The Inevitability of Zebras

It was a strangely quiet day at the flea market today, though I still managed to find a few good bodies and a slew of cute china miniatures. My dollar table stuff was absolutely decimated at BreyerFest this year; while I don’t make much money off of that kind of stuff, I like having that kind of “finger candy” around for the more budget-minded shoppers.

Sometimes you get just as much satisfaction buying a dollar mini as you do a $150 Web Special, you know?

Speaking of such, the BreyerFest leftovers are now up on the web site, for your shopping pleasure. Everything is available except the Surprise, the Haute Couture, and now (apparently) the Ganache.

I had been considering the Ganache myself, but I’m glad that that decision has been taken out of my hands, since I’m not really in a physical position to handle anything beyond Stablemates right now. In fact, most of my weekend was spent trying to get the inventory under control. (Still not ideal, but I’m not stubbing my toes on anything anymore!)

I would not have hesitated over a Caves of Lascaux, but none of the Pop-Up/Souvenir Store items – nor the Stablemates (rats!) – are available either, apparently.

While I had rationalized to myself that the Caves of Lascaux wouldn’t be that difficult to obtain, I knew by the Wednesday night of BreyerFest week that it wasn’t going to happen.

I thought the piece count was low, but judging from the demand Reeves probably could have doubled the run count and still sold out. I had no idea of the pent-up demand for this mold – and I don’t think Reeves did, either.

To make a long story short, though, we will be seeing more Zebra releases in the very near future.

In the past, anytime we’ve had a situation where an out-of-production mold returns to production with a low-number Special Run, more and/or larger runs tend to follow. Because the bodies are already there: knowing something of the production process as I do, it is financially impractical to run an injection mold with a piece count as low as 650.

The Web Special Polled Hereford Bull Marshall was a case in point: we hadn’t seen that mold in production since 2004. While it was certainly possible that they had 40 or so of those Bull bodies tucked away in the warehouse somewhere, it was also not a surprise that the mold returned to the Regular Run line a year later.

Whether these soon-to-be Zebra releases will take the form of a Web Special, Christmas Special, or a Regular Run item I couldn’t say.

I will say that I’m rather fond of the notion of a Silver-striped Christmas Zebra; a not-so-implausible idea, considering that they gave us a Wedgewood Blue Pronghorn Antelope last year.