A is for Another Pile of Shite!

See previous post for the title reference! It's all quality shite though...err...no it isn't...

For the rest of December we will be looking at real shite, so if you're a dyed-in-the-wool 58mm 'New Production' toy soldier fan, the best advise I can give you is go away; come back in February (January is usually a quite month for posts here I think?) and see where we're going here, but as far as the next few weeks go, we are looking at shite.

Let me explain...

This year - due entirely to the funds situation! - I have hardly bought anything; I think I've had 7 purchases on evilBay, Plastic Warrior's show, 3 Sandown's (the odd item and a mixed boxful) and that's it. I've probably spent more in the budget stores and The Works; a pound here, one-fifty there...over the year, than I have on 'planned purchases'?

As I'm sure a lot of collectors do, I regularly surf feeBay without intending to buy anything, finding and downloading images of rare or new figures or plastic toys, for the files I then can't use to identify a Space Station play-set I know I've downloaded...Doh!

A while ago I found this (upper picture), the main image and the next three, showed a so-so bunch of 'novelty' items, there were two or three useful figures, a couple of motorcycles visible and such like (a 'Home Farm' well, couple of racing cars...), but nothing that suggested it was worth a tenner.

However, there was one shot (lower picture), which suggested the asking price was not only worthwhile paying, but a bargain....nine bags, each apparently 5x5'ish, if they all had a few figures, a couple of motorcycles and the odd racing car, 'plane, train or other usefulness...and there were then two not terribly clear pictures of a couple of the other bags, and that looked to be the case, so a quick BIN was executed before one of the other three watchers remembered the first rule: Buy it when you see it or someone else will!

When it arrived (via some awful courier that has a tracking website which remains un-updated for days, and is then updated falsely with date/time changes...and states I've signed for something which was left on the doorstep in full view of the road! Hermes?) it was huge, and upon opening I realised I'd not looked closely enough at the scale of the known objects in the shots, and the bags were freezer-type 9x9's! To wit, I would give 2/3 quid a bag for this sort of stuff at a show, and the whole lot was indeed a bargain.

It is the contents of those bags we will be looking at in the run up to Christmas, along with the similar stuff they have been sorted into, or had added to them - some of this stuff is such shite I either had nothing to match, or the odd item, so all the non-figural, non-vehicular stuff has formed a new side-collection in the box they came in but sorted! I will probably sell it on one day in thematic 'packets'.

During the said sorting these were clearly from one maker/supplier, although when I - Aspergicly - tired to swap tops and tails to make better colour-ways, some were so loose they fell off, others were too tight to go together, so clearly from different batches over a few years, or probably: the better part of a decade or so.

Typical of what we will be looking at between now and the new year, we have three whistles on the left, a whistle-shaped whistle! A pair of shoes and a cows head! The mini-truck I've already added to the relevant post, a spinner that also has numbers for use with gaming (but being round-edged, open to argument if it stops between numbers!), a roulette ball-bearing game, false Appalachian Mountain Man teeth, a faux-glass animal in clear plastic, over-decorated with semi-transparent paint, a dolls handbag and a hair clip.

Novelties - Gum-ball machine toys (disvendia, vending or 'capsule' toys) from before the era of Tomy or Gashapon, Christmas Cracker gifts or 'prizes', dime-store consumables, party favours, cake-decorations, the odd premium, the contents of Lucky Bags and Sobres, the stuff from the trick/joke rack on toy shops, the little pocket-money bin-toys...that's what we're looking at here for a while.

No war or killing, few military items at all and not many figurals, just a healthy dose of fluffy nostalgia through seasonal, holiday stuff. Including the stuff we got in our stockings, crackers and those hollow gift-baubles you could get, but it's all shite stuff too! It is all pretty much 1970's, so no early tin or wooden stuff, and none of the current stuff, except when the current stuff is the same stuff recycled, or an early example of some cracker toys we will look at, at some point.

Countdown to Christmas on smallscaleworld...has started!