The Things We Value

I was doing a little pricing research on eBay this week – a few pieces are already up on MHSP, with more to follow throughout the weekend – and I have to say that I am utterly befuddled by the high prices Flockies are commanding there.

I’m not talking of the rare Regular Runs or Special Runs ones, or the occasional Test pieces that show up, but the undocumented “free range” ones that I had thought the hobby had all agreed were basically Customs.

It's no secret that I am not a big fan of Flockies: they creep me out, especially the ones with the glass eyes. But I will also admit that the ones made by the Riegeseckers for Breyer – the Miniature Series in the Regular Run catalogs, and all the assorted pieces available via holiday mail-order catalogs – have both historical and monetary value. And some people have taste different than my own. (Whatever you want to keep on the shelf in your horse room is your own business!)

These custom ones have some, too – they were sort of a thing in the hobby for a while, oddly enough – but the prices I’ve been seeing seem way out of proportion.

Am I missing something? Is it something I should be glad I missed? Was there a rumor of them being Tests/Culls/Decos under the fake fur-like substance? Is it a bit of bad intel multiplied by a surplus of fun money?

It seems so weird to me; sometimes I understand completely why something becomes popular, desirable, or expensive, but this one makes me shrug my shoulders.

It’s one of the many reasons I try to avoid giving out advice on value and pricing. If I were able to shape the universe as I saw fit, something like this would be more valued than it is:

It’s a Matte Black Pinto Western Pony. Like its Palomino counterpart, the majority of them are Gloss, not Matte. It’s actually a rather scarce piece, in any condition – even body quality, as here.

The Black Pinto is slightly more common than its Palomino counterpart – I see a small handful of them in the wild every year, while the Matte Palomino is about as common as the Matte Walking Horned Hereford Bull, and that one took me nearly a decade to acquire.

She came in what wasn’t supposed to be – but ended up being – a body box lot. She wasn’t the only interesting piece in the lot, but I’ll get to them when the time and moment is right.