This was supposed to be part of Rack Toy
Month, but due to the vagaries of my budgeting, the fact that RTM overran and
that Royal Fail use a bank-holiday Monday
as an excuse to do bugger-all for about four days, it didn't arrive until the
late posts were publishing and I wasn't near a computer.
I'd been watching it on feeBay for a few
weeks (months maybe?) and it had come down in price so it ended-up being a
bargain, but had I been flusher it would have been cheaper still . . . and this
may be worth noting as a sales technique if you are a seller:
Having reduced the lot (there was another
bag included which we'll look at another day!) by a pound after a few
re-listings, the seller still didn't sell it (although he would have if I'd
been in a better position, but I had insurance to get!), so kept it off evilBay
for a few days and then re-listed it with a 10p increase . . . it immediately
got two watchers?
When I saw it had been re-listed I grabbed
it - having been the only watcher over the previous few weeks! But it makes you
think; a steady price-increase might get watchers to strike before it goes up
some more? Worth a thought . . . anyway; let's look at it.
On feebleBay it was hard to gauge the
figures, I thought they were about 55/60mm and new poses, or new to HK copies
of less common US or Euro figures from the 1960/70's. It turned out they are
common'ish copies of the old 45/50-mil Monogram
(later Revell) GI's, with another
pose - see below.
The gun - the real reason for the purchase
as I've never seen one before - is a quite crudely manufactured, spring-loaded,
shell-firer with a satisfying, clicking, elevation-mechanism noise.
The firing rod can be fitted either way,
and due to it's length matching the breach-length rear of the catch-slots, I
suspect should be the other way round but this was how it came, and both it and
the spring are laid in the breach-cavity, then the two are pinned together and
the whole held firm by an ethylene O-ring and the barrel.
One of the shells is a miss-mould . . . or
a dum-dum!
One of the 'Unknown' MPC spaceman copies has been ID'd! Or at least attributed to a
generic rack-toy and married to some Monogram
copies! Maybe the 'dum-dum' is a chemical munition!
Range, at a vague 35% of elevation, is a
pretty consistent 'over 3-meters' and at near point-blank will knock-over a Britains Deetail cowboy!
Base-mark on both is a small, neatly-lettered
but poorly-stamped, full 'Made in Hong Kong'
How they go in the archive; gun, shells and
figures one side of the index card, header-card, bag and staples the other.
Both the staples and the shells get their own smaller self-seal bags (I don't
use the term 'baggies' - it's baby-talk), of which I only use four sizes across
the whole collection, all others (as they come-in) are used to go back out, or
given to trader-mates.
The main reason I de-bagged this one was
that the staples were so rusted, the card needed a clean/to be protected from
them and was going to come loose with handling at some point anyway. The card
will get annotation at some point, I just photographed it first!
The staples are kept so that when/if I
need/desire to restore the packaging, I can match them with new, clean ones of
the same size; feeding them through the same holes and closing them by hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment