Unfinished Business

As you might have guessed, I am blissfully uninterested in the Passage to the Pacific. It is an event that’s clearly designed for a very, very small subset of hobbyists, a subset that can drop a month’s income on a trip on a moment’s notice. And I am not a member of said group.

(It is true that this week's one and only Powerball winner bought his/her ticket less than 30 miles from my house, but it wasn’t any one in this actual house.)

I suppose it’s nice that it’s on the West Coast, as sort of a consolation prize for there not being a BreyerWest this year, but all in all, these VIP events feel like subsidized vacays for the Reeves Staff. No thankies.

The event also ties in to the topic of privilege within the hobby, but I’m not quite ready to get into another extended philosophical discussion just yet.

Speaking of: in light of the new information that was posted on Blab, and some that I have received privately, I should have a follow up on the CheaterFest post in another day or two. I still need a little more time to collect my thoughts and clarify my opinions. (The super-short version, for those not in the know: steps are being taken to remedy the live show incident.)

Now, back to the actual horses…

One of the things that I failed to pick up in the Ninja Pit - and should have - were the two assortments of unpainted models (aka "whiteware"). They were dirt cheap - twenty bucks per assortment, with six models per box. Better yet, not all of them were weird unsellable things, either: Gem Twist, the Clydesdale Mare, the Clock Saddlebred and even Sucesion and LeFire (yes, you read that right - two of the hottest molds on the planet right now.)

My stack was already almost as tall as I was, so there wasn’t any way I could throw those boxes on the pile without losing something else. I really, really wanted to: even if I sold everything in each of the boxes for five dollars apiece, I could have made my money back, and then some.

By the time I was able to get back in the Sales tent, though, they were gone. It wasn’t a huge deal for me, since I still had plenty of bodies to sell at that point. What’s bugging me now is that I forgot to write down the numbers they assigned to each assortment.

I’ve been able to track down what was in these assortments from their rather conspicuous appearances on eBay. But naturally, the sellers haven’t exactly been eager to show the tag on the box with the assortment number in their listing, since the twenty dollar price the tag would also reveal would probably put a bit of a kibosh on their sales.  

It’s not a super-important bit of data, but dang it, you know I’m kinda anal about this sort of thing.

What’s interesting about the molds in these assortments is that so many of them had been made into Web Specials: Clock Saddlebred (Spring has Sprung), the Belgian (Red Rocket), Family Arabian Stallion (50th Anniversary FAS), Sucesion and LeFire (A Mother’s Love), and the Stock Horse Stallion (Summer Solstice).

Throw in the fact that the Clydesdale Mare and the Ranch Horse/Cody have also had a few low-piece Special Runs not all that long ago (Del Mar for the Mare; Chico and Opening Night for Cody) and you’ll see why they’ve piqued my interest.

In case you were wondering, the models in the assortments that haven’t come out as limited SRs (yet) include the Western Prancing Horse, Shetland Pony, Gem Twist, and Midnight Sun.

FYI: there hasn’t been a regular - or special - run of the WPH since 2004. Or of the Midnight Sun since 2002. While the Midnight Sun is probably out of the question, the Western Prancer? The model whose vintage Black Pinto paint job was recently repurposed for the Vintage Club Salt and Pepper release?

Hmm.