Heck, it’s been a while since I posted. Life gets in the way and all that - but also I haven’t had much cool to talk about recently in my die-cast collecting.
But! I did want to share a Grail Find I got this week...
I’m a huge aviation nerd and one of the side collections I have features Corgi’s Showcase series of die-cast aircraft. For a long while now, I’ve had this model of this Cold War vintage RAF Vulcan bomber, deco’d as XH558, one of the last of these big beasts to fly - here’s a video of the real thing in action.
But for ages I’ve been searching (fruitlessly) for a rare alternate paint-job version of this model, the XL426 version in the original early-sixties white livery... Until this week.
Purely by accident I stumbled on an ebay auction with no bids and a hour left to run - so you can bet I snapped it up! This variant features the anti-flash paint-job, because the Vulcan carried the Blue Steel nuke and the original thinking was this colouration would deflect the flare from the blasts. Check out this illustration from a 1963 Eagle comic showing it in action...
Earlier this year I got to climb around inside a real Vulcan at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, and that was an amazing experience for someone who’d seen these mighty birds flying as a kid. So I’m pretty pleased to cross this elusive quarry off my wants list!
