Fall In 2014 - Saturday, Day 2

Day 2 of Fall In was fairly uneventful for me, and somewhat brief. I arrived mid-morning and had plenty of time to watch various games and do some shopping before setting up a flea market table for the afternoon session.

I've been giving some thought recently to what my miniatures collection would look like if I started with a completely clean slate and were not burdened with a basement full of false starts, sidetracks, and periods that have gone by the wayside. Suffice it to say for the moment that the "ideal" vision differs a good bit from the reality. With that in mind, it was a very successful flea market session, where I sold practically everything I brought. This included three boxes of 25mm Saxons and two boxes of 25mm Vikings (reserving enough of each for modest skirmish armies), my American Revolution Continental army (2 large boxes of Brandywine regiments), Warhammer fantasy battle dwarves, a few miscellaneous odds and ends, and a half dozen board games. I came home with one board game and one rulebook. The carry-out was delightfully lighter than the carry-in.

This was a good step in the right direction towards (profitably) jettisoning the things I will never use. Hopefully they have found a good home where they will be of more use to somebody than they have been to me in recent years.

My two flea market purchases over the two days were a box of 54 nice 15mm palm trees and a set of uniform guides. The palm trees were based very nicely on round masonite bases (flocked), and look beautiful after I got them home and gave them a light overhead dusting of two shades of lighter green and a matt sealer coat to knock the edge off the dark green plastic look. These will be useful for either my 15m Crusaders or WW2 Pacific War.

Age of Chivalry, two volumes, in French

The real find was the uniform guides. Liliane and Fred Funcken did a whole series of uniform and equipment guides (back in the 1970's primarily, I think). The sets came in pairs of two books per period and go for a very hefty price for the English versions. You can also find them in French and less commonly in German. When I see them at shows, they are generally in French. I have Napoleonics in French and Lace Wars (1700's) in German. To this I added the two volume set of Medieval and Renaissance (in French) for the reasonable price of $45. They are in great condition, and I use them primarily for pictures and painting inspiration, so the fact that I can barely fumble through some of the text makes no difference.

All in all another successful show, and it certainly has gotten the painting juices flowing again, as these shows always do.