Getting a little off topic, but I recently got an educators' kit from 1979 that includes an Alpha with balsa nose cone, make your own chute, etc. All in pristine condition, including the letter to the teacher from Estes. Interesting to look at, but I'm afraid to build it!
Like if someone was finishing antique furniture - be very careful with it!
Be like the people over at YORF. Keep that on the shelf and buy all the parts to clone it from eRockets or BMS.
I already have a new and modern (plastic) version. But I'm not really a collector of "vintage" (read "old") kits. I like to build them... eventually.
But I'm sure someone out there would buy it from me for way more than it's worth.
That's not really my thing though.
This is thread drift, but since you two have brought out the Alpha history geek in me, I have to put in a few things:
The Alpha (originally BNC-50K balsa nose cone, and later two different blow-molded plastic ones) is
not the same model as the Alpha III (plastic fin can, elliptical injection-molded nose cone with the tiny screw eye off to one side). I was going to say apples-to-oranges comparison but it's probably more like Gala vs. Cosmic Crisp apples....
Cloning the original Alpha (or actually likely the second variant, with the two AR-2050 centering rings on the motor mount, since that's what'll be in that 1979 vintage kit) is easy. The Semroc BNC-50K nose cone at eRockets is the currently-available nose cone that is closest to the original shape. You'd also need a motor hook without a finger tab (I think eRockets sells those as well, as do a couple of other vendors). The rest is all widely available parts.
Either building that Alpha or cloning it will give you a better performing (as in, flies higher on a given motor) model than one built from a current kit. The difference in weight due to the one-piece centering "ring" in particular is enough to make a difference.
I had to be amused at calling the Alpha III the "modern" version. From this distance, in early 2024, they're in their 50s. The original K-25 Alpha first appeared in a Model Rocket News in December of 1965. It has undergone a bunch of detail changes since then, but is still available today.
The Alpha III (plastic fins) first appeared in the 1971 catalog and reached the configuration sold today (orange plastic parts, black body tube, finger-tab motor hook and peel-n-stick markings rather than waterslides) 30 years ago, first appearing that way in the 1993 Estes catalog. It is, for all intents and purposes, unchanged since then — different mainly in where some of the parts are made and the kits are packaged — and the asking price.
@Capt. Eric does that 1979 Alpha have die-cut fins or does it have the SP-25 fin pattern sheet and just a 3x9 ion piece of 3/32 inch thick balsa in the kit? According to the timeline I've built, it should be just the sheet balsa and the pattern....unless it's an educator's kit that's really marked Alpha II. Then it would have die cut fins. I'm curious to know the details of yours.
We now return you to the discussion of Estes' pricing policies and the Great Goblin...