Another Kind of Sampler

I found myself facing another strange hobby disconnect the other day whilst lurking about another Blab BreyerFest thread, the one where they were all complaining that "prices were too high" at the hotel and that they "couldn’t find anything worth buying there, anyway."

To which I can only say "T’wasn’t my reality."

My sales were a little bit down from last year, but that’s only because I had less to sell - I forgot a box of clinkies at home, and I didn’t have time to thin the personal herd like I wanted to. My roommates had the same experience, pretty much: we were never lacking for customers with cash. I did notice that more customers this year were unfamiliar with the concept of haggling, though, something I attributed (to a degree) on the relative newness of the attendees.

For the record, folks, there's absolutely no offense taken when dickering over price; tagged prices are intended to be optimistic. In fact, some of us take a more offense if you don't make the effort.

I also happened to find quite a bit I wanted to buy, but I was somewhat hampered by the fact that I had, ahem, overindulged a bit on Friday morning. I had the money: what I didn’t have was the room. And I’m too cheap to mail stuff home to "make" the room.

In fact, I am so bereft of sellable merchandise that in my rare spare moments, I’ve found myself trolling eBay for box lots. (Which usually stops right quick when I remind myself "Don’t you have some storage boxes to go through, lady?")

As I've mentioned above and before, I did pretty darn well in the NPOD this year. Aside from the WEG and Equine Affaire Esprits - which would have made the wait in line worthwhile, alone - I managed to score more than a half dozen Samples. On my way to check out something else that had caught my eye, I was lucky enough to stumble upon (and then get pushed against!) one of the three or four Sample boxes that littered the sales floor.

After the person in front of me (darn!) had taken her share, I rummaged through what was left that - as you may have guessed by now - was definitely not nothing.

One of the things left on the bottom of the box did look like nothing - or more precisely, like a crumpled wad of tissue paper, until I picked it up and realized "Hey, there are Stablemates in here." Those Stablemates being a complete set of the 2009 Funfetti Stablemates, still in their original mini tote bags:

Sweet! Couldn’t beat the price, either, which was considerably less than the $20 apiece they originally were. And them probably being Samples? Even better! (BTW, since they were marked as a set, I’m counting them as "one" Sample, not "five".)

Since they slightly predate the introduction of the VIN numbers, there’s no definitive proof that they were Samples, but all the evidence seems to point in that direction. They were on the bottom of a box full of Samples, many of whom were marked as such. This, for instance and honest to goodness, is the actual tag that came with my Sample Palomino Weather Girl:

Hard to believe something with a tag like that was actually getting tossed around the NPOD at one point, no? Because, OMG, she had a couple of scratches. (The horror!)

Most of my other Samples are live show quality, so a couple of scratches on another wasn't going to crush my world or anything.