MY COLLECTION

 Hello, my name is Craig Robinson and i have been an avid collector of Corinthians world famous football models since they were first released way back in 1995 with a range of England national figures. To date (25-12-09) i have in excess of 3,200 individual figures in my collection. Making up my collection are every 'Club Gold,Fans Favourites, Prostars Retail, XL Series' that has ever been released.

 Corinthian followed up the success of the range of England national figures by releasing players from the FA Premier League, in a range called 'The FAPL Collection.' This range of figures is in my opinion the best they have ever done and i am proud to say i have every figure they ever released as part of it, along with some of the annomilies aswell. Following on from the success of this range they released the 'SPL Colleciton' which compried of the top 5 club sides in Scotland, again i have every figure released in that range.

 Corinthian went from strength to strength and expanded their range by releasing figures from some of the best club sides in the world, teams from 'Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Germany and Holland' were all released. During the same period, Corinthian released some figures in their National kits, the Nations chosen for release were 'Italy, France, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Japan and South Africa.' From all those figures released,of which there are many, i need just two to complete my collection, those two were both released as part of the 'Italian Superstars' range of figures. The two figures which continue to elude me are 'SER060 Stroppa Udinese' and 'SER086 Schwarz Fiorentina.' I am fully confident of one day adding those two figures to my collection to make it complete, only waited 13 years so far!

 In 1999 Corinthian sold the rights to the 'Headliner' name to an American company, however, this was not the end of the 'Big Heads.' After a much needed break, Corinthian were back in 1999 with a brand new range of figures and a brand new name, this name was

 Each 'Prostars' figure was issued a base code 'PRO' and the last figure to be released was 'PRO1825' but a few figures were assigned basecodes but never released, so there was actually only ever 1750 figures released and in my collection i have 1749 of them! The single Prostar figure that evades me is 'PRO1191 Fabio Cannavaro Parma Home Kit Select 500 Japan Lucky Box Series 2 chaser figure.' This figure was part of the 'Select 500' range of figures, meaning only 500 of each figure was made and this figure was never made available for direct sale, instead it was packed inside 'Lucky Boxes' and released solely in Japan, due to a distribution problem only now are these figures actually been found in Japan. I will get this figure one day and make my 'Prostars' collection complete.

 One topic that has always divided collectors is wether the figures should be kept in their original packaging or wether they should be removed from it and displayed loose. I myself collect them to display them loose, never seen the point of obtaining the figure to never actually 'hold' it in my hands. Some collectors have kept them in their original packaging to preserve their value, however, i will never sell my collection so there was no reason to do this.

 Removing the figures from their packaging presents a massive problem, how do you properly display them? Easy enough to do if you have a relatively small collection but near impossible if you hae over 3,200 of them! i had not gone to all the effort of actually obtaining them all to simply hide them away in a cupboard and a mere shelf is no good as you would not be able to see any figure which was not on the front row, also how do you prevent them from getting dusty, 3,200 figures would attract a vast amount of dust and i would not relish cleaning all of them on a regular basis.

 Luckily for me my dad relishes a challenge and in March of 2009 he took up this challenge and started work on the 'Grandstands,' once planning permission was obtained of course. With special thanks to Andy Atkin and Wayne Dawson who aided my dad in constructing the stands. Each stand is made of Fibre Glass, there are a total of six individual stands, three screwed on top of each other to form one Grandstand, making a total of two Grandstands. Inside each stand sits a tier system made of wood, which acts as a terrace for the figures to stand on. In between each row of the tier is a thin piece of acrylic which comes upto the figures neck, this is there to prevent any figures from toppling over, some figures are 'top heavy' and will simply not hold up, eg Karembeu.

 Inside each stand is also a set of two light units to alluminate the figures within, no point them being in their if you cannot see them. To tackle the problem of the dust we (i say 'we' it was my dad mostly) built a frame around the stand and placed plastic runners on the top and the bottom of the Grandstand and inside these runners placed 3 pieces of acrylic sheeting. Two acrylic sheets on the back runner and the third sits on the front runner, these sheets slide open to allow figures to be removed. For the handles we decided to use some plastic model footballs, a nice touch i think you will agree.

 The final touch was to add decal transfers of every team that Corinthian has released figures for (thanks to Johnny Carson for the decals), those decals we placed along the top of each stand and in the middle of each Grandstand is the name of the stadium, 'Theatre of Stars' along with the date the stands were completed on, 25-12-2009, bang on schedule too.
 
 The pictures below are of my custom built Grandstands, each Grandstand is pictured in full and then i have taken pictures of each individual stand and split that stand into three sections. The only thing left to say is a massive thanks to my dad for going to all the time, trouble and effort involved in making these superb Grandstands, not to mention the expense too, oh and before anybody asks, he cannot be commissioned to make any more!
 Thanks Dad!
  CRAIG