Ok, it's been a while in the offing, but here it is, the full disassemble and reassemble of the palitoy vinyl caped jawa.
Here she blows as it arrived in the post. Lots of slap dash sellotape all over the shop.
Here it is with the sellotape removed and all the bits laid out. Conclusions, that is a genuine vinyl caped jawa. The bubble definitely originated from the cardback in question due to the matching rip tears etc.
The back plate was placed in wonky, at an angle, you can see from the matching card tear the angle it was at. Decided not to put a cloth cape jawa in there as this has been done in other people and it was a struggle just to get the vinyl cape in there correctly.
This is a regular 12 back palitoy cardback I used to make the missing foot plate and to replace the missing card above the bubble.
Here's the whole thing back together again, sans sellotape and the stuff pinched off the regular 12 back. Conclusion, the bubble type is the correct one for a vinyl cape jawa, the jawa is a genuine vinyl cape. Could a cloth cape have been inside and a vinyl cape placed inside when the ting was retaped back in the day? Yes, it could have. That would go against my philosophy of Occam's Razor though. All things being equal, the simplest answer is probably correct. So, was there a sneaky switcheroo back in the day, or was this resealed the same way as the rest of the 12 backs that came up on ebay at the same time? I would suggest the sellers story was genunine, and this isn't the first time an opened one has come up. The bottom line is, until a sealed one is approved by AFA, the debate will go on!
cheers Jason