The end of a quest
- This topic has 10 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 7 months ago by .
-
Hello to you all my friends.
I want to share my achievement with you today and my joy. First a little background :
I discovered Mithril back in 1994 at the same time I discovered the Lord of the Rings books and roleplaying games shops thanks to my mother. I will always remember the smell of old cold cigarettes mixed with salpetre on carved underground stone from thos authentic RPG shops back in the 90s (I suppose most of you remember those environements 🙂 )
I was young then (only 16 years old, and not a lot of money), and passionate with Tolkien and the aspect of those figurines… Vignettes and new dragons were not yet released. the last figurines to be released were the House of Elrond, around the M340 or so…I had scarce figurines, lots of holes, strictly nothing below M100 except the M62 Smaug box, and no more than a hundred from M100 to 350
In 1996 I decided to join the french Mithril Fellowship, thanks to those little papers folded inside the blisters advertising for the fellowship, and my mother , who helped me in my passion, paid so that I could order all the “special fellowship igurines” (MS225 to MS299 along with a little collector pin, and the tengwar magazines in french)…
I tried to focus since then on buying everything that my retail store was receiving, but Internet was not there, not all figurines reached the store, it was hard to come by… (I am still in contact with my store seller, “rolegames” in Marseille , which sells a lot of Mithril on ebay too , name is Bernard, we have more than 20 years relationship)
In 2001, I was older, and with more income, Bernard (rolegames) called me saying he had a very rare figurine to sell, from a collector selling his collection, and it was a M16 (without the sword…) he sold it to me for 300fr (50€ or so) , since then, I told myself I had the most precious figurine, and I wanted to gather all the collection, and my quest begun…
I kept buying everything (even asked ESPECIALLY for a given limited edition number of the LR to have the same “edition number” from LR1 to LR40.. which is 1051 🙂
As a guy working in IT, I began surfing on the web on the early versions of the Mithril site, using methods to bypass the “rules” that was redirecting all requets to mithril.ie to princeaugust.net (a rule that I contributed, early, since 2003 to eradicate, with lots of discussion with Michael and Lars… as all traffic was redericted to the french site and we were missing a lot of news….and releases. This is how I learned, surprised and upset, about the existence of CHRISTMAS figures offered to be bought only by Fellowship members) I was mad, because no way did Prince August France had ever communicated about those figurines in their news when I had talked to them (I got them on phone and they told me these were reserved for ENGLISH members, not french ones…. how rude! ) I bypassed them and contacted mithril.ie directly, (a girl, before Michael time, who was touched by my disapointment and accepted to sell them to me, along with the 5 tengwar in english , while in french only 3 exist) I also discovered the Myth’Images and Mithril Maniacs at that time and was amazed by their painting job, done by Jaques Philippe and Fabrice (though I did not know them at the time, but I envied them)
While navigating on the net, this way I discovered in 2004, the Many Mithril Pages forum, handled by Marc “Mithrandir” Campbell whom I befriended.
As a persistant hunter I asked him about the Christmas figurines, as I had managed to get all of them back in time from 1994 but… nothing before, which seemed odd as my research showed that Mithril did exist since 1988 and I had heard rumors of “promotional” stuff before the special sales beginning in 1994. Marc gave me this list :
Sadly, no, I don’t own the Xmas figures pre-1994. Like you, I just have the ones that were offered to the Mithril Fellowship. I did some research, and here are the ones that PROBABLY exist, but I don’t know for sure.
1988 Aragorn
1989 Isildur 28mm vignette
1990 Eowyn
1991 ???
1992 Galadriel
1993 IsildurWhen I saw that, stars shone in my eyes, I was at the same time mad , upset and passionate. While I was trying to fill up my collection with many contacts from shops all over France before going to ebay, I kept hunting down pictures of them… Mithril Maniacs provided the 1993 Isildur. The Tengwar magazines provided two others 1990 and 1992 though not by name. and also the ME2 prototypes (mentionned with the names of 5 others, apparently abandonned or converted into LO releases) So many artefacts to collect!!!
2004 was a key in my research : the 1991 was a mystery, Marc could not help at the time, and the 1989 name was odd… two real mysteries… then I found this on the “Juegos Sin fronteras site” :
Figuras de 54mm si no pone otra cosa. Solamente para Socios “Hermandad del Anillo”
Navidad ’88 Aragorn – n/d Navidad ’89 Isildur Vignette 32mm – n/d Navidad ’90 Eowen – n/d Navidad ’91 Patrick Sarsfield ? – n/d Navidad ’92 Galadriel – n/d Navidad ’93 Isildur – n/d https://web.archive.org/web/20070520203714/http://personal3.iddeo.es/juegossinfronteras/hermane.htm
So I learned about Patrick Sarsfield, even though without a pic… I did not even know who he was, but found a copy on the “Edman collection” 54mm of Prince August and finally got pictures of the original Xmas 1991 one.
I could continue with chapters and chapters… How I befriended Chris over the auctions for the unreleased warbands, how I lost the big auction when he put the 1988 Aragorn for sale, after having placed a bid of 1680€ (which I lost…) How Chris , in his generosity, sold me his own personal copy of the 1988 Aragorn, and also told me he had found last copies of the 1990 and 1992 Christmas which he sold to me…
How, three years ago, my Christmas 1995 Arthur was about to break at the sword hilt and I asked Michael if among the employees they had no old versions and Michael found one… along with a 1991 Patrick Sarsfield !! which he sold to me…
and until … last weeks, after several months of negociations with a swedish mithril fan named Karl Johan Frisk which discovered out of nowhere, the famous 1989 vignette, I finally managed ……
THIS
Almost 30 years of tracking… and passion in collecting those little treasures….
Now, my dream is almost come true, I only miss one known oddity… I do hope I will get my hands on it before the end…
I still have some time, I hope…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
