COBI Panzerkampfwagen E-100 - Limited Edition Set 2571

COBI's Panzerkampfwagen E-100 Limited Edition is a 1:28 model built from 1,677 blocks, 37 cm long, with a rotating turret, a movable gun, working tracks, opening crew hatches and a removable engine under the service hatch. The interior of both hull and turret is modelled. Five figures are included, four of them exclusive to this edition: a tanker, a Volkssturm soldier, a colonel, a soldier in the rare Leibermuster camouflage printed front and back, and a newly designed female figure. A signed stand for the removable engine, a drawing board with prints, an engine jack, a numbered laser-engraved plate and a certificate signed by COBI's chief executive complete it.

There is a chest of gold in the box

Among the accessories is a chest spilling gold, and COBI's own description says it fell out of the Golden Train. That needs explaining, because it is a reference most buyers outside Poland will not catch.

The Złoty Pociąg — the Gold Train — is a Polish legend that will not die. The story is that in the closing weeks of the war a German train loaded with gold, art and documents was driven into a sealed tunnel in the hills near Wałbrzych in Lower Silesia and concealed there. Beneath those hills is Project Riese, a genuine and enormous network of tunnels dug by concentration camp prisoners for purposes never fully established.

In 2015 two treasure hunters announced they had located an armoured train by ground-penetrating radar, and the story became international news. The Polish government got involved. A team from Kraków's AGH University surveyed the site properly in 2016 and found no train, no tunnel and no metal — only natural rock formations.

People are still looking. The gold in this box is COBI winking at its own audience.

A model of something never finished

The E-100 never had a turret, never moved under its own power and never fired. One hull was built by Henschel, found by the British in 1945, tested and scrapped. Everything above the hull — including the turret on this model — is projection from a handful of drawings.

In the COBI range

Set 2572 is the standard E-100 with 1,511 pieces and one figure.

Specifications

Pieces: 1,677 · Figures: 5, four exclusive to this edition · Scale: 1:28 · Numbered plate and signed certificate
Model dimensions: 37 × 16.5 × 12.5 cm (14.6 × 6.5 × 4.9 in)