This is one of the most sought-after sets in small scale collecting, despite being A) Too big; B) Flats and C) Probably not that rare? Indeed the scale varies, like most flats with mounted figures being smaller than foot and the Tee-pee's even smaller.
The reason I don't believe it's that rare, is because it was obviously sold as a touristy memento or keepsake and would have been stocked by several museums and probably the battle site facility. Therefore it would most likely have been purchased by parents/grandparents, and thus may have been kept if a different part of the house. I'm willing to bet that the 'Family games drawer' of houses all over the world have these in them. Why do I think this? Three out of the four I know of, were/are Mint with booklet and play-mat and three out of the four I know of, have turned up in the UK. They are too different to end up in the toy soldier box with the Airfix, Starlux or Marx and have a semi-educational aspect which would have lead all those house-proud 50's housewives placing them with the Monopoly and/or Chess set in a different part of the home/playroom.
This is the tin they come in, it has a tie-pull opening mechanism, which I will place on my Imageshack account as I can only load 5 images at a time on this blog due to the level of detail I'm shooting at.
http://profile.imageshack.us/user/peerpressure/images
I'll also put up a sample page from the booklet.
Yellow poses are the foot Indians and Tee-pees, the foot figures average 40mm but some of the guys being shot would be closer to 50mm if they straitened-up!!! The Tee-pees are much smaller at about 1:120.
The Red 'Sprue' was all the mounted Indians, and some riderless horses running about. Again size varies slightly between the mounted horses, however two of the riderless beasts are considerably smaller, and one is quite large in comparison.
Blue is for the ill-fated mothers' sons of Mr Headstrong's command. Both foot and mounted, as with the Indians, a riderless horse is provided. Note the number of casualties...
The Play-mat with Custard's route to oblivion...Oh! instead of the deserved oblivion he received fame which lasts to this day...One-Nil to the Native Population? No; Lost One-to-Nine hundred and Ninety-nine, on home ground...Sorry.
The set is numbered; SET NO. C-2, leading one to the less than dramatic conclusion that there is probably a C-1 somewhere. As the 'C' may stand for Custer, this might mean the other set was a non-figure related product, supplied to the same institutions that were buying this set. But if the 'C' stands for something else like Cowboys or Combat, we could all be looking for a second far rarer set that WAS retailed through toy outlets and has been played to death in the toy-soldier box???
The set is described as 80 true-scale plastic figures, there are in fact 82 pieces and without the Tee-pees there are only 78 figures, but that's the pre-consumer-rights era for you!!
[For those afflicted by Political Correctness, all mentions of Indian above should - of course - read; Native American People of the Pre-Columbus Era.]
