Cees,
I am confused...So far as I can tell there was no Top Flite Taurus kit before 1963, yet Ed had both models throughout 1962. Neither can be a kit. The MAN article intro, Jan 1963 (which must have been prepared around October 1962) states that 'the man in the street is doing the winning' so there must have already been a number of Taurus flying and winning local contests. This would imply that there were already plans circulating (as seen by the October 1962 RCM&E plan seen here) much earlier than the MAN ones. It is obvious that the MAN plans are simply the kit plans with added sections for the ribs and formers, the engineering of the kit was completed before the plans were published, so Sid Axelrod must have had access to these earlier plans as well as Ed's models. If this is so then it would be hard to tell which fuselage is the oldest, but one of them was modified for the model seen on the auction and the A/C carrier. It is possible that one of them is older than the other, but the difference will be weeks, not months or years. This is only a guess, but at that time it was common to build two models at a time, rather than one, as things were not quite as reliable as they are now, and it made sense, especially if you were practising for the Nationals, as Ed was when the models were built.
Evan.