"They're for sale if you want them"

As discussed last week, my quest for a 100% complete (as defined by moi, of course....) LEGO Star Wars collection is all well and good, but it's not the whole story. There are also those "ancilliary items" which I alluded to - those rare, exotic trinkets which we curse LEGO for producing, unless of course we're fortunate enough to manage to get them for ourselves..... Despite my focus on the Star Wars retail sets, I do have to confess to keeping an eye out for some of the harder-to-find exotica, and when such items do occasionally present themselves I'm not averse to adding them to the collection if the price isn't too exhorbitant.

One such item which I was recently lucky enough to get hold of without having to remortgage the house or sell my family into slavery for is Set COMCON024 Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder. This is one of those infernal LEGO exclusives which you can only get if you attend a particular event, in this case the 2012 New York Comic Con (NYCC), or know someone who's attending and willing to get up early and stand in a queue. Even after all that, attendees didn't get them for free - they had to cough up $40 for the privilege. Ouch.

You can see some pictures of the sealed set below (click pictures to enlarge). Unusually, it comes in a metal tin with a twist-off lid. The lid is secured with a couple of tape seals and festooned with a nice cartoony representation of Luke Skywalker's face; there's also text around the circumference confirming that the set is indeed a NYCC exclusive. The side of the tin is covered all the way round with a large sticker showing a representation of the set contents against a backdrop of what looks like Mos Eisley spaceport. Overall, the packaging is really rather nice - slick and desirable, and certainly not the kind of half-hearted effort that you might perhaps have expected LEGO to cobble together given that this set is a one-off.

Per the close-up shot below, only 1,000 of these sets were made, of which mine is number 777. I guess that makes them moderately rare in the great scheme of LEGO collectables; to put this number into perspective, there are 10,000 of the much coveted chrome gold C-3PO minifigures in circulation.

When I looked closely I realised that the black section of the seals was in fact perforated; I carefully cut along the perforations and twisted off the lid in order to inspect the contents, which you can see laid out in the picture below (click to enlarge).

The instruction booklet (pictures below - click to enlarge) is surprisingly sturdy. I was half expecting to find a photocopied sheet of A4 inside the tin, but I really couldn't have been more wrong. The pages actually feel thicker than those you'd find inside a regular retail instruction booklet, and the printing is absolutely top notch. The booklet is made up of a total of 34 pages not including the front and back covers, all of which are taken up by the building instructions apart from the last two which show an inventory of parts. The building instructions themselves are extremely clear and easy to follow, with no colour discrimination issues evident.

All 110 parts are contained in a single bag. The bag isn't sealed; instead it's closed by way of a sticky flap along one side which can be non-destructively pulled open, and indeed subsequently re-closed if desired. You can see a few of the more interesting parts below. Pride of place goes to the dark red mud guard-type piece which I've never seen before; at time of writing the draft Bricklink set inventory, which is pending approval, doesn't even show this piece, and I'm betting it's brand new. This is obviously a bit of a blow if you're planning on Bricklinking the parts rather than shelling out for the set. The set also contains, amongst other things, 7 light bluish grey 1 x 2 masonry bricks which are as yet only available in this and 4 other sets, and 14 tan 1 x 2 x 2/3 slopes (a.k.a. double cheese slopes) which is more than you'll find in any other set. Unusually, there are no extra parts.

The set contains one minifigure, described by Bricklink as Luke Skywalker (Tatooine, Smiling). To my great surprise, it appears that this version of Luke Skywalker has never appeared elsewhere and is unique to this set. His tousled blonde hair has certainly appeared previously, for instance in the minifigure version of Luke Skywalker included in Set 7965 Millennium Falcon, as has his torso and rather nice printed legs. The minifigure head is however unique, meaning that for the time being this figure can't be recreated 100% accurately from parts obtained from other sets. Neither his torso nor his legs feature any back-printing, and the head isn't reversible (unless entirely blank flesh-coloured minifig heads are your thing) but the figure is nevertheless a nice representation of Tatooine Luke and I guess potentially destined to be somewhat in demand among minifigure collecting completists.

