After a nasty brush with the thoughts of buying plastic ECW's below (which I know will happen!) but if I avoid 'Salute' with all its goodies it should be a 'managable' acquisition!! I am returning to the late 17th Century with the Foot Guards. In the 1980's I used to attend toy fair swapmeet extravaganzas often at Sandown or Kempton Park racecourses. This was due to having for the first time a full wage packet in my pocket and to try and obtain Airfix, Frog etc kits and plastic figures. Now as ever I went off on a tangent and collected diecast/metal artillery pieces (I have stil 2 or 3 Astra pre war models, Britains etc) and cigarette/tea cards (I love the tea cards a real reminder of childhood why o why dont they do it now instead of silly knitted monkeys!)
I have a couple of sets of Cigarette cards depicting military uniforms including a set from 1976 by Carreras ltd called simply Military Uniforms. They are a series of 50 and are basicaly the uniforms of the guards regiments as they evolved over time from Card 1 depicting a musketeer of the King's Royal Regiment of Guards of 1660 to card 50 of a regimental sergeant major of the Grenadier Guards in 1960. They are very nice illustrations if a bit 1970's!!
Above is card No5 depicting an officer of the First Regiment of Foot Guards in 1685. On the reverse it states 'At the coronation of JamesII, officers of this regiment were magnificently dressed, some in coats of cloth of gold, others in crimson velvet and some of fine scarlet cloth. the second regiment was also splendidly dressed but the officers had buttons of gold thread wheras the First had silver plate. The men of the first had blue breeches and stockings while those of the Second Regiment had red.'
Anyway I've got a few Belgians Carabiniers from 1914 to finish this weekend and must order a few Parkfield Mini's for Sedgemoor!