Three Soldiers going on ebay but need some help (1 Viewer)

[andyayrton]

Hi found these in a box of toys (amongst early britains and semi flat soldiers)




any ideas as Im putting them on ebay next few days..some info would be great

 

[theBaron]

Are they metal, or plastic? It looks like there are no bases.

 

[andyayrton]

Are they metal, or plastic? It looks like there are no bases.

Hi, sorry of course I should of said they are plastic and yes they have no bases. I THINK I played with them at my grandmothers thirty years ago and might of belonged to my father which would make them anything between early 40s to early 50s but I cant remember (father deceased so asking hims out the window!)

 

[Peter Reuss]

Can you give some sense of scale? How tall are they?

 

[andyayrton]

Can you give some sense of scale? How tall are they?

Hi, they are 5.5cm , no marks, numbers etc..love to find out something about them.

 

[theBaron]

Hi, they are 5.5cm , no marks, numbers etc..love to find out something about them.

OK, that's close enough to 54mm to say that these are 54mm or 1/32 scale. They really do look to me like figures from a kit, like an armor kit, though I can't say that conclusively. The fact that they have no bases also makes me think of figures from a kit. Tamiya's figures come without bases, for example; the sprues include flat rectangular bases for the modeler to use if he chooses.

Are these figures of a hard or a soft plastic? Hard like styrene, or soft like the plastic Airfix uses for its figure sets?

Prost!
Brad

 

[theBaron]

Also, from the quality of the details, I'd say that these are not from the 40s or 50s. In the 40s, there weren't many makers of plastic kits or figures, period. Bergen Toy Co. here in the States started making their plastic toy soldiers in the late 40s, if I remember correctly, but they made nothing like these. Model makers Revell and Monogram were just getting into plastics in the late 40s, and the real boom in using plastic for toys came in the early 50s.

These look like they're from the late 60's or early 70's, to me. But again, I could be wrong.

Prost!
Brad

 

[andyayrton]

OK, that's close enough to 54mm to say that these are 54mm or 1/32 scale. They really do look to me like figures from a kit, like an armor kit, though I can't say that conclusively. The fact that they have no bases also makes me think of figures from a kit. Tamiya's figures come without bases, for example; the sprues include flat rectangular bases for the modeler to use if he chooses.

Are these figures of a hard or a soft plastic? Hard like styrene, or soft like the plastic Airfix uses for its figure sets?

Prost!
Brad

hard plastic for sure. Used to model make as a kid and not like the Airfix figure and look to be (badly) factory painted.
Thanks for the help so far very much appreciated.

 

[theBaron]

Glad to help!

I'll check in my reference books and see if I can see anything like them. I still suspect that they're from a kit, though.

Prost!
Brad

 

[theBaron]

I had a look in O'Brien's "Collecting Toy Soldiers", 2nd edition, in the section on plastic makers, and I still can't find anything like this. There are some maker's figures who have a similar quality of sculpting, but the figures have bases molded integrally with the figure. And those whose figures had no bases look nothing like these, those figures are all much more toy-like in their proportions and style. I'm still going with model kit figures at this point, till we get more details or I can find some other reference.

Prost!
Brad