We are slated to be hit by another storm like last year. The storm last year knocked down trees and homes lost power. We were lucky as we only lost power for a few hours. Other people were out for a week! We lost one toy show because of the down trees.
This year the storm is going hit a few days later that the last one. I am hoping to get in the two shows this weekend . The first is Chiller which will be no problem. The other is a toy show in Delaware. The second one we may have to deal with wind and rain. I am trained to deal with weather and have no fear of weather. I will be using my HHR which is great for this type of weather. We fell in love with the HHR after getting a rental in Las Vegas. I drove it to Sedona Arizonia. No one told Laurie that final part of getting to Sedona is down a widing road, which we did at night and in the rain. Laurie did not relax, but I was fine as my late father had me on every crooked road in Pennsylvania. Going back from Sedona we had to go another way due to a rock slide. They had a snow and ice storm and we drove on through. There was seven accidents, we fortunately did not have to stop as people were already at the scenes.
Because of the experience Laurie fell in love with the HHR and when she had the chance she got an HHR that she love until it was in a three car accident. We were waiting for a light when a woman who was on the phone hit us and we went into the another car. We were not hurt, but the HHR was total. Laurie through a friend found that Enterprise Rent a Car had used ones for sale. She was able to get one and when they were done with her, I had them set me up with one.
After we do our second show we will stay close to home and see how it plays.
I know you are a busy individual but have you managed to determine why my Comments are not showing up on the right side bar for Comments ?
We have remove your two comments as it contain your personal email address which could be open to spammers. In the future you want to contact someone who has comment on this site, you will have to contact us and we will contact the person to see if they want to hear from you.
No need to protect me from spammers as I have ample software doing just that. So in the future you can leave my email address visible.
Sorry it is our policy not allow email address to be display even if you have the software.
Hi Paul (Stad). My name is Ed Connell, I have just recently found your site here. I have bought from you in the past, never through ebay though. Do you even still do your old mail order catalog ?
I haven’t really bought anythng in quite awhile, but am always on the lookout for neat figures I like. I doubt you remember me, but I have bought from most of the old dealers out there at one time or another. I have collected toy soldiers since I was 3 years old, ever since my grandmother put the 1st mpc ringhand ww2 figure in my hand to stop me from crying. Its my earliest memory. Anyway I figured I was say hi,and hope you are doing good. I am very selective about the figures I buy, mainly action poses, never liked marching, band, nor dead poses. Mainly medieval, and western figures. I don’t own a single marx playlet, but could tell you a few stories about numerous marx figures I have had in the past. I long when marx was doing those great sets, that are really way out of my league now. My parents never wanted to buy me toy soldiers. The ones I got were thrown away, when I rebuilt my collection it was thrown away again.
I never had the opportunity to get the cool sets I wanted, and saw displayed at stores, or that was listed in the Sears wish book. My grandmother was a big marx fan. Anyway I have a large number of figures now, and now where to store them all. I still buy some I like, but with the price of things now, its ridiculous. I would really like to produce my own figure line, its always been a dream of mine. Unfortunately I am not wealthy enough to do it, plus do not know the right people to help me.
Anyway thats some info about me. Thanks for all the info on your site. I can’t really travel nor drive anymore. Good luck Paul.
Oh …..so it is your Policy…LOL Well then tell Don Perkins if he still wants to see what you would not allow to be posted that he can emails me.
We will be happy to tell him to contact you as to your post. The only posts we have seen from you recently from you has been ones with your email address. If you want to do a review on the Paragon Scouts go ahead. We will do one next week after Hackensack.
I dont review figures but I did post where pictures of them were located and that post seems to have went astray.
Odd it went a astray. It would have been easy to repost the link.
Here is the link
http://www.paragon-scenics.com/miniatures/Figures.html
I will be buying the figures this weekend as I like the poses.
The Kane County Antique Toy show was yesterday and I attended. I was surprised , this show was loaded with plastic and the prices were right. I picked up a Fort Apache with a decent box, dividers, instructions, with 54mm cavalry and Indians for $90.00. Then I got a bag of 104 Civil War figures, including Re-cast Marx, Imex, Accurate, Call to Arms and even some Barzso for $10.00. Anyway, there lots of playsets to be had at reasonable prices and plastic figures galore, I had to leave early before I went crazy and spent too much money. A good show with good attendance, I was pleasantly surprised.
Ed
Glad you had a great time. Laurie and I did a toy show in Delaware yesterday and we had a great time. We got great buys in various plastic figures and other items. The crowd was down due to threat of Sandy. We got to see some great friends and Laurie was able to get to her Mexican restaurant she likes. I will talk more on the show soon.
Hi Paul , (I am not sure if you prefer Paul or Stad). I hope you guys are ok up there.
