Hooptedoodle #374 - Tales of Shopping during Lockdown

(1) The international parcel saga - as mentioned a few days ago, I made an online purchase in the USA, and it took 12 days for the parcel to travel from somewhere in Massachusetts to the Global Shipping Center at Erlanger KY. I am astounded to relate that, though the scope for detailed tracking rather dropped out of sight thereafter, the package duly arrived on my doorstep in South-East Scotland bang on the promised date, so the international part of the trip took only 5 days, despite the involvement of Pitney-Bowes [who?] and Hermes at this end.

So, as promised, I have to admit that I am very favourably impressed. Credit where credit is due. Well done, everyone.

(2) A happy coincidence - I was pleased to manage to obtain a pre-owned copy of David Chandler's Marlborough as Military Commander online for only £6 plus P&P, and it duly arrived, promptly and tidily, from a bookshop in Bradford. I was very pleased to find that the book was clean and tight, but was especially happy to find a label on the inner cover revealing that it was previously owned by Charlie Wesencraft, no less. Since I read somewhere that Charlie was a close friend of Dr Chandler, I had a mad idea that I might have got an author's signature for my £6 as well, but alas, no!

I now have a number of books which were previously owned by celebs, as it happens - a set of The Dickson Manuscripts and a set of Sauzey's volumes on French Napoleonic allies, both formerly owned by George Nafziger, and a couple of ECW books once owned by Peter Young. These were all just flukes - there are a couple more, but at present I can't remember what they are, or who they came from. I did once buy a book on eBay which had previously been owned by me, but that is another tale, and rather embarrassing.

(3) An unusually fortunate purchase on eBay [UK]. Someone tipped me off that there was an item which looked like the sort of thing I might be interested in (old toy soldiers of an old-fashioned size). I checked it out and, yes, I was interested. The seller was someone I've dealt with before, and he comes up with some very nice old stuff from time to time. Starting bid was £12. The seller was also open to offers - based on past experience of what these figures typically go for, I made an offer of £16. Rejected.

OK - I upped my offer to £21. Also rejected. This was getting a bit steep for me, so I just placed a normal auction bid of £16 - there were 6 days to go. I reckoned I would be happy if I got them for that, and I would have been fairly priced out of the market if I didn't.

I was out this evening, but got home to find that I had won the item for the £12 starting price. No other bids, no other interest. Obviously we win a few and we lose a few, but it demonstrates the risks of making (or not accepting) offers on an auction item - risks both ways, of course, but I'd have happily paid the £21...

eBay - Definitely the End This Time

I recently posted a sad tale about an apparent hack of my PayPal account - I managed to take quick action on it, but it seems that not quite everything was sorted. I now find that I have been subjected to what is becoming a common scam - someone hacks into your PayPal account, inserts a fake address so that they can link to your eBay account, and then - as they have done in my case - sets up a fake listing for sale on your eBay account.

First I knew about it was when I started getting emails about an "unresolved issue" on eBay - someone wanted a refund because I had failed to deliver a set of security cameras which they had bought from me. Erm - security cameras? The listing was still active - it seems I had sold 1 out of 50 sets available. No money had reached me though PayPal. The purchase took place on 22nd May - the following day I got a request from eBay to change my password, and did so, though they sent me no details which might have put me on my guard. I changed my PayPal password as well (again), at the same time.

This morning I had a phone conversation with an eBay security man, based in the Philippines. He was very good and very reassuring - they were already aware of the problems with my account, and are in the process of cleaning everything up - the eBay listing has now been taken down, I have no need to worry about refunding anything - the purchaser (if there is one - that may be a scam too) will be reimbursed. The law enforcement authorities will be notified about the incident as appropriate. Was there anything else he could help me with?

Well, no - nothing else really. I will be closing my eBay account as soon as they let me back into it. That's enough - I've been muttering about this for ages - I think that God has now sent me a sign.

Watch your step. As it happens, I had kept a note of the full name and address which was hacked into my PayPal account, back in April. It is a guy named Nikolaj, who lives in London. Interestingly, the security cameras were supposedly for sale in London. OK - there's lots of people in London, but the man in the Philippines tells me the incidents are related. The security people were quite impressive, though I'd have been more impressed if they'd sorted the matter out before I reported it.

That's it for me - eBay now officially stinks - I have had good use out of it for 15 years, but for me its time is up. There are too many fifth-rate crooks hanging round the internet, trying to suck some blood out of the system.

Cheers, Nikolaj - I do have your full ID and address, and I do have friends in London. I shall fantasize about that for a bit. Incidents like this always (well, "always" is a bit strong - I'm very careful, and pretty savvy, and have had very few problems in the past) leave me feeling ashamed for being stupid. With hindsight, other than changing my passwords rather more frequently, I don't think I could have done much better.

eBay/PayPal - Glitch Department - Be Very Afraid...

