The Second IBM

When it comes to collectibles, rarest is such a loaded word: in a hobby where 25-30 Test Colors are distributed yearly, even being unique doesn’t guarantee value or even interest.

For an item to be truly valuable nowadays, there has to be more to it than mere rarity or uniqueness.

Prior to the early 1990s, Marney Walerius’s original Gray Appaloosa In-Between Mare qualified on both counts: it was not only (apparently) unique, but historically significant as Breyer’s first failed attempt at replacing the Old Mold Mare in their product lineup after the legal dispute with Hagen-Renaker.

Then a second piece – a Woodgrain, this time – showed up in California in the early 1990s, and turned the hobby on its head. What was once an unattainable oddity was now, hypothetically, available. It was no longer a thing that could be acquired and owned by one person sequentially, it could actually be something that could be collected by multiple hobbyists.

So ironically, by being less “rare”, the In-Between Mare probably became even more valuable!

I don’t have any idea about the exact number of In-Between Mares floating around the hobby, because of the simple fact that many hobbyists have a hard time distinguishing the Family Arabian Mare from the Old Mold/Proud Arabian Mare: a mold that bridges that gap could also be sitting in many collections completely unrecognized.

It is just not rare enough that I still have hopes of finding one on the secondary market, someday: a “new” one turns up on the market every four-five years or so, more often than some other items I can think of (#82 Donkey with Baskets, ahem.)

I had a momentarily breathless moment a few weeks ago when I spotted a Woodgrain FAM at a local flea market, from a far enough distance that I thought my moment had come, but she wasn’t so it didn’t.

I didn’t have the $1000 to hit the “Buy It Now” option on a Woodgrain IBM on eBay a few years back, and I certainly don’t have the money to buy the one up for auction now.

Not that I hadn’t given it some thought: the Woodgrain at auction is that “second” piece I mentioned/pictured above. I would love to have something with that kind of provenance and historical import, but alas, my bank account still says Not Today.