Saturday, May 28, 2016

Palms for the Poor


Back a few months ago, I ordered a variety of inexpensive plastic palm trees from China through Ali Babba. I now understand the process a bit better - Ali Baba basically acts as a middle man for many Chinese manufacturers. This makes it somewhat hard to estimate shipping charges at times. For my palms, I wanted a variety of heights and styles, and I didn't need hundreds of trees. Thus it took quite a bit of shopping around on the Ali Baba site to find exactly the items and quantities that looked like they would work best. Ultimately, one of the items was cancelled when the supplier was unable to ship them within Ali Babba's fairly tight time frame, and each item wound up arriving in a separate mall parcel over the course of a bout a month. Fortunately, unlike the rest of the world, shipping charges from China seem to be incredibly low!


Here's an example - 20 x 4" tall palm trees. 


Here they are unpacked. All of these trees have the plastic "pegs" on the bottom for model railroad layouts and the like. 


A close up shot with an Eureka 28mm Assyrian figure for scale. While I was in the Turks and Caicos Islands last month, I did some filed research on Palm trees, assisted by Rum Punch and other potent potables.  This style of Palm, such as coconut Palms,, seemed to have most trunks more grey than brown, and the frond-like leaves were often a dusty light green.


The Short Palms like those at the top usually seemed to have a red-brown trunk and  medium to  dark green leaves.  Interestingly, Palms are not native to the Caribbean or the Bahamas, even though we routinely associate both with them. 


This top down view illustrates the point that their are two different major styles of leaves found on Palms. Elongated, frond like leaves , such as those on the left, and wide, "palmate" leaves like those on the right. The Date palms that I saw in the Islands all seemed to have Palmate leaves... some very, very large!


This is the final style of Palms that I got - short with large, palmate leaves. All of these will probably get some dry brushing of the trunks and leaves before use. All told, I got about 52 palms for about $25. Not bad at all! There should be quite a few of these appearing in my Egypt vs Assyria game at Historicon in July. 

14 comments:

  1. Not at bad haul at all! I have been seeing a number of bloggers buying Chinese trees for the gaming table. Many of the deciduous varieties look a little on the sparse side but they may be just fine. When I bought a box load of palms years ago, I bought mine from a cake decorating store. Great trees and inexpensive as well. The cashier thought I was nuts to buy so many. She said I must be making a very large cake!

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  2. Wasn't it Napoleon who said, "To make a good cake, one must bakle a great many palms! :-)

    The key thing in my purchase was that I wanted a variety of different heights and types... and I didn't need 100 or 200!

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  3. Ah great minds think alike, I have also just purchased a large number of Chinese manufactured trees. Will have to do a review post :)

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    1. As I mentioned,. the experience was a bit different, but they (SAli Baba)essentially hold your funds in escrow until the items are delivered. Looking forward tp seeing both your trees AND the forest!

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  4. Peter,
    Found my "date palm but really have coconuts" palms at a local cake supply store. Purchased 10 then returned to see if the lady had more. She asked "how many"..... I answered...say a 200. Like the glazing on the nearby by cakes her eyes glazed. The question never came why so many but you can see the question on her face. Her sales on palms met annual quota the following week when the palm tree pile arrived from her supplier. Worked out to 12.5 cents each... I had a coupon for 50% off. Biggest cheap purchase for years. Need any coconuts? I have extra ;-))

    Used in my recent Pyramids 1798 scenario. Can't have enough "nuts" for the nutty one in the summertime desert.... French in wool coats and Ottoman/Arabic/Bedouin/Syrian/Coptic/Nubians/Fellahin.... the "confused ones" shall we call them. Then there are the Mamelukes in a class by themselves.

    The nutty Rabbit.
    Can rabbits eat a coconut?

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    1. Yes, I could have gotten 100 - 200. Fortunately, common sense prevailed. I wouldn't mind a few palms with the "nuts" if we ever have reason to exchange other goods.

      Loved your Pyramids set up. AS for Rabbits and coconuts - I think the commercial sweetened and shredded coconut would be good bunny fodder, but opening the nuts themselves would be tough!

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    2. Never know what those bunny frontal teeth can be used for. Had two large rabbit pets in my youth. They escaped by "boring" though a wooden enclosure board into the family garden for an afternoon of delightful munching.

      About the palms. Plan to do some small size Vietnam 20mm gaming next year maybe.... or some Pacific war gaming maybe, or I tried to corner the miniature palm options market/exchange. With years of lead time and pre game designing thought I purchased the palms to cover a 12x6 table estimated space late 90's. Still haven't played either game format but I have Vietnam era vehicles painted.

      M

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    3. Yep, never can be sure what those lupine incisors can do!

      Have you seen Eric Burgess' Jungle terrain (constructed by Mal Wright)? Amazing, with zillions of palm trees and other jungle foliage - spotting rules are unnecessary!

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    4. Uh should be Leptine as opposed to Lupine (wolf)!

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  5. A friend of mine swears by his trees from China. Good service, fast delivery and a great price.

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    1. I may try some other kinds of trees in the future!

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  6. I use huge amounts of trees in my 6mm games and I buy them all from a Chinese supplier on E bay called Everestmodel. I buy bin 4 sizes from 35 to 50mm and 2 colours of greenfrom. I think the last lot I bought cost 7.50GBP per 100 and reached me here in Spain in 10 days. Considering these are individually wiore wound trees you really can't top that for value, quality or service.

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    1. pfft my typing
      bin - in
      greenfrom - green
      wiore-wire

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    2. I understood it anyway, and I give constant evidence that my own typing is worse! :-)

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