bridgend_steve wrote:Hi guys,

Steve here, the seller of the unreleased figures in question. I was alerted to this thread yesterday so I think it's only fair that I should be allowed a few words at my trial.

I can assure you that these figures are 100% genuine unreleased GW figures, obtained from a trusted source, one of many I have who are "very close" to GW. I'm sure you will undertsand that I can't - and I don't want to - reveal my source. So that leaves a bit of a dilemma as to how to convince you that these are GW.

I'm a collector, and as a collector I turn to provenance whenever I've been in a situation where I've had to make a judgement call on a particular figure or seller. So far I can say this has not let me down. So seeing as you guys have clearly not heard of me (and why should you have - I'm a collector rather than a gamer, although I did game from 1st to 3rd edition Warhammer) I'll give you a bit of background to myself so you can have at least some information on which to base your notion of the provenance of these figures.

I've been collecting Citadel figures for around 30 years, been group owner of the Citadel Collecting Yahoo group for both of its incarnations for around 10 years, and been ebaying for 11 years. As an ebay seller I have an immaculate record with 1 neutral to my name. Over the years I have sold thousands and thousands of figures, probably a few hundred of which I would classify as unreleased or "genuinely" rare. Outside of ebay I have traded with, bought from, and sold to most of the world's top collectors of Citadel. I'm sure you'll agree that I wouldn't have been able to maintain this reputation had I been selling anything dodgy. If anyone would like a character reference then feel free to sign up to the Yahoo group, or mention my userID (bridgend_steve) on the two forums which I tend to frequent the most, Frothers and Lead Adventure.

I have also been fortunate enough to have known the likes of Bryan Ansell and John Blanche. In fact, ironically I was intending to post a message to this forum in the next few days on a completely separate manner - John Blanche's ork biker army. I have a large collection of figures which were painted and converted by John Blanche, including his entire Ork biker army, part of which was featured in an edition of White Dwarf (346 I believe). I have just set up a website/blog (www.thecitadelcollector.co.uk) to document my collecting, including galleries of my Blanche figures. At the moment there is a pic of just one of my Blanche bikers (http://thecitadelcollector.co.uk/zen/index.php?album=john-blanche/citadel/ork-biker-army) but I hope to upload pics of the entire army over the next few days. This is the army I mean: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=2000099a&_requestid=1520753 . I have also worked with GW staff to host my figures at GW exhibitions, including one celebrating Warhammer's anniversary. You can see my figures here: http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n77/bridgend_steve/?action=view¤t=Picture005.jpg (my name is on the bottom of the info sheet to the left of the pic).

So why am I telling you all this? Well, hopefully it will help to convince you that I'm the "real deal" and not some kid who has kit-bashed some rip-off figures. I know I'm not going to be able to convince those of you who have already made up your mind about me and the figures, but for those of you still on the fence I hope this helps.

I have the other figures in this set, and I hope these will also be going on ebay over the next few weeks.

cheers
Steve