Since the storm I have been reviewing your archives, and found quite a lot of interesting stories, from you and fellow collectors and dealers. Not sure I should Troll them up or not though. Recent things I have noticed were the new Paragon figures, they are really nice. I like the TSSD crazy horse figure a lot too, Austin Wayne and Eastwood, all I can is wow. I was always a big Indian fan. I found out late in life my great grandmother was half Cherokee. I never knew her, nor even know very much about her. Anyway I always liked and felt sympathetic to the American Indian.
Crazy horse was one of my favorite characters growing up, I read a book in grade school about him, as well as on every Indian book at school. I liked Cochise a lot as well. I would go home and recreate battles of the ones I had read about in the books, and started naming certain figures I liked, those characters. I had a lot of mpc figures, also some marx, timmee, and a couple other brands.
Ahh the memories, anyway the crazy horse figure is very nice, there is one of the Paragon ones that could go for Geronimo, or even Lone Wolf too. I really liked the “Blonde do you know what you are” Clint figure to, lol. Eastwood is my favorite western character of all time. Jose Wales was my favorite western. I liked Joe Kidd as well.
I also enjoyed the old comment sections from your old lists as well, I didn’t find out about you until the mid 90’s sometime, and it was a fluke. I actually called a few times, and spent a couple hours each time just talking to you, it felt like I knew you my whole life. A good friend of mine which has since passed away, owned a sign company, and he did mail order, and it was called hobby bunker, not the one on the internet. He had all kinds of cool stuff in his hobby part of the business, and he was a very talented artist, well anyway the 1st time I went into his shop I saw a big box of marx stuff priced at a bcuk each, Zorro was 25 bucks, including the horse, it was packed with powder blue alamo mexicans, Zorro, and numerous other figures, he didn’t have knights or vikings though, not in marx, he had some hand painted elastalon ones, that he had painted himself, they were beautiful.
I asked him where he got them, because I had bought some over priced stuff from a New York dealer I won’t mention his name, He was the 1st person I had bought toy soldiers from since my last collection had gotten tossed in middle school, so I was just getting back into collecting, and almost stopped because of the crazy prices this other dealer was charging. ( I didn’t know, that there were a lot of other dealers out there.)
Anyway getting back to my friend at hobby bunker, he carried a lot of other stuff too, like a real ww2 german uniform, real ww2 stuff, tons of ho scale stuff, he sold displays to museums. Anyways, this was the 1st time I had met a true fellow toy soldier collector, that loved the scale range I was into, after marx went under, which in 1980, my Grandmother told me about the marx auction that was going to happen, see was a marx fan, and knew I loved those figures, I figured I wouldn’t have been able to out bid anyone, I was only 19, I was making a quarter over minimum wage at that time, I figured I would never see those figures again.
I forgot about my hopes about ever getting some of the playsets I had always wanted, then in the mid 80’s I got into wargaming, and bought tons of Games workshop stuff, but always wanted 54+mm scale. Anyway, Doug saw my excitement when I saw the marx stuff, lol. I couldn’t contain myself, it had been at least 15 years since I had seen any. Other than way overpriced hard plastic and brittle recasts. The 1st vikings done in brown. Which half of them broke during shipping.
Anyway Doug, told me to follow him, his shop was connected to his house, and he went into a display room in his house, and he had heritage britains mint in box, the greeks, romans, chariots, I was drooling, then I saw his character figures, He had a John Wayne figure ( in metal and painted), he also had Wyatt Earp marx, he had all the western characters, I had never seen them before, I don’t think he had Dillon, he had so much stuff it wasn’t funny, anyhow I asked if he had any playsets, and he said wait a sec, he went into another room and brought out Barzo’s Roger’s rangers playset, and he said he had just got that, he said at one time he had a few marx sets but they were long gone via his mail order lists. He then showed me his Playset magazines, by Tom Terry, and I went through every one, as well as Gepperts guide. I got a lot of dealers names and numbers from those magazines.
I checked out Barzo’s playset, and Doug had a customer and told me I could wait there and check everything out, so he left me there in his display room all by myself, I checked Ron’s figures, they weren’t bad I noticed a bent bayonet on one of the figures and tried to fix it and it broke, I barely touched it, I was mortified. I put the figure back up, closed the box, and went out to tell Doug what had happened, when I told him, I told him I would replace the figure, just tell me how much, and that I was very sorry.
If he would have said 50 bucks I would have given it to him, he said don’t worry about it, and that 5 bucks was plenty.
Anyway Paul thats how I found out about you and bought some nice stuff from you.
His name was Doug Cusick, not sure on exact spelling on his last name, I went over there about 5 times and he was one of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasure to meet, I asked him if he ever decided to sell his figures to let me know, well I got busy and didn’t visit him for about a year, and then I heard he passed away. The company was sold, etc. He was pretty young, that was at least 12 years ago. Well, comment time made me think of him, and the kindness he showed to me, and brought back the memory on how I met you as well.
Anyway thanks for all your efforts, and to all the others that help you out as well, it is appreciated, more than you know, and I hope you guys stay safe up there. You all, will be in my prayers.