The landspeeder build itself is extremely quick and simple, and the finished model can be seen below. In general, 1 x 2 masonry bricks have predictably been employed to represent brickwork in official sets where they've appeared to date; here however the 'back' of the brick is exposed instead of the 'front' in order to approximate a horizontal line running around the side of the landspeeder. Spoked wheels form the front of the engines, and metallic silver 1 x 1  round plates and 1 x 2 tiles modified with grille are used to provide some subtle detailing. Although it's not clear from the photographs, the landspeeder appears to 'float' thanks to the use of six transparent boat studs attached to the underside of the model. At the back, printed round 2 x 2 tiles form the back of the engines - no stickers in this set - and if you look closely you can see the new dark red mud-guard piece wrapped round the support structure for the central upper engine.

While the model is immediately recognisable as a landspeeder, it'd be an uphill battle to try and argue that it's in any way an accurate representation of the source material - it's far too short and stubby. It'll also only hold one minifigure, making any recreation of the iconic scene below something of a challenge....

"These aren't the droids you're looking for" (from Tumblr)

If you're not a fan of the chibi stylings of this set and would prefer something a little more movie-accurate, LEGO has previously produced three other landspeeders, not including the glued 2008 Landspeeder Bag Charm. Set 7110 Landspeeder holds a special place in my heart as it's the first LEGO Star Wars set I ever owned, bought for me as a present back in 1999 when I was well and truly lost in my Dark Ages; it would be almost a decade before I'd rediscover the joys of LEGO and embark upon my Star Wars collecting spree. Set 8092 Luke's Landspeeder can still be found at retail and is probably my favourite of all the landspeeders; as well as being a fairly decent rendition of the subject matter, it also comes with a prodigious number of minifigures for such a relatively small set. The landspeeder found in Set 4501 Mos Eisley Cantina is arguably the most 'realistic' by virtue of it's unusual sand red colour, although it's also by far the most expensive at current prices thanks to the presence of four rare and exclusive minifigures in the set including Greedo.

Set 7110 Landspeeder (1999)

Set 4501 Mos Eisley Cantina (2004)

Set 8092 Luke's Landspeeder (2010)

If I'm being completely honest, nobody except dyed-in-the-wool collectors really need bother with the NYCC Landspeeder. Sure, it's undoubtedly cute, and yes it contains an exclusive minifigure, but it's hardly worth the £80+ / $129+ that people are asking for it on Bricklink..... I was lucky and managed to pick mine up for less, but even I would have found it hard to justify coughing up Bricklink prices for this one.

One Hundred Percent

One hundred percent complete. 100%. It's the holy grail for some collectors - a 100% complete collection.  As a huge fan of both LEGO and Star Wars. I decided one fateful day almost exactly four years ago that I'd like to try and collect a boxed example of every single LEGO Star Wars set ever made, and it's been an expensive millstone around my neck ever since.

Admittedly, many of the sets were actually quite easy to track down, through eBay mainly. Some of them were even quite cheap - while they had to be boxed, and all the pieces, minifigures and instruction booklets had to be present and correct, I had at least thankfully decreed that the sets didn't have to be sealed. I was however forced to carefully ponder on exactly what I'd actually meant by '100% complete' and 'all the LEGO Star Wars sets ever made' at an early stage. You'd think it was pretty self-explanatory, but a look at Brickset's listing of all the sets in the LEGO Star Wars theme, which you can see here, soon suggested that things might not be quite as simple as they had initially seemed....

According to the Brickset database, the LEGO Star Wars theme consists of a total of 334 sets at time of writing, although since that total includes 15 unreleased 2013 sets I think it's probably more accurate to say 319 sets, for now at least. So you'd think it would be pretty easy to figure out which sets you'd need to track down in order to complete your collection, right ? Not necessarily.... Take a look through the list of those 319 sets, sort them by set number, and you'll find that after you get past the latest UCS offering, Set 10227 B-wing Starfighter, the set numbers take a big jump into the 20000's and things start to get decidedly less straightforward.

Brickmaster Set 20006 Clone Turbo Tank - rarer than hen's teeth....

