Hi CJ,
the first one in the 1978 advertisement is almost identical to the one I described. Differences are bright orange cowl with white plastic nose cone added on to the same style plastic cowl shown. I recall it was attached by two plastic pins at the top of the dress cowl. The broken off white pins from this missing nose cone remained on the cowl. Wheels and base are the same. Is this what you call the mid arch base? You can see a slight raise in the base before the catcher. Our catcher had those pins that located on the hooks built into the handles as seen in the earlier Celestial 160s, like the VC-160s had also, as an attaching method.
Not sure ours had the magic eye originally as it got damaged pretty early on and we didn't order a replacement catcher until 1989!! It didn't have this feature. Our next door neighbour's mower, which was an older version with the same base and impulse starter, had the same catcher with the indicator. We sometimes borrowed theirs to use on our mower!
I used to mow this widow's lawn on a regular basis using her mower and she had a Waltons Celestial 160 as well. It was interesting as it had the older style top and the wheels as seen in the first two files, but was equipped with the plastic G4 carburettor setup. I used to love using her machine as it went really hard but used less fuel than mine! Happy memories.
