I know someone who will be jealous with the Smurfette gown rohling
She is lovely but don't you worry, I'm expecting a rather large parcel from Schleich's UK agents to arrive on Monday. They sold me all their ex display smurfs at low low prices, they only date back to 1998 but I am still very excited!
There are 400 mixed smurf figurines dating from 1998 - 2004, playsets, supers and a boxed display of marching band smurfs.
I don't tend to focus on the older rare smurfs that everyone wants, I think more about what will be hard to find in 10 years time. Sometimes people concentrate so much on finding older smurfs that they don't think about buying the current ones, it makes far more sense to buy the current ones when they are at their cheapest. Like the School playset, I bought that because I know they are already thin on the ground, and they were only produced for a short while, so they could be tomorrow's version of the astro playset, you never know. The current Farmhouse is like gold dust, the only place I know that you can get it is Australia. However, the buildings don't hold their value as well as the playsets and smurfs. Cyber smurf has been discontinued, he was only available for 2003 and 2004. It makes sense to get him while you can because he will be rare one day. My one and only German order via the website was for a Snowboarder Smurfette, surprising isn't it? Why would they order from me when smurfs are readily available in Germany? Look around, there aren't many shops selling this smurfette, she is already quite hard to find. I am excited about my delivery because there may be Snowboarder Smurfettes in there plus other harder to find more recent smurfs.
My advice to all new collectors is to make sure they always buy the current range because that's when brand new smurfs are going to be at their cheapest. I'm going off the subject here but I do think people sometimes overlook the common smurfs in favour of the rare ones. Personally I would always try and buy two sets of the new smurfs, especially if they are a theme like the marching band or the football smurfs, not so much the newest 2005 ones because they will probably last the distance. Wouldn't it be nice to think of your smurfs as a little investment as well as a hobby? And if you end up with two of a smurf that turns out to be rare then you always have one to sell and one to keep. I know Rachel tends to do this with the promos and I think it is a great idea, far more fun than adding pennies to your piggy bank and who knows, you may get a better return in the long run?
Just food for thought, I'm not trying to sell more smurfs although it probably sounds that way, lol.
