Sunday 12 November 2017

The Lead (and Plastic) Pile Restored

Back home after three days in France, I am chronically jet-lagged after flying Toulouse-London-Los Angeles-Auckland in a single hit - 25 flying hours and another 10 hanging around in airports. But I'm pleased to be home where two parcels await me. 

The first is part two of my order for the French in Egypt project. This order was shipped In two parcels, the first of which arrived two weeks ago. This one contains some artillery, infantry, generals, a limber, the dragoon command and the dismounted dromedary troops.



Much fun will be had poking through the contents of this.

The second is a back order for some gamer’s grass in desert shades for use with the French in Egypt project.


My time in Toulouse was busy with work, but I found time on Tuesday to visit the local games shop - Sabratache in Rue Pargaminiéres. This is a small but very packed store with many painted and unpainted large scale (54mm and up) figurines, paints, books and various 28mm figures. I picked up a box of Perry French line Infantry and a box of cuirassiers...oh dear another project started. Although in truth this project was always on the cards I had not intended such an early start.


14 comments:

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    1. I agree. You should be able to see the first results by the end of the week.

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  2. Nothing better than coming home to a parcel of toy soldiers

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  3. The most frustrating thing about a trip to Europe is placing an order with expensive postage, knowing that there is a remote possibility that you are either passing it on your way there or that it may be in the cargo hold coming home.

    Mind you, I'll never complain about the Perrys and their free postage deal.

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    1. I supect that this parcel was sitting in the NZ post depot when I left. I should use the Perrys free shipping deal, but the problem is that £200 is remarkably close to the level at which GST is payable on entry, which would write off the saving.

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    2. I hadn't thought about that. We are still sitting on $AUD1000 here, although there have been rumblings about reducing it.

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    3. Ours is still $NZ400, but I have re-tweaked my spreadsheet and I think I can make a £200 order work so long as the fx rate doesn't spike.

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  4. Lots of goodies for you! Boy, that sounds like a brutal trip.

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    1. Yes I spent most of yesterday afternoon rummaging through little boxes of figures.

      Unfortunately when you live in this part of the world Europe (or anywhere away from the Pacific rim for that matter) is a multi-sector fight. The option is to stop off somehere between the sectors, but that loses time and isn't much easier on the body either. I am somwhat of a veteran of these trips now having completed fifteen or so in my time.

      What makes this worse than a point to point flight is the security checks. Point to.mpoing you don't notice them much, but here theybecome a big part of the journey - on this trip there was one in Auckland, one in LA and one in London...and on return Toulouse, London and LA. You spend an extraordinary amount of time standing in cattle queues.

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  5. Tough flight! Nice haul and you can't go wrong with Perry plastics!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain. After a good night's sleep it is back to work to earn enough for the next lot of figures.

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  6. Welcome home Mark! I am one stage behind you - I have ordered around $550 in total from multiple different suppliers for the RCW project - hopefully the first parcels should start arriving in a week or ten days, but you never can tell and with Christmas approaching, the post is starting to build up - I hear stories of large numbers of aircans sitting at NZPost at the airport already full of inbound mail they are struggling to handle.....

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    1. Well I have the next lot of French in Egypt on the way now. Yes this time of year can be slow, but I was surprised last year when I placed and an order about this time, expecting delays, and they arrived in a week. NZ Post had stepped up and were delivering every day instead of every second day which I am sure helped to clear the backlog.

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