As noahnoahnoah's comment alludes to, there is kind of a problem with elevation differences on Earth being small. For example, the vertical distance from sea level to the summit of Mt. Everest is only 0.1% of the Earth's radius.

If you made a globe with a 1 foot diameter, Mt. Everest should then be on about 0.2 millimeters above the surface (if you choose to represent sea level as the surface).

Edit: this problem is less dramatic if you make either models either of local regions, or extremely large models (because relative to the size of a region like the Bay Area, the highest elevations in the region are fairly high).

You are absolutely right, it hit me as well after posting the questing. The elevations would have to be vastly exaggerated for a globe