General Custer

General Custer in Buckskins!

Well, almost. What you see here is a true Test shot of the General Custer figure. He was molded in the normal 'Caramel' colored plastic of Johnny and Chief. This super rare piece showed up on eBay in August 2010. The lucky winner paid over $500 for it. I know because I was the second high bidder at $475.

It sure would have been nice if Marx had produced George in this color, but they'd all be breaking apart like the Johnny's and Chiefs are... So maybe it's best that they did him in the more stable royal blue color.

Here's the back story I got from the person selling him on ebay
"Believe it or not, we came upon this figure by happenstance. As a child, I actually owned these and many other Marx toys. But back in the day, we never saved anything that had been played with alot. These toys were always plentiful as we lived about 5-7 miles from the Marx Toy Plant.. Many of my friends parents worked at the plant. Fast forward 40 years, my husband and I were at a small country auction we frequent. Upon inspecting the offerings of that evening, I noticed a large box on the "front table". Inside the box were various Johnny West figures, each in a ziplock bag. We usually split initially and then meet up and compare notes. I mentioned to him about the "box" with the Johnny West toys, and he said "Oh, I didn't see them," end of story. So I said "Maybe we won't bid on them then." Well, when the box came up for auction, they wanted to offer one piece at a time. NO INTEREST!!! The auctioneer said "I guess Marx toys aren't what they used to be." So they proceeded to offer the total contents of the box up for bid. I actually had to think about if I should bid or not. I thought maybe let it go. Thankfully, my husband was on the ball and started bidding!! Long story short, we picked up the box and all contents for $20.00!! I had no idea what we had until I listed General Custer and starting getting tons of questions and the bidding took off. It didn't take long to realize how valuable he was. In the end, the winning bid was $515.00! He is now in a private collection in Florida. I will never pass up a "box lot" at an auction again!!"

Neither will we Pam! Thanks for sharing.

The winner of the auction has promised to send some pics of this piece in his collection... I'll post them when I get them.