P is for Perfect Pile of Purloined Plastic Plunder!

So, you may have been aware that a bit of a do was held in Richmond at the weekend! It takes a whole year to come round and is over all to quickly!

I am really hopeless at doing show-reports, although I often photograph the sorting stages with a Blog-article in mind! Thus I have several still on the desktop going back about three years, and some older stuff in Picasa, I'll try and make June 'acquisition month' and clear some of this old stuff, not to show-off, but because it may be interesting to some, and will clear some space on the laptop!

With that aim in mind, lets get this show out of the way in a timely manner....

Plunder! the swag-bags in situ, late Saturday night...full of promise...I eventually escaped with three bags...well, there was a forth, which I had taken with me, but a coffee-related flask-failure incident rendered it out of action for the duration!

The first was my purchases as I went round the hall throughout the day. Pile - top left, mid-sorting - top right, after sorting into my standard 4x51/2 bags - bottom left. It's hard to choose a 'winner' when I've picked everything in the photograph, but this group of female subjects is a fair example of the eclecticism of my buying.

I think most if not all of them came from Brian Carrick's rummage tubs, and they are; from the left -

A heavy vinyl Flamenco dancer, probably removed from a Spanish tourist thingy? A Jim figure of a girl, she's been repainted in metallic blue, so I may strip her back to bare plastic one day? A hard plastic copy of an Elastolin farm lady, scaled down and possibly in cellulose acetate by Reisler of Denmark and a soft synthetic/silicon-rubber girl marked Hong Kong.

One of Henry's wives from Cavendish...I have all bar one of these in storage, but can't remember which one, so keep buying them when I see them in the hope that when I marry the two piles I'll have good examples of all six of them, as I also can't remember which ones I've got here (when I'm at a show), this may well be same-pose number three? I still don't actually have Henry either!

The last two are scale-downs of Fontanini statuettes, one in hard, painted styrene and the other a soft-ethylene copy of an old European food premiums, with the original separate plinth now moulded on.

The badges were abandoned at the end, but having always attended these shows as 'trade' I've never got a badge, so I rescued them!

The second swag-bag contains the 'lucky-dip'. I'm very lucky to have been in the hobby long enough to have got to know a few people well, and for them to have got to know me and my quirky, [originally] small-scale oriented, ephemeral, eclectic, completist, Blog-post driven ways, equally well!

As a result some of them put stuff aside for me and from time to time - the Plastic Warrior show being an ideal time - divest themselves of it by offering it to me...I've never said "no thanks"! Five people brought stuff to Richmond and it was in Bag No.2...

Trevor Rudkin has been saving me stuff for over twenty years now and there's always something of interest in his bag, this year it's a toss-up between the Thorntons set and the pile of Ninjas which I think are Soma; although only marked 'China', they also carry a number on the foot which is very Soma, and the sculpting ties-in.

But the winner was in a separate tub which Trevor had carried reverently all the way from the Midlands, with the lorries nestled in bubble-wrap...these little 1:100'ish civilian Bedford MK types. Obviously based on old Matchbox or Corgi models and as you can see the bodies can be swapped, I have somewhere a whole boxed-tray of near-identical vehicles (with the same silver wheels) from some generic HK outfit but with Ford Thames cab-units, so we'll look at them all in more detail another day!

Fellow blogger Garreth Morgan also brought a bag of bits for me...bit of Marx, some damaged Starlux (which being hard plastic go in a tub with similar sized damaged Triang, Blue Box, Reisler and Marx for ultimate conversion), a nice Blue Box civilian Bedford RL needing a load and two Wells/Brimtoy RL's lacking front axles which are otherwise OK so will provide doner-service at some point, 3 ABC or ABC-like Indians (only one marked) and a nice 'from hollow-cast mould' Guardsman are all highlights.

The winner from this lot though is a quantity of old card French cavalry, dismounted...they have some age and the scraps that have been used to base them show it, lovely copper-plate ledger pages of some sort, and these aren't your run-of-the-mill 'paper sheets', they are heavy card stock with colour-litho overprinting in about 28/30mil.

