ploughmaster

The picture certainly confirms a Case International version with the earlier, square front end existed, but after much searching, I have been unable to find a pic of a 2wd Case International 1056XL with the later style front end

Not only that, but you suddenly realise (to your cost) that your collection is a lot further away from being complete than you realised

I would agree with that Seller states "We are the frist in the UK to get a shipment", so why did he need to steal Andys photos from the other thread http://www.farmtoysforum.com/forum/uploads/emoticons/default_rolleyes.gif' alt='::)'>, instead of taking some pics of his own??: (http://www.farmtoysf...post__p__477916) I hesitate to call him a liar, but I think he is

The one Andy measured up (and put a photo of on the FTF Internationals thread) with registration number BEW 361Y was registered when new in the UK on 29th October 1982, so not a later import

The only other one I have seen for sale was on eBay a couple of years ago and i can't remember how much it sold for . I seem think it may have been over £300 (but it was nowhere near as tidy as that one is). £600 does seem a lot, but if you are an old school collector who is looking for completeness, will you ever see another - it is worth whatever you can afford to acquire it. The seller is well known authority on Britains and Herald plastic figures, so he knows very well what he has got and what he might prise out of someone for it. Sadly, it's way beyond my means.

The original published list price was actually £60, although I don't think it has actually been sold at that price anywhere - around £30 to £35 is about what most sellers have had it priced. It is certainly very good value indeed. It is also an uncatalogued limited run set - I am told Britains themselves have now sold out so the ones that are currently on sale with retailers are all there will be!

I think if they had made the shoe true to scale, it would probably not hold the ring far enough from the carpet to allow the Britains pick-up-hitch to get under it. Agreed it is a rather large lump, but I don't feel that it is a major issue on a sub £20 toy - were it being marketed as a £30 - £40 detailed replica it would be a different matter. Chassis is metal with a sprung drawbar and steering rear wheels; body is plastic

They can't be far from being available for sale - I see they now have the Tomy name on the front of the box.

Looks pretty good to me at first glance. Thanks for giving us a sneak peek It steers (which may rectify the disappointment a few felt about the previous ones). The only real criticism I would make is that perhaps the exhaust silencer is a little undersize (and the the cab steps should be at a little steeper angle). I wonder if they have put the join line along the top of the bonnet which was missing from the previous safety cabbed versions??

They are certainly fairly rare; as you say they weren't built for longevity. Unlike most previous Ford trucks which were manufactured within Ford, they were basically kit built - the engines were sourced from Cummins, transmission from Eaton and cab shipped in complete from Berliet. Shame that restored example is missing the chrome F O R D lettering across the upper panel. There is a pic of the one the County demo team used, lined up with some of Basildons Transcontinentals, in John Hulls book 'The Best Job Ever' Completely unrelated to County (as they were Ford, Roadless and Muir Hill dealers), I remember that Lincolnshire Motors (or Hartford Motors Agricultural as they were at the time) ran a Transcontinental out of their (now long gone) Caistor depot in the late 70s/early 80s.

Some great photos there, including some interesting and unusual versions that we didn't see around even when they were in production. I thought it was odd too. I don't know the actual provenance of that ERF, but I do know that County Commercial Cars ran a fleet of about 10 D-series Fords during most of the 70's, and they had at least one Ford Transcontinental in the late 70's which was used for transporting the demonstrators around.

I'm sorry about that - I had thought they were metal when I looked, but on closer examination I think I may have been mislead by them being painted over the plastic.

I think if you look at the pic on Outback Toys carefully, you will find it is the same prototype with the right hand dual wheel tread the wrong way that we have already seen (better pictures of) in the Ertl 2011 thread (http://www.farmtoysf...11/page__st__40) I will be very surprised if the model has working grain tank lids, but how anyone can tell from the very poor quality pic on Outback Toys website is beyond me Seeing the way it operates on the full sized machine, it is difficult to see how it can be made to work satisfactorily and be robust enough on a 32nd scale toy. It is a bit disappointing to see that it has a rigid tank auger when the full sized machines are more often seen with the split auger which folds across the rear (and was featured on the previous Ertl dealer edition). The price in the USA is given as $67.99 - about £44 or 52 euro at current exchange rates, which is probably the same sort of price that the European/Britains version is likely to be when it is released in the Autumn. The Ertl Prestige collection is on a par with the Britains Heritage and Collectables items in respect of detail, but due to the very much tighter toy safety laws in the USA, are generally marked as suitable for age '14+' only. To achieve the requirements for the '3+' age guidelines we are used to seeing in Europe, Ertl have to strip off most of the extraneous detail (eg. cab step handrails, mirrors, light stalks) to create what they refer to as a 'shelf' issue. T o answer CX820Joe, the largest header available in Europe is 10.7 metres (35 feet) (to be honest, I doubt if the S690i will quite manage to keep up with a well set up Lexion 770 ) There is a 40 feet header available in other markets such as North America and Australia.

