R is for Recent Sorting Session!

When I say recent..I mean about two years ago I think! This stuff sits in Picasa as I think I must photograph it, then don't know what to do with the photographs, yet it seems that these sorting or show plunder posts get the most traffic over time...so I'll whore myself to Google-love and clear Picasa with several of these in the next month or so!

Gareth from Morgan Miniatures (currently promoting his new Ancient Egyptian Infantry from the battle of Kadesh) pushed this stash to me for no real money at all at a Sandown Park show ages ago, and as it was a busy day I didn't get to have a proper look until I got home that evening.

Bags, lots of bags! All the detritus from mixed lots which he's sorted into his collection...he knows I like the eclectic junk and small scale so he put this lot aside for me. basically we'll look at them bag-by-bag, but some of it's out of order and I can't remember the order now, not that it matters!

Kinder bits top left, a couple of HK athletes, a bunch of seated 'unknowns' and a nice (but damaged) motorbike with a French or Italian look (toy-wise). The best thing in this bag (eclectic and small scale!) is the sub-scale piracy of the Matchbox farmer in a soft silicon-rubber, presumably from a Chinese rack-toy I've yet to ID?

Also of interest, the two wooden cannon; might be home-made or might be wartime austerity/craft toy accessories for a wooden fort? The yellow Dinky copy, white astronaut, lead (Britains or Crescent?) range-finder and the Esci/Italeri Nebelwerfer chap who's already enhanced a post, a while ago...he needed dismantling and re-glueing.

More mini-ships and the Esso Tiger who got blogged the other night. The little car is one of the Charbens 'Old Crocks' they are quite common, but usually in this state paint-wise, however, they also suffer from metal-fatigue, particularly the wheels, so it's nice to get one in this condition, even with the paint loss. And it will make a nice WWI staff car after a re-paint!

Next lot!

Cereal toys aplenty! Hong Kong copies of Crescent circus, a bunch of the Kellogg's animals and a couple of other animals, one of which (orange girafe) I think I saw on the Cereal site the other day. The Zylmex half-track is probably the recent Red Box Motorcity re-issue (I say 'recent' casually...it's probably 15/20 years ago now! It gets faster as you get older...wait 'till you're here!), but identical to the 1970's original.

Nice heap...

...breaks down to give most of a Marx 45mm G.I. mould-shot in mint condition, various useful gaming figures, Merit tree bits and a Lego tree, a Kinder robotic horse (?!?), Blue Box plough and a local-yokel key-ring. I perticularly like the two ghost/ghoul figures which I have ID'd but haven't got the moniker in front of me!

Hiding under the click-shut bags (I refuse to adopt the infantile 'baggie' moniker..luvies, buddies, baggies, babies - big babies!) are a couple of nice mid-1970's header-carded rack-toys which will get their day when I cover the originals...in fact the right-hand one might have had it's day last year sometime...I think I did Lido HK copies?

Another - whole - bag of gaming pieces, some Game Workshop, some GW for MB (Milton Bradley), some less obvious and all waiting for an in-depth article looking at all the commercial boxed open-and-play version sof this type.

Continental premiums as polystyrene flats and tin flags along with the Lido submarine I had been missing for the longest time, picking-up the sky-blue surface ships years ansd years ago!

Least said, soonest forgotten! But that's half the fun of these mixed junk lots, and I will keep one of each in any event, seems to be a Mustang lookie-likey (Pucara trainer?) and a more obvious Stuka!

Best bit of a Blue Box fort, lots of wall pieces for a land-grab by the illegal immigrants and  - despite the cotton hinting at damage - the whole gate was in one piece so bargain I think!

I kept meaning to blog these when the collection was at hand back in the early days of the blog, but I don't think I ever got round to it...HK copies of the Marklin lead flat HO railway workers, I have quite a few of these now and really like them. In the small-scale world so much of HK's production is Airfix based one always has a soft spot for other sousces of figures.

Starting to sort a big bag of mostly Airfix clones, newer on the left, older on the right, interesting bits sorted above...

...then breaking down the left pile and finding a few more oddments...

...and then the right-hand pile gives the above, the blueish-grey Britains clone was new to me, and while he was the only one in the whole pile, you need to get lots of these piles to find those odd figures. He's now on the HK Khaki Infantry page, marked China, he's a recent Cracker or gum-ball toy.

Airfix fort roof and HK walls, all grist to the mill! The walls go in an 'unsorted' bag and occasionally get sorted against the known examples, as there are subtle differences between the various Giant, Woolbro, Gordy, Success, Fleetwood et.al. supplied/branded forts.

Large lump of robotic Games Workshop which prooved to be almost complete, a blob of....sea-grass (?) from a modern action figure r doll play set probably. And a real gem, hidden under that gloss chocolate brown paint was a Gem Models rock formation.

As with the Airfix clones, there's usually a bag of hollow-horsed 'Cowboys & Indians', usually mixed product of several sources/brands (with little or no genuine Giant) to be sorted out....

...and again, separating the obvious lots and puting the lesser items to one side...

..in this case a Marx barbed-wire strand, Quaker horse, Morestone/Budgie horse and some 15mm Christmas cracker/gum-ball toy minis...

...along with four late/post Giant foot figures...

...and only four of the correct figures for a heap of the horse I call Waveymane...I have started work on that page, but it's a big job and obtaining lots like this all help with that bigger picture!