Thursday, 24 July 2025

Able Archer / RFR rules - Last haul from a 2nd hand fair

 


One of my biggest pleasures, exceptuating the ones were small people are made (or not), is to find old kits that remind me of my childhood. And I think this craze is increasing with the end of the  old style  model shops. So last month I had  news from one of my down town informers (can´t say his name), the one that sells my mother Corin Tellado books, that in Tomar, a city some 70 km from Coimbra (as a side note, Coimbra is still the capital of Portugal, as there is no document of any transfer of capital to Lisbon) a guy nicknamed Zé Manco (Joseph Lame, in english) was selling a large quantity of old plastic models at the 2nd hand fair of Tomar, on the first sunday of each month. So there I was looking for the guy on that day. Not easy as the fair is huge, but I saw a lame guy moving with some difficulty and I was sure to have found my target. 

Among plenty of others, I found these 5 old treasures in perfect conditions:

- The Lancaster will go along with the Revell one I showed a month or so ago just because two is much better than one
- The Sheridan will go to my 11th Black Horse Regiment in Vietnam
- The T-34/85 (had no idea that Polistil made 1/72nd models) with go to the NVA
- The Skyhawk will go also to the Vietnam
- The Seagull will go Guadalcanal as this campaign is starting to bite my brain.

Next month I´ll be there again at Tomar as Zé Manco still has a big box at home that he didn´t bring last time. 

Next: More Vietnam, mostly vehicles

6 comments:

  1. Thanks Neil. Nice memories from my 80s.

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  2. The Polistil kit may be Esci. There was some link as the Polistil name used to appear with Esci on the kit boxes in the UK. Not sure why - perhaps Scalemates could help?

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  3. Thanks Jeffers. Esci only had the T-34 /41 and the T-34/42 (the one with the "mickey mouse" ears). Besides, this model looks closer to 1/76 than 1/72. But you are right on the connection between Polistil and Esci as I checked Scalemates. Even so this tooling is from 1974 and the Esci models started in 1976 with a completely (and bigger) different model.

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    1. I like a good mystery! 😁

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    2. Me too. But as you are one of my more faithful followers I can send you the guy´s name. In code, obviously :)

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