As I begin to collect the larger scales seriously, and as I experiment with eBay and try to build up the dreaded (and increasingly meaningless) 'Feedback', I have been picking up a fair few bargains which I'll be showing highlights of over the next few days. This was one of them.
Reasonably accurately described by the seller, as
'Scalecraft Saladin Tank Near Complete' or something similar, it had no bids and I picked it up for 99p with a hour to go? When you see what two people will bid each other up to for a pile of schisser sometimes, you begin to realise eBay is a madhouse!
It is in fact totally complete, even down to the stickers and has only two bits of minor damage, a loose command pennant and a broken lifting ring/towing eye, which was broken by the good old Post Office and is sitting in a clic-seal bag waiting a superglue session, as this is made of an ethylene and will be hard to glue.
It's true that it has no motor, but they were sold with or without, built or in kit-form to fit every budget so that's no problem!
Scalecraft made a few of these kits, including an imaginary amphibious truck, an
MTB in near 1:76 scale and the best
Thunderbird Two! I think they made
T1 and
T3 as well? All clip together and pre-coloured.
I guess the lack of interest lies in the fact that it's not German, American or from the Second World War? But it's real life cousin has seen more action than a lot of post war designs, famously in the streets of Kuwait City and along the beach front when the Iraqis invaded in the early 1990's, but also Oman/Radfan, Indonesia, Central/South America, Sri Lanka and various African conflicts.
When the
Saladin was withdrawn from service 'down under' the Australians put the turrets on their US supplied
M113's, but proving top heavy they replaced them with
Scorpion turrets as soon as they became available (rather like our
432B/432-30 with the
Fox scout car's 30mm
Rarden turret), however it meant half-a-saladin saw service in that iconic cold-war conflict - Vietnam.