Always look twice

I got quite excited this morning. I am looking for a blue #300 Austin Healey. There aren't many around at all but I live in hope that someone may have one and not appreciate that it's quite a scarce item. So when this one appeared at quite a modest 'Buy It Now' price on Ebay I thought I'd better get it before someone else does.

It should have red seats but I couldn't see their colour from this angle and there was nothing else to show them either. It also seemed a slightly dark shade of blue but then I have nothing to compare it with having not seen a real one. The silver work looked good and it was generally grubby and not something someone had recently restored. Suffice it to say I was a little suspicious but didn't want to risk losing a possible valuable item. I was viewing this on a small laptop screen and for some reason I decided to change my immediate plans and look at this on a bigger monitor rather than hit the button, buy it and carry on with what I should have been doing.

I am not sure exactly what made me wonder but it was probably a combination of the red painted indicator at the front which would not have been on the original, the late shaped wheels which, of course, I'd seen on red and cream editions but sort of expected, for no logical reason, a blue one to have had the smooth ones.

The other thing that made me wonder was all the other roughish models in this chap's lists of other items for sale. I often find it is a good idea to look at what else they have as that can be a good guide as to whether they're a dealer, someone who is genuinely getting rid of a lot of old items which include old Corgis or some other information as to their background. In this case there were quite a few repainted items and that, more than anything, made me uncertain about this one.

There was a photo of the base and at first glance all seemed to be fine. Open the image in a new window, however, and you get the full-size image which, in this case was a nice 1600 wide. 

Then it was clear. A tiny strip of red was visible just where the body meets the base plate at one side and under the wheel arches, what had previously been just a dark colour of some sort was clearly red too. This was a repainted red original. I went out and did what I should have been doing, a few pounds better off and quite relieved.

I do wish people would say when things have been repainted - preferably in the title.