Tamiya put out a 1/48 P-51 Silver Edition of the Blue Nose Petie 2nd.

Is this kit of any special value beyond being a Tamiya kit?

I have one and want to build it but I want to know if its anything special or can I build it without worry of having ruined a collectors item or something.

There is a special personal story behind this particular plane. My cousin is married to the grandson of Lt Col John Meyers pilot of Petie 2nd. Petie was Lt Col Meyers older (or younger) brother.

I want to build this plane and send it to him as a gift. It is already all silver so I may not need to paint it at all. This may be a good or a bad thing.

Any thoughts?

Always, always, ALWAYS paint.


Especially now that there is such a wide array of products which are increasingly easier to use in order to obtain a natural metal finish.

If you go the strip the chrome route you will also need to sand the mating surfaces that will be glued. At least for the major stuff like basic airframe. The plastic was given a gloss clear coat for the chrome finish. Those seams will keep popping open.
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Chroming a kit they've basically had in production since 1995 costs them virtually nothing. The profit is slightly less (chroming costs) then just re-releasing it once again with new decals, or in the case of the blue nose, Cartograf decals to entice us to buy yet another P-51D from them.

I really don't know any serious modelers that would even consider building it as pre-chromed. For one thing chrome looks nothing like aircraft aluminum, and two it's impossible to remove unwanted seams, or correct alignment issues as I've said before. The very nature of the molding process with their accepted tolerances, just doesn't equate to a perfect model with no issues.

I've seen and built some incredible models, but none that I can think of were ever 100% perfect.

If you already have the kit take Jessica's suggestion strip the chrome plate off, and then finish it with a metalizer paint. The end result will be worth the effort.

Joel