Short post about a potential misadventure I had this week. Hopefully everything is sorted out now, but it bothers me because it looks like a security bug in PayPal, which would be a huge confidence shaker. I use PayPal quite a bit these days for all sorts of online purchases, and if I have any doubts about its sanctity I shall drop it like a hot potato.

A few days ago I completed a routine purchase on eBay - large, reputable seller I've dealt with before. Paid via my PayPal account, and received all the usual confirmations and "order completed" mails from eBay. As ever, I filed them away in the "eBay" folder - just in case - you know how it is. As ever, I didn't really look at them. After I'd filed the order details, I suddenly realised that there had been something odd about some of the information on the last document. So retrieved it and - sure enough - the delivery address was someone in London who is not me. I've never heard of this person, or had any dealings with them. I checked my PayPal account, found the payment entry, clicked on the details, and there it was again - everything was correct except the delivery address.

I mailed the seller, who is a decent, helpful chap, and explained the situation - he has agreed to send the package to my correct address, so no further worries there. The wider implications are a bit scary, though.

It seems that, as part of a routine PayPal settlement for an eBay purchase - a situation which must occur zillions - possibly even brazilians - of times every day, PayPal has correctly made payment to the seller, but has supplied him with an incorrect delivery address. From someone else's account, it seems.

Some thoughts:

* what if I hadn't spotted it? - the parcel would have gone to a complete stranger, though the seller would have no cause to suspect that anything has gone wrong. As far as I am concerned, the parcel would simply never have reached me. Another mystery of the sea.

* more worryingly, if this is a glitch in the PayPal security system, what else could go wrong? How much does this shake my confidence in PayPal? How likely am I to use it again, for anything?

I've now changed my passwords for eBay and PayPal, as one does, and I've emailed PayPal to report the incident. It isn't a catastrophe, I've caught the problem before any damage was done, the amount of money involved was not large anyway - no need to dramatise. The big problem is that I really do not wish PayPal to have frailties, or make mistakes. I use PayPal because it is convenient, provides a level of confidentiality between me and the seller, and because it is not one of the Bastard Credit Card Companies. If my faith is compromised, I shall change my habits - that's for sure.

Of course, PayPal have not yet replied, and they may send me a perfectly reasonable explanation and appropriate reassurance, but at the moment I am hard pressed to think what they could possibly say that would make me feel comfortable.

Just saying. If you use PayPal to pay for an eBay purchase - or anything else for that matter - recommend that you check very carefully all the documentation that you receive, including details of where your package will be sent.

If anything further develops, I'll stick a little post up here.

***** Late Edit *****

OK - I received an email message from PayPal explaining how I may amend my postal address if it is incorrect. No help - not what I was looking for. On Tuesday, once the Easter weekend was over, I emailed them again and explained that they had missed the point of my previous message, or had possibly not looked for any point in it, and that I had serious concerns over security.

Very quick email reply from them asked me to phone them - the number was a free UK 0800 number, but I was speaking to people in the US. Heavy going - they were going to reverse the eBay transaction and do all sorts. We sorted that out - they understood that I had sorted out shipping details with the seller, and that primarily I was worried about how the PayPal address for someone else had been supplied to the seller for my purchase.

PayPal staff said they were confident that a default shipping address had been supplied from somewhere else, and it had suppressed the request for the address from my PayPal account, but that this must be due to a fault in eBay's completion software, or in some website application used within the seller's online shop. As we say in Scotland, it wusnae them, whatever. They also said they will raise it as a potential security issue, so that the software people may include it in future reviews.

They assured me that it won't happen again, but I can promise I will be checking very carefully the details of any PayPal transactions I take part in for a while. Really not very happy about all this.

Anyway - move on - let's find something else to worry about; however, the more they tell us that nothing can go wrong, the more disturbing it is when something does.

********************

One Step Forward - any number of steps back

Some years ago I decided to try to get my book collection back under control (one time among many), so I selected a goodly number of volumes to sell off, give away, bin etc. Among the books that went at that time were the original (green and black) War Games by Don Featherstone, and the original (orange) Practical Wargaming by Charlie Wesencraft. I got rid of them because (a) I never looked at them any more, and (b) well, my wargaming had outgrown these books anyway, hadn't it? I sold both books on eBay, and got reasonable prices for them - these things were in demand at the time. Fine.

Sadly missed - now back in the library

Of course, it took me just about a month to realise this was all a mistake. My life was poorer without them. Whenever I needed cheering up about why I played with toy soldiers, those old books were what I missed. Therapy. After about a further year I saw a good copy of the original edition of the Featherstone book, so I bought it (yes - I did feel like a bit of an idiot, but I paid less than I had received for my original one, and I will maintain (stubbornly) that the replacement was in rather better condition).

