Tell me about Christmas Villages

[Slava]

I guess the thread title says it all. I have zero clue on where to buy or how to pick this kind of thing, but basically to give a gift as a kind of "starters set" what can you tell me. Lest anyone have no clue what I mean here, I'm referring to the little towns/villages that some people set-up as a decoration. So any help here would be appreciated!

What do I need, where do I get it and anything else people can tell me would be great!

[Shawnski]

Department 56 Nothing else close to them. Some of the earlier, rarer pieces are now worth a ton of money.

Last I was buying them, the various garden centers had them. You might check their website for retailers in the area too.

[Shawnski]

To further my previous note, within Dept 56, they have several series. I collect the Christmas in the City series, while my sister collect(ed) the Dicken Village set. There are others as well like the Original Snow Village, but I believe these are the two best.

Some pieces are only made for the one year and are then retired, while others can go on for many years before being retired. Finding older pieces (especially in perfect shape WITH the box) can be tough, thus the prices on them can go up over time.

There are buildings and accessories like bridges and people. You can go crazy collecting this stuff. A couple years ago my sister finally said "No Mas" as they had to have a separate storage locker in their condo JUST for their village, it was so big.

Looked absolutely amazing when it was all set up though.

If you have any other questions, just post.

[Slava]

Well I guess what I need to know is what I need to buy to start out. So I assume there needs to be a power bar or something and then I guess a few buildings and stuff to begin? My plan was maybe a starters set to begin and then a building or two a year as add-ons. Is that even reasonable though? I am not planning on dropping a grand on this, this year. At the same time I wouldn't buy like one building!

[Komskies]

Our family has been collecting these village pieces for a long time now, probably nearly 20 years. We usually buy one or two pieces a year, so we've amassed quite a collection thus far.

We started out with a "starter" set type thing from Costco. It came with 4 buildings (a church, a residence, and 2 others I don't remember), a bridge, and some figures. It wasn't part of the Department 56 Collection, and the quality of the pieces wasn't as nice as the Department 56 ones. Now we collect exclusively from the Dickens' Village set.

You'll want to go to Green Gate Garden Center (Macleod Trail just south of Canyon Meadows Drive), as they have all of the Department 56 Collections (Dickens Village, Christmas in the City, North Pole series).

The buildings will range from $70 to maybe $110, depending on the complexity and size of the piece. They also have all sorts of accessories, ranging from trees, lamp posts, figures (many buildings will have a matching figure, such as a fish and chips shop may have a small food cart or something, have to buy these separately).

[Shawnski]

Each building has a small light and cord, with an on/off switch. Having a single power bar for all the cords is definitely handier.

When you determine what series you might like, you can look on Kijiji or eBay to see if there are pieces people are selling at a reasonable price. It CAN save you a lot of money to start as some of them are far below initial price simply because they had so many sold.

There isn't usually a starter set per se, but I have seen in some years where they might have a package of a couple buildings and some people.

Set a budget and then go to a retailer or two and see what they have for that amount, then maybe see what you could get via eBay/Kijiji. Again, for these pieces, buying new isn't the only option! I found some older pieces at a great price one year.

Don't forget to get some of the cobblestone and snow too....

[Komskies]

As Shawnski said, each building comes with a bulb and a cord with a switch. If you're getting a few it's probably best to get a power bar with a switch on it so you can leave the buildings all turned on then toggle the whole set with a single switch.

I highly recommend the Dickens' Village collection. It has that really nice old-time feel to it. Cratchet's Corner, Scrooge and Marley...

[Ardor]

This doesn't fall under the category of the more classic collections out there, but we've had a lot of fun collecting and setting this up every Christmas. It isn't a huge collection, but we've intermingled it with some pieces from another collection and it puts a cool twist on it all!
Being that there is a large number of Flames fans around here, this may be of interest to some of youll! A cool gift for the hardcore Flames fan in your life!
My only complaint with the collection is that I wish the 'arena' was actually the Saddledome, but all-in-all, it's pretty cool to have a "Flames" village!

click for link to Flames Village

[TheyCallMeBruce]

What's a Christmas village without Godzilla?

[Robbob]

Mother-in-law has a seedy area in her Christmas village complete with some vending machine homies and street walkers. We are going to add a couple little zombie figurines we found in a vending machine.