69c Rolls Royce Silver Shadow

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Hello Chfalkensteiner,

This is the first time I have seen a picture of the so-called 'flat black' base.

Very interesting, now I have seen one, I see that the model has the 1st body casting and the first front bumper and grille component, (no little rectangular cut-out at the rear of the registration plate)...and it has the 'short' seat moulding, as I suspected all along.

I can see why Nick has put this version on his code listing as 'Code 1', without an example of the 'long seat' version, a flat black base could easily be taken for an early production run of 69c, so Nick will have to move it up slightly in the listing.

Any chance you can show the rest of this models body, interior and the inside of the wheels, for further identification, so I can advise Nick where it would be better placed in his listing, cheers.

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

[ChFalkensteiner]

I am not sure which parts of the model I should take pictures of to provide any more information. To my eyes it looks exactly the same as my gloss black base example with all solid wheels, except for the baseplate colour.

The wheels are all solid, with only the rear left side wheel having a tread pattern on the outside. That wheel has the number "02A" cast on the inside, while the numbers on the other three wheels are "28H", "29H" and "33".

The notion of this model being an early issue comes mainly from the fact that the same flat black colour is otherwise only found on the baseplates of regular wheel models from 1969 (as far as I know).

Of course that does not mean that it is the first issue. Batches of baseplates in that flat black colour may well have been used after gloss black baseplates, or alternately at the same time, so both baseplate colours might be found with the long as well as the short seat moulding - but so far this is just speculation.

[GHOSTHUNTER]

[quote="ChFalkensteiner"]I am not sure which parts of the model I should take pictures of to provide any more information. To my eyes it looks exactly the same as my gloss black base example with all solid wheels, except for the baseplate colour.

The door locks will be large or small, the body panel below the front number pate will be smooth or have two vertical casting lines, the front air-vents, (under the headlamps), will be large or small and a very easy I.D. detail in the boot, is the join from the bottom of the backwall to the floor, it will be sharp or smooth.

These details are for the first and second body castings, possibly the third, but certainly not the fourth, (the opened up wheel arches for the wider wheels) and with clear pictures of all or some of those details, will help in putting the 'flat black' base version in the right place in 'MY' listing and of course Nick's 'Code' listing.

While you go away and do that... would you like me to post a listing of my own versions here in this thread?

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

[SMS88]

Please can Ghosthunter tell us the wheel mould numbers on his #69c with the pre-pro seats???
As we did with #56 BMCs recently, surveying wheel mould numbers allows us to make a more accurate ordering of production given that wheel moulds tended to wear out in around 6 months and it seems that perhaps upto 4 sets of 4 dozen moulds of each size seemed to be in use at the same time once SF thin wheeled production peaked in 1970 after a slow start in 1969 where all cars with 11x2mm wheels seem to have numbers WITHOUT letters only.
Those wheel mould numbers from Christian are very useful because they eliminate the possibility that the matt black base example is early production - those H numbers would be well into 1970. As Christian rightly says, Lesney stored parts often for months, sometimes years if they were leftovers from completed production runs - so while we could speculate that they were painted matt black at the same time as well known 1969 matt black baseplates,this particular example has wheel mould numbers too new to be part of the initial production run of at least 1 million cars (from 40 years book). We know from models like the #35 Merryweather & #68 Porsche that small quantities of pre-pro castings were thrown into subsequent production runs perhaps because they had come from the surplus parts store to complete a current run rather than being newly manufactured for a specific run.

[SMS88]

The door locks will be large or small, the body panel below the front number pate will be smooth or have two vertical casting lines, the front air-vents, (under the headlamps), will be large or small and a very easy I.D. detail in the boot, is the join from the bottom of the backwall to the floor, it will be sharp or smooth.

These details are for the first and second body castings, possibly the third, but certainly not the fourth, (the opened up wheel arches for the wider wheels) and with clear pictures of all or some of those details, will help in putting the 'flat black' base version in the right place in 'MY' listing and of course Nick's 'Code' listing.

While you go away and do that... would you like me to post a listing of my own versions here in this thread?

