Drama Overload

I didn’t think the drama surrounding the Weather Girls could have gotten worse, but it has. No to Glossies, yes to Glossies, no to Glossies again, and now maybe Glossies but rare - is it any wonder I stick to more ancient Breyer history? So much less of a hassle …

How sad is it that when I heard the news about "Steppin’ Out," my first reaction was "Well, Ohio isn’t that far away…" Then I plugged in the numbers: 480 miles round trip, with gas at $3.50 a gallon? Not gonna happen, unless I can get a caravan of locals to split the costs.

http://www.breyerhorses.com/news/detail.php?eventid=880

As I’ve said before in the comments, the whole situation with another super-limited Esprit - this time, an almost generous 200-piece run - is ridiculous. Is there some sort of arcane plan to make this mold totally uncollectible to almost everyone on the secondary market, except the rich and/or crazy (and their wannabes)?

There’s only been one "large scale" release of the Esprit mold so far, and contrary to what a lot of hobbyists seem to think, it wasn’t all that large. Just because some Tuesday Mornings got one in their latest Breyer shipment does not mean that Reeves had a gigantic surplus of them. There have been low-piece count BreyerFest SRs that have ended up in Tuesday Morning stores, for heaven’s sake.

The market for pricey Breyer SRs is not that big, either - just take a look at all of the high-priced beauties gone wanting on MH$P recently. Most of them, it seems, being sold by previous attendees of super-exclusive events in order to fund their attendance at the next super-exclusive event.

Sorry, no can do, not even if I could. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of being that fickle with my horses. If I go through the trouble and expense of getting something that rare or desirable, I mean to keep it long term. More than a year or two, anyway.

Yeah, I do something similar with the stuff I find at the flea market, but on a much smaller scale financially - with lower expectations, and less grandiose ambitions. And most of it stays in the more affordable ranges: it’s been a couple of years since I had a sales item in the three-digit range, and those were models I never intended to sell, except out of financial necessity. (As in, I needed money to pay my bills, not finance another extravagance.)

Eh, enough with the griping - let’s cover a little history for a change. As promised, here’s the scan of the Poodle’s big announcement in the January, 1958 issue of Toys & Novelties:


Even though the photo is in black and white, it seems pretty obvious to me that the color of the collars is probably blue, not red. Reds tend to turn darker in black and white photography, and blues look lighter. (The collar on the white one looks much lighter in the original copy - my scanner’s being all naughty and contrasty.) There’s no real news here, only confirmation: it jibes with what we were already able to ascertain from the physical evidence.

In case you were curious, the books in the background appear to be about home decorating. That’s interesting. Was Breyer already thinking about a "Decorator" line at that point, or was it just a subtle suggestion to potential buyers about their product's potential as decorative accents?