a question of age.........

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Beowulf Shaeffer
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a question of age.........

Post by Beowulf Shaeffer »

sorry if this question has been asked/answered before......cant find any thing elsewhere on the site and this seemed the right place on the forum to ask


my question is there a way of roughly telling the age of an airfix kit by the packaging or instructions?

the reason i ask is that my next project is likely to be the LVT4/jeep kit that i picked up on ebay recently..........now i know its been around a long time (i can remember doing it over 30 years ago!) but i was just wondering how old my particular example was............cos the decals are completly unusable......the instructions are just as yellow! :lol: ......only date i can find is on the box and thats the copyright 1977......somewhere once i found a site that listed what kind of packaging was introduced when but cant find it again
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MerlinJones

Re: a question of age.........

Post by MerlinJones »

The answer lies within the boxart and box style.

Check this site out, Collecting Airfix Kits;
http://pws.prserv.net/gbinet.dbjames/index.htm;

...And in particular, this section, devoted to packaging styles;
http://pws.prserv.net/gbinet.dbjames/types.htm;

Regards,
Bruce
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Beowulf Shaeffer
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Re: a question of age.........

Post by Beowulf Shaeffer »

ooooo...cheers for that Bruce! *bookmarks site* that will come in useful

so my Buffalo's box is a type 5 which makes it pre 1977!.......................which i think was about the last time i made it! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: a question of age.........

Post by Dirkpitt289 »

I was going to say cut it in half and count the rings. Good thing Bruce was here to answer that question. :mrgreen: :ha:
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Beowulf Shaeffer
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Re: a question of age.........

Post by Beowulf Shaeffer »

Brews wrote:If you think your box is pre-1977 yet the box has a date of 1977 on it for the copyright, then i would say that the box is at least 1977.
in which case the website is incorrect :-D cos it deffo aint the type 6 :lol:

i was interested cos i have quite a few old airfix kits..........i see stuff like the times they had to put a pic of the actual built kit isnt on that site.........i know i have stuff like canberra and me109 that fall into that age bracket

im assuming that since the site dosnt go past the 'early 80s' they dont think anything past that is collectable and therefore dont have it listed
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capri3
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Re: a question of age.........

Post by capri3 »

You may find you have a 1977 kit that's been put in an earlier box. I have several kits in my collection that are later kits in earlier boxes or vice versa, all bought on Ebay.
Most obvious was a Fairey Battle in a 1960's box but the contents were from much later.
Not that it mattered to me as I'm a builder, not a collector and I got it cheap. I can see how some people would be upset if they were deliberately seeking an early 'collectable' release though and maybe paying a price that reflected this.
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Re: a question of age.........

Post by JamesPerrin »

Beowulf Shaeffer wrote:
Brews wrote:If you think your box is pre-1977 yet the box has a date of 1977 on it for the copyright, then i would say that the box is at least 1977.
in which case the website is incorrect :-D cos it deffo aint the type 6 :lol:
The answer to that is that is simple took time for new box styles to be introduced. They didn't all change on the 1 Jan '77. The new box style could have been introduced any time during the year.
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