperweight for your desk. This could be tolerated if it wasn't for the worst part which is the Makerware software, it is extremely unintuitive and there is no way to stop a render once it scans a cloud mesh, it just turns your objects in to blobs. Sure if you want to scan a can, or a soda bottle it pretty much makes it, but anything with the slightest bit of complexity and you had better sign up for a 3D modeling class at your local university as you will need to learn how to use ACAD, Blender, MAYA, or some other 3D design software to repair all the edges, surfaces and parts of your scan that the Makerware software has added to your scan. Our hobby shop purchased one of these and all I can say is that not only is this MakerBot Digitizer a terrible piece of tech, but its price can only be described as criminal as you are going to spend $800+ for the unit and then you had better buy the Makercare service plan if you want to have any clue at all on how to do anything with it. 28 days in and neither of my techs have been able to get it to work to the point where we could "just click twice to scan, and you’re ready to print" as it is described in the marketing material. We all understand that the 3D scanning tech is in its infancy but to push what my techs, wouldn't even dare call a Beta version of a product like this, on the open public and then force them to pay for phone support (as you will have a very difficult time trying to convey your problems over email) is just plain nuts. We have dealt with stubborn manufactures and vendors with poor reliability but never have we seen such raw, and amateur products put up for sale. During my years studying Mechanical Engineering at Charles University in Prague (an extremely prestigious, nearly 700 year old university, http://cuni.cz/ ok it's only 667 years old), a product like this digitizer or the "smart" extruder's for the MakerBot printers would have gotten me kicked out of class or possibly the entire engineering program as these products are so poorly thought-out and roughly designed that I do not even want to think of what school, much less a university would have allowed these people to become engineers. At any rate if you are thinking about getting into 3D printing, be warned if you go this route as you will spend more time with tech support then you will scanning, printing, eating, sleeping or doing anything productive, in summary; just wait as the technology is clearly NOT here yet and companies like MakerBot and others are pushing products that they know are flawed on a unsuspecting public and making them pay a premium price. Thank you all for reading, those of you that made it through. I have to go get something nice for my I.T. guys as I have been pushing them really hard on this 3D scanning/printing problem and I know that they are doing the best they can with what they have but it just simply isn't enough at this time.

Sincerely

MTH Collectibles

Online Store Updates                                             04-28-2015

We take pride in everything that we do and we recently sent out surveys to many of our customers and followers for ideas on what we could do to make your shopping experience better on our online store, here are some of the items that have been and are being deployed to our updated online store:

1. SmartPhone Visability - Many SmartPhones apparently had a difficult time viewing some of the options on our old online store layout, so we have improved that and tested it on Apple, and Android SmartPhones to ensure a improved experience.

2. Tablet compatibility - Apparently some tablets, much like the hundreds of different types of SmartPhones had a difficult time viewing our entire page, and some of the other features of our online store and that is something that we have now addressed as well, so no longer will you be chained to a desktop or bulky laptop when you want to shop on our online store, now you will be able to shop using your SmartPhone and/or Tablet as well.

3. Page Buttons - It was brought up in the survey that the page buttons were difficult to navigate so we have made larger buttons, and added a "light up" feature when you hover or touch the page you want to browse which will make selecting a category much easier.

4. We are adding more videos and will try to put videos of at least some of the cars that we have for sale running on one of our test tracks so that you can see a slot car and/or Train in action. Currently we only have two cameras and one is too bulky to fit on many of the slot cars so we are accepting donations via paypal, and will be setting a percentage of each sale into a mini-video camera fund so that we can provide you with some exciting videos.

5. The Font's - It was also mentioned that some of the font's/text size was difficult to read and we are currently in the process of updating all our items, however due to the sheer amount in our inventory this is expected to take some time to complete all the changes, but we will be posting all new items for sale in a larger, more friendly and readable size.

6. Easier PayPal CheckOut - We have spoken with our hosting company and have worked out a new option for buying items called "PayPal Mini Shop" which will help you purchase an item using PayPal quickly and securely.

There are several more items that we are updating and addressing but we wanted to list at least a few of the major changes to show you that we do listen to your suggestions and that we want to make you comfortable buying from us. Please bare with us during these updates.

Sincerely

MTH Collectibles

It is here, our 1960’s style Pit-Lane/Garage for 1/32 scale slot car tracks. This building is massive and comes with flooring and posters with checkered trim along the ceiling, reflective garages to shine more light from the replaceable bulbs in each set of garages. The 2^nd level walkway and balcony include team managers and a news table along with other interior trim for the VIP level. Sponsor posters and flags are on the third (top floor) with a Control Tower, Grandstands, and vending machines. This set includes three great slot cars (Ferrari, Porsche & Lotus) as well as a pit crew for each team. The build has taken several months but it is done and ready for sale, so get your wallets out as this is a unique item that will spice up any slot car track.