From time to time a miniature pops up, that you just can’t place. I’m in a few Facebook trading groups and sometimes it happens – an Orc or Goblin that I absolutely love and don’t know what and from where it is. So here we are – if you want to look at the pictures and try to find the mini yourself – have fun. But you can also relax and sit back and see what ways I found. I got two major examples today:

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First off was this little guy. I liked the look of him, it’s definitely a Goblin and I had never seen him before. You can see that’s an easy one. In the plastic bag with him is a leaflet that was even identifiable on the picture in the group. There are two links on it. Tried them? Good – now we both now they are defunct. Frustrating at first, but oh well. It at least tells us, that it probably was a con mini. That makes searching a bit harder, but we now know it is one. So I just googled the respective things. Mini Art Con didn’t turn out great. Masq-Mini however gave me those two usable results: Brückenkopf online is a German Tabletop news site. I searched for more stuff on their site to find out if they had this mini somewhere, but it wasn’t. Still, Masq-Mini did sell minis. Which prompted me to use the Wayback Machine to investigate the Masq-Mini website further. If you’re not familiar with the Wayback Machine, it basically archives parts of the internet at pretty random intervals and let’s you see how the website looked at a certain point in time. Pictures use up a lot of space and are not always available but it helps. It’s also a dead end in this case, since I didn’t find the miniature in question. So where to go now? The second link was to the Lost Minis Wiki. Should you know the company in question that’s probably the first place to go. It tells you some basic Information about the company, from when to when it was run and who was behind it. If you’re lucky you’ll also get some pictures of models. And that was the breakthrough: It told me the sculptors name. Whom I found on Facebook and could ask. Stefan, now Niehues-Ellermann promptly answered, told me he sculpted the mini for a convention in Germany around 2007 and also told me the name of the illustrator (Johannes Figlhuber) since I liked the drawing so much.
And a link to his shop. Stefan created his own bakeable one part polymer-clay for sculpting that has similar sculpting properties to bees wax, BeeSPuttY. And on his website, at the product page for sculpting tools sat my Goblin taunting me. So you see, that one was actually pretty easy and since Stefan was so nice of helping me and did it very quickly I had my closure pretty fast. It wasn’t as easy with the next one:

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Yeah, this Orc. Wow. Seemed so familiar, still strange. I had no information but the front of him. The seller didn’t know where he got him, which is also always a very easy solution if it works. The tab of the mini is also always a big indicator if you can see it. Luckily I could, otherwise I’d have had to wait until I got the miniature to remove it from it’s base. The front tab said F.A.P. wow. You might be aware, that googling FAP Orc might not be the brightest idea and let me tell you it didn’t lead to any results. While Masq-Mini was short for Masquerade Miniatures and that was pretty easy to find, FAP didn’t turn out anything. So I used my next “trick”. Asking on the internet. I asked on the Oldhammer Forum first. I didn’t know how old the mini was but the style was Oldhammer enough for me and the people that stick around there tend to have a good grip on companies new and old. The user Padre was nice enough to ask on Facebook for me since noone else answered. Could’ve done that myself but didn’t think of it at first, so thanks for the initiative – the various Oldhammer groups there might give good answers. I prefer forums because they are more permanent and if no one cares on Facebook the post will be virtually lost since who scrolls down 20 or more posts on Facebook? The results were: an early Mantic test sculpt, West Wind Miniatures Dwarf Wars range (since the only pictures on the page are bad, who knows what they look like, especially the characters that don’t have a picture) and Celtos (because of the similar belt buckle). I wrote a message to Mantic first and got the very fast answer that it didn’t belong to them. I also wrote to West Wind but didn’t get an answer yet. Celtos I ruled out. I have some of their Orcs and they look vastly different. Now I was back at square one with no additional infos and the nagging question in my head – who is this Orc? Then I came home to the miniature.

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Wohoo – the back of the tab. That helped immensely although I couldn’t place it at first. JRN 2006. Now I knew the general time frame and JRN quickly resulted in my finding the sculptor. Jakob Rune Nielsen. Look at his blog – I don’t really follow painting competitions but even I have seen some of his works before in things like the Orc and Goblin compendium by GW or in White Dwarfs due to his many Golden Demon wins. His blog wasn’t updated for a few years, but after googling his name further I found his Instagram and asked Rik to write a message there for me to ask him about the mini. I wrote a mail for safety as well. I also found a Beasts of War article on him, which let me know he had his own miniature company for a short while, Runic Miniatures. The website didn’t work anymore but the article and the Wayback Machine made it clear – there were Orcs and Goblins in the line up, but not the one I got. Here’s a painted example of one of them on Jakobs blog.

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The sword is exactly the same! The boots are the same! So I knew I had the right guy. Also the email was still working and I got an email back from Jakob – who confirmed it was his sculpt. He also could tell me what FAP stood for: Fanatic Army Painter. The army painters range of paints had their own minis for a short time and Jakob was sculpting this Orc while making his first Runic Miniatures models. He told me: “I was really inspired by classic old school minis at this time. Also, it needed to be simple – a few colours and then a wash on top, done!” So my hunch searching on the Oldhammer Forum was definitely warranted and the influence of the company he was working for is pretty apparent in the easy-to-paint design. In that moment it dawned on me: I had seen that guy before. You know those Army Painter leaflets to teach new painters the basics? Or the pictures meant to illustrate how fast you can paint with spray paints and dip? That Orc is the example for some colors including Goblin Green. I’d swear most of you have seen him before too.
After waiting a bit I could get even more info from them: it was a one off run, since they didn’t like the Orc enough to sell him – can’t be that bad if they use him in promotional material I guess, but I don’t know how lucrative selling a single Orc would have been for a paint company so I can’t really argue with the result. I kind of like that lone Greenskin and am pretty happy I got him.

So how to find miniatures you can’t place?

• ask the previous owner
• have a good look at the tabs or bottom of the mini
• use every part of the packaging to your advantage
• ask on Facebook and Forums
• have a look around on the Lost Minis Wiki (or Stuff of Legends if it might be a citadel miniature)
• use the Wayback Machine when ever possible
• sculptors put a lot of work into their stuff so they’ll probably remember if you found out who made the mini

That’s my (not so complete) list of tips on finding unknown miniatures. I hope you had as much fun as I had when searching for the origin of those two minis. If you have any other tips, let me know in the comments 🙂