Rsknol is a casual collector  Gender: Male Location: Alexandria, VA Website: http://www.dinosau[ ... ]ollector.150m.com I collect: Dinosaurs The most I've spent on an item: $200 Annually I spend about: $4000 I purchase a new item: 4 Times A Month A few words about myself: As a young person in the fifties and sixties I had Marx, MPC, TimMee, Nabisco, Tootsie Toy and Ajax dinosaurs. I seem to have missed the Miller and Sinclair toys somehow. A favorite of mine was the Aurora Stegosaurus with cavemen that my father bought for me. My other favorite was the Marx Flintstone play set from my grandfather.
My interests lapsed as a teen, although I did a science/art project that would now be called a Paleo art project in Jr. High where I drew prehistoric scenes from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene and posted them each week.
In 1989, I came to live is Washington DC and was exposed to the Smithsonian Natural History Museums Dinosaur exhibits. My favorites were the three dinosaur dioramas and it started my collecting of Safari figures from the gift shop there. After Jurassic Park came out I expanded my collection to include many of the new toy lines.
About my collections: I collect toy dinosar and prehistoric animals figures and create dioramas with them for my website. I also colelct a few resin and vinyl models but I prefer toys. I also collect retail plater and clay molds to make my own figures. About my interests: I came across an ad for a magazine call Prehistoric Times and subscribed. I learned more about other toys lines from articles in the magazine and communicating with other collectors. I wrote a few articles for them and I briefly collaborated with the Dinosaur Galaxy Gazette reviewing new releases of dinosaur toys. My style of writing didn't fit into the lighter format that they wanted for a reviewer.
I started up my own Dinosaur Web site on AOL to show my collection off. Eventually I filled up my AOL site and started Site B at the 150m.com site. This gave me more hard drive space for graphics and allowed me to begin using MS Front Page for the new pages. Recently I upgraded the site to be popup-free and have a replaced my old Digital Casio camera with a Minolta for higher resolution.
I originally intended to post photos of my dinosaur dioramas with a light commentary. I consider my first successful effort to be the Morrison page, which is largely unchanged. It remains my personal favorite. As time went on I got requests for more detailed pictures of the individual figures. Much of the work over the last few years has been trying out different ways off combining the wide-angle diorama shot with more detailed pictures requested by figure enthusiasts. Some techniques have been more successful than others. I try to keep a log of my changes in the Updates page.
I discovered Ebay and eventually added a News Page to show off things I had found but had not yet put into dioramas. This eventually caused me to create the Reference Pages, based on the one I saw at the Rubber Dinosaur Site. I liked the format and wanted to add more details. Some of the conventions I use have started showing up in the descriptions of auctions on Ebay and I hope sellers who want to describe their offerings continue to fine it helpful.
In 2001, I started doing a regular column for the Prehistoric Times primarily devoted to new toy releases. I do try to sneak in references to older toy lines and some paleo-facts. I enjoy hearing from site visitors, PT readers and showing off my collection. Starting July we are teaching a Dinosaur Diorama class for the Smithsonian Summer Camp Program in 2007.
 My Latest Collections - see all collectionsFeatured Interview: Who are you calling a Fossil ?!?
CQ: How many dinosaur items do you have and what got you started? I have several thousands of figures filling my basement. While I had dinosaurs a kid none of those survived. I was buying figures I came across in stores again once I had kids. That is when I started doing toy stores again. About the time Jurassic Park (JP) came out I ran across Prehistoric Times the collectors magazine. That connected me with some other collectors and I started seriously collecting JP and Safari figures. I bought Copies of MARX and MPC figures from other collectors. I collected Battat , Play Vision and Invicta figures. The big change came when I started buying on EBay my collection mushroomed.
CQ: How do you decide what goes into a diorama? Well originally I wanted to show my figures in context of the time and place they lived. Later I wanted consistency of design, so I try not to mix figures from companies with different styles. I try the use the same guidelines used making historical military miniatures or model railroaders use. I make more an effort with the flora now. No grass, flowering plants only for the terminal Cretaceous. Originally I used plastic trees from the sets as is. Now I try to paint or touch up the plants and exclude cactus and other out of period plants. I have a series of reference books and the Dinosaur Encyclopedia from Hyper-works Software. This gives pretty good pictures of the flora and fauna. Within the toy limits I try to be accurate.
CQ: Which do you think are some of the cooler new lines of toys? I like modern toy lines best. My favorites are the Museum figures from Safari, Bullyland and Schleich. I watch for their new releases every year. My latest favorite toy line is Procon and the variety and choices of figures have me really interested. Play Mobil sets also are fun. You can only have so many T-rex’s no matter how good they are. I really like figures I have not seen before like Nigersaurus, Arizonasaurus and Shunosaurus. I enjoy checking out the Dollar stores for custom projects. Some hollow vinyl figures can look surprisingly good with paint and trimming. Enjoyed my profile? Before you leave, make sure you can find your way back.
Direct link:
http://www.collectorsquest.com/collector/rsknol.html Tech savvy? Grab the HTML Tags for image and text links. You can use them in your blog, for example! Click here to show them! |
You May Also Like ...
|
| ||||||||||||||
