Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Overcast,flurries, mild
Introducing
Deke's Collectibles-
The Manoils
Yesterday, I presented another exceptional collection from Mr. James N Seidelle, courtesy of Gray's Auctioneers. Not only had Mr. Seidelle collected a fine collection of American Mechanical and regular banks, but he had a large collection of Manoil figures of soldiers. You rarely see such a large collection going to auction. If you look either on Liveauctioneers or ebay, you swill be "lucky" if you can find 20 Manoil figures at any one time. The sellers on ebay would prefer to sell these figures piece-by-piece, while on Liveauctioneers, these collectibles are not the rarest,nor the most expensive, so the auction houses may not see these items with the more expensive items.
I have not written many posts on lead or metal alloy figures. These were made with a hollow base or core from a mild. At the time, these toys were inexpensive to manufacture (1920's-1950's) and were sold in true nickel and dime stores (5 cents and 10 cents). At the peak of the Manoil toy company's production, they were producing 500,000 of these toys a week. These toys were most popular during WWII years, when America had entered the war.
Deke is the nickname for Dr. Winston T. Winston, Ph. D., who studied and works in the field psychology. During his lifetime, he has managed to collection several interesting collections, that I hope to write about in the future.
But what I found most interesting is to see and read the descriptions of the Manoil toys. Deke has compiled a nice collection of Manoil figures that were made either in different years, or were made in different variations. You'll have to look very closely to see the differences. Some are easy to see, and other are more difficult.
The image below is the same as the one above.However, I had noticed a repeating red pixel on
most of Winston's photos. If you magnify this image and look at the left pocket at the upper right corner, you will see the red pixel. This is a camera sensor defect that happens once in a while.
You can't do anything with the camera,as to replace the sensor is too costly. So you simply live with it,and correct it with a photo-editing software.
Most of the figures look like WWI figures or early WWII,. America didn't want to enter WWII, but did so after the war had started. The country wasn't prepared,but as the war continued, the great industrial machine helped to create the weapons that the American recruits would have to use to defeat the Germans and the Japanese.
You'll be better able to see grass in the other images below. However
there are many more subtle variations between these tow machine gunners.
Notice the part of the gun above the soldier's right hand. The top photo has many more rivets on the metal plate. than the bottom one. Also the up and down angle of the machine gun is more apparent
just in front of the bullets clips.
I don't know what Deke means by the term aperture as it replays to the machine gun. However there are most certainly plenty of difference between the 2 figures. The most obvious is the big differences in the colours of the two machine-gunners and their guns.
The soldier on the right side has more prominent buttons on his uniform, and his pant legs have smoother pleats. There are a few other variations that I'll let you discover.
I didn't think as to how Deke had photographed all of his characters to the same size.
Then, when I was whitening the backgrounds, I noticed the mall letter "X" on the white paper just under the soldiers. You can just see the "X" under the left grenade thrower's base.
Below are a trio of stretcher carriers.
Now we have more difference wit the added figure.
Personally my favourite military figures are the ones that have more accessories or more interesting accessories with them. In this case it's the searchlights.
I decided to leave this "brain-teaser" of 6 images for last. I have to congratulate Deke for his fine collection and even more astute observations and data on these figures. I would never have known that such subtleties existed, especially when you consider that these figures are quite small. Also if they;re sold ungroups,most ebay sellers may not take the time to photograph the items apart or as separate images.
The height of these toys can vary from 2"-3" (51 mm - 76 mm) depending on the position (standing,bending or crouching). The size of the soldiers had to always be the same size so that when kids would play with these figures or set up battle scene,the whole platoon or division would all be the same size.
I'll be writing more on Deke's (Winston) fine collections in the near future. One of his collectibles are collectible cards manufactured during the WWII war years. These are quite interesting when you realize how children were affected by this horrific world war, and how companies manufactured these cards at the time.
It's interesting that yesterday was the 73rd anniversary of the sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour. Although I was very busy yesterday, I still remembered that date. The interesting thing though was that I didn't hear or read anything on the radio or news.
Sometimes time softens the bad things in life.
Thanks for dropping by,and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
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