More detail about DS setsEach year since 1983, Geobra has produced a Direct Service Catalogue which offers various items for sale over and above what is in the 'main' catalogues. In recent years these items have also been displayed in the online shop. These items include
• New sets only available from the DS department.
o Most of these sets have numbers in the range 7000 to 7999, but since 2011, set numbers between 6200 and 6599 have also been used (also 6619).
o DS sets often closely resemble earlier sets, in some cases a DS set is apparently identical to an earlier set
(see comparison of set 3627 from 1994 and its DS counterpart 6464 from 2015
here )
o For many DS sets the main difference from an earlier set is that they have no klickies included
o DS sets often come in a plastic bag or plain brown box, rather than in a full colour carton like regular sets
o Some DS sets are released to restricted markets, like the main sets. For example, 7950 does not appear in any German DS catalogue but is in UK versions.
• Re-issues of 'classic' sets, using the same set number as the original (e.g. the Excavator 3001 from 1998 was reissued in the 2011 DS catalogue and the Baron's Battle Tower 3665 from 1993 was reissued in 2004). Many of the reissues of classic sets have been under new numbers in the 7nnn or 6nnn range
• Accessories such as electric motors, railway tracks, train couplings. quartz sets for RC controllers, as well as add-on sets such as building extension sets, lighting sets, sets of accessories, etc
o Most of these have 7nnn numbers but in recent years railway track accessory sets have been numbered 4384 to 4391
• 'Standard' Playmobil sets offered 'while stocks last'. These seem to be 'end-of-line' items and are always offered several years after the original issue. What is offered varies quite a bit from country to country.
• Non-Playmobil items such as books, cups, bags and T-shirts. Some of these have typical 4-digit set numbers but have not been included in any of the statistics, graphs or totals here.
For some reason, that useful source of information on Playmobil sets, Playmobil Collector 3. Edition does not cover DS sets, the sole exception being 7411, the extension floor for the Victorian Mansion 5300.
PlaymoDB does cover DS sets . I found 48 DS sets not included in PlaymoDB, not including non-playmobil items like books, bags and T-shirts. I also found 77 sets
DS sets not in German catalogues in PlaymoDB which aren't in the German DS catalogues. These probably appear in catalogues issued in other countries. I have half a dozen UK DS catalogues but I haven't done a detailed check on the contents compared with the German versions. What is clear is that some different 'end-of-line' sets appear in UK catalogues.
I found 1438 sets featured in the 35 in German DS catalogues. Of these, 52 were issued more than once. with a gap of 1 or more years between issues. 4 sets were issued three times. Reissued DS sets are often (32 of the 52 second issues and 2 of the 4 third issues) labelled as 'NEU' (new) in the catalogue when they reappear after a gap of one or a few years. In most cases, there is nothing to suggest that the reissue is any different from the earlier issue, but in the following three cases I believe the reissue really was new, in that it was a new version of the earlier issue.
7010 First issue 1983-1994. The 1995 reissue had newer-style sheep
7071 Originally issued 1994-9. The 2003 reissue probably had newer-style fence posts, created for the similar set 7292, available from 2000-2013
7223 The 2000 reissue picture showed a canoe with two paddles but the 1998 picture showed no paddles (the actual set may have had paddles in both versions, or the earlier version may have been issued without paddles in error)
In addition, set numbers 7102 and 7303 were both used twice, for different sets:
7102a (1983) Five Color Figures
7102b (1986) Elephant Trainer Accessories
7303a (1983) Selbstlader
7303b (1986-7) Tractor Trailer
I found seven sets newly issued but without the label "NEU", so a visual search of the scans would miss these as newly issued sets for that year.
5 sets shown for the first time in the 1996 catalogue were overprinted 'Leider ausverkauft' (Unfortunately Out of Stock), so perhaps very few were actually sold (or perhaps the catalogue which gassy scanned was a version issued later in the year, after stocks had run out).
