Stuart's Citadel Blister Collection

During my recent adventure to Stuart Klatcheff's home to paint up a few miniatures, my host remarked once again about his fabled collection of sealed blister packs. Being a retiring sort, Stuart has plenty of time to scour eBay for bargains and his knowledge of the Citadel range (pre and post slotta) is considerable, so subsequently his collection has grown to formidable size. 

Bt until now, I had only HEARD about the near mythical collection but had never actually seen it. Just before I was leaving, Stuart bought down just ONE of his many boxes from his secret dungeon. What lay within just blew me away, as you will see. 

The carefully packed box was just full of sealed blister packs from the glory days of the 1980s. And these packs weren't just sealed, many of them were mint and looked to have just been plucked from the shelf of a Games Workshop store or Wonderworld type shop only yesterday. 

My first forays within the container unearthed some treasures indeed, including a mint and sealed rarer variant of Skrag the Slaughterer, along with Realm of Chaos era centaurs, an armoured minotaur and some dwarfs! 

More spilled from the box and I dug deeper, including: chaos dwarfs, bloodletters, dark elves and an Adeptus Machanicus marine all sealed within their blisters.

But we had barely started...

Can you spot the sealed and mint limited edition Thrud model? Or the chaos champions - including the chap with the jezzail? 

Or the (originally limited) Slaanesh champion with the book and sword - still sealed and practically mint! How does he do it?

It went on and on...

There are two pretty desirable models in that blister!

It was like a stock cupboard in 1989!

I have never even seen a sprue of the plastic Citadel crossbows. Let alone some still sealed in a Realm of Chaos pack. 

And then there was Stuart's white metal (mostly) collection of loose models - of which I saw just a fraction. 

Beastmen....

Including this lovely model from Kev Adams.

And I thought I HAD A LOT!

Orlygg

Old School Citadel Blister Packaging

A short and sweet celebration post today, inspired by Andreas Massonne over on the Oldhammer Community Facebook Page and I subject that I have not really spoken about before here. Packaging. Or more precisely, the mid '80s early '90s packaging that I remember dangling en mass from the walls of gaming shops in the heyday of my youth. 

One thing that I loved about all of the backings to the blisters I would gaze at with longing every other week were the pices of colourful artwork that adorned the cards. A small selection of my collection of blisters can be seen above this text and the variety of colours and designs is most obvious, even to the laymen. All were different and yet some how appropriate to the type of miniatures that they advertised. My favourites were the anti-social green of the goblinoids range and the sinister red, white and green of the Realm of Chaos range. 

Obviously. 

Yet the packaging was not always as exciting. Originally, many Citadel models were sold loose in draws and you just asked for what you required. The freindly chap (or chapess) behind the counter would dutifully slide the draw open and unearth the 'skeleton warrior with severed head' that you were after/ Then came the tickets with a vague symbol and a hand written code telling you was contained within the plastic bag that dangled below. Miniatures had been packaged like for years and were a common sight in the 1970s. By the mid '80s the more familiar card packs appeared, as illustrated above, in navy blue and yellow. But it was the later '80s that saw an explosion in bright and exciting packaging. 

Have a gander at these!

By late 1991 I had moved on from regular miniatures buying. My parents had bought me a Commodore Amiga and my interests moved elsewhere. The years ticked by and by 1995 I had returned to the hobby and started collecting Bloodbowl miniatures again with a friend. Sadly, the glorious blister packs that I had fond memories of were long gone, replaced by much, much inferior products. 

See what I mean.

And they have been bland ever since.

Orlygg