I stood there in his guest bathroom, looking down and paying attention to what I was doing, and when I was satisfied that all was going according to plan, I looked up absentmindedly. It was then that I saw it. There was a box on a shelf, a red box with something metallic in it. It was a pile of miniatures. It was a pile of 6mm miniatures, filling a red shoe box to overflowing. How many miniatures can fit in a shoe box? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?
That didn't really matter, because as my mind started paying attention to my surroundings, I became aware that the red box was not alone. Coming into focus was a room filled with one toilet, one door, and three and a half walls completely covered in shelves and dozens of boxes of miniatures! Dozens! The amazing part wasn't that his utility bathroom held more miniatures than a person usually sees in his whole life, oh no, it was that this was the smallest stash of miniatures I had seen in Mike's house that day!
I met Mike Vogell, appropriately, in a miniature warehouse. I had traveled to the Warstore warehouse in Southold, New York, to shop. It's a mail/internet-order warehouse, dusty and expansive, but customers are welcome if they make the long trip to the ends of Long Island's North Fork. It was there, one morning about eight months ago, that I planned to spend some money while my wife slept at our summer home in Calverton nearby. To my surprise, there were three other gentlemen browsing in the Bolt Action aisle, a rare occurrence in a remote warehouse, doubly so for what is still only a mildly popular game. Not one to waste an opportunity, I started talking to them, then joking with them, then we made a connection. One of them, the oldest and most 'father figure-like,' was Mike Vogell. Walking with a cane yet full of spit and vinegar, he was the kind of old guy you love to meet, the one who makes you laugh and has a generousness of spirit, yet no pretense to correctness or propriety. I liked him immediately.
Before we had parted he had given me his number, and invited me over to his house to check out his collection and play some games. I called him that day, anxious to cement the relationship, and we confirmed for the next weekend. I was excited because, besides the friendly repartee I enjoyed with him and the other guys, he had hinted at an impressive collection of miniatures that I "might like to see."
Most of us can only imagine what Howard Carter experienced as he cracked open that seal and began to flash his light around, to walk into a chamber of wonders and riches, to lay eyes on something you might have hoped existed, but had no guarantee of, yet here was real, and exceeding even your wildest dreams!
Such was my fortune the moment I descended into Mike's basement, and laid eyes on the fruit of his life's passion.
Miniatures, glorious miniatures, all types, all sizes, all games, all genres, by the hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands! Boxes, boxes everywhere crammed full to bursting! Shelves and dressers, tables and chests! Miniatures in neat rows (hundreds of sailing ships), in piles (orks and space marines), drawers full of hussars, boxes of gladiators, bags of terrain (enough to cover a football field and more), shelves with dozens of identical Tiger tanks, row upon row upon row of them! A 6'x4' table! A 12'x4' table! And that was just the stuff on the surface!
How did this happen? Where did this Shangri-La come from? Like Kevin Costner's dad, I turned to him and said, "Is this…is this…Heaven?"
"No," he said, "as if they'd let you in!"
They laughed uproariously, and with that I was one of the guys.
Mike was a wargamer since the sixties. He got his rulebooks in the mail by sending checks to other guys who wrote their own rules for small groups of hobbyists. It was a very personal hobby, where the players wrote each other letters, created their own magazines, and traded money around for services, hoping to make enough to cover their hobby. Mike said they never did.
He got involved in casting metal miniatures, holding several licenses to cast them for overseas and domestic companies, and did this for decades while running a successful printing business to support his family. This was responsible for about half of the collection he had. It turns out that metal is cheap and, if you have the time and know-how, you can pump out a significant number of miniatures in just a few decades of work. The other half of his collection, the tall sailing ships, the space vessels, the hills and buildings, even the 6'x4' table covered in gothic city terrain we called Vogellville, was purchased and lovingly built by Mike.
At one point he even had his own line of acrylic paints, and still had the stand and hundreds of bottles in one of his closets.
As you began to dig around, going under the tables and pulling out boxes, or pulling back a curtain to find another cubby hole of treasure, you began to realize you could never absorb it all. Rulebooks, dice, tokens, 6mm, 25mm, 20mm, rulers, grass, flock, tape measures, more dice, cowboys, amazons, motorcycles, out-of-print 40k minis, bi-planes, ocean battle mats, hexagon pieces, more 20mm, magazines, protractors, paints, roads, boxed sets, chinese peasants, markers, chits, then BLAM(!), another box of 6mms that has to contain thousands of them. Thousands, in just that one box.
As you look up and around in awe, like I did later that day in the bathroom, you realize that you are looking at a collection of miniatures one million deep. It must be. It can only be. One million. At least.
In the end, there is no describing the length and breadth of his collection. It was seemingly unending, full of character, and glorious to behold. The mind can scarcely comprehend.
Yet, even the full light of its radiance paled in comparison to the man that was Mike Vogell. A greater friend, a more accepting one, a kinder one you would be hard pressed to find. His collection needed paragraphs to convey to the uninitiated, and even then, I assure you, I have not done it justice. But Mike, Mike I can sum up with one sentence. On his last day on Earth, he was arranging to give a large gift, worth hundreds of dollars, to me and one other friend of his, completely anonymously. "Make sure he gets it," he said, "but make sure he doesn't know it's from me." He wanted me to have it, but didn't want me to know it was from him. He didn't want me to feel like I owed him anything. He just wanted to gift me something.
In the end, Mike, you did gift me something. It was knowing you that was the gift. RIP my friend. May we meet, and game, again. It might not need your collection to be Heaven, but it certainly needs you.