Conte Plastic (1 Viewer)

[gk5717]

Anyone collect Conte,s plastic playsets & figures.
I,ve got all his playsets, plus I have over 200 of his figures that converted.
Gary

 

[Alexdakar]

I collect the WWII ones. Are you the one on ebay that sells the conversions? Those are cool.

 

[gk5717]

No I don,t sell them, but that is the guy I buy mine from, his name is Gary Dutko.
I got to him when he first started doing them, but now he has kinda slacked off, he is running for office in Pa. and don,t have the time.
Don,t know if you have seen his work in person, but it is excellent.
Don,t know if you know this but the WW2 GI,s Conte has pictured on his website are the same 54mm figures Valiant makes in metal. They are the exact same size as Contes. I buy them and paint them a solid color and they fit perfectly. A little expensive, $13 each but I finally have regular GI,s. I just bought a few more that just came out which will put me at 10 different poses, plus TSSD should have theirs out at the end of the month so that will be 18 different GI,s.
Read on another board that Contes GI,s won, be out till 06, which probably means sometime in 07.
K&C is my favorite, but if Conte would ever get back to the old days his plastic would be second.
Just set up the Conte Norman church & priory, there was nothing better .
Gary

 

[Alexdakar]

I paint and sell the plastic ones and then buy the metal ones. I almost have all the metal sets but I still need the Brit sets. I wish I had the Conte church.

 

[Ken & Ericka Osen/H&A Studio]

No I don,t sell them, but that is the guy I buy mine from, his name is Gary Dutko.
I got to him when he first started doing them, but now he has kinda slacked off, he is running for office in Pa. and don,t have the time.
Don,t know if you have seen his work in person, but it is excellent.
Don,t know if you know this but the WW2 GI,s Conte has pictured on his website are the same 54mm figures Valiant makes in metal. They are the exact same size as Contes. I buy them and paint them a solid color and they fit perfectly. A little expensive, $13 each but I finally have regular GI,s. I just bought a few more that just came out which will put me at 10 different poses, plus TSSD should have theirs out at the end of the month so that will be 18 different GI,s.
Read on another board that Contes GI,s won, be out till 06, which probably means sometime in 07.
K&C is my favorite, but if Conte would ever get back to the old days his plastic would be second.
Just set up the Conte Norman church & priory, there was nothing better .
Gary

Take a look at the Michigan Toy Soldier website to see the Conte church that I increased in size by 50%. It was one of my favorite projects for Conte so I customised one for Rick and may make mine even bigger when I get around to it. It may be available again on a very limited basis according to Mr. Conte...hope so!

 

[gk5717]

Ken, could Conte ever afford to do playsets in the quality and price range of his first sets, namely Zulu, Warlord, FFL, and the DDay series.
I personally think the church is the best building ever done. And second would be Contes bunkers from the DDay sets.
I still remember the excitement at OTSN 1999, when Conte first opened his room to show in person all the stuff he had been advertising in PFPC, he was the talk of the hobby and rightly so.
I,m sure it was financial, but what a shame all or at least some of those sets he had listed on his first web site could have been done.
He changed the plastic collecting hobby.
Gary

 

[gk5717]

Ken, another question. Have you seen the conversion work in person that the above mentioned Gary Dutko does? Excellent! I have over 200 different Conte figures from his early plastic from all his periods.
Gary

 

[Ken & Ericka Osen/H&A Studio]

Ken, could Conte ever afford to do playsets in the quality and price range of his first sets, namely Zulu, Warlord, FFL, and the DDay series.
I personally think the church is the best building ever done. And second would be Contes bunkers from the DDay sets.
I still remember the excitement at OTSN 1999, when Conte first opened his room to show in person all the stuff he had been advertising in PFPC, he was the talk of the hobby and rightly so.
I,m sure it was financial, but what a shame all or at least some of those sets he had listed on his first web site could have been done.
He changed the plastic collecting hobby.
Gary

I remember everyone waiting because I was the one driving the truck in from Detroit with the sets!
There have been a fair number of increases in cost for Richard in everything. The sad truth is that the playset collectors market is less than half of what we hoped, so the unit cost had to go up. Even moving plastic tooling to Asia hasn't helped in overall cost and has slowed things up. I used to be able to visit the factories as needed and this can't be done any longer. At the end of the day Conte pumped life back into American produced plastic products and still has plans to add to his range including WWII, Romans and possibly Greeks.

 

[Fubar]

I collect almost all of the Conte items.Not into Pirates and the Romans are great but I have 2,000 25mm painted Romans of various times periods.
I have converted many of the ACW guys from the unpainted plastic sets and paint them.Great troops. Lots of fun!
FUBAR

 

[Ken & Ericka Osen/H&A Studio]

Ken, another question. Have you seen the conversion work in person that the above mentioned Gary Dutko does? Excellent! I have over 200 different Conte figures from his early plastic from all his periods.
Gary

The first couple I looked at I had to look twice as I couldn't remember doing the poses. I was impressed! Some are great...a few don't look quite right but are great additions for variety...