[NIckC]

Hi all
My name's Nick. I'm really looking foward to being part of this community. I starting collecting back in 1981 (when I was 7) and smurfs were $1 at New Zealand BP stations. I had my parents traipsing around New Zealand looking for Rugby, Spy and Painter that were sold out and then later around the world. I forgot about them in my teens (smurfs were not playground legit) and caught the bug again when someone at work sent me a link to Mushroom Village about 15 years ago. Luckily I still had (most) of my old collection. It's grown 3-fold and still collecting. I'm especially keen on Rugby, Angry and Astro variants although still completing my originals collection!

[Tommo]

Welcome to the forum Nick! There is so much information on here, especially as you are starting with variations, which I have to say feels like they never end It will be a great milestone when you've got all the basics. How many have you yet to get?
Cheers
Tommo

[Arno]

Welcome !
That is a good news for us to have someone from New Zealand. You may show us your homeland variations that we may not know.
Have fun here
Arno

[The Smurf Collector]

G'day Nick

It is great to see a kiwi collector join the forum. I am based in Melbourne, Australia so I am looking forward to hearing about your smurf collecting habits.

I have been lucky enough to have buy two small collections from two ex Kiwi's who now live in Australia. Both collections were from their childhood's and an extra special to me. In one of the collection's it included a NZ Soccer player and an advertisment from BP New Zealand that listed some of the smurfs they released.

Where in NZ do you live?

[NIckC]

Thanks for the welcome everyone. I have around 150 left to get yet. Have the first 200 or so and the big gaps occur through the middle numbers consistent with when I lost interest in my teens- 1986 onwards. Interesting that a lot of the smurfs in the latest catalogue show a release date of 1984 or 85 but I got mine in 83 when my parents went overseas.....
I'm based in Auckland. I know there's other collectors here- I've seen some of their collections, and I'm well and truely the runt of at leat two litters. The ones released in NZ at least were mainly the "Made In Hong Kong" Smurfs so not sure if I'll hav any interesting variants .
At the moment I've just received 5 variants of Angry Smurf I'm rather happy with. Not really maintaining my focus of collecting the set- lol. Can't keep my eyes off the colour variations. Seems the ones I'm in love with fall into the "impossible to find" column. (Red Angry, Yellow Judge, Green Jacket Astro, Red Lipstick Conductor, Colour reversed Normal....the list goes on- FOCUS, Nick!)