Hi Ed
I answer either to Paul or Stad, many people in the hobby know me only as Stad. The origin of Stad is I had a discount store in late 80’s/ I decided to call it Stad’s Discounts as my father who had the same first name had a grocery store a few blocks away and had called it Paul’s I kept the Stad’s when I started the list. Many people found us by accident or the advertising I did. I did Comment Time to let people know more about the hobby. This was before PFPC and the internet. After the advent of PFPC Comment Time was another voice especially when Tom Terry got silly with ban on reissues etc.
On that New York dealer his prices are hilarious, if I needed a laugh I use to look at his catalog. One of my favorite stories was when he introduced me to his daughter. I told her that I sold toys cheaper than her father. Everyone had a good laugh.
Thanks for the kind words and you take care as well.
Thanks Paul, I would have liked to been there on that, that is funny. I don’t really have hard feelings toward the man, because I did get some figures I didn’t ever think I would get again, like the timmee little John, and some nice recast civil war in a nice soft plastic. They weren’t marx though. I can’t even recall what brand they are now.
However I was able to find decently priced timmee Robin hood figures since then, I learned some lessons, from him. Almost everyone I have dealt with has been really decent, I met some really nice people, so its all good.
I got a lot of stuff from Mexico cheap on a tip you gave on one of our phone conversations, those recast boonesboro figures in buckskin, I got from you were super nice figures , I gave half to another old time friend of mine that got all the figures from Mexico for me. I got a lot of timmee knights, and cowboys, indians, and wagons, at least a grocery paper bag of figures for a 100 bucks. I hadn’t had those knights since I was 10.
I also learned a little about the cafe storm knights from you, you used to sale them, and I never knew what they looked like, I recently checked out Kent’s site, which I have bought from him too, also a great guy. Anyway some of those storm figures are nice, I really like the comminius (spelling maybe off) figure, he looks like a Gaul, they have some decent knights also, I had never been aware of them until your list.
I don’t own any, but its nice too know about other figures, from other times and parts of the world. Like in your archives, I believe your friend Peter Evans sent pics of a couple of nice mounted dragon knights, the one with axe is super nice.
I bought a Matt Dillon figure because of your story. I knew I would never get one otherwise, and I do like marx western characters, and I really liked the Matt Dillon figure. See I didn’t know how rare that set was until I heard your story Paul. The figure had the flat buttock defect though, however its really not even noticeable, when I received the figure.
I inspected him, and he was perfect, however, his left leg snapped while I was just holding the figure, it was a clean break however, and I put a spot of fingernail glue ( which is perfect for soft plastic figures) and it is as if it never happened. You can not tell it. I tested it as well, there isn’t even a line, no seam, its perfect. If I ever sold it, I would let the buyer know this as well. I don’t plan on ever selling it though.
I was freaking too, that is the most expensive figure in my collection, I was just inspecting him right out of the box, and I got him at a very decent price. I totally trust the person I bought it from, because I have bought lots of stuff from him, he even told me he was sorry that it happened, and that sometimes these old figures can break, and I could send it back. Anyway I kept the figure, no one can tell, and it doesn’t hurt the figure at all, and evidently, that was the only weak spot on the figure. I was wondering Paul if all the ones you have seen had the mold defect on the buttock, its just a wee flat, was that common, I know your an expert on that figure.
I had to settle for a recast Johnny Ringo, because I wouldn’t have ever been able to get him either. I over paid for him, but he is soft plastic and an extremely nice figure. I won him in an ebay auction years ago, and people kept bidding me up. It reminded me of the story you told about the auction you went to, and the toy guy was buying everything, which made you angry. So you showed him, have you ran into him anymore Paul ?
I got into some bidding battles on ebay, thats why I don’t want to ever buy that way again. I got tired of being sniped at the last second, I usually always had to overpay for something I really wanted. I did get some deals though, but I haven’t bought on ebay for at least 5 years. I know some auctions, the sellers friends were bidding me up. there really isn’t anyway I could prove it though, however, I would watch other items and who won those and bid on them too. Some people go private. I just don’t trust it.
Anyway many of the figures in my collection you had some part in it Paul, either by your tips, info, or directly from you, which I appreciate greatly, because I cherish my figures. Also do you sale any other way other than ebay now Paul, I know you possibly ay do a show, but I can’t make those unfortunately, also I know you like dogs, and Kent’s site shows some nice ones on the same page as the cafe storme figures, I don’t know if you knew about them or not. They are pretty nice ones, you probably already have them, or know about them, but in case you are missing any, or didn’t know about them, you should check them out.
Thanks Paul.
Going to be making my first appearance at the Cantigy(?) show, it’s in Wheaton Illinois and home of the Big Red One museum. It’s supposed to be a realtively small show 30 dealers, but I heard the walk through attendance last year was 1,500. Well, I got nothing to lose so I’ll have two tables and see what happens. Hope the cold weather doesn’t hamper the attendance. Maybe I’ll get a good up close look at an Abrams tank too, they are supposed to have quite a few tanks and other vehicles on the grounds.