Brian Carrick also had a bag of chuck-outs "full of lovely stuff" for me and there was lots to chose as a favourite of the day...I've gone with the bears because it was International Bear Week last week...apparently...well it was on Facebook which is enough for me!

I'm guessing the irony of bears in bearskins was lost on the Chinese sculptor! Three marching and three at attention, these had a little 'China' sticker in gold on them and are probably still findable in the kiosks on the London tourist trails..but..soldier bears...brilliant!

Other highlights include the three space-ships from Tombola, the two late HK bath-toy ships (Missouri (green) and United States (silver)), various premiums, a nice rubber Ultraman, a wooden flat of a chicken (you all know how I like my wooden toys!), a terracotta French revolutionary type, early Airfix camel, German 'dimestore' cowboy firing a cannon, Kinder monster and a vinyl figure from the Captain Harlock set; one of his side-kicks - Ramis Valente, he'll join Sylvidra who's been in storage for three years! Both made by Fabianplastica.

The third swag-bag was the 'my chair' stuff...during the day, I keep being tempted by stuff on the stall I'm supposed to be helping with...and it gets put on 'the chair'...'nuff said! Highlights are everything in the picture pretty-much, but I'm choosing the two elephants and the two Aloes?

The elephants are; on the left - a Hong Kong nodding-head elephant with a thread tail and on the right; the Carthaginian command piece (made by GMB according to Peter Evan's new book - see yesterday's post or Plastic Warrior's Facebook page!) from the Rosas Y Maleret board game 'Battle of Maturo' which has been on my 'wants list' for years! The Aloe plants might be Spanish also?

Now I said five people brought me bits and bobs and we've only seen three? At one point in the proceedings Peter Evans was throwing toys at me! He narrowly missed the person I was talking to and his fellow PW founder Brian, but hey, what the hell, when you go to a toy show intending to obtain toys and someone throws toys at you, I think you'll agree: it's been a good day!

He didn't even want money for them! Five nice China Troops vaguely based on Tee Mee poses with a bit of Revell in the influence department, an LP robot, a Ziani Spider-man freebie and a Gum-Ball ManzingerZ/robot type thing (I know the maker of but can't find the reference).

The fifth person was Barney Brown, but his 'brung bits' (Marx minis and Reisler 30mm's) got included in the first 'purchase' bag and images above, thanks Barney, Brain, Gareth, Peter and Trevor!

Top right are my floor-sweepings, only an unknown pilot and a Roco windscreen in the toy arena, but lots of fake jewels, the car-park was full of them but they were all dull and weathered, walked on or driven over, but in the hall there were lots of pristine ones...I think they'd been used as 'posh' (read: wasteful) confetti at a wedding reception, anyway, they are useful for scratch-building and modelling, and the small clear ones make excellent replacement headlights on late Dinkys and Spot-Ons!...not that I'm known for restoring either...but you never know, and they were free!

The final act of the day was Brian's extraordinary generosity...I had been tempted by his flats earlier in the day and not given in to temptation (the list of things I walked-away from would take a week to type!), at the end of the show, when most people had gone he said "Do you want them for £x", "If I've go it" I replied pulling £y out of my pocket with some shrapnel, "you can have them for £y" he said, "I'll just get them from the car" and shot off, coming back moments later with the tubs in the last image above.

It was a complete bargain, and with most of them whole or part sets marked mostly to one brand; Heudebert (bread-biscuit things), I've left the lids on until I can marry-them-up to the ones in storage and have a 'Flats' month to catch-up, but some may feature here in the nearer future so keep coming back!

That's a shows worth, it's all-sorts of all sorts in every scale and material, but it helps build the bigger picture and helps build Blog posts! There's one thing missing, but I'm paying for it next weekend so it doesn't count!

And if you're wondering....I shot the favourites against a backdrop of pages from Garratt's encyclopaedia I had at hand! Was that it? Blimey, that was quick...got to wait a year now!