N is for New Finds, Pt.5 - Kit Lot

At Sandown Park the other week I encountered a chap who had a stack of kit boxes, mostly AFV's but a few aircraft and a ship or two. Checking a couple of boxes it was clear they were not what one might call mint! The seller leaned over and said "They've been given a good seeing-to, make me an offer!"

Well, I started sorting them into stacks of 'apparently mint' and 'buggered about with' and asked him what he wanted for the buggered-about stuff, which included a couple of bags of bits and all the either empty boxes, or boxes with signs of tampering, plus an envelope of header cards and transfers. A deal was done...

Top image is how they came home, the lower image is sorting in progress. It turned out to be a reasonable spares purchase, not least than because there was a complete Airfix Matilda and Bren/6lbr in their bags, five Midori squeezed into one box with the wheels, tyres and gear-cogs in the other box...no casings for the pull-back motors though, just loose cogs!

The header cards will have to be checked against the collection as there are two distinct printings of the 2nd type 'full-artwork' cards. The early 1:50 Tamiya Crusader was pretty much absent, but the box is good and all three instruction sheets, the parts for wiring-up the motor and the plastic motor-housing were present along with the transfer sheet, so I may get something back on evilBay one day for that?

Further investigation revealed that the little tin of bits for a Cole's Crane suspension (and front mudguard) was from another kit, and this one is complete on the runner, so I feel a couple of conversions coming-on there, one day! The bags of bits contained the missing turrets for the Midori tanks and most of the 'medium sized' parts for most of the kits in the Airfix inventory (no JS.III or modern armour), along with a complete Bloodhound, launcher and transport trailer.

But...no AFV hulls or running gear (clearly in another bag, 'bagged' earlier in the day) and few wheels. The wheels aren't a big problem I have a lot in the spares dept., but turrets without hulls are a bit of a pain! There were also several floor-plates for the 5.5in Gun Paul posted on Mystery Model Monday, but a week when I wasn't on-line, typical!!

There's something very reassuring about a well stocked spares dept. no?