welcome dixonmurray

Hello there and welcome dixonmurray! 180th member of the new site.

Welcome

Hello VAME Forum. I have been looking round for a few days now, so thought I should introduce myself.

My name is Andy. I got my first chap in 1970 – US Sailor with the British Infantry & Parachute Regiment sets and my younger brother got exactly the same except, he went for the Pilot. By that time, the US-style basic soldier had been replaced by the first version with Realistic hair, but I still wanted the original sailor, which had changed to soft painted head, shiny rivets, short boots and a plastic dog tag. I never really played with him as such, but preferred dressing, posing & using him in stop-frame movies made on my 8mm camera. My brother, on the other hand, used to get together with the other kids in the street and their Action Men and continued to grow his collection. So I gave him custody of my stuff and concentrated on the repairs side. Several of the kids broke their figures and I took on the task of fixing them. Word spread and soon kids were coming from all over. Often, the best I could do was to make one figure out of two broken ones and the deal was that the other bits went into the spares box. Soon I had a good collection and I worked out how to fix pretty much anything. The kids eventually grew out of AM and when I returned from college, I found to my horror that my brother had sold off most of the stuff we had and my spares box had vanished! The remaining 5 dressed figures (British Infantry, Para, Aussie, British Officer & RM Combat) went up to my parents’ loft for over 20 years.

In 2005 I re-discovered them & brought them home to display. I bought a few of the things my brother had sold off, but then one day I walked into Modellers Loft… To see those displays, exactly as I remembered them. All the bits were there – every set, every figure. Action Man was back! I didn’t realise that it was a limited edition & I bought some sets for my 5-year old to play with!
For some reason, about 2 years ago and maybe inspired by the 40th Collection, I got the bug & started collecting again. I quickly amassed around 100 dressed figures and then ran out of money and space. So I decided to get back into the restoration business and sell off my spares on eBay as “ADM Action Restorations” under the id “dixonmurray”. I prefer selling the dressed figures as it gives me great satisfaction to restore broken figures, complete the sets & bring them back to display condition. I probably could get more money by just selling the bits off, but it’s not as pleasing as creating something new from parts and bringing old VAM stuff back to life.

I have been introduced to this forum by Ken “biglebowski” whose wonderful photographs caught my eye whilst browsing last year. I shall be taking some photos of my own collection over the next few months and hopefully I may win “Photo of the Month” one day.

To make a start, here’s a few pics of my stand at “Action Man Day 4” on 1st June 2014