I also replaced the Wesencraft book, by buying the new, John Curry-edited paperback. Since I bought this edition, I guess I'm entitled to an opinion; my opinion is that I am delighted that John is re-publishing all these old classics, but I found his reprint of Practical Wargaming disappointing - numerous typos, tables laid out in a way which I found very difficult to follow, and I don't like the scans of the half-tone photos at all. So, you can guess what I've done now - that's right, I've bought a nice, clean, pre-owned copy of the orange, hardback Practical Wargaming from eBay. [I was about to go on to discuss the comparison of the selling and purchasing prices, but in fact I'm too embarrassed to bother.]

So everything is now back as it was - just some stupid footling-about in between.

Anyway, what this all amounts to is me trying to put a positive spin on my Full Donkey achievement of having sold two books on eBay and then having to buy them back again, also on eBay.

Whatever, I'm happy with the arrangement.

Thought for today: How many idiots does it take to make a market?

Useful Odds & Ends

Just what you need to keep your games tidy and the kit under control

I have recently bought some purpose-built gaming paraphernalia - a useful dice-tray, and a playing card holder, which are both smarter and more practical than the usual superannuated ashtrays etc that get called into use here at Chateau Foy.

These are nice components - they have a good weight to them - they are foamex, the dice trays are available in a wide range of styles, are lined with felt and have non-slip feet. The composite is available in a number of colours, including all sorts of stone shades. It is also surprisingly quiet in use - your dice will not make much of a rattle!

They are available on eBay - I have no interest in this, by the way, other than the fact that I was pleased with the pieces I bought, which are satisfyingly solid and stable in use, and I found the seller to be a pleasant, helpful chap. Well worth checking out, I think.

The website isn't ready yet, but you'll find a lot of information if you look up
playtrayuk on Facebook

***** Late Edit *****

I got a couple of emails asking for more info about these; I emphasise that I am not connected with the business at all - I'm just a customer - the items are mostly intended for boardgamers, but the seller has a representative selection of his range on eBay here if you wish to have a look.

******************

Hooptedoodle #273 - eBay - Going Cold Again

Hate it or love it, I have to admit that, without eBay and the availability of old, out-of-production wargame castings which it brought about, my own previous interest in wargaming and the collection of the paraphernalia associated with that hobby would never have been rekindled.

I'll say that again, just to emphasise the point - and the emphasis is for my own benefit, because I find this very easy to forget: without eBay, my former involvement in wargaming would have remained a closed book. The question of what else I might have done with my time and pocket money is a separate matter, strictly for discussion in the pub.

All well and good, but I have become aware of some changes in eBay - the markets have changed quite a bit, the systems and the procedures and safeguards have evolved in such a way that they now suit online dealers - people who really are doing this for a living - and my impression is that it has become harder-nosed. You have to be on your guard more, there are more tales of rip-offs.

That's only to be expected, I guess. As more and more people use eBay, the range of experiences will increase, and public appetite for tales of scams and doom and gloom will also grow. I read things and I nod, or shrug, or whatever; I experience things at first hand and I take serious note.

My experience of eBay over the last 15 years or so (I think it's about that) has been really very positive. Apart from buying and selling stuff that I've been interested in, I've also made a number of very solid friendships with people who share my areas of interest. In my case, this has mostly been miniature soldiers and military history books, and it is possible that these categories of buying and selling are dominated by older fellows who are reputable and straightforward; whatever, they seem to be less attractive to the crooks of this world. No-one, as far as I know, ever became rich quickly by buying and selling second-hand soldiers (though a few of us might feel that we have become somewhat poorer by the same process!). The dodgier bits of online auctions seem to be the mass, low-cost markets (like used clothing, for example), but also expensive stuff like computer games and technology and musical instruments - fields where enthusiasm and gullibility can outstrip caution and commonsense.

We recently sold an unused, unopened Sony PlayStation through eBay. It was a competition prize for which we had no real use, since my son's interests have moved on from such devices. The final sale was fine - the item was bought for a decent (though fair) price by a very nice fellow in Manchester, who bought it for his own son's birthday. Everyone was happy, but the risks are there to see. Two of the bidders we had cancelled their bids and pulled out during the course of this auction - something I cannot recall seeing before. In each case, remarkably, the bidder claimed to have accidentally entered the wrong amount - a justification for cancellation which is currently accepted by eBay.

Even more remarkably, each of these two bidders put in multiple bids, to cover themselves against subsequently being outbid (so they managed to enter the wrong amount several times), and each waited a few days - three days for one and four days for the other - before realising their error. We all know that what really happened was that they managed to buy one of these PlayStations elsewhere for a better price, and then cancelled the bid on our auction. Presumably this has become an accepted way of proceeding - if eBay allows it then we cannot complain - but it's outwith the spirit of eBay as I knew it, especially since other watchers and bidders (and there were quite a few) would be impacted. To me it seems, if not actually unethical, then certainly contrary to the traditions and spirit of eBay as a marketplace based on trust. If you attempt to welsh on a bid at Sotheby's, I promise you will be mightily embarrassed for your trouble.