Sets 20006 (above) to 20021 are so-called Brickmaster Exclusives; while a couple of them could for a limited time be purchased at LEGO brand stores and via LEGO S@H, most of them were only available via LEGO's subscription-only Brickmaster service which was restricted to folks in the U.S.. Next are a series of sets numbered from 30004 to 30059. These are all small models packaged in poly bags, and their availability has been highly variable, having appeared in some countries but not in others (e.g. to date, Set 30059 MTT has only been available in Japan and possibly Canada). Then there are various set collections and 3-in-1 Superpacks which occupy set numbers in the range of 65081 to 66432; these have only been available from certain retailers (typically Toys R Us) in certain countries. Therafter the set numbers start to get just a little bit silly and you're on to some of the rarer promo sets, starting with Set 2853835 White Boba Fett (below) and beyond this the likes of Set 4521221 Gold Chrome-plated C-3PO; these poly bagged minifigures were given away free by LEGO at various points, e.g. hidden within random retail sets, or given away free with a specified minimum spend at LEGO S@H.

Soon the set numbers run out and you're really in the wild country - sets which don't even have an 'official' number and which Brickset thus somewhat arbitrarily designates with an alphanumeric identifier and lists alphabetically. These sets include CELEBVI, a Mini Slave 1 model only available to visitors to the Star Wars Celebration VI event in August 2012, and COMCON019, a Mini Sith Inflitrator model only available at this year's San Diego Comic Con (below).

The bad news if you're a completist, particularly one who is just starting out now with few if any sets already acquired, is that even some of the 'regular' retail sets from past years are painfully expensive now. Consider for instance Set 10123 Cloud City, released in 2003 at an RRP of $100. A complete, boxed example will currently set you back at least £550 / $1000 plus shipping if you buy through Bricklink. Just to make matters worse, once the set numbering stops and the letters start, you may be looking at an even more serious financial investment if you want to get hold of some of the items. And then there are some rarer items still that aren't even included in the Brickset database and which will cost you literally thousands to aquire, assuming of course that the few who own them would even be willing to part with them. Such obscure items include the fabled 14-carat gold C-3PO minifigure (below) of which only 5 were ever made.

14-carat gold C-3PO minifigure (from Brickipedia)

So for the aspiring LEGO Star Wars collector, where does '100% complete' end? Is it just the retail sets? Or maybe it also includes all the stuff like LEGO Star Wars key chains and/or magnet sets as well ? And what about all the rare promo items which don't even have proper set numbers? Not to mention the set collections and 3-in-1 Superpacks which are just collections of standard sets in a bigger box. Or even the multiple versions of the same sets with the same set number but with different packaging. And do all the sets have to be boxed to count....?

There's no 'right' answer. I've seen these questions debated endlessly on the various online LEGO forums and everybody it seems has a different definition of which sets to include and what it means to be '100% complete'. For what it's worth, and it's not really worth much at all, I arbitrarily take '100% complete' to mean just sets which you can actually build and which were, or still are, available at retail. So not key chains, nor magnet sets, nor rare promo items. Sure, if I can get these ancilliary items without killing myself then that's great, and I certainly do when I can, but they don't count towards my own personal 100% tally. You may well disagree, but that's fine - each to his own, and whatever works for you is good. Just don't tell me that you're 'right'....!

UCS AT-AT : Once More Unto the Breach....

After a brief holiday from the MOC AT-AT build, during which time I dabbled with the Monster Fighters theme amongst other things, it was time to get back to business and crack on.

Those who have been following along will hopefully recall that when I last posted about the AT-AT here I had just completed the body of the beast. That was by far the toughest part of the build so far, but having had a break I was suitably refreshed and raring to dive back in. Next up : the neck and head.

You can see a screengrab of the LDD file of the AT-AT neck above (click to enlarge). The LDD building guide generator broke this section down into 112 building steps involving just 314 pieces, which compared to some of the other sections I've attempted thus far is veritably miniscule.... You can see a sample page of the building guide below.

Predictably given its design, construction of the neck was somewhat repetitive, but at least it was relatively uneventful; thinking back to the difficulties I've had with previous sections of the AT-AT, notably the body, this was a bit of a relief.... At its core are multiple overlapping Technic liftarms meshed together by a multitude of pins and axles; it's consequently extremely strong, which it will need to be to support the head in the correct position.

You can see a photograph of the front of the completed neck section above, and of the back below (click to enlarge). The red 3 x 5 liftarm with quarter ellipse is black in the latest version of the parts list, in case any fellow AT-AT builders are starting to panic... The Technic structure emerging from the dark bley neck section in the picture immediately above helps to support the head and enables it to move from side to side, or at least it will do when the head is eventually attached.

