Strange Inheritances show - Toy Soldier Collections (1 Viewer)

[The Military Workshop]

Earlier in the week NZGary sent me a couple of Youtube clips he had watched with his wife. He is away on a work retreat in rural Tasmania so I said would post here as might generate some interesting discussion.

The are two shows. Both involve similar type collections of thousands of mainly pre 1900 type figures collected over decades. Neither seemed to have WW2 in their collections and that is probably because the vast majority of their collecting time was before WW2 collecting became popular.

The first, 21 minutes, involves the collection of Orson Munn from Southhampton, Long Island (The Hamptons). Prior to his passing he indicated he would like his collection to go to a local museum (population of his town is 50,000). The episode interviews his daughter and son and discusses the value of the collection and their attempts to find a home for the collection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwRYvRA0aEo&t=3s

The link does not appear to have worked so might have to search on Youtube with

Strange Inheritance ~ Toy Soldier Fortune​

 

[The Military Workshop]

The 2nd clip, again 21 minutes, features the Manhattan collection of Bob Postal where his widow discusses the collection. The widow had seen the first episode. In this case two NY Museums agree to take parts of the collection. Has a nice ending when she is asked which was more important to him the collection or her. Clearly she is biased {sm4}

I forgot to mention in first one they were quoted $10m to create a museum to house a $400,000 collection.

Search for this clip on YouTube.

Strange İnheritance ~ Toy Soldier Story 27 ​

 

[jazzeum]

Here are the links,

https://youtu.be/CwRYvRA0aEo

The second one is for the Manhattan collection. I see a lot of Trophy, AeroArt and K & C. I also saw Matt Murphey in parts of the video. The owner had an amazing collection. Fortunately, I have only a small fraction of what he has.

https://youtu.be/OXZpQ9f9zQw

 

[theBaron]

Yes, either George or Matt posted about these episodes when they first aired a couple of years ago. Fun to see the collections. It's an interesting series, generally speaking. I enjoy seeing the kinds of items that come up. And Jamie Colby is a babe, too.

Prost!
Brad

 

[NZGary]

I am now back in the land of the living. The biggest benefit when I came across these only a week ago was sitting down and watching them with my wife and her gaining a wider appreciation of the hobby (and that I was not the only serious collector). We agreed I needed a toy soldier room - probably similar to the one in the second episode. Probably not going to be in Tasmania as we have just purchased a small two bed apartment but possibly in our larger houses in New Zealand or in England.

It brought home to the both of us the need for me to display properly the collection, rather than it sat in boxes only taken out to do photo shoots for magazine articles. I used to have a diorama room in the attic of the house I shared with my first wife in England but since the divorce the collection has just been shunted around the world and remains hidden from view. Of course it gets added to frequently with new purchases but it would be great to get it all on display.

It also got me thinking about the size of the collection. In recent years I assumed (without counting it) that it was north of 10,000 figures. I have photographed each set/figure and cataloged them. I have now started to count and value the collection and find I was widely off the mark with my assessment. My defense is that the boxes take up so much room that it filled a full double garage from floor to ceiling. I estimate (having counted half the collection so far) is that its around 6,500 figures with maybe 500 vehicles, artillery, planes, ships and scenic items. Just goes to show I have a way to go to collect as many items as some of the more serious and or affluent collectors.

The show also brings home the value of our collections and the difficulty in disposing of them. You certainly wouldn't buy toy soldiers as an investment would you? Only to be purchased to enjoy the 'little men'.

Anyway enough musings from me.

Gary

 

[bromhead]

Collectors were treated like eccentric nuts on that show