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What a great way to drum up business :D
ER MER GERD!! The world is running out of slot car braid(and 22 cal. ammo) :lol:

I suppose its an anticlimax to mention that we used desoldering braid for decades...

Had a couple phone calls and I think we will be ok.

Yeah, but the bozos still stampeded to the stores to buy it all up. Think they figured out they had been hosed? Nope.

I can get all the .22 ammo I want, 2 boxes at a time. My local ammo supplier is on to the auction and Craigslist guys and sells them 2 at a time per day. I've got plenty as I keep finding them in the house so I've only bought 2 myself. Braid is like potato chips, they'll make more. I personally don't use Parma braid, too stiff. :)

Parma braid is still listed as being available on their website. The braid has brass clips for use with 1/24th scale commercial raceway type guide flags, I would not use it on 1/32nd cars.

The fact is that Parma has not had any of the 1/24th Big Mama braid for some time, Mike McDowell came on a couple of sites to say that Parma was having massive problems with their Chinese partners and that was the reason for the non availability of the braid and the 501 Death Star 16D motors. About three weeks ago Parma started to get the braid back into stock but the price had about doubled from $1.00 a pair to about $2.00 per pair. The lack of 16D motors not only has put a damper on the sales of motors but Parma has not had any to put into their RTR Womps and FCR cars. Some womps were shipped with the rotor motor as a stop gap but Mike has stated he would not ship the FCRs until the 501 was again available. I know that this has little if any effect on the plastic based Slot Racing Hobby, however, some of the struggling commercial tracks are hurting because many of them based their lower scale racing program on this motor.

If it gets critical, I'll be willing to dig into my box and sell off some of those Parma motors. I don't have anywhere to run them anymore, and it really wasn't my kind of racing, anyway. I can get along fine with replacements from my motor box. Keep my HRW name handy if it gets bad. But I will say that Parma is big and rich, and they can weather the storm, I'm sure.

In order to gain market share many Chinese companies sold things at cost. Many American and European companies could not resist sourcing things from China, but now the cows have come home. The cost of labor has gone up in China and Chinese companies are no longer willing to sell their products at cost. In the meantime the factories that once made all sorts of things here have closed.