I got there at 10:30, so I missed all of you, but I ran into Pete Dawson from the Wings & Wheels IPMS Club, or, the Hawaiian Shirt Mafia, as some of you may know them. Also met up with Art Etchells and Dennis Sosna (Dennis made it in from homecoming at Penn State).
There was a good crowd from opening, and only started thinning out around 12:30 or 1PM.
Sorry, Luiz, there weren't many Staddens at all. The collections I saw earlier this year have been snapped up. I got an early Stadden Hessian grenadier, in the smaller scale (54mm).
I agree that there was a lot of plastic, but I think that's just the latest stage in a development that has been taking place for perhaps 20 years or so. The guys who played as kids with classic toy soldiers--hollowcast Britains and others--really are dying off, and the collectors who are left are either old-timers who played with them, and have a lot of money to buy the choicest sets, or younger collectors who never played with them but like the style and settled on collecting them. So we've seen a gradual shift in that market, I think. Conversely, the guys who played with Marx and other plastic figures as kids, are now in their prime collecting years and I think the market has gradually responded. I can remember when it was pretty much the MarxMan who had any plastic toy soldiers at all, surrounded by table after table of individual collectors, and dealers, with boxes and bins of hollowcast figures--and dimestore figures, too, not to forget that style and the guys who collect it. And I can say I've seen the shift taking place, and at the same time, I've seen the expansion of the newer-makers and the Russian connoisseur figures, to the point where they are established in the hobby. It's interesting to watch.
Prost!
Brad
