Saturday, February 13, 2016

Another Obscure Man o' War Variation

To show you how deep I’m going on my Man o’ War project, this was my previous purchase in the endeavor, sometime later last year:


That’s the 1986 Sears Wishbook release. (He was also very cheap!)

What’s nice about this example is that it can be tied to a specific vendor, and a relatively narrow window of time. And so will be another useful piece for establishing the chronology. As far as I know, the Wishbook release will be identical to the regular run Man o’ War, who was available through 1995.

But you never know, I might find something that distinguishes him. That’s the whole point of this exercise!

These “deep cuts” are not the kind of thing I target on a regular basis: really, you’ll drive yourself mad trying to get every box, and every variation of every box, in additional to all the actual and perceived model variations.

And end up broke, too.

Not only that, I do not have the time or space to start delving deep into every release that needs that kind of treatment (including most items prior to the purchase by Reeves in the mid-1980s).

But I thought it’d be an interesting experiment with a few specific releases I have a certain fondness for, and which already have a long and complicated variation history that need to be sorted out to my satisfaction anyway.

As I mentioned before, I've already gotten most of the expensive ones out the the way, so while this project may end up driving me crazy, it (probably) won’t drive me broke.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you found a glossy RR variation (not the red sears)? There is one on ID your breyer. I am dying to find one!

ANDREA said...

I tend to be suspicious of any nonstandard vintage glossies.

Far too many hobbyists all too eager to add something "rare" to their collections, and glosses are relatively easy to fake, at least on a photographic level. Some probably do exist, but I'm not buying any unless it's cheap or verifiable.