It also became obvious that a good proportion of the people interested in our PlayStation were dealers - people who buy and sell for profit - which is fair enough. I'm glad it went to a private punter who actually wanted it - I realise that my approval is outmoded and probably irrelevant in the overall scheme of things.

Also recently, I attempted to dispose of a portion of my mother's vast library via eBay. I've bought and sold a lot of books on eBay in the past, happily and mostly fairly successfully. Whoa - not so fast. First of all, the market appears to have changed - prices for and interest in books have dropped - and most of the (relatively few) potential buyers were, in fact, dealers just looking to make a profit on resale.

I'd prefer to swerve the inevitable lectures on economics, so please give me a break if you suddenly feel such a lecture coming on - if that is the current market, then so be it. There may be all sorts of underlying trends which explain this, including demographics - oversupply generated by an ageing population with an increasing legacy of old books to unload onto a world that is possibly less interested in collecting or reading hard copy (or anything longer than a Tweet) - we will probably be forced to acknowledge the same trends in the toy soldier market one day soon. Whatever the reason, I gave up - nearly all of mother's books went to the Heart Foundation shop. It's a good cause after all (assuming the money finishes up in the right place - another topic for the pub), but the chief reason was that the effort and the minimal return of persisting via eBay, added to the hassle and the potential risks, made sale by auction impractical. I am no longer prepared to be messed around so much. Not for that kind of money, anyway.

Anyway - let's get to the point. I read in the Guardian of some poor chap who sold a guitar on eBay for well over £1000, it was paid for by Paypal and the courier delivery was signed for, but the buyer subsequently claimed that the case was empty on receipt and raised a dispute, which resulted in the Paypal payment being refunded - in these cases, it is simply a matter of the buyer's word against the seller's, and eBay and Paypal will normally find in favour of the buyer. Ah, you say, but the courier has the recipient's signature. That's not too promising either - this is only for receipt of some sort of package - damage or missing contents would not normally be discovered until later, and - maybe worst of all - if the buyer claims it is not his signature, there is not much can be done about it. There is a lot of this sort of stuff around, apparently. Worrying.

In how many ways could you be dissatisfied...?

I think I am finally convinced that my use of eBay will be firmly limited in future. I shall continue to look out for cheapish wargame items from established sellers, and I will happily continue to trade with people I know and trust, but the selling of valuable items is becoming unattractive. I can always insist on payment in cash on personal collection, of course, but since I live on the backside of the moon that is not really going to work.

I realise that my career on eBay has involved more retirals than Frank Sinatra, but I think this time I really am convinced that the game is pretty much up.

Mixed Fortune on eBay

How about this then? Just happened to see it on eBay, so decided to indulge myself (all right, indulge myself yet again). This is an old cigar box, not awfully glamorous, but the embossed copper lid makes it just the thing to keep my ECW wargame dice and cards in, so I am really rather pleased.

eBay hasn't been working for me recently - I've had a load of books listed for sale, and had hardly any success - eventually the starting prices were so low that I'd rather give them away, so I've put most of them back in the storage boxes until the market picks up again.

One book I did manage to sell was a near-mint copy of the Esposito & Elting Napoleonic Atlas. At the third attempt, I eventually sold it for about £40, which is a snip by any standards, but I regret that it was bought by a London bookshop, who had it on sale in their online shop for over £120 the same day they received it. Oh well.

Anyway - never mind that. Just look at my tacky cigar box - good, eh?

Still in the Spares Box, with Mike and Whiskers

Whiskers developing his technique - in fact, I imagine Whiskers as rather more bald than this

Almost exactly two years ago, I scored one of my biggest-ever hauls on eBay, and bought in a load of ECW figures which came from the estate of a chap in Northern Ireland who had recently died - his entire collection, which was enormous, was sold by a local charity shop. I only bought a stack of his ECW troops - all SHQ and Tumbling Dice 20mm - but there were literally hundreds of them.

The big surprise at the time was that they had very obviously been painted up and organised to fight Montrose's campaigns - since that was exactly what I wanted them for, I had seen that there were a lot of Scottish troop types in the collection, but it wasn't until I started checking out the flags that I realised what I had.

The figures were quite nicely painted, in a very plain style, but I was a bit shocked to see that they had been heavily coated with some kind of ship's varnish - these figures were definitely intended to stand up to some severe, industrial handling, I would say. I set about identifying figures which would restore most easily, and which were of most immediate use for my Montrose project, and I did some retouching, and a great deal of applying matt varnish to tone down the finish, and rebasing, and I was pleased with the results. The episode generated a lot of very plain, rather dull Scottish and Irish soldiers, which provided a fine addition to bulk up the splendid Covenanter units which Lee Gramson had already painted up for me.

All good - I've done some Montrose things now, and intend to revisit this again soon. While I was spending a few late nights in 2014, getting these ex-eBay fellows ready for the armies, I got to know the previous owner a bit better. Of course, I have no idea who he was, but at 1 a.m. when I was preparing figures for the prescribed matt varnish I would find myself chatting to him - I called him Mike, in the absence of other suggestions.

