Fell behind for several years. What'd I miss?

[Deleted]

Hello everyone!:

I'm a Mithril miniatures collector from way back. I stumbled across mithril miniatures back in the late 1980's. I scrimped and saved and struggled to find miniatures over here in the US for several years. It was a fun endeavor for quite some time. Eventually I was collecting some more directly from them over in Ireland.

Unfortunately I fell on hard times, and also got seriously distracted several years ago. I stopped collecting when cash was getting tighter, and carefully stored away my collection in a closet and was forgotten about.

I always intended to eventually get back to it, and start trying to pick up where I left off. Sometimes wondering if mithril miniatures would still get made after so many years. Especially so after the rumors I had heard about copyright changes and whatnot, with the advent of the Lord of the Rings movies and all kinds of money demands from the owners of the rights (blah, blah, blah). I still got all those nice little e-mails and whatnot from mithril, which helped keep it at the back of my mind, but I never got quite motivated enough to get back into it.

Well, the past couple of years have been good to me for the most part. Some how or another I managed to get the motivation and pulled out my collection out of a closet today, and try and refresh my memory, or whatever lists I scribbled down of ones my collection was missing.

I did a little bit of poking around in their store, just to try and get a vague idea of what I've missed out on so far, and if maybe most was still available. It seems I may have missed out on nearly a couple hundred figures since I last stopped. It kind of makes my head spin trying to figure out all the ones I might need, trying to of course avoid getting any duplicates.

I'm not sure if I feel up to trying to pick up everything, or if maybe I feel I could better get into my Tolkien stuff by concentrating on some other interests and maybe give up my mithril collection. Any opinions one way or the other? Cost of course can be a little issue, but of course I would probably have spent most had I spread it out quite a bit all these years. Of course I might have the possibility of ordering a whole mess of what they still have in stock that I'm missing, and they might offer a significant extra discount for ordering so much at one time. They were so nice to me in past years. I imagine a rough guess of it potentially maybe costing me a couple thousand US dollars to fill in all those recent gaps, which of course would make anyone cringe.

My collection consists of the majority from numbers 83 through 397 including all the box sets and whatnot (I think I'm only missing - 329 and 346? & 347? if those 2 exist). I also have about ten of the first rare 82. Plus I have christmas ones from 1994 thru 2000, as well as a few of the "special" ones. Then I also have maybe a dozen or so duplicates from the regular M series, including a couple of special ones. I think the last ones I picked up before I stopped collecting were the LR ones. I received all 40 of those, and was given number "24" of 2500 of the run for all 40.

Just how much have I missed out on? LOL Numbers going into the upper 500's now, as well as other series LO, LT, and larger sizes of 54MM? It's a little daunting to think about it when I may have other things to distract me.

So many other nice things have also come along since the advent of the movies. So collecting things Tolkien related has been getting me confused as to just what all is out there, and even what haven't I even heard about yet. I used to have little bits of fun and excitement when I'd spend time tracking down all kinds of unusual things since there wasn't much out on the market. But now there has been such a flood of goods on the market. Since I'm more apt to narrowing down only certain types of things to collect, I don't want to overwhelm myself with so much of a collection. Many, many, many years ago I used to collect all kinds of other things, and soon realized I was collecting too many things and would get myself into financial issues. Eventually I gave up many things, and pretty much only concentrated on my Tolkien collection (except a few things).

How much of a Tolkien Fan am I you may ask? Well, put it to you this way. I managed to acquire a legal vanity license plate on my car "TOLKIEN". Kind of shocked when the state told me that particular one was still available to be registered. I've had it for nearly 20 years now.

