As promised, some lines about my smurf collecting and collection.
With an older brother collecting comics and stuff, I have always been surrounded by omics, including Smurfs. My first album was the legendary 'Vader Abraham en de Smurfen', a number 1 hit in 1978. A few years later, the cartoons... I always loved the Smurfs, but I only started collecting them around 1995, I think.
My collection is a strange one. I have gotten some very beautiful and expensive smurfs for gifts, so that was the easy part. But all (yes, all) my other smurfs come from flea markets, and all of them were for around half a Euro or less. I got some for free, I bought one for 2 Eurocents once, and I often buy whole lots, like some fifty smurfs for 10 Euro...
I haven't kept count of it, but I guess I haven't spent more than 250 Euro on my collection of Smurfs, and I have recuperated part of it by selling some doubles, or using them as a gift for my younger brother (don't worry, the rest of the family is not into Smurfs .
Consequences: a lot of much-loved (i.e. badly rubbed) Smurfs, a lot of incomplete houses and sets, no boxes, and a fairly random collection with huge gaps. But on the plus side: lots of surprises, lots of stories, and amazingly a fair amount of rare and very rare Smurfs. I'm still working with the 1997 catalog, so some things may be outdated, but this is a sample of what I have (excluding other exciting Smurf stuff, I'll show one day when I have the possibility).
I have five or six Dupuis Union Smurfs, 12 OMOsmurfs, and five Smurfs on a pecil sharpener. I have at least one version of Smurf 001 to 049, including e.g. the four different 014 Schlafschlumpf. The first one I miss is ironically Der Schlumpf, 050 .
I have some apparently rare Smurfs, like Gratulationsschlumpf (067), 8 Schlips (069) (I want to have 98 of those!), Wandergeselle (88.1) with the long stick, Tennisschlumpf 2 (093.5), the one in one piece with its racket (already three times: is it really rare?): Kapitän (141), the blue one, Autralischer Footballschlumpf (150), Papaschlumf mit buch (174.2), Baseballschlumpfinchen (186)!!!, Majorette (188.2), Schlumpfinchen mit Topf (196), Schlumpf in Frack (216) and Schlumpfinchen in Abendkleid (217), Gargamel mit zwei Gläsern (232.1). Hopefully with the new catalog, I will have some more rare smurfs
Other series: Schlumpf auf stock reitend (1907), Weihnachtsschlumpf (1908), Gärtner (0206), green and brown one; Schmetterlingfängner (0209), Gargamel und Azrael (0211), Boxer (508) und Hürdenlaufer (511).
And then there are the advertising smurfs (all the Quick smurfs, all the Silan Smurfs, Holiday on Ice Smurf, GB smurf), one lonely Jubiläumsschlumpf, 8 of the 9 clip-on smurfs, ...
The Bully haus, the old great house, the old white great house (very incomplete), the popup sportstadion, ...
Sorry, I got a bit carried away there... All in all, I guess I have some 500 smurfs.
And I bid on smurfs on ebay, but someone alwys beats me (I've posted my last unlucky story on the ebay-forum ).
Sleep tight!