Factory anomaly or touchup-that's the question!

Those who collect Britains or other old toy soldiers and figures know the general rule that if a figure has been touched-up, embellished, or repainted it considerably lessons its value. The same rule, generally applied, goes for repairs, however well it's done.

Because of this, some years ago I purchased an ultra-violet(UV) or “black light” that looks like a tiny flashlight and is small enough to hang on a key chain (just google if you want one-I forgot now where online I bought mine). I use it to detect touchups, embellishments, repairs on the figures I want to buy. I found this to be a valuable tool-mail order dealers usually have a no-questions-asked-return policy(some have UV lights also so they can verify your claim about a touchup).

I was excited about the possibilities of UV lights and posted some photos illustrating an example of a UV light touchup detection on this website(photos below).

But I also found that there are limits to detecting what is a touchup and what's not-at least in the case of pre-1966 Britains Ltd. model figures.

Case in point: I acquired a set made toward the end of Britain's hollow-cast lead production(probably circa 1963-66) that is in a “window” box that the company used after 1961. This was a “shop mint” set that as far as I could tell had never been removed from its box and had never even been opened.

But moving my UV light over the set I noticed that all the red paint on the figures fluoresced; a “sure” sign of a touchup.

But was it? Looking over the set with a high powered magnifying glass, I began to have doubts. Only the tiny red dabs of paint for the mouths/lips fluoresced as did the red busbies. Which meant that if this set was touched-up, it was done by painstakingly removing each figure from the box, touching-up only those areas described above, then carefully retying the figures, closing the box flaps, all without leaving any of the usual tell-tale traces.

Question: why just touchup these areas-the rest of the paintwork was pristine, free from scratches etc.. And all this trouble for a fairly common set that only retailed for around a hundred dollars!

Which led me to conclude that because of the relatively late manufacture of this set, Britains probably started using the modern, lead-free oil based glossy paints that readily fluoresce under a UV light(and so the ability to detect some touchups).

Although a dealer I use doesn't agree with my theory, I was becoming fairly certain that I was onto something after checking and seeing that the fluorescing phenomenon happened with another set that I'm certain was also made during Britain's very late production period.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, I emailed James Opie, a world authority on old Britains figures, and asked him if Britains changed to using lead-free based paints that would cause the fluorescing effect under a UV light. He wrote back that this indeed was the case; that Britains started using lead-free paints during their last few production years and that some of this paint will fluoresce under a UV, giving the impression that the figure has been touched-up.

I also asked him about another and much better known instance where it appears that some touching-up has been done- but probably was not.

This involves the Bahamas Police set figures-set #s 2184-86. On many of these(90% that have been observed, according to Ray Haradin, a Britains collector, dealer and appraiser), there appears what looks like dabs of off-white paint applied to the bright white of the tunics and helmets. There is a theory going around in the Britains collecting world that this touching-up was done in the Bahamas by the store that sold these sets because the high humidity in the Bahamas caused some of the original paint work to flake off.

My own feeling is that in this case the touching-up on these figures was done at the Britains factory(or by the outworkers). James Opie agreed and added another very plausible theory: that the touching-up effect was a result of factory painters or outworkers using the thicker paint from the bottom of the paint pot!

Besides the above examples, there are other “irregularities” or anomalies encountered with old Britains.

For example, sets with figures with mismatched paint(which commonly shows up in the flesh tones, or the color of the bases) would lead one to conclude that not all the figures were original to the box.

But at the Britains factory, occasionally they did add a mismatched figure to a set-especially the officer figure or one that came from a different mold from the others.

Britains also used(right before the war and after)cheap looking and feeling boxes that were neither red nor shiny with tie cards attached by different kinds of staples, or no staples at all. Britain's tie cards also varied in quality and were stamped with a range of logo styles.

To sum up, here's my take on these types of anomalies: what would one expect from a hand made, hand painted(or sprayed)product that during one period was produced in the millions per month by many different individuals? And as far as UV lights, they can mislead(the example below shows an actual touchup).