More than twelve colours then, but how many and where do we draw the line? Some types are clear variations on the original such as the shades of yellow, but once the yellow turns to the deeper mustard with its own run of shades what then? Moreover, for the collector you would not put a team in to two different shades of basic yellow bases any more than you would mix base wordings. I come back to my basic premise that if an item is stable and available in quantity over time it is a type in its own right. What about the blues - how different does a shade have to become between the light and royal blue or the navy and the green to become another colour? I have exchanged a few emails with Paul at subbuteoflats about the silver colour that possibly emerges as a shade of grey. He has bases with clear swirls or veins similar to the gold ones. Is there a whole other family of colours with veins or were gold and silver some kind of promotion at some point?

There are other questions about the production of the bases. You will often come across bases with a litle tag on the side. Anyone who made Airfix kits or owned their small soldiers as a child will tell you that this is a sure sign the bases were made on some form of rectangular grid known as a sprue. Are there sprues of bases surviving out there somewhere?

Personally I believe we have to divide the twelve colours in to more types for two main reasons. Firstly it is very clear that numbers of stable shades exist so why pretend otherwise. Secondly, in the modern world with so many items traded on ebay (there I said it and I was doing so well) collectors need some form of colour reference set. It is very difficult to photograph or scan colours accurately and I have spent many hours trying. Stamp collectors have simple colour charts so why not Subbuteo? I am trying to establish a colour set or colour box as I have called it but this is a slow and difficult process. However, the search for new base colours does turn up some spectacular results.



The whole process get even more difficult when you consider finishes and other differences that occur. Some bases have a very reflective finish while others are quite dull. The difference can be subtle. It is not uncommon to buy a set of bases and to the eye they look like a set but when you get them in a good light or under a magnifier and they are clearly nothing of the kind. The width of the slot seems to vary considerably from very wide to very narrow. It may be that early bases had wider slots to accomodate the card players. The clearest difference is the wording on the top of the base. It can be either a double Subbuteo or a single Subbuteo and the registered design number.

If we count clear shades as types we might easily identify thirty to forty different basic colours. Multiply by wordings, by slot widths by finishes add keeper bases and early base types with and without wording and you don't have to be an accountant to work out that we may well have more than 200 bases types and counting.

I have just walked to my study, picked up a box at random, taken out the three bases below and scanned them.



What does this very unscientific sample show us? Three maroon bases, three slot widths, at least two finishes, two wordings not to mention possibly made of different ingredients. Someone asked me if I wasn't being a bit hard on other writers for failing to extract more information from Peter Adolph. Yes I do think it is mildly interesting that Peter Adolph was challenged to a duel, but can anyone look at this picture and explain the differences to me, with manufacturing locations and dates and the reasons for the changes?

I think it is far too early to start giving reference numbers to base types but I also think we have to start somewhere. I just haven't got my head round where yet. I am going to start the base colour galleries next and rather then do this by date of release I am going to group different sets of colours together. In the colour box I have run with the order of the spectrum and on the gallery pages I am going to adopt a similar approach. So each page should (with gaps!)group similar colours together. This is a huge work in progress so your input is not only apppreciated but required. If you send me colour photos or scans I would ask three things. Crop the photos to sensible sizes and concentrate on one base at a time. Thirdly if the colour does not accurately reflect the real base try again.

I have spent three evenings scanning every base colour I possess at this point. Two clear problems have emerged. Red and blue shades simply do not show very well. Clear navy blue bases show up the same as royal blue and my favourite terracotta red scans poorly. The intermediate colour between blue and green comes out a soft pale blue without any green hue showing. The stars are certainly the gold varieties. I have over 40 colour types to display and I think they look pretty good. It only serves to emphasise the need for the computerised colour box, but you could not reproduce the gold patterns.

The reality of loading the base types on to the galleries has been rather different. A four hour session crashed the entire site three times and I am still unable to load a genuine dark yellow or terracotta red. There will obviously be shades between the colours shown.


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