They already do - the last time I looked most of the Claas tractors were still being built in the former Renault tractor plant in Le Mans

The five different coloured Valmets were commissioned by the Dutch importer; and the emphasis here is different colours - the problem with a blue County, from Britains point of view, was that it would be a third tractor in the same colour. In reality most of us would have liked a blue one, but at the time Britains were very muich orientated towards sales as a childrens toy (and mainly through toy shops in those days) and of course back then there were massively fewer actual collectors than now (for example, Spalding toy tractor fair in those days fitted into the now demolished old Springfields restaurant with about a dozen stall holders in a space about a third of the size of the smaller hall of the exhibition centre )

As Tractorman810has said, any blue County 1184 that you see will be a conversion as it was never issued by Britains in blue. I think Warner Hall made clear in one of his magazine articles that the only genuine blue one was the prototype which he made for Britains. Britains were (at the time of release) asked why they were not making them in blue and the official reason given was that as they already had two blue tractors in the range (Ford 5610 and TW35), they didn't want another one, and used the excuse that County would produce a tractor in whatever colour the customer wanted, which whilst quite true, was certainly extremely rare. Britains will have run some colour trials and picked the colours which they felt would look best on the shop shelf. County certainly produced industrial versions of a number of their tractors painted yellow, although I don't know that any 1884s were painted yellow and I think a white one is highly unlikely. The last version of the 1884 as portrayed by Britains (with the last version of the bubble cab with the larger roof and black mudguards) had only just become available from County Tractors Ltd when David Gittins sold the company to Bensons in 1987 and whilst it is known that at least one 1884 was built with this cab, it is certain that no more than a handful could have been made in total. The one that is known to exist may well be the only one??

I think that is what you have got

I don't really see how it is possible to put a specifiic figure on limited runs - it will be governed by who the manufacturer is, the OEM of the model, and therefore how many could be expected to be produced in a normal non-limited run. All issues are limited, whether it be by setting a specific production run to start with, or simlpy producing until they stop selling - once the item is out of production it has reached a 'limit' To be a truly 'limited edition', the numbers would need to be not only substantially less than a normal production run, but also significantly less than the number of people who might want one at the time/price of release (as some issues have been in recent years), and I think we need to differentiate between a 'Limited Edition' and a 'Special Edition'; which is available in more substantial numbers. .

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by "wheel inserts" ?? If you are asking about the wheel rims/wheel centres, then they are metal

Most of the 32nd precisions that Ertl have produced have sold poorly - the first version of the 8400, both the more recent 8430 and 8530 and the Case Steiger STX have ended up being sold off cheap to get rid of them - even now there are a fair number of the 8430 and 8530 still for sale in JD dealers and on eBay (and no, they were not a rehash of the earlier model ) ). Bearing in mind the level of detail now being achieved on the standard issues, I don't think the precisions would offer an improvement in detail in line with the price they would need to be. As I have said before, I don't expect to see any more 32nd scale precision models from Ertl.

Aaah.... I understand what you mean - I had forgotten about 42111. I have no idea why it was dropped so quickly - it was quite a good model and was released in late 2007 and withdrawn at the end of 2009. The number LRO1911 will be the part number for the Land Rover dealerships. You have no need to worry about your English - it is pretty good (and hugely better than my attempts at any other language )

This business with the non-appearance of pictures and sellers having to continually sign in again (often being unable to submit their listings at all) has been going on sporadically for several weeks, but does not seem to affect everybody, and those affected don't seem to be affected all of the time. I've had the picture problem on two or three occassions. There have been a number of threads on the eBay discussion boards on the issue - it seems most likely that eBay are fiddling about with changes to the software again (whenever they are trying out some new function, it nearly always results in some problem of this nature surfacing). Some things take longer to put right again than others.

It simply means that the underbidder has submitted a bid which, although more than the minimum bid increment, is nonetheless below your bid - in your example they probably sniped a bid of £30.50 in the last few seconds of the listing, which would still leave you as the high bidder even thouigh there is less than a full bid increment between their bid and yours.

I have far more time on my hands than I would like I used a combination of trade catalogues, New Lines catalogues (where I have them), and referring to James Opies 'Great Book of Britains'. The 1974 non-release was the 9566 High Sided Tipper Cart, which I was told buy a retailer at the time had to be witheld because of a shortage of materials - it was around the time of UK financial calamities and the oil crisis and the 3 day week. It was shown again as a new item the following year and it finally appeared that spring (1975). Your impression of not much being released years ago is probably right - in some of the years where there were larger numbers of releases, many of them were plastic figures and animals, or buildings and accessories rather than tractors and implements and, in some years, the new releases include re-coloured or rebadged models that were labelled in the catalogue as a new item (as indeed some are this year \ ).

Last year - there were 25 new releases marked in the catalogue last year (although two of them didn't appear in the end - the Kane trailers). Purely for the sake of interest (and because I was bored and had a mad urge to have a count up); the approximate number of new releases including buildings, figures and accessories marked in the catalogue each year since the launch of the first tractor in 1948 runs as follows (I have not counted sets unless they contain unique items not available on their own, and have not included repackaged items such as the mass repackaging of the animals and accessories which happened in 2004): 2012 - 25 2011 - 25 (2 not issued) 2010 - 11 new items 2009 - 11 2008 - 6 2007 - 22 2006 - 14 2005 - 19 2004 - 18 2002 - 21 2001 - 9 2000 - 6 1999 - 17 1998 - 15 1997 - 12 1996 - 11 1995 - 7 1994 - 4 1993 - 26 (includes 22 newly sculpted animals) 1992 - 10 1991 - 12 1990 - 7 1989 - 16 1988 - 9 1987 - 7 1986 - 16 1985 - 9 1984 - 10 1983 - 10 1982 - 20 1981 - 7 1980 - 11 1979 - 14 1978 - 7 1977 - 7 1976 - 9 1975 - 4 1974 - 1 (and then it didn't appear until 1975!!) 1973 - 2 1972 - 11 1971 - 17 1970 - 10 1969 - 2 1968 - 9 1967 - 1 1966 - 3 1965 - 6 1964 - 6 1963 - 11 1962 - 3 1961 - 12 1960 - 9 1959 - 20 (all were Herald plastic figures) 1958 - 43 (all plastic figures or buildings/accessories) 1957 - 17 all were (Herald figures) 1956 - 17 (Launch of 16 Herald farm animals + new cab on Farm lorry 1955 - 0 1954 - 1 1953 - 0 1952 - 1 1951 - 1 1950 - 2 1949 - 2 1948 - 5