Glacier

I had checked first thing in the morning for the Reeves "Christmas Surprise" and noticed it was the usual free shipping and discount blady-blah-blah-whatever they had offered before. Since the hobby, in general, had not been overly thrilled with a similar gift last year, it made me wonder if there was still a "surprise" forthcoming.

In the afternoon - after dinner, but before the food coma set in - I thought I’d check it out again, and well hey, guess what shows up:

A 40-piece Special Run Wedgewood Blue Pronghorn Antelope? Didn't see that coming. (What I thought might be coming? Either the Elk, or the Boxer.)

Okey dokey, then. They have (had?) a few other lesser surprises - leftover Kashmirs, for instance - but Glacier definitely met my qualifications for "the kind of surprise I was looking for".

What’s most interesting about the Pronghorn Antelope is his horns are not molded separately - as is the case with most of the horned Traditionals - but are integral to the mold. (The Rocky Mountain Goat is another contemporaneous example with integrated horns.)

We’ve had two previous releases on the Pronghorn Antelope mold: the original release #310 that ran from 1971 through 1976, and the #389, running from 1997 through 2005. There haven’t been a lot of releases on the Pronghorn Antelope because, well, there’s not a lot you can do with a Pronghorn Antelope.

The earlier ones are lighter, have a more "airbrushy" paint quality, and the horns tend to be light gray, veering into charcoal. The later ones are darker, are clearly masked, and have black horns and facial markings. The belly and neck markings are somewhat different, too, with the earlier pieces having a variable number of stripes on his neck, while the newer ones always have three.

Glacier’s markings and shading more closely resemble the original #310 releases, which also tended to have very high belly white.

Other than one well-known Alabaster Test Color, there aren’t a lot of known Tests, Oddities or Variations of the Pronghorns, outside of the normal amount of variation that occurs during production. The later Antelope was produced during the bi-eye era, so some may have that feature, but that’s about it.

Neither one of the earlier Antelopes is particularly difficult to find at a reasonable price, though I doubt that will be the case with Glacier: I’ve already seen three for sale. (I was kind of hoping that people would wait until the day after Christmas before they started doing that.)

For the record, though, I prefer Reeves selling these low-piece-run "weirdities" in straight up sales like this, rather than as purchase raffles like the larger-run Web Specials. It doesn’t eliminate speculators, but it does seem to cut down on the initial rush.