Well, I built that kit several times when I was much younger, but none of them is still in existence. I have no idea what the total parts count was; the length was in the vicinity of three feet. And the price (my age is about to show) was $15.00.
I'm at least 95% sure that all the big Revell Constitutions, American, German, and otherwise, are essentially the same kit. (To my knowledge, the only Monogram Constitution was an extremely small "beginner's kit" with a one-piece hull.) The initial release didn't have sails; later ones had vac-formed plastic ones. The beautifully-done crew figures in the first release had been sculpted for the purpose; they had early-nineteenth-century USN uniforms. For a while the kit was being sold with the same nineteenth-century merchant crew as the Cutty Sark, Thermopylae, Kearsarge, and Alabama kits, but I think the USN guys came back eventually. And I've heard that recent versions have serious problems with brittle plastic, flash, and other signs of aging molds. Otherwise I'm quite confident that they're all the same. Those people are notorious for botching up such things as scales, parts counts, and measurements on their boxes.
I agree with those who think it's the best Constitution kit on the market - at least as far as plastic versions are concerned. (Bluejacket and Model Shipways both make excellent wood ones.) And the "copper sheathing" is indeed very well represented. But the statement about all the rows of plates being parallel to the waterline is incorrect.
A little thought will establish that, given the shape of a ship's hull, for every row of plates to be parallel to anything was physically impossible (unless the plates varied hugely in size and shape - which they generally didn't.) Because of the ship's hull form, the linear distance on the exterior surface of the hull between the waterline and the keel is considerably greater amidships than at the bow and the stern. Therefore it takes more rows of plates to cover the midships region than the bow or the stern.
The usual practice in dealing with this problem was to mark a series of "goring belts" on the hull. The coppering gang would generally start at the keel (exception: it appears that in the eighteenth-century British Royal Navy they usually started at the waterline) and nailed the plates, which generally measured about 20" x 48", to the hull in rows that were as straight as possible, each row overlapping the previous one by an inch or two. In a full-bodied ship like the Constitution, the natural result of that process would be that, after the first couple of rows, the rows of plates would start to slope upward at the bow and the stern. (Think about it. Remember that, in the midships area, those lower rows of plates would be nailed to a surface that was tilted at a sharp angle.) So at some point (typically about eight to twelve rows from the bottom) a horizontal line would be marked on the hull. The workers would cut the sheets of copper so all the curving rows of plates ended at that line. Then they'd lay a row horizontally, and start the process again.
All this is harder to verbalize than to visualize. There's a good, illustrated description of the general principles in George Campbell's excellent book, China Tea Clippers, which fortunately is available on line: http://www.all-model.com/Clippers/Page60.html
There were variations on the theme at various times and in various nations. The number of goring belts varied, depending on the hull form (and, I imagine, on national traditions and the judgment of individual shipwrights). And sometimes the lower edges of the goring belts were gently curved, rather than straight and horizontal. It's best to check any pictorial evidence about your particular ship before deciding how to lay out the coppering on a model.
Plastic kit manufacturers have generally done a pretty good job of representing hull plating on sailing ships. As I recall, both the old Revell 1/192 Constitution and its more recent 1/96 sister have it just about right. This is the sort of thing that a lot of modelers don't notice. But if you've ever put the metal sheathing on a model's hull yourself, you know just how complicated a job it is.
The bottom line: The Revell 1/96 is, bearing in mind its age (it's more than 40 years old now), is one of the best plastic sailing ship kits ever. If you can, get an old one; the plastic probably will be of higher quality. But in any of its many versions, it's a sound basis for a serious scale model.
Good luck.