I recently came into possession of a used Roco collection. All the vehicles appear to be quite old and I am guessing they were purchased and painted in the 1960s. These photos are the WWII German era vehicles from the collection. This looks like those vehicle collection yards in late WWII Europe. The Allies would gather up all the German vehicles from the battlefield after a battle and collect them together. There they would have all the ammunition removed, and anything of immediate value such as papers, maps and Luger pistols.
These are some of the parts I have sorted so far. Light anti-aircraft guns, Panzer IV skirts, SWS halftrack wheels and track units, Mobelwagen and Grille side walls. One of the SWS halftracks actually had Saladin armored car wheels on for some reason!
What can you recognize in this little box? Resin 75mm stumpf barrel, I don't know what the axle is from, and a little metal gun of some kind. Some more SWS parts.
The two yellow SWS halftracks have been repainted at some point in their lives they were brown and green, now over-painted yellow.
Some enterprising model builder has replaced the original Roco cab with a vac-u-formed plastic version of the soft-skinned halftrack cab. Good idea as it was much more common than the armored version of this halftrack.
A guy I used to know would say, "If you buy a large used collection there will always be at least one gold colored vehicle." Here it is. I have been told that back in olden times people used gold spray paint as a primer because it would cover anything, any other color, and stick to almost any material. I never used it but it makes sense. In buying other used collections I have found golden vehicles before, sometimes the gold was the third or fourth layer of paint. I think eleven is my record for stripping paint and finding multiple layers underneath.
This is a beautiful camouflage job on this Grille. One interesting thing about it is that one of the camouflage colors is the original Roco black-green unpainted plastic. It is green, dark gray, yellow, red/brown paint, and bare, unpainted Roco plastic. It seems a lot of airbrush work not to paint the whole vehicle. I know for certain that the owner was finished and did not intend to go back and paint that last few spots of bare plastic, and I have proof of that theory.
I have had over a dozen Roco vehicles painted in that exact same camouflage scheme. Many of them had decals applied to them. They have been in my collection for perhaps 20 years or more. The decals were US Army white stars, and Soviet Union red stars. This Jeep has been in my collection for may years and is the same camouflage as the Grille.
Here is another one of the vehicles with the same camouflage. Recently I have been going through my collection and upgrading many of the older vehicles. This one has had flash removed and the bare plastic was finally painted by hand, by me. I also painted the wheels and the canvas cab top which was only partially covered before. It is a great camouflage job. I had these trucks with both US and USSR stars on the hood. I am removing all the stars and will eventually replace them with American markings. They were so old a little scrapping with an X-Acto knife was enough to remove them.
A Roco Panzer III, two Roco Sturmgeschutz III and two Edai / Arii / Grip small German pak guns. The German guns will have the wheels and gun removed and they will be replaced by some WWII Soviet Union guns and wheels I have. The guns and wheels will go into the spares box. There is almost certainly two Stug III cannons and a Panzer III turret someplace in the spares box, but the Panzer III tracks might be hard to find, but I am sure I can work out something for these five.
The other vehicles I will sort over and some will be returned to service with my collection and a few others will likely become surplus and traded or sold off again. I no longer use the old Roco Panzer IVs but I do have a few conversion projects in mind for at least a few of them. And I have A LOT of SWS halftracks already so not all of them will stay here, but at least a few of them will. Some of their camouflage schemes look familiar also so that might help determine who gets to stay and who has to go.
Randy at Fidelis Models does buy and sell used Roco so contact him if you are looking to buy or sell some of your collection.
Thanks for reading.
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Mike Bunkermeister Creek