How? (1 Viewer)

[Col. Hesler]

I was just wondering how all of you fine people got into collecting toy soldiers?

For me it all started in 2004 when I got Britain's Big Red One set #2 for my birthday, however my passion for toy soldiers didn't really spark until the spring of 2007 when I bought a few more sets on ebay.

 

[thebritfarmer]

For me it started with the Britains farm series back in about 1977. I still have a couple of the pieces, I collected the farm, zoo and civilian figures and it just progressed from there. I started getting into the soldier side of things about 2 years ago.

 

[sceic2]

I was age 14 (in 1965) and standing in front of a blister card display of Roco 1/87 (HO) tanks and other vehicles from WWII. I could afford to buy one or two with the limited income I had at the time, but I wanted them ALL.

I remember very distinctly telling myself that when I got older, I will have enough money and I am going to buy the entire display.

Move forward through time about 35 years and that same 14-year old did not forget.

 

[eborris]

I always liked toy soldiers when I was a kid, tried to get all I could but like most of us I was stifled by lack of income.

In the early 70's I started up again in metal 25mm Napoleonics by Minifigs and Hinchcliffe Zulu series. I then got divorced and remarried and had a couple kids, so collecting took a back seat.

Got divorced again and started up collecting for real again in the late 90's, except now I graviatated towards plastic with a little metal thrown in.

 

[4th Hussar]

Mid 80's went to Edinburgh Tattoo, next day picked up a lead piper and drum major at a shop. Latter picked up more Scots troops; then mounted troops; a few bands; needed some artillery and then a few tanks..................... Now have about 2000 troops primarily glossy. Why ? have yet to figure that one out, I just like them.

 

[Louis Badolato]

When I was a kid I walked to school past a hobby shop called Devlin's Hobbies that had a whole showcase full of amazing glossy metal toy soldiers. I wanted them soooooo bad, but just couldn't afford them, so I built plastic models and painted my own toy soldiers. When I was first out of law school in the early 1990's, I happened across a place in Manhattan called "B.Schackman's Toys & Novelties" (sadly, like Devlin's, long since closed) that had the same huge cabinet full of glossy (Britains) toy soldiers. I remember the first set I bought was the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs . . .

 

[marco55]

I've always been interested in toy soldiers.I had plastic army guys for the west,the civil war,revolutionary war when I was a kid.I saw a old Shirley Temple where she was with the British Army in the 19th cen. and I thought they were so cool that I melted the hats on my revolutionary soldiers and shaped them into pith helmets.I got pretty good at it too.I really started as a collector in the mid-nineties when I went to Gettysburg and saw cw dioramas in a museum and when Conte put out the Troiani sets that was when I caught the bug.
Mark

 

[Carnahan]

When I was very young I was simply obsessed with the military. Various members of my family would buy me dimestore army men, as well as Britains Deetail and Swoppets, but my grandmother was the driving force. She would take me to the Captain's Toy Chest in Sarasota, a great little shop in a tiny blue house, to pick out figures. It was so exciting walking up to that big glass-fronted case and deciding what to get! I was ten when the shop closed and cried when we pulled up and found out. When I entered my early teens I began painting figures bought on weekly trips to Orange Blossom Hobbies (also gone, alas) and still kept up with Britains. It kind of bums me out that the dealers have moved almost totally online and kids rarely get the thrill of walking up to those big cases. If I ever get the space and money, I want to track down one of them and fill it up.

 

[Deitz]

It started for me when I was 9 years old, when I got a Marx playset for Christmas (Civil War) my borther got the (Alamo set). The next Christmas I got the Sons of Liberty set and my brother got the World War II set. Then I got a couple of Timpo sets,and a lot of the small 72 size sets and a few Britain Deetails figures here and there. Then I stopped when I was a teenager.

I picked up the hobby again about 10 years ago, first Timpo Swoppets then metal figures. I missed out on about 20 years of collecting.

 

[Grognard]

For me it all started a few years ago in Paris (France). Like with Louis by passing by a toy soldier store in the Palais Royal garden. This store ("Les Drapeaux de France (Standards of France)) opened in 1937 and has the most fabulous display of metal toy soldiers from all eras I had ever dreamed of. This was a revelation and I remember my first purchase: Napoleon on his horse and a few of his marshalls and from there this is history...I have now more than 200 Napoleonic soldiers and counting...Each time I go to Paris I always go there (my favorite restauran is nearby too ) ...My problem is that now the exchange rate Euro/$ is not what it used to be when I started to buy from this store so I am glad that I found out about K$C, CS, etc. in the meantime .

 

[jac28]

Like many others - it all started in my early childhood. My older brother had Marx toy soldiers (and others), so I was never without them. I played with his and started getting my own. For a few Christmas' in the late '50s/early '60s we'd both get a Marx Playset for Christmas.. He might get Battleground and I'd get Blue & Gray.. or he'd get Wagon Train and I'd get Alamo... I'd also get Lidos or MPCs or Auburn as stocking stuffers, etc. And I'd always get bagged figures when we were on vacation, for birthdays, etc.

As I entered my teen years I put away toy soldiers and focused more on slot car racing and model kits. Getting married and having a family - I didn't pursue toy soldiers for awhile, but rediscovered them at the Kane Co. Toy Show in the early '90s and have been involved in the hobby ever since.

Jim

 

[lancer]

Started as a kid. I can't remember a time that I haven't been fascinated by the military and all that meant for a kid. Toy soldiers, toy guns, model airplanes, tanks, ships, just everything. Used to get the Marx sets as a kid, especially the ACW sets and the WW2 sets. Also got the Zorro set, the AWI set, the Alamo set, Robin Hood too. My father also gave me his old hollowcast Britains from when he was a kid in the 20's and early 30's. My interest in the military must have come from the fact that my father and his 3 brothers were all vets,(only my youngest uncle missed WW2 and that by months). Anyway, I added Timpo and swoppets, Heralds and anything else I could get until I really moved into metal TS in the late 70's. Still at it, too. Just a life long interest. -- lancer

 

[theBaron]

I really got into metal figures as a young adult. I'm not quite old enough to have been aware of toy soldiers in the classic era, though I do remember seeing a display of Britain's Deetail figures in the toy department at Hess' in Allentown when I was 4 or 5.

As a kid, I played with plastic army men, cowboys & Indians, and GI Joes, and built models. By the time I was in high school, I had collected a couple of boxes of 1/72 and HO scale Atlantic and Airfix figures-Ancient Romans and Britons, Greeks and Trojans, and Napoleonics. That's when I first dabbled in casting, making plaster molds of some of the simpler figures, and melting tire weights for the lead. But I gave all of that up when I went to college.

Fast forward to my junior year in college, I'm living in Munich, and I find a set of homecast toy soldiers at a flea market. I bought them because they looked cool, but a couple of years after that, the first edition of Richard O'Brien's "Collecting Toy Soldiers" comes out, and I learn that the figures were cast from Schneider molds. I found an original bronze Schneider mold at a flea market, and armed with the info about dealers and clubs in O'Brien's book, I was off to the races! I learned about Prins August and bought their molds, and I started going to shows, joined the MFCA, and eventually came full circle, picking up scale modeling again as a complementary hobby to the toy soldiers. And with the spread of the Internet, I wound up here and in other forums.

Prost!
Brad