Russian Painted 54mm Samurai (1 Viewer)

[Andanna]

I have always supplemented my FL displays with the random St. Petersburg figure, but I now decided to create a modest Samurai display with St. Pete samurai. I started shopping on eBay in the Elite painting category as I liked the subjects and the price point, albeit I made offers which were accepted.

I have no background on purchasing Russian miniatures. What should I know? What are the pitfalls? May I assume that as the delivery of the first figures is end of May (this year, though) that the figures are not in stock?

 

[tdubel]

I have always supplemented my FL displays with the random St. Petersburg figure, but I now decided to create a modest Samurai display with St. Pete samurai. I started shopping on eBay in the Elite painting category as I liked the subjects and the price point, albeit I made offers which were accepted.

I have no background on purchasing Russian miniatures. What should I know? What are the pitfalls? May I assume that as the delivery of the first figures is end of May (this year, though) that the figures are not in stock?[/QUOTE

It depends on who you are purchasing from. Aeroart owns their own sculpts and has their own painting and sculpting done in Russia. If they commission a sculpt from Arsenyev or Sineus Studios, they own it nowadays. Another studio is Amber who sells in the US through Valentina Harlowe. Amber appears to have absorbed a lot of defunct studio's castings including Mercury, Bijato, and some others. Niena is still in business also and sells direct, they sell in a variety of painting styles, the higher end ones are costly. Finally, you can commission figures from Arsenyev/Vityaz, but be prepared to pay between $550 - $1500 per single figure.

I have found Aeroart to be the most consistent in quality, price and quite frankly friendly dealings! They are personal friends, so I may be biased but I also believe it to be true objectively!

Regarding other painters, there are a number of artists who went out on their own and sell on ebay - SB, Denis S., Attica, etc. They will vary in cost and 99% of what they do is painting other manufacturer's kits. The unscrupulous ones dropcast kits and paint and sell them. I have found Denis S. to be the most reliable and I send him kits that he paints for me personally.

Furthermore, you can also collect the retired Aeroart pieces. There is usually a decent selection on ebay and they are still IMO some of the best values in this area.

TD

 

[Andanna]

Thank you, Tom, very instructive. Do you have links for direct purchases? Feel feee to use pm or email.

 

[joesgis]

I have always supplemented my FL displays with the random St. Petersburg figure, but I now decided to create a modest Samurai display with St. Pete samurai. I started shopping on eBay in the Elite painting category as I liked the subjects and the price point, albeit I made offers which were accepted.

I have no background on purchasing Russian miniatures. What should I know? What are the pitfalls? May I assume that as the delivery of the first figures is end of May (this year, though) that the figures are not in stock?

As a long time Russian figure collector, I have much to offer here but will begin with a few points of emphasis....in regards to ebay purchasing, if you buy from Aeroart you will get the exact figure in the photos. Most Russian figures on ebay from other sources are painted after you purchase the item, thus the long delivery as you noted. However, many sellers do offer figures that are ready to go off the shelf. Almost of these sellers are selling other manufacturers figure kits that they will paint for you. They rarely do their own sculpting/casting. So I like to make sure that they are actually painting original kit figures issued by the manufacturer and not cheap recasts that are made by EK Castings and other firms. It's best to have the genuine article for the collector and for the industry itself.

Enjoy the Russian figure hunt!
Joe

 

[AJ82]

Agree with Joe - I had hit and miss with ebay. Aeroart takes the risk out of the deal and are great to deal with. They have really expanded their Samurai offerings - I will post two that I recently picked up in my collection thread.

Also note that Aeroart has two great looking samurai buildings (I think done by Vitaly Puzenko) they sometimes sell - they are not on the website but you can call them to see availability.

I wish I had room for them - attached are pictures that I took at a show.

 

[tryfon]

[The 2 you mentioned are very very expensive, these days you do come across fabulous Russian made and painted by great Russian artists.

For Aeroart, they seem to post within within US and Canada only and they have set up ebay were you cannot ask question if not from US or Canada. For this day and age very odd

 

[tryfon]

Do not Russia, if you find a kit contact some of those other Russian sellers who can do pretty much the same but better prices

 

[tdubel]

One more comment - if you want very high quality, the best of the best for original work is Aeroart, Arseneyev/Vityaz and Tatiana. I forgot to mention Tatiana earlier but IMO she is probably the best all the way around. By commission only, but I have never seen a bad figure from her and my highest quality piece is directly from her the Siam Elephant. I know of none better.

IMO also, if you collect these, for the most part you get what you pay for. The higher quality just costs more. I have some Russian Mongols I paid $35 a piece for and they are quite lovely figures. However, if you put them next to their $175 Aeroart brothers, there is no comparison!

TD

 

[Andanna]

Thank you all. Good advice. I have bought from Thor before as I do have some Russian miniatures to enhance my FL displays.

I am notoriously impatient. I do some commissions at the MFCA in 70mm, for the samurai I would prefer in-stock figures. And I am not planning to display these samurai figures as individual figures, but rather several duels as part of a battle.






I got the inspiration from Über-collector Kochetkov.