I is for It's Not Rounders and It's Not French Cricket!

I picked up a small bag of mostly American Footballer's the other day, but there happened to be some nice, early-looking baseballers in the same bag. To be honest I wondered if they might be Commonwealth (right colour, but too glossy?) or Van Brode (semi-flat), but a quick Google revealed them to be Ajax, and not that uncommon.

These are they! Factory painted in a dark chocolate brown (and blue!) on a pinkish-fawn base material, it's a hard plastic; probably polystyrene, but some of the properties of a clean Bakelite, the sort used for visible electrical's in domestic settings, plugs and switches. They are smallish, about 50-mil - I didn't measure them and they've been put away now!

The three on the left were also in the bag, while I had the one on the right, all copies of Lido-made US originals. These are the poorer copies, unpainted and in two variations, smooth bases and hollowed bases with a HONG KONG mark; the smooth-based figures are marked on the body - see below.

The better copies are hand-painted and can be found in soft plastic or - as here, carried by Wilton's - in hard plastic, these are very similar to the American Football set we looked at the other day/will look at in the next few days (delete as applicable!) and might be from the same source. These also carry a small HONG KONG on the base - see below.

Loose odds include a soft plastic version of the previous figures, a figure who may or may not be a baseball player (he has some properties in-common with some novelty soldiers I have with separate clip-together belts and stuff), but I think he is, his heat-shrinkage damage making it hard to read the details!

The other two are probably gum-ball capsule-toy inserts, with a glossy 20-odd millimeter one and a larger, earlier looking chap who I like as he's  a catcher (?) preparing the 'secret hand signal' for the pitcher!

Markings, or lack of them left-to-right from the top, Ajax are blank, marked and smooth based Lido copies, the other marked, flat-base (Wilton) and the three smaller novelties.

The body-mark of the other Lido-copy, compared to the hollowed-base one; orange is another colour that's hard to photograph, but it is there! Like American Footballers they are not numerous this side of the pond; it's not our game!

Speaking of American Footballers - meet you here again in an hour-and-a-half!