Ochel

[Roland Simon]

Some collector friends and me are visiting the Ochel workshop in Kiel once or twice a year. We are lucky enough to live near to Kiel, so it's no problem to arrange our "shopping" visit with Erika Ochel. She is very kind to us and we could look around to all treasures.
We found out, that mainly the moulds of the "normal" figures from the TYW, 7YW and also Napoleonic period are worn out, because these have been the "bread and butter" figures to the early Ochel company. But nearly all staff figures are in an excellent condition, also figures from the Renaissance period, Spanish war of succession, middle ages and much more are worth to collect. One can find real "treasures" among all periods and yes it's right, by ordering via catalogue  you have to deal with the "box of chocolates".......

[Joerg]

There is another point with Ochel:
One should honestly quote a movie:
Kieler figures is like a box of chocolates - you' never now what you get.

Means- there are superb figures, but you also can get obscurely shaped figures, nearly completely lacking any relief
from heavily worn out moulds.
And - for a substantial price, compared to other editors.

And either the phantastic ones or the bad ones have the same description in the catalogue.

This is not intended to hinder anyone in ordering from Ms Ochel,
but to dampen disappointings.

And - the catalogues contain figures, that are not casted anymore.
And this is NO fault of Scott, who published this catalogue, thank hom for that.

[Scott Johnson]

I cut my teeth on Kilia flats way back in the 1960's. In spite of language differences and a decline in the dollar/Mark value I continued into the mid 1970's. All of that stopped then in part due to starting a family and career. Kinda gave up on the hobby until the advent of  (1) the Internet/Ebay and (2) Paypal - very important. Then there was an explosion in my collection. Brother Douglas (the Incompleat Kieler author) put me in touch (via Kulmbach, 2007) with Erika. I have placed at least 4 orders with her filling in some of the gaps in my Ochel collection. Alas, the painted sets are no longer available from her. But I took up painting flats for wargaming after that Kulmbach trip so that's not a problem.


Ochel fans contact Erika!

[marko]

Yes, I echo this as well.  I had a very pleasant experience dealing with Erika as well.


Their only downside previously was the website did not provide much detail other than a textual description and a few rough pictures.  They have added a number of painted examples from Jim Horan/Bistulfi's site which shows them off beautifully.

[Mike G]

I know this is nothing new, but for those of you who have not done business with Erika Ochel, she's very easy to deal with and her figures are like none others available today (in my opinion of course). Some of the sets that Ochel has must be some of the greatest ever engraved - especially for those of us attracted to esoteric topics. I bought several Vollrath series (Caesar crossing the Rhine at Neuweid and the Sobieski set to name a couple), and they are superb. Highly recommended.

Mike