In Plain Sight

I’m finally getting around to cleaning up my financial paperwork from BreyerFest. Not that I didn’t want to deal with it before, I really had other and better things to do before now. Plus, I had already done a rough estimate of the numbers, and they weren’t all that bad. The only real "overage" in the budget came from a handful of select pieces I found in the Pit - items that I couldn’t pass up, because I definitely could not have afforded them elsewhere.

(Not trying to be deliberately dodgy, but a girl’s gotta keep some secrets, y’know?)

I had already "budgeted" a bit for the Samples in the Pit, so this piece - the subject of a recent discussion on Blab - wasn’t part of that overage:


At first glance, it looks like the Zippo from the 2004 J.C. Penney SR Set, the one with the Strapless and the Amber. Notice anything different about him?

Here’s a hint: http://identifyyourbreyer.com/images/410154.jpg

My guy has the Strapless blanket! Or more precisely, the blanket from the 2002 QVC "Artist’s Proof" SR of the Zippo, in chestnut. Neat, eh?

Don’t panic, I didn’t see it at first, either. A little bird told me to be on the lookout for Zippos in the Sample boxes of the Pit this year, and when I saw one, I grabbed it and immediately stashed it in the buy pile. Even if he wasn’t anything special, I figured hey, it’s still a Zippo. I love Zippo! And he comes with a Sample Room/Pit provenance, which is a step up from your garden-variety Special Run.

I was distracted by the glare of flashier things, I guess, so I didn’t pay too much attention to him until last week. As I was poking around the Internet, catching up on a little random research, I thought I’d pull up a picture of the Black App Zippo just for kicks - and holy moley! You could have hit me with a plank.

(Note: I have been hit with planks before. So I know of what I speak here. No, you don’t need to know that story, either.)

My first inclination was to label it another one of those "Mystery/Early Bird Pit Specials" that have turned up in the past few years, like the Gloss Summer Solstices and the Fun Foal Appaloosa PAFs. There’s definitely more than one of him out there, and they are all identically painted. Seems like a logical conclusion, right?

I’m not so sure. From what I’ve been able to gather, these guys were not a deliberate attempt to drive us early risers crazy. (Actually, I’m fairly certain of it.) If they were, they would have been grouped together somewhere else, and not mixed in the Sample boxes willy-nilly. They really were just a part of the Sample Room cleanout.

Admittedly, it is a little odd that there would be a small group of identical, but different from the norm Zippos roaming around the Sample Room; I don’t know what the full story is, there. Still, regardless of what they are - Tests, Prepros, mistakes, whatever - because of the circumstances of their sale, they’ve become another "Early Bird Special" by default.