Rover 3500 Collection

[RacingFreak]

After a little pause, here's the latest one:



Very lucky to have won this, absolutely mint one (on acceptable price, dare I say !), but the hunting will go on still !!

[familybucket43]

Very nice,matchbox also did this colour with a white interior too...

[David Tilley]

Well I finally had a chance to do a few little things today. I found some of my normal civilian Rovers....

I do have others too, as well as a bunch of later Police versions too, but I did not find those at this time.


Here you can see a change with the way the sunroof opened between preproduction and production examples. The prepro had the window stretching up through the gap to form a sort of visor. The tab to slide back is also much smaller. The production vehicles all had a full width tab and no window protrusion.

My prepro has a lack of paint in some spots on the one side.

Some class this as a prepro, but examples were found in the G-1Car Transporter set in the UK, so to me that means it is a production model. I would hazard a guess though that it was not supposed to be produced, but so many prepros existed that they just wasted them in the sets to get rid of them. As they were sold in stores that counts them as production models as far as I am concerned.

White, tan and brown interiors on the standard bronze one (as well as shade variations).

I will continue to hunt more of these down as the bronze seems to have some good shading on it, plus I am still to get a wheel variation.

[RacingFreak]

Superb David! Now thanks to your close up picture of the prepro, I can see the different windows and sunroof castings better. It's also needed to mention the yellow interior (which in fact is found in similar shade in the Z.F. Manaus issue!). If only they made the sunroof itself in black

Your yellow variation is just fabulous

Today I've came across an interesting Rover Museum page and there's a scale model collection of Rovers. This is a very interesting variation:



Also this!

http://rovermuseum.nl/?categorie=234

Looking forward seeing more Rovers from you

[Taniwha]

Been looking for a yellow Rover since I saw it way back in the catalogue before it even got to shops here in NZ. So, all I have are these two variants:



This was my favourite Matchbox toy as a kid, always wanted the real thing when I grew up and once flirted with buying one (a five speed manual Vanden Plas V8) to the point of taking it home for the weekend to "test". Was too expensive at the time though. I'd previously owned a beat up 1971 Rover P6 2000SC which I loved, but ended up selling to a bloke who used it in a Demolition Derby...those were the days.

Cheers,
Gavin

[RacingFreak]

Great ones Gavin!

And just arrived few minutes ago this MOC Rover 3500 in the rarer BLUE package (more common appear to be green and yellow ones):



Also.. since when Royal Mail are using JETS or.. rocket launchers?! It was sent on 1st and just arrived today, 4th! I expected it to arrive atleast on the end of the week, wtf. I never had postage that fast and it was only £4

[David Tilley]

I thought I would share this link.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/pic ... me=2619118

Hopefully this will take you directly to picture 4 on the photospread. I discovered that when The Daily Telegraph were busy taking photos of me and my collection, the photographer took this shot which had the yellow Rover 3500 as well as a green Golf and they put it on their website.

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Hello David, fame at last, eh!

Just think, all those royalty cheques will come flooding in to you every time those images will be seen by the general public, is retirement now on the cards

I don't collect general Matchbox, so obviously I don't have any of your Rover models, but that yellow example does look really nice, its funny how models look better in certain colours and not others.

Keep on collecting and carry on enjoying the forum,

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

[RacingFreak]

Realized I totally abandoned this thread

I've got this dark tan interior variation in mint box + a neat Rover SD1 brochure/booklet from Moyboy back last year:


It's the darkest interior shade I have so far, thank you so much Mick!





I've been lucky enough to get these two canadian blisters too:


And my second Germany packaged Rover 3500 (the other being the Rover 3500 Police in blisterbox from MB Intl. era)





Very happy from my achievements last year, hopefully there will be even more to come this year!

[RacingFreak]

Got this one today, finally a dark shade in mint condition! Surprisingly, it's exactly the same shade as my another one from last year (which also was later on unriveted, cleaned up and fitted with dark interior. I plan on repainting it as it was a placeholder anyway for when I get another such :



(yes, it's also cream interior, shall I call that a nice combo? )

And the whole collection so far (with exception of 4 more that are put away for restoration):