WEST HAM UNITED1995/96

West Ham United had 10 figures made as part of the FAPL Collection, the vast majority of which have never been released again, in fact only 2 would be released by Corinthian again, those being Tony Cottee and Marc Rieper. Cottee would be released again for the Hammers as a Convention special, however that would be an entirely new sculpt. the same can be said for Rieper. he wold be released for Denmark but that would be a different sculpt.

Some great players made up this range notably hard man Julian Dicks and long serving keeper Ludek Miklosko, also released for the hammers was Croatian international Slaven Bilic, however the figure pictured on the collector card varied from the actual figure, the head was the same but the body pose was different, this was also the case with Steve Potts and also Iain Dowie.

Julian Dicks was released with 2 variant cards, one has him almost entirely shaven headed, whereas the other has him with a thin covering of Black hair, a subtle difference but enough to make it a variant and one for the completist.

Another interesting fact about this range of figures concerns the Ilie Dumitrescu figure, here is why. All the West Ham United figures PL numbers end in 9, this is not the case for the Romanian Dumitrescu as his PL number is PL248 but I have a theory as to why this is the case.

Dumitrescu played for Tottenham Hotspur in the first half of the 95/96 season but was sold to West Ham United half way through that season, this is important as it took a period of time for Corinthian to get a figure to the point as to where it could be released in the shops, so when the master was made he will have been playing for Tottenham Hotspur hence him having the PL number he has, all the Tottenham figures had PL numbers ending in 8 which is why he was assigned the PL number he was.

The West Ham United figures are for the most part very rare with only Potts, Breacker and Miklosko being found regularly. The figures of Dicks and Cottee and slightly rarer, with the remaining 5 figures are all very with Dowie being one of the rarest FAPL figures ever released due to the fact he was released towards the end of this range and his release went largely unnoticed by collectors.

Finding these in blister is very difficult, especially Dowie, all in all a truly great set of figures and one which has really kept it's value over the years and some of the figures still elude collectors today.

There were also 2 different 4 packs released: