My Toy Soldiers & Me

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Books I have found to be very good for my hobby, will add more in due course.

Enjoy!

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Let’s be very frank, I am done collecting in great numbers which means “boxes of soldiers” be them REPLICA METAL SOLDIERS&MODELS -as is the present case- DORSET SOLDIERS… W.BRITAINS (ebay.co.uk mainly)… OLD Britains (meaning last century old maker)… TRADITION OF LONDON… STEADFAST (R.P.MODELS)… MARLBOROUGH… and the odd figure.

My collections are complete.

Be them bought painted (the vast majority) or the casts I painted or converted myself… (lately I have enjoyed “completing sets” converting existing figures… aka Scots Greys, Bengal Lancers etc.)

I have two displays.

One is in my house in Pal (1600 mts above the sea level I guess) mainly marching figures and Bands. My DUCAL (Fort Ducal) collections are there… Trooping the Colour was my first collecting theme… completed with other ceremonial Toy Soldiers; Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Some other units as “my” Royal West Kent, two sets of Mountain Guns and very old “memories” (including mugs and model cars and what not).

The other in my ex-office in Andorra la Vella -only 1000 meters above the sea-(retired Arquitect) or at least a part of it! contains the potentially usable for Old Style Wargaming… summing up a lot: A French Army circa second half of the XIXth; A British Army (in 3 versions): White Colonial Helmets; SIMKIN times; and Khaki clad troops with Indian Troops suport for the same second part of the XIXth up to 1900 (I even have some USA Toy soldiers by REPLICA).

Even now (I do not know how) I have been presented by a Ballon observation set, you do make friends after decades in the collecting field… even some special vignettes done as a gift by talented artists!

But, it is over. MAINTENANCE and classification and order is the moment for me. Just yesterday changed an arm of a soldier to have another bugler. I am painting today a kepi to distinguish another one… doing an standardbearer for a Bengal Lancer unit… deciding which heads will go on some extra (or redundant) mounted soldiers to have “Piece Uniques” (LOL.. I am not a snob at all it is the way to say they are not commercially available at all) etc

Have the pics of the last lot, curiously it contains USA Infantry (the boxes went to the Chicago Toy Soldier Fair and come back to Old Blighty were I decided to add to my collection as a curiosity… and at the last posible moment I oredered some USMC boxes -that was a great idea- probably the toy Soldiers I have got more quickly in my life since idea-order-arrival… delighted with them… Peking 1900.

Of course some time later I decided to square a bit the units and get a bit more of them to do a proper job with an expeditionary force from the USA (by 1900 the new up and coming global Empire…) Andrew always says I can not stop collecting because I am an addict… LOL (maybe he is right mind…)

Enjoy (in a couple of days I will reubicate this post where it belongs on the new order of the webpage).

In the same parcel come some casts to complete my SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON set, a very nice ITSC MUG!, and a copy of the SIMKIN book edited by International Toy Soldier Club (Fantastic limited edition).

I was doing myself some odds and ends on my side of the Channel.

Now, if Tony Dilley makes for me a single dismounted Engineer Officer (Architecture section)… that will be all for the moment!

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I had one in my collection years ago… but I sold the figures because there were not here not there (or so I thought) In fact I have painted this set myself to correct the colours I did not like on the old one. If you look on my book you will see pics of it (I can not find anymore!)

So now my French Foreign Legion has a new Band.

Hope you like it.

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So, in the end I did add 6 figures to the collection. I doubted a lot if adding Mildred Natwick was worth at all… but the Colour Party took my fancy in a way… an important scene in the movie I guess… so years later I asked for more casts from Replica (Andrew Stevenson) and a cast (modified) from Antony Spencer (DORSET SOLDIERS).

The parcels arrived, curiously Andrew (a very busy man) forgot to send the heads an the arms to complete the “conversions”… it was in fact a bit of luck in retrospect… because I made an order to London Bridge spare parts and found those splendid flags!… had a bit of trouble using Bengal lancers arms -had to remove the original lance- making the existing hole in the hand bigger with my machine was very tricky!… but finally I could put on the colours into them… the rest of arms and heads was easy enough.

Once the characters “created” it only remained to paint them… so they were put “in the queue” of things to do… had to finish some French Foreign Legion additions (4 figures); some Khaki officers (one new Ensign, a Foot Officer and a Mounted one); repaint as a USMC standard-bearer the substitued figure with puttees from the Four Feathers set… and the last job of my collection could end the collection.

Have some pics!

And of course… enjoy!