45a Victor with Black Wheels

[matchboxtom]

45a Victor with Black Wheels

Not often I can add a variation I needed for $4

[GHOSTHUNTER]

A nice addition with those Black wheels, it has certainly been loved by it's previous owner... or was not loved at all and just thrown in a box with other models...

Not sure about the box, it looks to be a too early a box for this late model and considering the condition of the model, the box clearly has not been with the model all it's natural life and I feel it has been added to the model from another source.

Thanks for showing this 'Hard to Find' version.
GHOSTHUNTER.

[matchboxtom]

Box is probably too early. Still nice to have.

[Diecast]

Nice addition to your collection Matchboxtom, and not easy to find the variation with black wheels. I have two variations with BPW but no one with rear silver trim. I think that by very late variations of 45a there was no rear silver trim and the list should be corrected.
Antonin

[kwakers]

Part of the 'Fun' in our hobby is looking for rare variations like the BPW 45a with silver trimmed rear bumper Antonin. Just when you think they do not exist and give up on these even existing, someone here will find a used one in a beater box (You or Jason, LOL) with silver rear bumper trim just as Stannard and Nick have listed.
Harold Colpitts never listed your smaller knobby 8X18 BPW in his 1976 AIM Guide, but had large and small FINE Black plastic wheels listed. Could there be a model with 8X40 BPW out there in someone's collection who has never measured their outside diameter? I also have both the 8X18 knobby, and a 9X36 fine BPW example like yours Antonin, and they are also without silver rear bumpers. We found these brand new in our stores, so we know they are very original.
But, perhaps both these BPW 45As not only exist with silver rear bumpers, but possibly even with as of yet uncoded 8X40 BPW as Harold's AIM Guide from 1976 seems to suggest, or maybe even the 10X36 BPW used on the 28C Jaguar as of May 1964 as the 'large' ones during a shortage of the proper 9X36 last BPW used commonly on this Victor. The 8X40 fine wheels would have been brand new to Lesney and meant for the newly released 23D Trailer as they also used up stocks of the common early 8X18 BPW on them.
As has been said by me so many times here in the last 7 years, it is very hard to correct Mike Stannard's 1985 Guide by REMOVING any variation Antonin. They all eventually seem to be found no matter how rare they may seem to any one of us who have been searching many years for them. We have discussed some we have never found, but we still keep smiling as we are looking for them. Mike saw and documented some of the rarest ones possibly in Lesney's own collection that he had access to? kwakers
BUT, over these last few years we have found many not only hidden, but some very obvious casting differences Stannard seemed to have completely missed. Nick's listings reflect many hours of hard work and study by many of us here, and we will continue on into 2015 and find even more to add.

[kwakers]

By the way, very nice Buy on yours Tom! Could yours have traces of the silver rear bumper trim Antonin has never found on the BPW versions? kwakers

[Diecast]

I agree with you Dick, sometimes a very strange variations may occur, I would be very pleased when somebody here could confirm a variation with rear silver trim & BPW.
I have never seen the variation with BPW ø8x40, do you think, it suits to the chronological line? The production of 45a was finished in the middle of 1965 and the production of 23d Caravan has started in the middle of 1965, but the variation with BPW ø8x40 was a later one. Anyway it would be nice if anybody could show it here.
Antonin

[kwakers]

I always limited my thinking on that 23D Trailer Caravan until today Antonin. You and I thought together on it, early wheels, and then later wheels. It seemed as though all the early versions HAD to have the early 8X18 knobby wheels on them until I really checked our collection over when thinking about large and small fine BPW wheels on the 45A. I actually noticed today that those 8X40 wheels were available for use on the early yellow Trailers with all the first casting details on them, possibly even as they were released to the public in 1965. We know the most common were the 8X18 BPW on all the early yellow variations, yet they are also all found with the 8X40 BPW to prove those wheels' introduction very early in this Caravan's production. I can't prove that Lesney did not have these fine 8X40 wheels in early 1965 because they were already using fine tread 10X36 wheels on the #28 Jaguar in May of 1964 a year earlier. These 8X40 fine BPW MAY have been available and used on a very last run of the 45As to end their production in 1965.
BUT, It also seems that if there really were two different size fine BPW on the last run of 45As, they also could have been the 'stock' 9X36 BPW as 'small', and then the 10X36 BPW (large) as both sizes were also used on the 38B Vauxhall Victor Wagon with red interior. We had found our 38B Wagon with larger rare 10X36 wheels in one of our U.S. stores in the 1960s, but Nick just documented it as a 'new variation' in January of 2010. Perhaps if we all look at these BPW 45As in 2015, we may be able to add the second size fine BPW variation Harold had noted in 1976. Harold is gone, but the models in his collection are still with us somewhere in the world for us to re-discover.
To a Very Happy and Productive New Year in collecting for all of us........ kwakers

[Diecast]

Dick, I will now focus my attention to 45a with fine tread black wheels. I think the wheels ø10x36 would probably be too big for this model. I think that will be more likely to find a model with smaller wheels. Has anyone here more information about 45a with fine tread wheels or even model with BPW ø8x40 or BPW ø10x36?
Antonin

[GHOSTHUNTER]

I can't really add much to this thread except show a picture I have had on-file of what appears to be the '9x36' BPW model, but it does show what is probably the correct box and unpainted rear bumper.

'9x36' Black Plastic Wheels.jpg (111.91 KiB) Viewed 736 times

GHOSTHUNTER.