"Well, Mike," I would say, "this one's got cat hairs stuck on the varnish as well - you should keep old Whiskers out of the painting room.." and so on. I developed a technique of loosening the cat hairs from the varnish with the tip of a penknife, and then removing them with tweezers. A strange way to spend a long evening - this is almost certainly why I started talking to Mike. As time went on, it became a house joke that I had gradually changed my mind, and that I now believed that Whiskers had done the varnishing himself - perhaps with a little guidance from Mike.

Well the horses are pretty ghastly, but they should paint up simply enough, and that
gives me the better part of two new regiments of rather understated Northern horse

Since I've recently been rooting around in the Spares Box, I found another load of the ex Mike & Whiskers ECW boys, and I realised that there are a lot more in the heap which would usefully restore in the same way. So for a couple of evenings I've been washing and debasing and removing the cat hairs. Since these figures are probably a bit worse than the ones I selected for refurbing last time, there are a lot more cat hairs - in fact I have now begun to believe that Mike did the varnishing, but that he applied the varnish with Whiskers, rather than a brush.

And oodles more artillerymen - just the job for the sieges - more than enough...

It's going OK - we are now ready for a bit of touch-up, and then the matt varnish can start. I need to paint up a few extra cavalry figures from scratch, to make up the numbers, but I hope to get a couple of additional Scottish/Northern units of horse out of this, and I will have more gunners than I will ever possibly need - certainly I will have plenty to man the forthcoming extra artillery for siege games.

Topic #2 - more pottery ornaments ready for sieges...

I previously gave a glimpse of some of my new Tey Pottery houses - this little side-project is shaping up very nicely, and I have the makings of a presentable 17th Century English town centre, such as I can lay siege to. So here's a slightly bigger glimpse...

eBay Capture - Very Old Toys Dept

I used to have one of these, or at least I had one very similar. This is a fortress made from moulded plastic sheet, manufactured by Eberlein & Co, of Neumarkt, Germany. Eberlein were not a specialist toy maker, they were a plastics company, but they produced toy castles under the trade name Eco, and they produced them in the German style already established by Hausser and Elastolin. [In passing, I am interested to note that Neumarkt is in Bavaria, very close to Regensburg, where I visited two years ago - yes, I realise this is of no interest to anyone else...]

I bought one in the basement toy department of Jenners, in Princes Street, Edinburgh, sometime in the late 1970s. I had grandiose ideas about adding sieges to my stuttering repertoire of wargaming activities, but I think really I just fancied one. Jenners had a choice of different models - this was a smaller one, I think. I have to make two hefty admissions right here and now:

(1) The thing sat in a cupboard for years and years, and never came near to any wargames

(2) Eventually it disappeared, and I cannot for the life of me remember what happened to it. I imagine it went to a charity shop or similar, and I guess the reason I cannot remember the details is because I wasn't interested by that time. Oh well.

This one came from eBay, yesterday. The background to the purchase is the usual haphazard series of coincidences which result in such things. Two years ago, on holiday, I went in a shop in the Salzburg area which had a mighty stock of old Elastolin things, and I was entranced. Crazy prices, and not my thing at all, but pre-war SS marching bands, and all sorts of exotic vehicles and buildings which I found very attractive (in an academic, holiday-time sort of way). Since then I have occasionally had a squint on eBay to see what Elastolin things are on offer - the rule of thumb seems to be that if it is in any kind of decent condition then the price is horrifying. That's OK, I maintain the same sort of vague interest in secondhand Ferraris. Recently a post-war Elastolin castle appeared - it wasn't in especially good nick, it was expensive, and it would need to be collected from a long way away. I thought about it, and watched it as it was relisted twice for lower and lower price. Still wasn't worth it (to me), and I didn't really want anything so big, or so difficult to store.

While I was losing interest in it, there was suddenly this much cheaper Eco castle available, complete with box, and I bought it very quickly, for very little outlay, and it was even shipped here by courier for an extra £7. Well now. I'm really rather pleased with it. It will make a splendid medieval castle section for a Peninsular War fortified city, and it may have applications in the ECW, though I haven't really explored that yet. It's in very good condition, though a bit dusty. It came from a shop that deals in old toys rather than a specialist wargame or military model supplier, so the low price probably reflects the fact that people who want old toy castles really want nice hand-made wooden jobs, not semi-realistic plastic ones.