For those of you building your own AT-ATs (Tristan and others) I have another little tip; see that 6L axle with 2 smooth half bushes at either end floating in space beneath the neck section on the LDD screengrab at the top of the page ? It's not actually needed, so you can ignore it ! The four light bley Technic half pins floating just below and behind it are used in the build, however - they fit into two of the 4 x 4 quarter circle bricks at the base of the neck (you can just about see them in the picture immediately above). According to Pete, once the neck is attached to the body they help to prevent it from sagging under the weight of the head.

Once I'd completed the neck I made a start on the head. As you can see from the screengrab of the LDD file below (click to enlarge) this is made up of a number of discrete sections which need to be knitted together at the end of the build. Despite its relatively modest size, the head is made up of a surprising 713 pieces which is testament to the level of detail.

Construction of the AT-AT head was divided into 281 steps by the LDD-generated building guide. The AT-AT has two lateral guns which are mounted on either side of the head - you can see these in the lower left quadrant of the screengrab above. These are first to be built, followed by the left side of the head, which can be seen in the lower right quadrant of the LDD screengrab. Construction time for these sections was longer than I expected, which is I think a reflection of the fact that finding the correct pieces is starting to take longer and longer as the build progresses; when you start out, many of the pieces are present in abundance, but as you use more and more of them up you're increasingly left needing the last one or two of a particular part so searching time is definitely getting longer.  The lateral guns are quite fiddly, and it took a couple of minutes of scrutinising and zooming pictures of the completed AT-AT, plus a text to Pete, to figure out how all the parts come together and attach to the side of the head....

Above you can see some pictures of the left side of the head, complete with lateral gun turret. It's only possible to rotate the gun barrel up and down; lateral aiming will eventually be provided via side to side movements of the whole AT-AT head at the neck as described earlier.

And that's it for now. Despite progress being slower than anticipated, by my calculation I've now used up 3,881 of the parts, so only around 2,300 to go. That's about as many as one of the bigger modular buildings, so I'm hoping I can get this monster finished by Christmas....

< -- Building the AT-AT : Part 5                                       Building the AT-AT : Part 7 -->

Monsters, Inc.

Against all expectations I was really taken with LEGO's Monster Fighters theme following my first contact with the sets, and having initially tested the water with a couple of the smaller ones including Set 9461 Swamp Creature it was only a matter of time before I felt the need to add to my collection.

Truth be told, it was quite hard to know which set to get next. Having pored over the set images I was spoiled for choice - all of the sets have an endearingly goofy B-movie charm to them, and really I would have been happy to build any of them. In the end it was Set 9466 The Crazy Scientist & His Monster that got the nod - there's so much cool stuff going on on the front of the box (picture above - click to enlarge) that I just couldn't resist it.While the front of the box drew me in, it's only when you look at the back of the box (picture below) that you really appreciate how many play features and neat touches the designer has crammed into the set; we'll get to those later.

The contents of the box are thankfully accessed by cutting a couple of seals rather than by the use of messy and destructive thumb tabs. The box contains four bags of pieces; the bags are numbered from one to four, and each of them contains at least one smaller sealed bag of parts. There are also two instruction booklets (below) the first of which details construction of the minifigures and the Monster Fighters' car, and the second which covers construction of the structures and furnishings. Finally, there's a gratifyingly small sticker sheet containing just two stickers.

Instruction booklet 1 is pretty short at only 27 pages; other than a collage of all the Monster Fighter sets on the back cover it's all building instructions. Booklet 2 is considerably heftier, weighing in at over 60 pages; it's bulked up considerably by a variety of advertising copy as well as additional content including a summary of the set's play features and a 2-page inventory of parts. As previously stated, the sticker sheet is teeny and can be seen below.

The set contains some interesting parts, a small selection of which you can see below. The medium blue 4 x 4 wedge and arch are unique to this set, and other parts such as the green Moonstone, medium blue 65 degree slope and dark brown tranquilizer gun only appear in two sets including this one. Other parts of note include the wonderful vial containing green liquid, the red light brick, and a few glow in the dark parts such as a rat and spider which aren't widely available in this colour.

