It can’t be a secret anymore that I love big scale modelkits, I have a strong passion for them and love the oddball kits in larger scale.

One of the harder to get modelkits is the Hasegawa Mazda RX-7 in 1/12 scale. Not a model I have been looking very hard for, since they cost a small fortune. But I do like it and wanted one eventually.

Funny story: My wife and I have been looking for a new(different) house and we stumbled upon a house, after looking at the pictures, I noticed something odd on the cupboard. The pictures were lo-res, so it was a bit of an search, but I could conclude very quickly it was the big scale RX-7. So far for that.

A few months later, a 1/12 RX-7 came on a local website for sale, the seller posted from the same town as the house was for sale, so it was easy to conclude it would’ve been the same. The only thing now, was to land the modelkit. The seller was asking a hefty, but somewhat reasonable price. I was fortunately able to get it a bit cheaper, since the seller was very reasonable to deal with.

Today, I went to collect the kit. Together with the seller, I went through the box and soon I had to conclude that it was missing it’s windshield and backwindow. Even though the rest was in the box, some things looked different than I am used to, but figured that it was me, since I never seen this kit in real life. These are some pictures of the box:

So far so good

This is different, I thought it was supposed to be plated?

The manual was also different, but it happens with Japanese modelmanufacturers.

And from this point on it get’s interesting. Accordingly to this letter, this model was not a consumerkit, but a pre-sale test-shot, possibly send to only a handful importers over the globe for review and sales. It also states which sprues are different and some things might be off, or not correct.

Interestingly, it also tells that the windshield (and I figure back window, since it is the same sprue) was not in the box.

I can not conclude any different than this must be a very rare version of already a rare modelkit. I would not be suprised if there are less of these still around than fingers on one hand.

But, what to do with it? I am definately not a collector and the collectors value does not say anything to me. I rather build the RX-7. My wife came with a practical solution: trade with a collector. He wants collectibility and I want buildability….