Give-away - Almost Nothing for Nothing

I’m in the process of trying to tidy up my den/office, and there’s a wad of old Historex Napoleonic uniform information sheets that I keep coming up against – mostly French – dating from the 1970s. This is a left-over from my recent loft-clearing activities in East Kilbride, to raise money on eBay for Cancer Research. I keep promising myself I’ll throw them out, but somehow it seems a shame to do this.

There’s nothing particularly rare in this lot, but there’s plenty of it, and Historex are legendary for being correct. If you are interested, please leave a comment with contact details (tell me if you don’t want it published), or email me through my Blogger profile. Depending on the size of the response, I’ll devise some fiendish system for choosing a recipient, and will mail it to the lucky volunteer/winner. The desirable object on offer is a stack of A4 sheets folded in half, which is about 1 inch thick and weighs around 450 gm. It is also a little faded, and smells a bit – how Old School do you want, anyway?

It may as well go in your dustbin as mine. If there is no response at all, of course, I shall pretend that someone emailed me.

Late edit - I was asked for a sample picture - here you go...

Late late edit - thanks to Hugh, Benjamin, Allen, Marco P, The Red Fox(?) and Mossmorran for your interest - I rolled a six-sided die, and Hugh wins - I'll get the envelope away to Maverick Collecting. No doubt there will be more exciting chuck-out offers coming up, so stay tuned! 

Where the Heck was I?

Today I was going to do a little post on my new Spanish line officers, but sadly I haven't finished painting them, so that will have to wait a day or so. I was also going to write up the next week of the solo campaign, but I haven't got the housekeeping sorted out yet, so that will have to wait as well.

One of the things which has taken up time in the last couple of weeks is the auction of various Historex items which I volunteered to sell on eBay to raise money for cancer charities. Since I volunteered I can hardly complain about the hassle, but it has reminded me of the amount of labour needed to sell stuff on eBay, especially if you are as verbose as I am when it comes to the listings. Then there's all the questions to answer, and all the peeking to see if anyone else is watching or bidding yet...

Everything is sold now - some 100 unopened kits from the 1970s, plus a collection of 60-odd finished figures. Some things I learned about Historex during the last few weeks:

(1) The interest is very substantially from outside the UK - most of the items have sold to buyers in Italy, Germany, France and the USA. Unfortunately, because of the weight, I could not offer the big collection of complete figures outside the UK, though most of the questions and interest I got came from overseas. In particular, the insured shipping cost of the 2Kg+ parcel to the USA worked out at about £90, which is crazy.

(2) Maybe predictably, the kits generated much more interest than the completed figures - there seems to be more interest in building them than purchasing someone else's efforts, however good. That shouldn't have been a surprise, I think.

(3) The completed figures are horrifyingly fragile - you dare not sneeze near them, and some of them will hardly support their own weight. A challenge - even for a fastidious (fusspot) packer like me. (I love the sound of bubblewrap in the morning.)

Anyway, they are all sold and mailed now - one or two still have to be formally accepted as safely received, but shipping has been remarkably quick. One small packet to Indianapolis arrived in a little over 2 days, which is fantastic. I have to make a detailed breakdown of proceeds-less-expenses, since I have to pay the net amount over to the charity, so I have been more than usually focused on the fees charged by eBay and PayPal. Man, they are not cheap. OK - I'm not really grousing - there is no other easy way to sell stuff like this, but the 10% completion fees on eBay really add up. However, I'm delighted to say that - assuming the last few items have arrived safely and we don't get into any disputes, we should have raised about £730 for the charity, so I'm very pleased with that.

It fairly knocked a hole in the time available for painting and other hobby stuff, though.

Next topic. I wrote a post not long ago about my apparent weakness for big shiny wargame books, and how they are usually not as useful as they might look. Well, I did it again. Having already bought and browsed Wargames Foundry's Napoleon rule book (great title, by the way, guys), I had decided against looking at Warlord Games Black Powder publication, which looked like another of the same sort of figure-promotion-disguised-as-rules jobs.

However, a few people whose judgement I have a lot of respect for have played the game and made positive noises about it. The most guarded comment I have heard was from John C, who said the game he played was "the most excellent fun, but had very little to do with Napoleonic warfare". So, when I got the chance of a good, cheap, second hand copy, I bought it, and it has been my bedtime reading this week - it is a bit large and heavy to be ideal for bedtime reading, and it also tends to hit the floor with an alarming thump when I doze off, but it has been most enjoyable.

It is refreshing to read a wargames book which appears to have been written by adults who have a nice way with humour and who can actually write both entertainingly and grammatically, and without getting unpleasantly nerdy or giving in to the temptation to slag other people's efforts. Anyway, the book is entertaining, the game looks like a lot of fun, and a few bells rang.

For a start, all ranges, moves and everything else are given in multiples of 6 inches - Ding! - hexes, I thought. I'm not sure if I intend to rush to try the rules - I think I'd like to sit in on someone else's game first. Fat chance around here. One slight difficulty I have is that, since the book is written in a nice, conversational style, there isn't a formal statement of scales and so on - or at least I didn't find one. The illustrated scenarios seem to be played with 28mm figures (as you would expect) on a 6-feet-by-12 table (and no-one expected that...), but they do not appear to be very large games, in the sense of numbers of units.

Anybody played Black Powder? Any views on what size of battle it works for? What did you think of it? I realise a lot of people use these rules, but I hadn't really considered them before. They look practical, and I like the simple, commonsense approach - anyone like to offer a brief critique?

If you'd like to invite me to watch a game, I'll be delighted - please just send the return air fare and I'll bring some beer.

Historex - the completed figures

Short supplementary post - I have unpacked the completed Historex figures, made a quick inventory and photographed them, and now propose to wrap them up carefully and put them back in the box. These things are frighteningly delicate. Since I do not intend to unpack them again before they go to auction, I thought I should put the pictures up here. Some of the paperwork suggests that there may also be some completed French gun teams, but they must be in the loft. I don't have them, anyway. There are a few Airfix figures included, which look very good too.

I only once attempted a Historex kit - it took me weeks to put together a model of Marshal Massena, on horseback, and I became irritated when it became obvious that the figure had a ridiculously small head. I did finish it, and it sat for years in the back of the display case before it got broken when I was moving house. Whatever, the experience certainly heightened my appreciation of people who are good at this stuff. I remember (with some unease) reading an instruction which advised scraping the back of the (fabric) webbing straps with a knife edge, to encourage them to curl in the correct direction. Far too intricate for me - I am in the Klutz league when it comes to model making.

Oh Crikey - In at the Deep End

A little apprehensively, I went today to see if I could help with getting a handle on a private collection of military models and books. The collection belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend, a poor chap who recently died after a lengthy battle with cancer. His wife wishes to raise money from his collection to go to cancer-related charities, so I'm happy to help with that. My reluctance is only that I can hardly claim to be much of an expert. Still, all hands to the pump.

Astonishing - the late Alastair was an expert on military planes and vehicles - especially of WW2 and later. I have never seen so many books in one house - also boxes and files of all sorts of aviation and scale modelling monthlies. I attach a couple of snapshots to give an idea - this is only the smallest tip of a very large iceberg indeed. He also was an enthusiastic plastic kit builder - again, mostly planes and vehicles, and most of those I think are stored in the loft and haven't been brought out yet.

I also saw a sizeable collection of Historex Napoleonics. An important factor here is that Alastair stopped building models some years ago, but forgot to stop buying the kits in - intending to get around to building them all some day, I guess. Sadly, the day never came. There are - quite literally - cubic yards of boxed, unbuilt plastic kits.

The sheer impossibility of making any impression on this astounding pile of stuff became apparent very quickly. The family lawyer is speaking to a couple of auction houses about putting the books for sale at an appropriate event. Similarly the vehicle kits will require a specialist dealer to move them.

My small effort today consisted of taking the Historex stuff away to attempt to shift it on eBay. Again, there is a mass of unbuilt kits which he was getting around to, and it is clear from the price stickers and the long-defunct model shops which they advertise that some of these have been around since the early 80s at least.

The completed Historex Naps are nice enough - built to a decent standard - though there is evidence of their having been on display for a while. They need a little dusting and a little touch-up, and a couple of plumes and stirrup irons have come adrift, but this was a very thorough and very organised collector - basically they are beautiful, if you like Historex, and as far as I can see all the detached pieces (and there are very few) are carefully kept with the correct models. Certainly if I attempt to glue any bits back on they will not be improved, so I'll leave them as they are.

The unmade Historex kits are mostly straightforward and still sealed, but one or two, at first glance, look a bit sparse - it looks to me as if a few of the bags contain the parts left over for an alternative pose - particularlly for personality generals - I'll try and check this out.

Today has been a fantastic experience, if a little sad because of the circumstances, but my head is definitely spinning. I need to set out all the built Historex models to see what is there, and attempt to match them up with the things which I suspect are spares packs. If/when I put these on eBay, I'm going to do it in a small number of big lots, simply because I don't have time to do it any other way. Interesting, but an intensive exposure to a world which is unfamiliar to me. If I find a model which I really can't identify, there may be the odd squeal for help here.