STOM’S BRAND NEW COLUMN

When I started collecting wrestling –like Tatanka would say… many moons ago- I mainly focussed on the WWF Hasbro toy-line. At that time I hardly knew anything about them. Didn’t know how many were in the set and how many sets were made.

So when I got my first internet hook-up one of my first searches on the web was for the Hasbro line. I stumbled upon a collector’s website that had all kinds of pictures of all kinds of figures from different toy companies. One particular toy line that caught my eye straight was the WCW Galoob line. These figures looked great. I had to have these….. Especially the one in the blue trunks with the green diamond on it…. He looked an awful lot like Razor Ramon, but he was in the WWF, it couldn’t be him. Forget about those Hasbro figures…. I wanted him.

I e-mailed the owner of the website to inquire about this figure. He told me that this figure was unproduced and only made it to a prototype stage. He also told me that only two or perhaps three were ever made. They were made for the 1992 Galoob assortment and that they would be pictured in their upcoming Toy Fair catalogue. He actually owned one of those prototypes. I could forget about ever owning one as it was never mass produced. He wasn’t selling his, no matter how much I offered. I believe his exact words were that he “would be buried with it someday”!

Ohhh and yeah…. the figure was Razor Ramon a.k.a. Scott Hall, but in he previous and failed gimmick called…. The Diamond Studd.

Years later I got an e-mail from a fellow collector through my old (and now defunct) wrestling figure website STOMWIJF.com. He wrote me that he had been offered The Diamond Studd by the original sculptor. He was broke, so he couldn’t buy it himself, but he was willing to act as my bidding agent on this one for a small fee. He continued by explaining to me that he would like to help out a fellow and serious collector. I basically told him to take a hike. Why would anyone help out in such a big way? Why not simply sell it on eBay for a large sum?

But as some days went by I just couldn’t get it out off my head. I had a chance to become one of the two owners of a great figure.

I e-mailed the guy back; apologized for a couple of days; coughed up the $ 450.00 and waited impatiently by my mail-box for 3 weeks. All the time I was hoping and praying that I hadn’t been screwed over and made the fool of. I paid a lot of money on this. Losing that money would be terrible, but losing an opportunity of owning this figure would be even worse. What was taking this long?

But then my trust in people paid off…….. the mail-man rang the doorbell and handed me a package. It was finally here…... The Diamond Studd.

The figure was not made of plastic like all the Galoob figures I already owned, but of cold cast resin. It’s some sort of hard plaster, that doesn’t require it to be heated or baked (or at least, so I have been told. I am not an expert on these things).

To this day, The Diamond Studd is still one of my most cherished pieces and crown jewel in my collection. Later I also got hooked up with other cold cast resin figures, including a PN News and Ricky Morton, but the initial thrill of getting Studd was never again duplicated.

I have always wondered how much I would get for this figure if I put it on eBay, but that will remain a mystery to me….. I am getting cremated with mine….. one day.

- Michiel “STOMWIJF” de Graaf

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