News, Views etc...Welcom Trojan Fans, Cross-pollination, Prices and Books etc...

Welcome Trojan Fans

I had a little spike in traffic yesterday and noticed that a dozen or so hits had come from the same place..."Ay-oop!..." I though; "...there's a link been posted somewhere on't'interwebnet thingy". Sure enough, I followed it back to Cigarette Card Collecting Dot Com, where not surprisingly, they were talking about Cigarette cards! But, toy soldier fans...what cards? Go and look for yourselves;

CCC - Trojan 'Gen' Cards

Now obviously they are going straight to the post they've linked to, but some of them might then click-on the Trojan tag and find this at the top of the search-results, others may click the home button or the banner title to find themselves here, so...

Welcome to you Card Collectors, I'm sure you'll find something here to press a nostalgia button.

Now, those regulars among you who just followed the link back to the visitors site, will have though what I thought..."Hell, another string in the Trojan/Shipton bow!! Obviously I then spent a few hours trawling the web for more details, and while there wasn't much forthcoming, there was a bit more than our visitors have on their thread.

So in the hope that someone from CCC will email me [maverickatlarge(at)hotmail(dot)com] with the complete list from their two-volume 'bible', here's what I found. If one of the CCC guys could send me the rest I'll update the list part with acknowledgement of both individual and reference work!

Trojan Gen Cards by; W. Shipton Ltd. 1959
(and Quaker Oats Ltd. up to at least Group 9 'Stars of Sport')

In 'Series 1' there are five cards in each 'Group' of a 75-card set and there are - therefore - 15 groups of cards. They were sold in their sets of five, in small waxed-paper envelopes. Certain sets were issued with Quaker Oats (in Quaker Oats graphics), they seem to have followed the same numbering system, and the wax-envelopes might suggest that all were issued in cereal, whether they were all issued with Quaker Foods and some got overprinted and others not is a moot point? I'm assuming all 15 'groups'/75 cards were available?

There never seems to have been a 'Series 2', nor any subsequent series'.

Series 1 - Group 1 - Beautiful and Scarce
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?
(Bird? Golden Pheasant?)


Series 1 - Group 2 - Characters of Fiction
1 - Robin Hood
2 - Robinson Crusoe
3 - Sherlock Holmes
4 - Mr. Pickwick
5 - Long John Silver


Series 1 - Group 3 - Stars of Entertainment
1- Lois Armstrong
2 - Pat Boone
3 - Elvis Presley
4 - Tommy Steele
5 - Perry Como


Series 1 - Group 4 - Fight Against Crime
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?


Series 1 - Group 5 - Prehistoric Monsters (?)
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?
(Pterosaurs?)
(Archeopteryx?)


Series 1 - Group 6 - Railways
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?
Flying Scotsman


Series 1 - Group 7 - Racing Cars
1 - ?
2 - ? (Green car)
3 - Maserati
4 - ?
5 - Aston Martin


Series 1 - Group 8 - Insect World
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?


Series 1 - Group 9 - Stars of Sport (definitely also issued by Quaker Oats)
1 - W. [Billy] Wright, Soccer ('Wolves' - Wolverhampton Wanderers)
2 - W. [Willie] Pastrano, Boxing
3 - Peter May, Cricket
4 - H. ['Herb'] Elliott, Track & Field/Running
5 - (Judy Grinham, Swimming OR J. Graham, Motor Racing? [Probably the later])


Series 1 - Group 10 - Animal World
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?
Giraffe
(Bird?)


Series 1 - Group 11 - Nursing
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?
(Male patient in bed with nurse next to him)


Series 1 - Group 12 - Under the Sea
1 - Fighting Fish
2 - Blue Whale
3 - Sea Anemones [described as fish-eating 'plants'!]
4 - Hammerhead
5 - Globe Fish


Series 1 - Group 13 - Ballet
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - ?
5 - ?


Series 1 - Group 14 - Wild West
1 - Buffalo Bill [Colonel William Frederick Cody]
2 - ?
3 - ?
4 - Wild Bill Hickock
5 - Billy the Kid [William H. Bonney]
Jesse James
("Cowboy")


Series 1 - Group 15 - Motor Cars
1 - ?
2 - ?
3 - A Two Wheeled Car
4 - ?
5 - ?
Cross-pollination

The other thing that struck me about this little series of serendipitous events/links, was that there's not enough cross pollination between the various branches of toy collecting and collectables in the wider sense - one of the lists I found was so 'off the wall' I'm not posting  a link to spare the blushes, but he was a sports cards only guy, and didn't know about the other groups at all.