The scale is around smallish-HO, which is perfect for me (I think the Elastolin castles are really designed for 40mm figures), and the factory paintwork is good and crisp and bright - the tops of the towers are a bit worn, presumably by being slid in and out of the box, but it is so good that I now have a very mild dilemma. Should I "improve" the paintwork? The red roofs are a bit too much of a Royal Mail shade for my taste, and the copper-painted tower on the church is as irritating as I found it in the 1970s. My general feeling is to give the model a good (careful) clean up, smarten up the roofs a bit and then dry-brush some of my house baseboard green colour around the edges so that it blends into the table nicely. my only doubt about this is caused by the fact that it is, in fact, in such good condition. If it had been shabby then it would be a no-brainer, same as for figures - repaint it. However, it is nearly perfect - if it were really old and really valuable, then the no-brainer choice would be to leave it exactly as it is. But it isn't - it's pretty old, and it's interesting to the oddball toy soldier collector like me, but it isn't Elastolin and it isn't valuable - if I were to choose to leave it alone, it would be entirely out of a sense of respect which might be inappropriate.

No. I think I'll do some painting on it.

I'm pretty sure that the plastic sheet is a lot heavier than I remember, so maybe it's not the same vintage as my previous one, and I see that the box is ticked against model #1493 rather than #1495, so there must have been two models of the same overall size, and I seem to recall that Jenners had bigger ones.

Anyway, it's here, and I'm still staring at it and grinning. I don't know how old it is - Eco still exist, though I don't think they do toys any more. If anyone knows any more about these, I'd be interested. I'll be in the courtyard, winding the working drawbridge up and down.


*************


Late edit: I was doing a bit of browsing about, and I came across this picture, which I use without any permission, which appears to show 3 further Eco castles, placed end to end, none of which is the one I have. I also checked out Eberlein's current website, which says they made toys for a period commencing 1966. I must say they look good, they don't have the cachet or the value (or the scale) of the Elastolins, but they seem a useful buy if you can find one.

Dead on Arrival

Rather sad picture, with thanks to my old friends at Royal Mail. Well packed, FRAGILE eBay parcel received recently, has obviously been dropped from sufficient height to shear off a number of these very old Higgins figures at the ankles. My thoughts at this moment are:

(1) You win some, you lose some

(2) Oh well

(3) This wouldn't happen with Front Rank figures, would it?

Further down Lilliput Lane – more eBay adventures

The inflow of collectable cottages is stopping – there are still a couple of items in the mail, but I am running out of enthusiasm and storage space at about the same rate. Interestingly, this week a couple of the “Sue” ladies (see previous post) were named Amanda and Carol, which I suppose is acceptable, but two of the sellers turned out to be blokes, which was more of a surprise, and (even more interestingly) I had my first eBay Lilliput Lane-related problems with these same male sellers.

Picture at the top is of a pleasant group made up of four David Winter Tudor cottages and a Lilliput Lane church, complete with passing cavalry unit to give the scale comparison. Nothing earth-shaking, but the most expensive building on display here is the church, which was, I think, £3-something. I am contemplating a forthcoming ECW campaign in a hitherto-undiscovered part of Lancashire, which involves a couple of decent-sized towns and a possible siege or two, so buildings of this type are most welcome.

My eBay adventures were instructive, and not particularly tedious, so I shall relate something of my dealings with the male sellers.

Case Study No.1 – Adam

Adam listed a single lot of two David Winter cottages, starting bid £0.99p, with a pretty hefty shipping charge of £9.50. Blinking at the P&P, I put a maximum bid of £1.25, and got them for 99p, with no other watchers, as far as I could see. Did the PayPal thing straight away (before I forget!) and looked forward to seeing what sort of velvet-cushion-accompanied-by-dancing-girls delivery service I got for my £9.50.

It was perfectly standard customer drop-off by Hermes, which for a parcel of this weight costs £3.98. Adam is obviously one of those eBayers who likes to load the shipping charges and put in a cheap starting price. I’m not sure that eBay actually disapprove, but I do – I’m not keen on this practice at all.

Just for the hell of it, I sent Adam a polite note (and at this point I had fulsome feedback from him, but I had not yet done the feedback for him, so I had a tactical edge), emphasizing that I had no grounds for complaint, since I had agreed to the purchase, but could he please explain the shipping cost.

I got a rant by return. Adam went on at considerable length about the unfairness of the fees charged by eBay and PayPal, the cost to him of doing the packing and travelling to the courier, and how I could hardly complain getting two such fine cottages for this amount of money. He also explained that if I wanted a postage discount I should have asked for the shipping on the two cottages to be combined, and he would have considered whether he could afford it, which is, basically, straight bollocks, since the two items were a single listing, and were combined already.

Tiring of Adam, who was less fun than I had hoped, I withdrew from the debate and left sort of sketchy feedback for him. If the cottages had been £5 for the two plus £5 shipping I would have been perfectly happy – as I am, in fact – so he’s correct, in a daft sort of way. It is a shame that he seems to get so little fun from his eBay involvement – the Sues do much better in this respect. One of them, bless her, sent me a lollipop with her business card – now that is classy.

Case Study No.2 – Colin

Colin is not a lucky man. I purchased another David Winter house for very little from Colin, paid for it, and got a notification that the item was mailed 1^st Class on 21^st July. By the 28^th there was no sign of it, so I sent Colin a friendly note to say that I wasn’t unduly worried, but thought I should let him know.

