Hermes update, neighbour has come home and just brought the parcel round to me, so all is well in that dept. The meter had a miniscule amount of bubble wrap, roughly A4 sized
, then the meter was packed inside one half of the original RS cardboard box with one end open. In the bottom of the box was a number of screws, nails, broken car bulb, connecting strip and other crap and the lot wrapped in a carrier bag and tapped up. It is a miracle that the meter arrived in one piece.
Meter was in a filthy state, I knew that from the photo, however considering the previous owner was a retired electrical engineer I'm amazed to see that the AC volts range is just way out of spec, AC mains measures 237v on my other meters but 252 on the Avo so that requires some investigation as do the supplied grabbers on the probes, all bent out of shape, just as well I only paid £15 for it then.
I have no doubt that all can be sorted out with some TLC spent on it.