Danny, great post thank you.
We were lucky enough to have four Mk1s display together at Duxford's Flying Legends last summer, the original AR213 which has been flying more or less continuously since the war, and three recent restorations by the various engineering magicians at Duxford and elsewhere. These have all been restored from wrecks and contain at least some original material.
One was force landed by 92 Sqn's Peter Cazenove on the beach at Calais (or Dunkirk?) after an encounter with the enemy, and was recovered relatively intact in 1980.
I believe there are one or two further Mk1 restorations under way and several MkIIs. The more the merrier, the sound of the Merlin still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Several of the IX(T)s are from the original batch converted by Vickers for the Irish Air Corps. Think at least one has a Packard Merlin, so I suppose it should really be a XVI(T)!