Good evening fellow followers of old school Citadel and all things 1980s Games Workshop. It has come to my attention that one of the rarest miniatures produced by Citadel during the Golden Age has cropped up on eBay recently and I thought that followers of this blog would be more than interested in seeing how the sale progresses. The miniature (as you will have guessed by now) is the famous Imperial or Chicken Dragon sculpted by Micheal Perry in 1982 and moulded and cast by none other than Richard 'GW's Forgotten Genius' Halliwell!
The model is huge, hence its name, and is said to be of similar size to an actual chicken! Now I have never seen one for sale before so I am intrigued by how much it will sell for. I am sure that Steve Casey from Eldritch Epistles would probably be able to give a more informed estimate by I am going to go for a price between £1000-1500 for this monster.
During the Oldhammer Weekend at the Foundry last September, I was told an amusing, and dare I say rather unprintable, story about the creation of this model by Rick Priestley and John Stallard. The picture they painted was of a far more rough and ready Citadel Miniatures than the one that would become so successful later on in the 1980s and beyond. Looking back, you really have to be impressed by their ambition as the model is absolutely huge, even by today's resin monstrosity standards. Also, remember that these were the days before CAD allowed slot together models on a grand scale and a little bit of (or in this case a lot of) modelling skill was required to build some of the more ambitious kits. Having personally restored a Great Spined Dragon in recent days I can certainly appreciate how difficult building and painting such a model would be. So here's hoping this beast is bought by a collector who actually intends to build and paint the dragon as a model so we someday get to see the monster in the way its creators always intended!
Anyway, here's the eBay link and a scan from Solegends of the guide paperwork that went with the model.
eBay Imperial Dragon AKA The Chicken Dragon
Good luck indeed!
Orlygg.