by grwebster » Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:50 am
I just obtained a Swiss air variant of the French Dinky Toys Caravelle and will see if anything is different from the others. I also have an Air Algerie one that I will check out.
I don't think any casting changes would have occurred as the tooling was modified in 1960 with the addition of the interchangeable cartouches for France or England and the addition of the British number 997.
Also, these special variants were exactly the same as the last French production before the tooling changes- the only thing different from a standard white top on silver gray bottom fuselage was the transfer decals- I think all they did was pull from already produced stock waiting for the Air France markings and applied SAS, Swiss and Air Algerie ones instead. So perhaps the second Swiss variant production could have used the modified castings made for the AF version which would then have the 997 mod in place.
As these rare variants are is basic and easy to do using any 60F AF casting, I wonder if there are many copies/counterfeits out there?