Austrian ID Parade

Over the last few days I have been lucky enough to receive over 100 Hinton Hunt castings produced by David Clayton in the USA (thanks Clive). Clayton acquired the Hinton Hunt moulds back in the early 90’s and was producing and selling the figures up until a few years ago.

My stated aim at the start of this project was that I was going to build my armies using only vintage figures but the reality of the situation is that I am going to have to use some of the later castings to complete my units. There seem to be a reasonable number of vintage British and French figures around but some types are just too rare for me to stand a chance of building whole 24 figure units. The Austrians are a case in point – I have 16 or so vintage figures but I had given up hope of finding any more to make up a full unit. I now have enough extra charging figures to make up the ranks.

The picture shows two each of AN21 Hungarian Officer Charging and AN24 Hungarian Musketeer Charging. The painted figures are vintage ones and the unpainted ones next to them are Clayton castings. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the figures. The Clayton officer is almost identical to the vintage one whilst the musketeer, apart from being a slightly lighter metal, only differs in that the base is square without the normal rounded corners. What really surprised me is that the USA versions both have the full Hinton Hunt figure codes marked under their bases. I had previously thought that Clayton’s figures had no codes and often used this as a way to determine if a figure was vintage or not – so it’s back to the drawing board on that one.

Ironically of course, the Clayton figures themselves are now becoming rarities. He told me he sold the moulds to a mysterious (my word not his) Canadian bloke who apparently has plans to market the figures again. For the full Hinton Hunt story check out the link to Harry Pearson's superb Vintage20mil site.