EVERTON 1995/96

Everton's club motto is 'Nil Satis Nisi Optimum', which when translated from Latin into English reads 'Nothing But The Best Is Good Enough.' This moto certainly applied when it came to the 13 figures Corinthian released for Everton.

 

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This entire set was made up of first time sculpts, the majority of which have never been released by Corinthian again. The Duncan Ferguson was not the best sculpt ever made and the one done of the player years later for Everton as part the Prostars range is far better.

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Nigerian forward Daniel Amokachi was a great sculpt as was the sculpt of David Unsworth, both were very close likeness of the actual player. The sculpt of Neville Southall was a favourite amongst collectors and featured his trademark moustache.

 

 

Corinthian released Southall years later but they produced a brand new sculpt for that, with Paul Rideout getting his one and only Corinthian figure release as part of this set, while the sculpt of Andy Hinchcliffe was the same as was later released as part of the England national series of Headliners.

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Crowd favourite Andrei Kanchelskis was released after he secured a move to the club from Manchester United. The Kanchelskis figure was originally intended to be released for Manchester United, this was the case as all the other Everton players base code's end in 0 unlike Kanchelskis who's base number is 181 and all Manchester United figures base codes end in 1 the sculpt for the Manchester United Kanchelskis did differ from this version but the figure had already been assigned a base code so Corinthian saw no need to change it.

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The figures of John Ebbrell, Craig Short and Earl Barrett were all first time sculpts too and have over time become very difficult to obtain. The loose figures can command good money with the blister packs proving incredibly difficult to track down.

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Dave Watson is another rare figure to emerge from this set, in fact this was the very last figure I needed to complete my FAPL Collection. I got the likes of Pembridge and Dowie before I got my hands on Watson, a truly rare figure which sometimes seems to fly under the radar.

 

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The rarest figure from this set is without question that of Graham Stuart, the reason for this is very simple, he was never released in single blister format, he was made exclusively available as part of a 4 player pack. The thing was that not every stockist sold the 4 player packs, with most stores concentrating purely on the single blisters and those that did stock multipacks concentrated on the more popular teams at that time, which were Liverpool, Manchester United and Newcastle United.

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This meant that the Stuart figure would have gone largely undetected by the majority of collectors, some only realising it was released years later. The 4-packs were not produced in that high a volume and the pack which contained Stuart was even scarcer to find, this pack was EV4C and contained; along with Stuart, Kanchelskis, Ebbrell and Hinchcliffe. Good luck trying to find a 4 player pack with the Stuart in these days, very seldom seen for sale.

 

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Completing the set was manager Joe Royle who was sculpted with a beaming smile, hard to think why given how Everton were playing at that time! A really interesting sculpt with a lot of facial work and detail.

 

 

It does seem a shame that Corinthian chose not to release a 12 player pack for Everton, as they did have enough sculpts to do so and feel it would have been a very well collected piece that would have appreciated in value over time.

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There were 3 different 4 player packs released, EV4A contained Ferguson, Amokachi, Southall and Rideout, EV4B has Ferguson, Southall, Unsworth and Barrett, while the super rare EV4C pack has Hinchcliffe, Ebbrell, Kanchelskis and Stuart.

 

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All figures were released with collector card and collectors information file.

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