And so to the build. Diving into the first instruction booklet, the first job is to assemble the set's four minifigures. The Monster (pictured below) appears to be a representation of Frankenstein's monster; I did wonder whether the lack of an actual reference to Frankenstein was possibly a copyright issue or just a conscious effort on the part of LEGO to distance themselves somewhat from existing works. Whatever the reason, he's pretty well realised. His large head is formed by way of an additional hairpiece-type element placed on the top of a standard minifigure head. There's a good level of detail on his head and torso, for instance a couple of safety pins printed on his head and metallic surgical clips printed on his chest to indicate where he's been opened up and resealed. The olive green colouration of his 'skin' is suitably ghastly, and all that's really missing are a couple of printed bolts on his neck. There's some back-printing on his torso, but he doesn't have a reversible head, meaning you don't have a choice of expression and are stuck with a grimace. The Monster minifigure is exclusive to this set, and rather good I think....

There are some clear similarities between the Monster and the Series 4 Collectible Minifigure (CMF) monster, released in 2011, but also some obvious differences in skin colour and the head and torso prints. You can compare and contrast the two figures below; the newer Monster Fighters version is on the left.

The second bad guy - the titular Crazy Scientist - can be seen below. Unlike the Monster he has a reversible head, which allows him to switch between red and clear filters on his goggles. I love his lab jacket, featuring a printed tool belt containing test tubes, scissors and pliers which wraps around the back of his torso.

While unique to this set, he's very similar to the Crazy Scientist Collectible Minifigure from Series 4, right down to his rubbery bley hair. The torso and facial prints are however different, and the CMF version doesn't have back printing on his torso. You can see a comparison of the Monster Fighters version (left) and Series 4 Collectible Minifigure (right) below.

Moving on to the Monster Fighters themselves, first up is Doctor Rodney Rathbone. His robotic right leg strikes a markedly discordant note against his neatly coiffured facial hair, natty bowler hat and immaculately turned-out torso complete with waistcoat, tie and fob watch. He doesn't have a reversible head, but his torso is nicely backprinted. Dr. Rathbone appears in three sets including this one.

Major Quinton Steele is the other Monster Hunter in this set. He's modelled on the cliched quintessential English pith hat-wearing adventurer, but with a twist - he appears to possess some kind of high tech monocle that even the Borg would be proud of.... This minifigure appears in this and one other set.

Once the minifigures have been safely assembled, attention shifts to the brick-built elements of the set. First up is the car, which can be seen below. The design of the vehicle is seemingly based on the iconic Citroen 2CV, but it's like no 2CV you've ever seen, bristling with armaments and other modifications including three flick-fire missles, an outrigger for Rodney Rathbone to fire from, rocket boosters at the back and a satellite dish on the roof. It's far from clear who's supposed to be at the wheel, however, seeing as both Rathbone and Steele appear to be too wrapped up handling the weaponry to attend to driving duties.... The car's neatly designed, with a rather fetching medium blue scheme. It would have have benefitted from doors, however, and it's a shame that a few bits of the bodywork are light or dark bley rather than medium blue. This is partly, but not entirely, down to limitations in the medium blue parts palette.

The laboratory is next up for construction, starting with the machine which breathes life into the Monster. This is made up of a tower which houses the diabolical reanimation device, and a rickety, uncomfortable-looking bed for the Monster to lie on while he's being zapped. The reanimation device contains a red LED light brick which, when activated, causes the transparent neon green dish and light saber blade attached to the front to glow red as you can hopefully see in the picture below (click to enlarge). An irritating thing about LEGO light bricks is that you have to keep the button held down in order for the light to stay lit. This set offers a neat solution to this, however - an elegant mechanism which allows the light to be switched on and remain lit. This is accomplished by turning a gear on the back of the tower which rotates a knob wheel adjacent to the light brick and holds the button down - simple but effective, and extremely welcome. Just remember to turn it off again when you're done or you'll be replacing the battery before you know it. The bed moves backwards and forwards by way of a reddish brown capstan so that you can manouevre the Monster into the perfect position for maximum reanimation beam exposure....

The remaining structures are what appear to be a holding cell plus a work bench and a storage unit (below - click to enlarge). The cell door opens at the front, but there's also a panel at the back that can be released if the occupant chooses to make a quick getaway. The roof of the cell is adorned with a ballista, presumably to defend the laboratory against aggressive oddballs driving Citroen 2CV's, plus a variety of animal species, of which two are of the glow-in-the-dark variety. The workbench comes complete with a glow-in-the-dark skull in a bell jar and various tools including a neat-looking little microscope.

