On the Dots

It’s been a quiet weekend here, for the most part. I had a touch of …something, so I thought I’d just stick close to home and sleep whenever the body told me to, which was quite a bit.

It was a good news-bad news sort of weekend, too. The good news? The medical bill I was worried about is only a fraction of what I thought it was going to be. (Whew!) The bad news? The minor repairs I took the car in for on Thursday turned out not to be.

In the end, though, it was a wash. Basically, what I thought I’d be paying for the car, I paid for the doctor, and vice versa. And I had been saving a little extra for the medical bill, so there’s no sense of financial urgency. Everything’s covered, everything’s good - for now.

Still, more money would be even better, so it was good motivation to work on the sales stuff in between my periodic lapses into unconsciousness. I should have a few more goodies up on MH$P on Monday or Tuesday. One piece that won’t be up for sale quite yet is this fascinating fellow:

An earlier Bay Jumping Horse with a fourth, short sock on his left hind leg! Usually it’s either no sock, or a full stocking on that leg. It’s not one of those "faux" socks you see sometimes when the painters stopped a little too short of the hoof in order to paint it tan or gray, and end up creating fuzzy little oversprayed pasterns and coronet bands. No, it’s an actual sock, as this shot makes even more clear:

Also clear in this shot, obviously, are his scrotum dots. I have no idea why Breyer started painting those things like that in the late 1960s. Since it was around the same time that Breyer was taking hobbyist demands for greater realism and detail more seriously, I suspect this was one of their more unusual responses.

It’s not like they hadn’t lavished painted detailing on those areas prior; it is not difficult to find earlier Fighting Stallions, Rearing Horses, and Bulls with enhanced assets. Still, kinda weird, and something we haven’t yet seen in any Vintage Club release. (I wouldn’t mind personally, but I can understand if others might object.)

The Jumper won’t be for sale for a while yet because he still needs a bit of clean-up work; he was probably the messiest of that lot I picked up last week. He is definitely not staying: I still have way too many Bay Jumping Horse variations in the herd. Most of them, I’m not sure how, managed to survive the last purge.