Roots

Lots of news the past few days…

If you haven’t heard by now, the BreyerFest program was released earlier this week; if you download it now, though, you’ll notice the auction page is missing.

Apparently, in the first iteration of the PDF, all they did with that page was cover it with an opaque white picture box, and on some computers it wasn’t always the first item on that page to load – thus revealing all the auction models, even the “mystery” ones.

I won’t reveal them here, but you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating them…elsewhere. (Think of it as a Treasure Hunt!) All I’ll say is one of them fits with some of the recent speculation of who the Surprise SR might be.

The program also revealed that the piece counts for the two known “souvenir shop” Specials – Art Nouveau (500), and the Caves of Lascaux (650). I was expecting Lascaux to be a bit higher; I am not thrilled with that, but I’ll deal. There doesn’t seem to be a Souvenir Shop Stablemate listed in the program, but I’m not counting it out, yet.

The Sweet Home Chicago promos went up on the Breyer web site too. While it is a one-ticket-per-person deal as we suspected, it’s by drawing and not first-come, first-served. The model is a Vintage one – the rearing Traditional Mustang – in a very modern paintjob, a beautiful matte silver bay:

My luck on these kinds of drawings has been pretty spotty, so it’s another thing that’ll have to go in the “can’t worry about it” file. The only thing working to my advantage here is that a lot of hobbyists aren’t willing to travel alone, if need be, if their pre-arranged partners aren’t also selected.

Except for a few rare cases, I have almost always traveled to model horse events alone. I don’t want to get too deep into the personal details here, but it’s just been easier that way; most of my closest model horse friends are not physically close, and my other friends and family are beyond disinterested.

One time I did pick up someone locally it did work out great, but most of the time it’s ended up feeling awkward and weird. 

Some people are kvetching that this set-up is not fair to couples, but look: there’s no way to make everything fair all the time for everyone. Many of these Exclusive Events were pairs-only, and disadvantaged the singletons.

And let’s be honest, here, it’s about time there was an event that catered to us lonesome oddballs. That’s how hobbies get started: it’s when these lonesome oddballs find each other, and make a second family from it.

For an event that celebrates the founding of one of the companies that helped make this hobby exist, it only seems appropriate that the event would harken back to the hobby’s roots. 

(And really guys, take my scary roommate stories with a grain of salt. Most of them aren’t even in the hobby anymore – or likely to even enter for such an event.)