The Final Four Goebel Figures - DIS 85 Dinah

Third in the Final Four is DIS 85.

This has got to be the most innocuous figure I've ever seen from Goebel, with the possible exception of the frog from the Bambi series.  I wrote a series of extensive posts on the question of 'is this Dinah' here and here, take a look at those for more details on why I believe this is indeed Dinah.  Again why two different Dinahs?

This photo illustrate a unique feature of the Final Four:  the Goebel Archive Tag.  What's that you may ask?  I'll tell you.

As some of you may recall, back in 2008 Goebel announced that they were closing and ceasing production.  They later sold off the Hummel division and the remainder of Goebel was purchased and both Hummel and Goebel continue to produce gift items, although independently.  But, as a result of the split and sale, the original factory, and the accompanying archive of figures, was sold off.  And these figures came from that sale.

Each figure from the archive is identified with one of these small metal tags or plombe (feels like aluminum), and to my knowledge there was only one of each figure in the archive, and perhaps not every figure was represented.  Luckily for me the four I needed were indeed in the archive!  The word 'archivmuster' loosely translates to 'archive specimen' (or sample or model), essentially the file copy of the figure.  The reverse says 'W. Goebel Oeslau', which was the name of the company and its location at the time the figures were made.

Several very rare figures from the archive have surfaced on eBay in the past 5 months, and I'm sure there are more to come.  It may be that for some of the rarer figures, the archive example may be the only known example.