A is for Accident!

This came in the other day, quite by accident, and not much of a cautionary tale as most collectors have 'been there' at least once! Saw a lot on evilBay, biggish, mixed lot with one or two nice pieces in it, three tight-wads had bid it up to 3-quid-something between them.

So I though (as you do!) I'll do the seller a favour by bidding it up a bit! Whacked in a £25 shot and forgot all about it...several days later found a demand for payment of nineteen-odd quid in my in-tray!

There were various other useful bits in the lot, so I'm happy with the hammer price, and this was in the lot - Timpo 'solid' knight (King Richard III, the Lionheart)...it's lost a fair bit of the transfers, but equally it's retained a fair bit of the transfers, so?

The colours - even on this tatty one - are so vibrant, they must have looked stunning originally, some lucky collectors probably have them near-mint, but this will do me...well happy!

The shield is the problem, the flag just looks a bit battle-worn! Funny thing is; I think I have a shield with a near-perfect transfer in storage somewhere without the mounting spigot, so at some point in the future I'll have to bite the bullet and try and swap them, which risks ruining them both, but will make an interesting post in a few years time!

H is for Hong Kong Romans

A new page has gone up looking at the Hong Kong 25mm'ish Romans (Trojans?) from Giant and their ilk. it's at the top of the page, or here; Hong Kong Romans

S is for Solpa's Senior Size

Blog follower Kostas from Greece kindly sent me a load of stuff to help with the Airfix Blog, and that is slowly being introduced or used over there, he also sent me a batch of Solpa images for the same purpose, some of which are more mixed in origin or subject matter, so I'm popping them up here for the general collector to peruse.

'Wild West', around the 54mm bracket, these would have come seperated into Cowboys and Indians I believe, and seem to be 'based on' rather than straight piracies of other makes figures, The Blue one; front, right, is intesting as I have several of this figure in different sizes, from Italy? Possibly a board-game piece? Possibly another maker?

Copies of Airfix and Britains WWII and Modern infantry types with a copy of a Lucky Products astronaut, who would have provided a slightly oversized enemy for the robots we looked at here.

Close-up of three of the figures, Solpa must have been quick off the mark to get the copy of the Airfix modern Russian into their range! I wonder if the Britains copy is from another source, he looks a bit crude for Solpa?

There are single-set images of these piracies - in more realistic colours - waiting in the queue for the Airfix Blog, but I almost prefer theses 'wacky' colours! A mix of clones; Airfix Japanese and Paratroops are the donors this time.

Some of the accessories that accompanied the boxed sets of figures, very 'Hong Kong' in execution, Solpa seemed never-the-less to produce domestically, or - if they did import - it was through a pretty exclusive contract-producer in the (former) colony?

Thank you Kostas!

D is for "Dad...I 'fink I got it wrong again!"

Well, I've finally committed myself to the ultimate madness, I'm putting my archive on-line. I've spent the last week or two preparing 11 new Blogs, which - while 'live' - have mostly got nothing on at the moment. I have posted about 50 listings/cross-references on the 'A' page, and last night got 30-odd on the XYZ-Numerals page. More will come!

The numerals are easy, there's only 70-odd and while they are going 'at the end' now, I've always archived them at the front, before 'A', so they've had the most work, and are closest to ready!

The reason it's got to go on 11 separate Blogs is simply the tag-limit Blogger imposes, which is 2,000 tags per blog. With at least 880 'A's, and all the cross-references and individuals to be added, letters like A, M and S needed a blog to themselves. At some point some Blogs (I'm thinking of them as pages!) may be combined - or split - that remains to be seen.

At the current rate of progress, it will take about 20 years to get the estimated 22,000 entries up...so this will remain an ongoing work for the rest of my useful life! Contributions, updates and any relevant information will be welcomed and can be left in the comments, or eMailed. Obviously the more entries that are published the longer it will take to update them, but we'll see how it develops!

I'm checking everything as I go, some folders haven't been visited for years and it was in updating the 50-fifty entry last night that I found a new catalogue, had a flick through it and found these...

I don't think much of the fridge magnets, the red-force seem hopelessly outnumbered with nowhere to go, but the bottle-opener is an absolute 'must', but for the toy box, not opening bottles...I can see those arms breaking after not much use? They should both be in gift shops or catering-equipment shops by now, or certainly; will be in time for Christmas?

It also makes for a good example of what's happening here with these new Blogs; it's a simple listing, of a current company...

...so I just need to update my folder with a download of the catalogue, keep the link, shove two previous edits of the 'main entry' together, add a cropped out logo, hyper-links & tags, and it's done!

Someone like Marx on the other hand...

...looks quite neat on the dongle, until you delve into the folders...

 ...some don't look to bad...

...some are going to take weeks of work...

...while others need a lot of sorting out!

But there are some hi-def treasures in there still waiting for the full light of day...that sequence of images in the 'kins folder is a complete 'book' format set of fairykins. But you can see that while I'm throwing-up some easy ones to get the ball rolling, a full Marx listing will scroll of tens of yards! And Blue Box are in three different places!

But...now you know where I am if I'm not blogging here on the 'Home' Blog for the next few years! I'll get back to the numerals now...still 30-odd to do.