I got a lengthy reply from him, to the effect that he had, unfortunately, been involved in an accident the previous week, and had been hospitalized, had had an adverse reaction to the painkillers he was prescribed, and was in very poor shape indeed. He had arranged with his father (who is elderly, an army veteran, and suffers occasional lapses of memory) for the week’s parcels, which were all packed and ready to go, to be posted, but it had all gone wrong for various further reasons.

I sympathized with his misfortune, told him I’d be delighted to get the package whenever he could manage it, and not to worry about it. There was a faint whiff of Foy’s Seventh Law about the explanations, but no matter.

True to his word, Colin emailed me the following day to say that he had battled his way to the post office, and the parcel should reach me the next day. And so it did, and I was very pleased with it, though I was surprised when I found a note offering his repeated apologies for the delay and the “mix-up” – the note was inside the packing, next to the miniature house. No problem at all – pleased with the item, very cheap purchase, but – would you undo and then re-wrap an already-complete package to put in an apology? No? – neither would I.

You don’t suppose he had just forgotten, surely? No – of course not. To be on the safe side, in future I deal only with eBay sellers named Sue...

I am still looking forward to receiving a very attractive, period town hall of suitable proportions, which I obtained for very little, though it is No.68 of a limited edition of - I can't remember how many, in fact. You get an idea of what kind of an outsider I am in this field of collecting when I tell you that I am thinking of how best to prise said town hall off its handsome wooden plinth. Proper collectors the world over would wring their hands and weep at such an act of desecration.

Heavy on the Cute – the World of Sue

More Confessions of a Closet Lilliput Lane Fancier

English windmill, Sir?

My recent coming-out as a browser of Lilliput Lane listings on eBay has landed me a number of excellent items of ECW scenery, and has been quite an education. I am, I sincerely hope, a fringe player here, but I have seen enough to be intrigued and sometimes horrified by the real deal.

Here’s the technique – enter “Lilliput Lane” and some other promising key word like “manor house” or “smithy” or “church” in the eBay search field, and have a look at what’s on offer. Don’t look at the prices at this point or you will run for cover, screaming. Find something you like the look of, and skip through ads for this item until you find one that gives physical size, so you can check it’s OK for scale (usually the serious retailers will give a full spec and lots of photos, but their prices will be off-putting).

Or a very serviceable manor house for ECW, for £2.25? 

I use 20mm wargames figures (Les Higgins, Hinton Hunt, SHQ, Tumbling Dice), and I deliberately use underscale buildings – the most suitable of the Lilliput Lane items work out at a slightly smallish 15mm scale, which is good for me. Having identified a suitable candidate item (and I like “retired” items best – current catalogue stuff and recent releases are dominated by heavyweight pro dealers, and therefore are too dear), I do a specific search on that, and then list the items by price, cheapest first, and the unknown, perfumed, faintly purple world of ladies’ eBay opens before me.

There are some astonishing bargains, and some of them still have boxes and certificates (which are wasted on me) and many of them are pretty much perfect. There is a whole alternative reality out there of ladies who deal in secondhand party frocks (size 14) and shoes (silver, stiletto heels, worn once only) and assorted gifty tat and shelf clutter, especially LL cottages and chromium plated photo frames. These ladies live in Basildon, or Bournemouth, or Slough, and they are – almost all of them – named Sue, and they are all lovely.

The Sue thing is quite amazing – almost an essential qualification; I did buy a nice little half-timbered cottage, perfect, for 99 pence from a lady whose eBay ID was molly*moppet or similar, but I was relieved to find that her real name was actually Sue, so that was all right. She was brilliant – postage fees were exactly correct, the care of packing and the amount of bubblewrap were well in excess of what I would have done for 99 miserable pence, she posted it the same day and left me nice, gushy feedback which was so extreme that for a brief moment I glowed with my supreme status as an eBay customer, until I checked and found that all her buyers get the same message of love and appreciation.

Preston Mill - the real building is at East Linton, in East Lothian, about 6 miles
from where I'm sitting; Montrose could well pass this way...

Why Sue? The Contesse and I discussed this briefly, and we reckon that Sue was a very popular name in Britain for baby girls maybe 50-something years ago, and that this is the typical age at which ladies achieve their lifelong wish to sell used party frocks and ornaments and gush at total strangers. And God bless them all – I have no complaints.

The price spread is astonishing – I bought a flawless (though unboxed) Claypotts Castle for £2 or something the same week that a dealer was selling it, used and "rare", as Buy-It-Now for £32.99.

Convincing Lonsdale-area farm; watch out - some of them have hidden Land Rovers 

I’ve had a couple of disappointments – paid £1.25 for a David Winter mansion house which turned out to be just over an inch tall, but that can go into the local charity shop – some nice lady will be delighted to buy it, I’m sure, and stick it on eBay. Mostly everything has been very pleasing. You have to be selective – this is a huge, bewildering topic area when you start looking around – and you have to watch the sizes and the close-up pics, but the number of items and the choice is staggering.

