The Old Wooden Vehicles & the early polystone stuff
Hello everyone, and thank you to Shannon for inviting me to join your King & Country Forum. I am a long time collector (started collecting K&C in 1994) and I see there are a lot of questions and comments on the forum so far about the early polystone pieces (Winter Tiger & Sherman) and the (much)earlier wooden Tiger than sold on ebay for $2,150. First, with regard to the polystone vehicles, according to Andy Nielson (who discussed the subject at length at the New York Symposium hosted by Lawrence Lo, Hans Hedrich and myself) the winter vehicles were limited in production to around 100 sets, with an even more limited winter version of the Sherman (IWJ13(w)) and T34 (which were only sold through and at the request of Tony Ciccerello of the Toy Soldier Gallery, one of the earliest dealers. They are out there and do go for in excess of $500. In fact a winter Kubelwagon sold on e-bay this weekend for $1000.75. Now, about the wood tiger that sold for $2,150, it was sold by my close friend (and one of the largest collectors in the country) Doug Luna to Eric Thorssen, the K&C dealer in Montana. It is one of the three original K&C vehicles, made in China. They were hand carved, and hand painted by Andy himself with brushes (rather than the later airbrushed versions) and were kind of primative. The original 3 were a Tiger, a Panther, and a Sherman. 50 each were produced in 1989-1992. Later King & Country produced much nicer looking wood, metal and or resin vehicles between 1994 and 1997, when production ceased and polystone production began. There were 41 different versions of the various vehicles produced pre-polystone, including 3 different Tigers, 4 different Shermans, 2 Stug IV's, a Stug III, 3 different Hanomags (2 wood, 1 Resin), 5 Jeeps (1 wood, 4 Metal), 2 Vietnam M113 APC's (1 wood, 1 resin), an 8 Wheeled Armored Car (resin), 3 Kubelwagons (resin), a Jagpanther (resin & metal), a Cromwell, 2 Quad Gun & Limbers, a Chevy 30 CWT Truck (resin), 3 Bren Gun Carriers (2 wood, 1 Resin), an RAF Bedford ambulance (3 color schemes), an RAF Fuel Bowser, a Bedford QL Radio Command Truck (2 color schemes), a Bedford Troop Transport Truck (2 color schemes, an 8 Ton Half-Track Prime Mover pulling an 88mm Gun, and a Vietnam Duster Anti-Aircraft Tank. There were as many as 200 (in the case of the 2 later versions of the wooden Tiger combined) and as few as 5 (the final wooden Sherman) of these wooden vehicles produced, with an average of about 50 of each vehicle produced. The resin vehicles (with the exception of the Jagpanther and the Kubelwagon) are generally more limited, with about a dozen of each produced). The old wood vehicles generally sell (on the rare occasions you can find them) for between $1,000 and $2,000, as they originally sold for around $380 each and are very rare. Andy also produced 94 different wood planes and 2 woo helicoptors a Huey and a Russian Gunship. To identify K&C planes as opposed to other desk top models produced in the Phillipines, K&C planes are always produced with the landing gear down. If you need any more information about the earlier production stuff, don't hesitate to contact me. I have all but one of the early (pre-polystone) vehicles, and 34 of the wood warplanes, so I can provide photographs of them if you need to authenticate something for sale. I have also provided many of the early brochures to the Sager's Toy Soldiers website, and can color fax them to anyone interested if you have access to a color fax machine. Anyway, as you can tell, I love to talk about this stuff!