;D

[Gildor]

well, welcome aboard jrrtolkiennut well to answer about what you have missed is not easy in a simple post.... One thing I can tell you is that the LO, LT and LR ranges are not produced anymore , the range has switched back definitly to the regular M range with some specials (MS for Fellowship, MX for Designer Mithril, MV for vignettes... etc)

about the 54mm there are no more any range for these... I am curious about what you call "specials" as I am myself a collector of specials

if you want to see a full listing of all existing mithril references, with pictures, information, prices and all details along with another great community of mithril collectors I invite you to visite my site : mithril.faerylands.eu . There you'll see a full database with every mithril release, back to M1 and until the latest releases, including all the special ones and all ranges ever produced... there, you'll also find the MMP community which is a very active forum with lots of info and trading possibilities or announcements about future sales, trades etc...

[Milo]

I also came back to beloved mithril minis after being off for 15 years.
What I can tell you is that new miniatures are magnificent and there is some good mood here and around.

Welcome back home !

[Theobald]

welcome, jrrtolkiennut, mind Gildor's advice concerning the link, please. It's a forum and a database. Easy to register. Though it might take you some time to check all that, it will answer many of your questions.

[Wendy]

Welcome! Don't feel too overwhelmed by the gaps. You could just start out with your favorites characters and peoples. Keep an eye on ebay as now and again a good number of them can be found for pretty good prices. And there's a sale going on right now on the Mithril site. ;D (Also, since you live in the US, you don't have to pay VAT - make sure you click the box in the Mithril shopping cart. It's more than 17% taken off the listed price!)

And do head over to MMP. There's lots of great information to be found and good conversation in the MMP forum. (Don't abandon this one, of course. ;D)

[Deleted]

Yeah, I know it wouldn't be a super easy task to tell me what all I missed out on. Of course I was kind of jokingly mentioning it. All though I think all those years ago I used to just reference all my collection simply by their numbers, since they seemed to almost always follow by the number, and not so much whether they were M or MB or MV or whatever, except of course for some of them like LR , MS, Christmas, and whatnot. Pretty much I think I'd likely just refer to most of the ones I'd likely need as maybe like 398 to up to ? 560 ?, and then of course the few other lines of LO, LT, other Christmas ones, etc. I just think I sometimes always worried that I'd accidentally get duplicates, or get duplicates inadvertently because they simply re-released some figures under a new code number (like the MC and MCD lines for example), but then didn't want to miss out on ones cause of a number mix up or change of line, I think they did one on...what was it? number 369 which had two different figures under that number.

Mostly I guess you'd consider me as a type of collector who simply wants one of each of a distinctively different item, and maybe not things who might only have a slight difference of whatever it is. When Iron Crown came out with MECCG, I tried collecting one of each of their cards, including all the promo's and whatnot, which I think I achieved for the most part, but took a long time. Then when Decipher came out with all those Lord of the Rings cards I tried keeping up with all of their cards, but I fell off collecting the last 3 or 4? series when money was getting tight and I couldn't find decent bargains (or much of any suppliers who still carried them for that matter), and now that collection is at a stand still too. Just really got overwhelming with all their series, and seemingly slightly more difficult manner of collecting all the rare cards (not to mention a few times I started getting the run around with a couple of traders I had problems with online). I also always intended to always maybe play those card games, but couldn't wrap my brain around all the rules, not to mention didn't know anyone who played those that could have the patience to sit down with me and teach me. But I was usually happy enough to be trying to collect all those cards simply for a collection, it occupied my time when I had a lot more free time.

As far as whether or not I'll actually get back into Mithril for sure, I'm still a little on the fence. Sometimes I tend to not have a decent enough of an attention span when trying to keep up with some things. You never know if I suddenly might be encouraged to simply stop collecting them all together for sure, and put them up for sale or auction and concentrate on other parts of my Tolkien collection. I did love going through all that collecting and hunting them down all those years ago, but now more important things occupy my time. Not to mention next week I'm about to try and get some extra welding training and whatnot over the course of several months, which will hopefully lead to a better career outlook and might occupy a considerable amount of my time. I got into that kind of stuff as a helper the past couple of years with a contractor I worked with off and on as he needed me. One time I had a nice stretch of about 6 months with him working roughly 6 days a week 10 to 12 hours a day. Kind of tiring for that stretch, but for the first time in my life I've had some super serious job satisfaction. Crossing my fingers that if I get all this extra training it could lead to some on the road work and get to travel a bit now and then.

