Putty Hill Show

Laurie and I did a Putty Hill Show last year and enjoyed it. We had wanted to go back, but various factors forced us to forego the show until yesterday. Laurie had to work, I decided to go by myself. The boys get me up early anymore since Quinn got the privilege to sleep on the bed. After taking them out and giving their breakfast, I got ready for the show. The trip was nice despite the rain.  The show had moved to Maryland State Fairgrounds. I arrived at the show ten minutes after it opened.

After paying my admission, I ran into our good friend Mark Hegeman.  I thanked Mark for alerting me on a Pech Tiger fighting a snake on Ebay. It is one of the items we had been looking for after seeing pictures of it on various sites.  Mark had gotten some Elastolin and Starlux medieval.  He also got an very interesting and unusual  Marx display piece.  The piece was the Marx piece was a display card with the Marx 60mm Nativity figures. What makes it unusual is the card is from England and the figures are from Germany in soft plastic! As I was talking our very good friend Gerry Watts pop up and said I thought you were not coming. (Gerry must be a mind reader as  I found out when I got home a friend had on Tuesday stepped off a pavement looking at traffic not realizing he was stepping into a grating and broke his ankle. He was staying at his son’s home until Saturday and decided to come back home. Because he lives on second floor, he was afraid his son would need help.  I would have cancel plans if I had been called in time.  His son was able to get him up with no problems.)

After talking to Gerry and Mark for a few moments  I started my search. I walked down the  aisle and spotted a Marx 6 inch cowboy going to draw his gun  body twisted.  I could not ask the price as no one was there.  I walked back later and the item was sold.  I continued my walk.

In the next row, I came to Gerry Watts’ tables. Helping at Gerry Watts tables was another very good friend Chris Lambert. Chris deals in action figures and had a couple of tubs of loose figures for sale. Gerry’s tables had a mix of plastic and metal. I picked up some plastic and metal for resale while getting for myself  a Mid-Eastern building with removable roof by Hobby Bunker. I will add it to a town I hope to have up later this year. Gerry gave me a metal Roman figure for Laurie as he knows she like ancient figures. From Gerry’s tables I continued down the aisle and stopped at Kerry Dunable’s tables.  Kerry did not have a big selection of plastic due to good selling in Wheeling so I only got a few pieces.

I continued down the aisle and turned back toward the first aisle as I had only done part of it. I found a woman with a nice selection of figures including a MPC Mummy in purple and three Beatles figures.  Three tables over was Jim McGough. Jim is one of the owners of CTS. We have know each other for years.  Jim told me that CTS will be coming out with WWII German artillery figures and more WWII German combat poses.  Jim then told me that he had asked Tim Geppert about a  70mm Timmee Russian reissue run he had supposely done and I was innvolved in it.  On Toy Soldiers Headquarters web site, Kent Sprecher shows in the Timmee military section the Timmee Russians in various colors.  The middle one is in a forest green and Kent stated that Tim Geppert had gotten these figures specially run in forest green in Mexico in that color. Jim talked about this piece of information with Tim and Tim told Jim he had bought the figures in Tijuana in a store then sold them for $.35 each. I had bought out all or most of them that Tim had. The reissues are hard to get and sell for $10.00 a piece.

Jim then told me he had just bought a load of plastic that pieces he had sold the party years ago. In it were Atlantic figures  which he was selling to Australia, Russia and Italy.  We then talked about Polk’s hobby and he told of driving down to Polks hobby and buying Atlantic. Jim remembered crawling top of boxes containing $200.00 trains in the Polk’s warehouse to get at the boxes of Atlantic figures.  Nat Polk would sell the items very cheap happy to get rid of the the items. Jim had a wide mix of items including an unusual large set of 54mm swoppet  spacemen in the box which I think was made in Italy. I like it but passed on it because of the size.  Jim got busy so I headed on.

Across from Jim was another old face Randy(I forget his last name) At one time Randy would set up in my area, but only now does two days shows, because of the amount of items he had for sale.  I had bought from him many years ago a load of plastic that was so much we took it out boxes just poured it into the back of the old Cutlass Cierra.  From him I bought  a lot of plastic figures including a  figure of boy sitting and playing a flute. I believe the figure is Elastolin I will keep that figure as I like unusual figures.  I later came back and bought from him a lot of Bachmann mini planes, which I have done well in the past.

I walked around the rest of the show and did not find anything else. One dealer had a Marx Captain Gallant Building  only no plastic, but I did not ask the price. There was a nice display of items at another stand including some Tom Mix radio premiums and a rare Captain Marvel Junoir syrocco statue. The show had a nice mix of items. There were tables with costume jewelry and other collectibles. Several tables had action figures. One party got the Shogun Warriors version of Godzilla out of the box but complete for under $100.00. 

The show had nice wide aisles and was well lit. The one negative was the food cart outside the building was quite high in prices with a hot dog going for $3.00.  The crowd was thin and I only saw a few collectors I knew. After two hours I head back home with nice weather all the way home.  I will go back for the next show and hopefully Laurie can go too.