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I used to be a bit of a collector back in the 90s and I recently found my collection, I remember having a limited edition 1991 Gamesday Space Marine Captain. I can find info about this model, they're reasonably rare, maybe £30 or so on eBay. Fair enough.

But this one is gold. I can't find any information about a gold cast version of this figure. I did find an image of one on Google, but the link goes elsewhere.

Does anybody know anything about it? It is definitely a gold metal and not painted (although I did paint the model myself later...).

^Are you sure it's actually 'gold' and not strangely tarnished gold over time? I've had a few pewter models pick up some color over time.

Have you got a pic?

Edit: There's something vaguely familiar sounding about a gold special edition something . . . but I wasn't in the hobby until '94-95ish.

A picture would help!

AFAIK GW have only ever done two minis plated in precious metals that weren't just one offs (every store at the time got one each to do with as they wished). A silver plated Emperor's Champion for the 25th anniversary of GW and the gold plated White Dwarf on shield (held aloft by Bugman and Gotrek) for White Dwarf's 30th.

Suspect this is a recast from someone who is also a jeweller or something. The CCM Wiki notes there being a gold plated Eldar Avatar given out as a prize, but nothing of the figure you describe OP. Nothing appears on Solegends either.

It was definitely gold when I bought it, I even left the sword gold because I liked it!

I remember some of the metal mini's being almost brass colour for a small phase back then as they moved from lead to eventualy white metal.

Gold when cast is while not shiney and has a very different tone to brass. Which looks like what most people would say was a gold colour.
Odd the mini loosm brass maybe but that tab certainly looks gold like.

Ice_can wrote:
I remember some of the metal mini's being almost brass colour for a small phase back then as they moved from lead to eventualy white metal.

I certainly remember some of my older metals having that sort of colour of mould release, which stained the model a bit. Maybe this guy was covered in it.

It was unpainted what I bought it and quite uniform in colour. There was no mistake that it was supposed to be that colour. I've hundreds of them from the early to mid 90's and none of them look anything like it!

As you can see, that gold really does shine. Is recasting common? It seems a lot of effort for little gain. Also it is up to the standard of other figures of the time, surely a recast would have tells.

Maybe I won't get to the bottom of this one. It's a nice thing to have anyway!

Edit to add screenshot from Google search

Measure its density to see if its gold or not. Gold is a bit more dense than lead, and a fair bit more dense than most of the white metal/pewter materials used.

Just need a very accurate scale, and a very accurate liquid measuring cup...

Or compare its weight to one that's clearly not gold, it'd be a few grams heavier if it was.

Haha, I'm not saying for a minute that it's real gold! Although it would be a find of a lifetime, I'm sure it would be common knowledge if they made any!

Rufio1980 wrote:
Is recasting common?

Has been for a few decades.

Quality varies between the obvious fakes with poor/soft details to things that you can't tell the difference.
And that's referring to metal models.

Now days? With all the resin & 3d printing? Pfft. There's Russians & Chinese making a living doing it.

Bismuth was one of a number of experimental additiveS to try and reduce metal costs, back in the day. Though the uniform colour?

Moriarty wrote:
Bismuth was one of a number of experimental additiveS to try and reduce metal costs, back in the day. Though the uniform colour?

they also used it in "lead free" waterfowl shotgun shells.

Yeah, bismuth has similar properties to lead when used in alloys.

Usually a combination of three metals were used in metal miniature production. Tin for hardness, lead for detail, antimony was for 'flow control' to get the molten metal where you wanted it.

Bismuth behaves much in the same way as lead but isn't an accumulative toxin in the same way and isn't quite as dense.

That said, the GW early attempts at lead-free simply upped the tin-content (Ral Partha also did it ) that resulted in Castings that were very clean, but very hard - and the 'ting' of shrapnel flying all over the shop when people were assembling them.

Do also try scratching the surface off - old superglue will yellow into that colour.

A.T. wrote:
Do also try scratching the surface off - old superglue will yellow into that colour.

On that note, spray on varnish can also discolour like that, although why someone would varnish a mini before painting is beyond me.