While I didn't know anything about them as I don't 'do' cards, or, if I do; it'll be regimental colours, or uniforms of all nations or something like that. And at the same time the CCC guys didn't know about Trojan's Toy Soldiers or the other products by W. Shipton/A.J. Novelties, despite all the work done by Paul Morehead and the other chaps and chap'esses at or subscribing to Plastic Warrior magazine (YES! I know, I promise to do the review in the next day or two, or the next issue will be due!), nor the Quaker link...so it's definitely worth spending a few hours idly browsing Google with 'random' search terms, as it will turn up all sorts of stuff you don't think you're interested in, that is linked to stuff you are interested in!

And the question now is what will turn-up next for this prolific mews-stable/coach garage of a factory!

Prices

If you did follow the link above, you may also have followed their link to the buy-it-now (BIN) listing in the US for a graded Wild Bill Hickock at US $499.95...yes-surrr-ee! Fahhvehun'red Dollars!

Now I know I do bore people with my "It's all mass produced shite and it's not worth anything!", but it's true, don't shoot the messenger! Even the poxy yellow caparison on the mounted Swoppet Knight's horse from Britains was mass-produced, in the 20th century, from an relatively indestructible, washable PVC by the biggest company of it's type at the time. Swoppets themselves; they're always on evilBay, only the ACW cavalry are truly rare'ish, as they have gone brittle, but it means their carbines are as common as muck if you know the right dealer!

Paul Stadinger (link removed a year or two later!) brought something to peoples attention the other day, I took a screen-capture of the finished lot;

(Luke-Skywalker Card)

The same week this happened;

(Japanese Robot)

The ugliest robot I've ever seen! It looks like a chocolate-bar dispenser from the 1970's Underground...with arms, that's had a fancy hat-box left on it's shelf!

What these three have in common is A) Modern! Post-1945, mass-produced modern shite! We love it, it's lovely shite, but it's shite...intrinsic value of the above three items? About a tenner the lot, that's five' ninety-nine for the robot, three-fifty for the proof card and fifty-p for the cigarette card.

B) They are also worth what peole will pay for them! There are a lot of very rich people out there among the austerity-starved, there are also a lot of idiots out there with more money than sense AND there are quite a few very rich idiots...most of them working in banking it would seem!

I know - "But it's a 'proof card', they're as rare as rocking horse shit" - Er, yeah...because?

Because they are a sub-stage of the printing process, they are rubbish, they go in the bin when they are approved and they never get attached to a toy, it's exactly the same as selling old sprue or runner.

In recent years we've seen the value of pre-production sample figures fall, because there are so many out there, most being sent straight from the factory to trusted 'reviewers' and often de-based in the process, so the fun of tracking them down has faded. Yes; it's still nice to find those kinds of variants of vintage figures though, but they turn-up in mixed lots at car boots as happened to a friend the other day.

The point is - The cigarette card is currently in a London dealers list for 20 quid (with 39 other Trojan's), while the robot will come-round a local show for £50 or so if you keep looking and the proof card is still rubbish! Let the rich guys and idiots pay the silly money, there's so much out there you'll never have all of it (even if you win the double-rollover Euro Lottery), and you can build a nice collection of anything from cheapies, bargains and swapsies!

Books

At Sandown this weekend, three new books were launched, the second volume of 'FiM' or Farming in Miniature, from Adrian Little, Robert Newson and Peter Wade-Martins, the first volume was issued over a year ago, and I will review them both properly, together in the next week or two (they're gorgeous...it's toy-porn!). Also there was a new book on Hugar buildings published, I had a quick look at it and it too seems sumptuous (but only page-3!) while a book on model villages/towns was also published.

I was busy, so apart from a quick perusal of someone's Hugar tome, I have no details on either of them and will endeavour to follow-up with better 'gen' (Ha-ha, back to Trojan!). If you can't wait try Potter's Fairs, as they were obviously the show promoter on the day and facilitated the launches. I don't even know if the second book is about 'toy' models or the sort of Model Villages you got taken to in the car with a picnic as a child!

Other Bits

Finally - I have been working on a mini-'book' of composition for over a year which I was going to publish as a page, loaded-it the other week, spend three weeks editing it, tweaking it, sorting out a couple of hundred photo's into about 30 collages, saved every time I was in there...Blogger/Google lost the whole F*****g thing the other day! Blank sheet of white-screen and no answers to my exasperated eMails!

Of course the photo's have been filed to six dongles, the text I've got with me is an early edit...yada-yada...so I seriously 'got the arse' and disappeared for a week or two as you may have noticed...upshot is, I've added a few images and a lot of text to the Airfix Blog, but have more to do, and that's where I'm at for a while, but I'll try to put some fresh copy up here, and - of course - the PW review!