eBay blunders reveal Dukes of Hazzard variants

I made a couple of goofy mistakes on eBay recently.  Oddly, they both ended up revealing variant versions of Dukes items. 

I have been after the chrome 1/18 General Lee for a while.  I have the "brushed" chrome version, but I am having a hard time tracking down the "shiny" version.  To my knowledge, there is only a "shiny" chrome 1/25 General, no "brushed," and I have it.  It is hard to tell the difference between the two 1/18s on eBay; the pictures look the similar, and often the sellers don't know which one they have, because they don't know there are two versions.

Here is the "shiny" 1/25 compared to the "brushed" 1/18.  I found one that I thought was the "shiny" one and got in to a little bidding war.  I kind of thought the bidding war proved it was the rarer of the two because the other bidder must know which is which.  That was a dumb thought.  When I got it in, I was disappointed to find it was the version I already have (three of). But upon further inspection, I noticed that this new "brushed" chrome one was a little different. 

The three I had before all have black "General Lee" lettering beside the flag.  All of the standard Ertl 1/18s have black letters.  Fans like us know this is incorrect because the real letters are blue.  Ertl and Auto World figured this out with the newer Ertl Authentics and Auto World Silver Screen Machines General Lees (my review). 

This new one I got has blue letters.  That is weird. 

The new one (on top) also does not have the CNH-320 license plate on the back of the car.  And I just noticed while placing these pictures on the blog, no RT decal. 

Same goes for the front.  New one (on top) is missing the front rebel flag.  Again, it is not show accurate to have a rebel flag, but most of the Ertl diecasts have it.  Its like this new chrome I got is some kind of correct hybrid.  Its nearly totally correct, except that its not orange.  I wonder why it is so different. 

For those keeping score at home, the 1/25 shiny chrome has both the CNH-320 and rebel flag on it.

So I'm still searching for the "shiny" chrome 1/18 General Lee, but now I know that there are three versions of the 1/18 Chrome General Lee.  We'll call the new one the "blue letter 'brushed' chrome 1/18 General Lee" and the old one "the black letter 'brushed' chrome 1/18 General Lee."  I have a blog dedicated to collecting Dukes of Hazzard stuff, so I can name things like that.

 
And then comes the bigger mistake I made on eBay.  I use the eBay Android app a lot.  It has improved quite a bit since I started using it when I first got a smart phone.  One feature I used on eBay quite often is the Watch action.  Even if I have no plans on buying something, I like to watch auctions to see how much they go for. 

I hit the watch button on the eBay app for one of the above Dukes of Hazzard Speed Jumper Action Sets.  I already had one and didn't plan on getting another, I just wanted to see how much money it would bring.  About two minutes later, I got an email telling me to enjoy my new Speed Jumper Set and please pay for it.  I have no idea how this happened.  Using the "Buy It Now" action takes at least two steps.  Either I screwed up or the app did, and I don't think it was me.  But I went ahead and payed for it.  When I got it in I noticed it was different then the set I already had. 

The set I already had is unused and has most of the stickers still on the sheet.  It is in really nice shape.  I got it from our buddy Driftlee.  It has all yellow track pieces and black wall pieces for the General to bust through. 

This new set has mostly black pieces.  It also has four General Lees in it.  All in varying conditions. It obviously has pieces from more than one set in it.  I thought it was pretty weird that so many of the pieces are black in this set, and yellow in the other.  It is not as surprising as the different 1/18 chrome Generals, but its cool to know there are different Stunt Jumper Sets. 

So the moral of the story is be careful on eBay.  But if you're not, you still might get good items.  Also, anyone need any Stunt Jumper General Lees or have a "shiny" chrome 1/18 General Lee that I could buy?