The various sections of the laboratory bolt together by way of hinge bricks; triangular (cut corner) plates at the base of the various structures prevent much movement of the different sections relative to each other, although if you'd prefer to open the laboratory out more you can remove or replace the plates and choose your own arrangement

You can see how all the various elements of the set come together below; presumably the idea is that the Monster Fighters mount a full frontal assault on the laboratory and lay waste to the place. Let's just hope that the Monster gets a shift on and reanimates sharpish or the baddies are done for....

Overall, this is a cracking set - highly recommended. It's an interesting and extremely varied build, the components of the scene are well designed and come together nicely, and there are a ton of play features worked into the models, with the mechanism for activating the light brick and keeping it switched on a particular favourite. My 4-year old loved the set as well - seeing it assembled on my desk it was almost impossible to tear him away - so its appeal is clearly not restricted to AFOLs of a certain vintage....

Monster Fighters Set 9466 The Crazy Scientist & His Monster contains 430 pieces and retails at £39.99 in the UK and $49.99 in the U.S.. Even at RRP I'd be recommending it, but at time of writing the set is 17% off RRP at Amazon.co.uk making it even more of an essential purchase. Folks in the U.S. can pick up the set here.

Blast from the Past : Set 657 Executive Jet

Just back from a week in the sun, and there's nothing like spending a few days in temperatures of 30 degrees plus to make you 'appreciate' the UK November chill.... My timing was actually pretty poor - I managed to pick the week when The Sun newspaper ran their biannual LEGO promotion to be away, and it's only thanks to the kindness of Brickset member Kevbags plus my folks that I didn't miss out on some pretty excellent sets this time around.

Anyway, what better way to cheer myself up on my return to chilly Blighty than by wallowing in some LEGO nostalgia and looking back at another set that I owned as a child. Set 657 Executive Jet, concisely but rather unimaginatively known only by the name "Aircraft" in the U.S., was released in 1974 at a cost of £0.65.

I still have the very set I owned as a child together with the buillding instructions, but the box is long gone. I was however lucky enough to find a boxed example on eBay for less than a tenner including postage earlier this year. The box (pictures below - click to enlarge) is far from perfect but is at least intact and even still has the original price sticker on it. The image of the model barely fits on the front of the box, and consistent with other sets of this era the image is untidily split in two when you open the box. Three out of four sides of the box feature a stylised side-on view of the model, and the fourth side is completely taken up by "LEGOLAND" branding.

The back of the box (below) is an early attempt to highlight close ups of a couple of features of interest, focusing on one of the jet engines and one of the wheels in addition to a side-on photograph of the finished model. I think the engine and wheel may be featured because at the time the set was released they were new parts - the light grey engine part appeared in sets for the first time in 1974, and the blue single wheel holder first appeared in 1973.

The building instructions (below) are of the fold-out variety and consist of a mere 5 building steps. The rest of the space is occupied by a multitude of photographs of other sets, including another of my childhood favourites, Set 687 Caravelle. I was pretty chuffed to realise that I have at least half of the sets featured in the photographs.

Most of the 37 parts making up this set are pretty unremarkable, but there are a few worth singling out for attention (picture below - click to enlarge). Pride of place goes to the three printed 2 x 4 blue bricks which make up the fuselage of the jet. This is the only set that these blue printed bricks have ever appeared in. There are also three of the single wheels with wheel holder, two light grey engines and the blue 4 x 2 x 2 tail, complete with (badly applied) stickers.

Unusually, my purchase came complete with the original sticker sheet which still contains two unused stickers; I don't recall LEGO including spare stickers with sets, but these two are certainly spares. I've not yet decided whether to remove the cack-handedly applied existing stickers from the tail and neatly replace them with the spares; I'm actually leaning towards leaving the remains of the sticker sheet unmolested for posterity, but we shall see.

As you'd expect, it only took a matter of moments to assemble the model, and you can see the results below. I suppose it's maybe hard to see anyone without an emotional connection to this set getting too excited over the finished model, but to me it's pure gold - I can still remember more than three decades later how exotic and sleek it looked back then, not to mention the hours and hours I spent swooshing it around....

If like me you're partial to a generous slice of nostalgia you can pick up your own copy of this set for a song; boxed examples can be purchased via Bricklink for less than £10 plus postage, or else keep an eye on eBay and one will no doubt pop up eventually. Happy hunting !