Bunsen Honeydew,

Just harking back to the Staravia auctions at Marlow, I’ve located the catalogues.

Yes, there were two auctions (I thought so but my memory was a bit short on detail).

The first was in October 1994 and featured a Hunter single seat nose (unidentified in the catalogue but listed as ex-Royal Danish Air Force). The rest of the catalogue was mostly airframe spares – Gnat, Meteor, Vampire, Piston Provost, Jet Provost, Canberra, Jaguar, Auster, etc (even a few Sabre canopies). Leonides, Goblin and Derwent spares, eight Martin Baker seats and lots of G90 and F96 cameras.

I don’t recall much about this auction and I can’t remember whether I bid on anything or just spectated.

Auction No. 2 was in April 1995. This one featured the two-seat Hunter nose, ex-Dutch Air Force and identified as N320. A few more type specific lots but the majority was of more general equipment, suitable for a range of types. The catalogue confirms there were hundreds of tea chests crammed with all sorts of stuff.

Your estimate of prices is more accurate than mine – I think my recollection of £2 is per tea chest rather than per lot.

The two Marlow auctions were then followed by one at Bournemouth Airport in August 1995, described as a major clearance sale by Anglo American Airmotive Ltd. The same Auctioneers ran all three.

A lot of it looked just like the stuff from Marlow, all packed in tea chests – whether this was where it originated I wouldn’t know.

Prices were crazy cheap as not much of it was exciting stuff. There was quite a lot of AGS material and these lots attracted some of the higher bids.

God knows how many hundreds of tons of spares were shifted in the three auctions. The scrappies probably made more money out of it than most.

From the three auctions, my best buy would be the new, old stock Mosquito throttle box. Still got it of course, but now the Mosquito production line is open once again, who knows…?:)