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

Remember that Lesney used twin moulds, and for some castings there were 2 moulds which means either 2 or 4 different but nearly identical bodyshells were in production at the sametime. Differences between left and right hand twins from a mould dont count as separate variations because every single 1-75 variation would then have to be doubled to incorporate which twin from the mould has been used -these variations mentioned in the quote may well be merely twin differences which remained the same throughout the life of the tooling -its only sequential permenant changes/modifications to tooling that warrant listing as separate variations.I havent surveyed the numbers on the backs of the front grilles however given the size of the tooling it is likely that as with boots used on the #69 + #24, at least 4 perhaps as many as 10 similar different numbered grilles were produced every time the tool was filled once with metal

[ChFalkensteiner]

The door locks will be large or small, the body panel below the front number pate will be smooth or have two vertical casting lines, the front air-vents, (under the headlamps), will be large or small and a very easy I.D. detail in the boot, is the join from the bottom of the backwall to the floor, it will be sharp or smooth.

I have just had a close look at all of my 22 different 69c examples (eight in metallic blue, twelve in gold and two in lime gold), but I am totally unable to spot any of those differences.

The body panels below the front number plate are smooth on all of them (where would I have to look for two vertical casting lines?), door handles (is this what you call door locks?) and air vents below the headlamps are the same size on all of them, and I cannot see any casting differences inside the trunks (boots) either. (I have to say I do not know where a "backwall" is to be found, as there is no wall at the back of the trunk, only at the front.)

Comparison pictures of those differences would probably help, but for the time being I am clueless...

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Hi SMS88,

Yes I fully agree with what you say and being a collector of all Rolls-Royce toys and models, I obviously have examples from Corgi, Dinky, Matchbox, Spot-On and Lone-star and the use of more than one set of tools/moulds etc, is very evident.

You can see from having many examples of the '1-75 series', the 'superfast' and 'Yesteryear' ranges, (among others), that at least two sets of tools/moulds were in use at the same time for full-production, but for practical and display reasons, most collectors will have the two versions, (lets say model A, from tool set A, and model B, from tool set B,), displayed side-by-side, not in two seperate rows with model A, in front and model B, behind, you could do, but I have not seen any body do it that way.

The wheel numbers on 'MY' version 1, with the 'long seat' moulding are...36, 32G, 16G, 14G.

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

[SMS88]

The wheel numbers on 'MY' version 1, with the 'long seat' moulding are...36, 32G, 16G, 14G.

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

Thankyou for the numbers - those Gs make it seem very unlikely this is a 1st run car even with pre-pro seats that could have been thrown into a pallet destined for the assembly line at any time,most likely at the end of a run to cover a shortage of fresh made components.
Is Ghosthunter collecting every baseplate colour variation of the SF69c with both body castings or is one twin enough to represent each listed variation for you? For just about all of us here we collect variations that dont include every single different boot number for each colour combo - combinations would require large numbers of cars that would look identical from 3 feet away to cover every combination made........

[GHOSTHUNTER]

OK Chfalkensteiner,

BACKWALL to FLOOR JOIN.JPG (17.57 KiB) Viewed 1951 times

The arrow is marking the Backwall to Floor join, this is 'sharp' and I have three models with this profile here. All models made after this have this area much smoother, not just tool wear smooth, it has been deliberately rounded off in the tools/moulds.

I will take some better pictures of my noted details from my earlier post, but am a little surprised to hear you say you have not seen any of my detail variations, especially the door locks, the actual door handle is about the same size between body casting 1, and body casting 2, but the circular blob representing the lock under the handle, is definately smaller on body casting 2, plus, underneath the rear bumper, the area in the centre which has been cut away for the tow hook arm has rounded sides as apposed to the sharply cast sides on body casting 1, all will become clear when you see the pictures.

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

[SMS88]

I will take some better pictures of my noted details from my earlier post, but am a little surprised to hear you say you have not seen any of my detail variations, especially the door locks, the actual door handle is about the same size between body casting 1, and body casting 2, but the circular blob representing the lock under the handle, is definately smaller on body casting 2, plus, underneath the rear bumper, the area in the centre which has been cut away for the tow hook arm has rounded sides as apposed to the sharply cast sides on body casting 1, all will become clear when you see the pictures.

Regards,
GHOSTHUNTER.

I have seen these differences.
However as these apply to 50% of every legitimate variation made they are not significant for me.I dont care whether any car has the left or right hand twin body or what number is cast on the boot,grille or baseplate. Its enough to know that in my array of each casting I have at least one example of each twin. Variations of colours & wheel types & actual casting modifications rather than simple twinning differences are the most worthwhile to list without appearing obsessive, need to be visible from 3 feet away or more to be worth collecting in my personal collection.