I see your point, Earl. There are however many possible reasons that align with my story (which is after all just a story)... for example, the V-2 nose cones might have been the first production run they tried, and they might not have been willing to pay to remake bad molds for just that one; what was learned from that might have led to better molds for the others, and all of that could have happened within a matter of days.

Digging through Ninfinger's site, I don't find plastic nose cones for sale separately from Estes until the 1974 Custom Parts Catalog; the catalogs up to and including 1974 show only balsa cones. But I'm not actually an expert on this history, just someone who almost lived through it.

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