Storage is an issue – the buildings are quite heavy and will chip easily, and are maybe not just what you wish to have lying about your bookshelves, but careful use of bubblewrap and old shoe boxes should take care of that (I can send the shoes to Sue for auction). I’m going to stop browsing the listings now – I’ve got some very decent items so far, and there are a couple more in the post.

Cornish tin mine - could just as easily be a Scottish lead mine

One word of warning – stay away from the collector forums, for that is a twilight world and you may become frightened. That is where you get into the debates about why the original version of Lupin Cottage (retired in 1987) is worth so much more than the later version (though I cannot tell the two photos apart) and why we all have to put our names down for this year’s special Members-only Limited Edition Piece, Windsor Castle in the Snow, which will (of course) be a magnificent investment to leave to your grandchildren (who, as I am beginning to understand, will get Sue to sell it on eBay for 99 pence).   

The Mad Surfer

Cuirassier command group

I’m sure that other 20mm Napoleonic enthusiasts will have noticed some figures on eBay, listed by a French seller who goes by the ID surfeur-fou. These are plastic 1/72 figures, and they are sometimes offered painted.

They look very attractive, and there is a good range of subjects. Having read the seller’s notes about his products, and having failed to find any identifiable matches on Plastic Soldier Review, I sent him a message via eBay to express my admiration for the figures, and to ask him if he is responsible for sculpting the masters. His reply (excuse my bumbling translation), was:

Tout à fait, sauf que le véritable terme est modelage et non sculpture. Les moules et les tirages sont également de moi, tout est fait par moi à 100%. (Absolutely, though the correct term is modelling rather than sculpture. I also do the moulds and production – everything is 100% done by me.)

Quite apart from the mainstream manufacturers, there are some wonderful talents producing 1/72 masterpieces at present – Franznap, Massimo (whose work is displayed on History in 1/72 from time to time) and quite a few others. The Surfer, whoever he is, might well be another – has anyone bought any of his figures, or does anyone know more about him and his work?

French limber team

Vivandiere

Lithuanian Tartars

These illustrations are all shamelessly pinched from eBay, without permission, and - as ever - I wish to make it clear that I have no connection with the seller. Just interested.

Hooptedoodle #80 - Just an Alternative View

What you see is what you get

A friend drew my attention to a recent experience on eBay - no problem, just a little puzzling. He was interested in the item pictured above, which appears to be 20mm cavalry of some sort, and is described as "decent paint job".

Since he felt that the seller might have attached the wrong photo (which does happen, you know), he sent a note to ask if these were indeed painted, since they didn't look like it, and received a prompt, friendly reply to confirm that the paint consisted of primer, with the odd spot of colour.

Which is pretty much what we see. I was intrigued by this. Doubtless the primer and the odd spots have been decently applied, but this is not the usual understanding of a decent paint job. Ignoring stuff like commercial misrepresentation and all that, which is too heavy, there is obviously a wider range of interpretation of what painted means in this context - which is where the photos come in very useful on eBay.

Every day I see breathtaking examples of miniature soldier painting online - my current favourite gawping site, among so many, is the Castles of Tin blog - and it occurs to me that we all have our own standards and definitions. It also occurred to me that, comparatively speaking, my own standard of painting is rather nearer the primer and blobs end of the spectrum than I would wish, but luckily I found a letter from the Tax Office to take my mind off the topic.

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.

Just One More Bid

"Of eBay I've had quite enough!"
You declare, as you browse through more stuff,
"But there's Hintons and Rose,
And - oh look, what are those?"
So no-one is fooled by your bluff.

Yet more shoddy, overpriced trash,
With paint slopped on over the flash,
Greets your wearying gaze -
There must be more ways
You could fritter your hard-earned cash?

Before I go out of my mind,
What is it you’re hoping to find?
What’s the dream? What’s the Grail?
What’s the sting in the tail?
Please explain, if you’d be so kind.

Buy soldiers, if buy them you must,
But by now I would think you’d have sussed
You’d be best, in the end,
Doing swaps with a friend,
Or someone you know you can trust.

But the postman still comes to the door,
And you open your mail with a roar:
“That seller’s a bad’un,
They’re never by Stadden!”
I really can’t take any more.

...“If that’s a dragoon,
I’m the Man in the Moon!”
No, dear, you’re a foolish old bore.

© MSF 2011
Any association with any real person, living or dead, or in any intermediate state, is entirely unintentional. Especially anyone named Foy.

As a late afterthought, here is a faint response, borne on the wind...

"I once almost had them, you know -
Hinton Hunt light dragoons in a row,
But I lost them, gawd blimey,
Outbid by the Limey,
With only four seconds to go!"