Here it is folks. The crowning jewel. The centrepiece of the collection. The small rouge one. Red Dwarf. Well, the second Red Dwarf really...
The original Red Dwarf model was built in 1988, and used from series I to series IV. Rather anticlimactically and unceremoniously, this first ship was destroyed when it fell off a shelf in the BBC production office.
So in 1991 a second model was created for series V, with filming taking place from the 15th of November to the 6th of December 1991. Once all the model shots were completed, this second ship was promptly blown up for episode 5, Demons and Angels. Numerous small fragments and four large pieces of the exploded ship were salvaged from the wreckage by Peter Tyler, the Model Unit Director of Photography. The four large pieces were each sold in 2004 to two collectors from the USA, one collector in the UK, and one further UK collector in 2014.
What happened to the smaller fragments though? They were also sold off to various collectors, and in 1994 the official movie and TV prop collection company "The Fox and the Unicorn" managed to ascertain numerous of them from an employee at Pinewood Studios. One such fragment was sold by The Fox and the Unicorn to a collector in Oxford, who in turn sold it to me, the Curator of The Unofficial Red Dwarf Online Museum- absolutely smegging not to be referred to by the acronym "TURDOM" for short.