Red seats and valuable boxes

Delighted to have acquired this - yet another Land Rover but not one I was expecting to be able to afford. It seemed to escape other bidders' attention, being displayed just as a normal Land Rover and accompanied by a brown horsebox with a damaged tow bar and that may have made many observers scroll by. It's the red seats that make it special. The dark green 438s nearly all have lemon interiors and this is a very scarce variant.

The paintwork isn't perfect but not at all bad - an easy B rating I would say. So, in the table that Toymart publish and which tends to be a fair guide most of the time, you'll see that, without a box this ought to sell for around £140.

With a box, however, the figure rises to over £400! Now, I do have a decent box that came with an immaculate 438 with normal colour interior so I shall simply use that one as all the boxes are identical. I'll look around for another for the normal version but I wasn't in a hurry to sell that anyway. I have not yet advertised any of the massive collection of Land Rovers that I have accumulated (other than some Breakdown models) as I may retain them for a while. They're very interesting and I still have some to find and they are not (with some exceptions!) that expensive.

Sometimes I do find the prices at Toymart a bit awry, especially for some later models that they seem to quote very cheap prices for but which can't be found anywhere, but these Land Rover ones seem about right and they actually had one in excellent condition for sale themselves which I note has now gone for the sort of top prices indicated.

In theory, a 438 box is valued at around £250 in this case! I'm quite tempted to try and find some more red seat variants without boxes and it could even be worthwhile paying the full 'No Box' price and then adding any decent 438 box I can find. Hopefully not everyone with either a red interior dark green 438 or a decent box will read this article! Mum's the word, OK!

There is also a LEPRA special edition that you see from time to time. This differs from the bog standard 438 in one respect only: it has a transfer on the canopy. You can buy the transfers and I challenge anyone to tell the difference if applied properly. The one shown below is the later metallic green type with cast wheels in a mid-70s style of box and that might account for some of the massive valuation but they all go for at least £500 or £600 however packaged.

I have decided not to try and buy or, for that matter, sell a real one of these, however. It is just too risky and the chances of upsetting someone or getting involved in some dispute are high. As I can never be confident of getting the genuine article I am, however, inclined to create one, add a nice box and, making it clear that it is a reproduction transfer job, see what it fetches.