VBD2 is closed. Please go to https://vbd3.co.uk instead.

I'm only collecting colour combos. All green will probably never cross my path.

yellowfoden wrote:

A-Man-Called-Bwian wrote:I have one of these colour combinations but I have a question: how come they ended up with more green cabs than they had trailers to fit them on? Did some idiot order 40,000 green cabs to go with 39,689 orange trailers? (Numbers are for illustrative purposes only).

You probably need to go back a step given this was a carryover from a major pack and mismatching of components would occur there. Some trailers would have been used for testing, others for colour trials and others simply get damaged during the assembly process and get rejected.

Bert

The green - yellow Guy isn't common but there do seem to be plenty around, and it's even illustrated in some of the catalogues. It might have been poor stock control, and it could even be the result of using up the orange and green paint at different rates. Might it have been an intentional variation that was swiftly dropped to save money? I don't suppose we'll ever know, but maybe we can use Hugh's 10% rule of thumb to work out how many were produced. If there are 10 on VBD and another 10 in sleeper collections, that would make 200. My feeling is that it's many more than that, from the number I've seen on eBay. It's certainly a variation that's easy to spot.

DrJeep wrote:...but maybe we can use Hugh's 10% rule of thumb to work out how many were produced. If there are 10 on VBD and another 10 in sleeper collections, that would make 200. My feeling is that it's many more than that, from the number I've seen on eBay. It's certainly a variation that's easy to spot.

The reason the calculation gives an implausible answer is that you have seriously underestimated the number of known models. \in a case such as this, where the model is not super rare, you need to allow for those which are 'out there' and for sale (for truly rare models, this number is usually zero, hence the reliance on models known to exist to VBD Members).
On the basis of what I've seen, most major swapmeets have one of these for sale, so i would guess the number of knowns to be somewhere between 250 and 500, yielding a low-end estimate of 3,000, and a high-end estimate of 10,000 and that's just for the UK! Multiply by 10(?) for the RoW, and we're looking at 30,000 to 100,000 units - sensible numbers suggesting that the green/yellow model was produced deliberately.

Idris wrote:The reason the calculation gives an implausible answer is that you have seriously underestimated the number of known models. \in a case such as this, where the model is not super rare, you need to allow for those which are 'out there' and for sale (for truly rare models, this number is usually zero, hence the reliance on models known to exist to VBD Members).
On the basis of what I've seen, most major swapmeets have one of these for sale, so i would guess the number of knowns to be somewhere between 250 and 500, yielding a low-end estimate of 3,000, and a high-end estimate of 10,000 and that's just for the UK! Multiply by 10(?) for the RoW, and we're looking at 30,000 to 100,000 units - sensible numbers suggesting that the green/yellow model was produced deliberately.

Yes, I thought that my initial estimate would prove incorrect - not the method! I've done a quick count of Guy transporters sold on eBay UK in the 3 months to today. Here are the results:

green / orange 55
yellow / yellow 30
green / yellow 4
unknown (repaints) 4

My search seems to include Australia but not the rest of the world, which is presumably to do with the way eBay listings are made and whether sellers are prepared to ship to the UK. But it suggests that roughly 5% of available transporters are green / yellow, and that on average there might be 15 to 20 a year on eBay UK alone. That confirms that Hugh's estimate of 250 to 500 survivors is plausible and perhaps even on the low side. I'm inclined towards the idea that this was a deliberate variation, though produced for a short period.

DrJeep wrote:I'm inclined towards the idea that this was a deliberate variation, though produced for a short period.

Sounds good to me.

How many all turquoise Ines, I wonder? 10?

A-Man-Called-Bwian wrote:How many all turquoise Ines, I wonder? 10?

If memory serves, I think I know of six, so double that to twelve and that points to somewhere between six and ten dozen having been manufactured. (Perhaps it was actually a gross, i.e. a dozen dozen).

I've just picked up my second so not rare. There was one on EBay recently but the cab had been repainted a mid leaf green.