Anyway, I wasn't sure about my collection. At one time I think I might have intended to one day come up with a way to display my collection, along side all my books and other Tolkien stuff I've amassed over the years. Of course I've only ever kept them in their original blister packs or boxes or whatever, and stored them carefully in order in other boxes, except for some of the box sets I kept on a bookshelf. I don't know if I ever intended to see if I could take them out of their packs and assemble them properly, but I'm not the kind of person who has what you would call a decent enough of a skill to do that. Let alone never even thinking about painting them, which is a skill I would never attempt since I know I don't have that kind of talent. All though I think one time a thought crossed my mind to maybe have paid someone who had enough talent to do that for me. Of course now things like that don't even come into mind about getting around to doing.

I have all kinds of other things that display more easily, and I think I might get a little overwhelmed at trying to think of a nice way to display all my Mithril miniatures simply in their packs, boxes and whatnot (especially so if I'd try and pick up ALL those other figures I've missed out on). I guess I'm more concerned that I wouldn't keep up with it all with my attention span sometimes, and then not be able to always enjoy it now and then if I never get them displayed in a nice way. My mind flip flops an awful lot the past several years. Am I getting that old? I guess maybe I'm more so feeling a little more overwhelmed by all the stuff that has surged into the market since the movies came out. I think I had more fun many, many years ago discovering the handful of different things that would seem to silently slip out onto the market so slowly, and felt I had a better potential at collecting a good portion of it. But now with so much out there, I guess I might feel I'm missing so much for a collection. I guess I've passed a crossroads where I'd have to decide to narrow down the types of things I collect and still call it a "Tolkien Collection", and stay within a reasonable budget.

Maybe if I decide to give up on it I'll just keep a handful of ones I think are nicer, or special ones, and whatnot. Just to narrow down my collection a little bit. I saw those other nice sets of an Unexpected party and Council of Elrond and whatnot, even if they are a little pricey. Though I just hate sometimes abandoning some collections I worked on so long ago. I think maybe I'd just be piling up on some of my collections if I'd just have considerable more income and not be such a tight wad when it comes to spending money on myself (LOL).

Anyway, just to reference some things that were mentioned in other posts. The "specials" that I think you're referring to that I mentioned I have I think are just the ones usually marked MS or something like that. And thanks for that link for the reference page of all the figures. From a quick glance of a couple minutes it seems very nicely organized. And don't mind me if you don't actually see me on here much. Like I said, my attention span leaves much to be desired, and I'd often forget about some things now and then, not to mention my lack of motivation to actually getting on the internet much when I get times when I'm just so super busy. During 2010 I think I might have averaged popping on the internet maybe once every week or two (especially so when I had those major surges of work), and then maybe only an hour or two at a time (mostly just to tend to some banking and bill stuff and maybe the occasional e-mail response).

;D

[Michael O'Brien]

well you do not need to be on the web constantly with the Fellowship club. We email 2 or 3 times a month, and adding suggestions or voting only takes minutes. While you can spend longer on the forums of course, debating and chatting to other collectors, you are in total control of your time here.
As far as ordering from us is concerned. If you wish to be part of autoshipment, you are guaranteed to get 1 (or more) of all new releases when they are released. You can customise your requirements so if you wish us to post out every 3 miniatures at a time, we can do that to save you postage costs.
The only exception is the MX series due to the custom nature of this series. We ask members to tell us if they want those rather than assume they do.
If you have any questions or problems with Mithril, I welcome the emails to allow me to assist you.
The Fellowship club is an excellent choice for any collector, as they have complete control of their collecting through us.