Breyer History Diva

More Pretties

2012-01-31T23:02:00.004-05:00

Looks like no Valentine’s Day Special for me. I’m okay with it; more money to pay the bills instead. (And my Glossy Joey should be coming soon!) I wasn’t planning on buying much before flea market season begins in April, anyway. Not that that plan is working all that well:

Found these at the local Salvation Army about a week ago. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t visited the store since before Christmas, so I stopped in on my way home one night to see if anything new and interesting had come in. (Well, duh.)

They were cheap - and on sale - so of course I had to rescue them. They were being used as decorations in the "designer" section of the shoe department, a high traffic area frequented by overly enthusiastic shoe fanatics and their daughters, both playing dress up.

("Designer" shoes are the ones that’ll set you back more than ten bucks, but less than 25. The "fancy-expensive" ones that go for more than that they lock up in the jewelry cases. Truth!)

My fifteen minutes of Internet research has determined that they were made by this outfit, and are (or were) apparently worth at least a little bit of money:

http://www.pjs-carousel.com/

I probably won’t be keeping either one; I was already considering doing a little herd culling in the next few months - when I can find the time, ha! - so it’s straight into "inventory" for these pretties. I won’t be planning to sell them until BreyerFest, since they’re kind of heavy, and a bit on the delicate side. I have no idea what I’ll be asking for them, yet.

Speaking of …

Aside from the strange selection of the Stretched Morgan as the Early Bird Special, what’s troubling me most is that they’ve changed the time, day and location of some well-established events. With the information not being as readily available as it used to be, I fear a lot of semi-regular attendees may try to fly on autopilot this year, with the usual consequences.

Let’s see. The auction now appears to be Friday afternoon, not Saturday night, and there’s not one, but two costume/dress up "contests." One of those contests is just before a Beatles tribute concert Saturday night - well after all of the other festivities are done for the day, which presumes we all go about our business for a couple hours in the meantime - fueling up, dressing up, and shopping up.

Oy, vey! And I thought the scheduling last year was a headache.

Not too keen on Reeves now scheduling major events on both Friday and Saturday night: that seriously cuts into our shopping/socializing time. The Ninja Pit, Raffles, and Contests are fun and all, but it ain’t BreyerFest if I can’t spread gossip among my minions and root around body boxes for misidentified treasures.

British Flavoured

2012-01-29T14:28:00.002-05:00

Spent some time yesterday poking the underbelly of the Breyer web site - the legal way, via the links, tabs and buttons.

I’d consider myself a fairly adept user - I even took some classes, back in the day, when I had delusions of being a webmaster. Even though I haven’t done much in that department since then, I still find myself obsessing over the structure of every web site I visit. If I get annoyed enough, I’ll even start sketching out - on paper, or even just in my head - how I’d reconfigure it.

I wasn’t super-impressed with the Breyer web site before, but now that I’ve spent some time wandering around the place, I think it annoys me more than almost any other site I visit on a regular basis. There’s too much "fluff" getting in the way of the "stuff". Fooey!

Rather than discuss how I’d completely restructure it, let’s discuss the BreyerFest material, which was my original reason for visiting the site.

I am not as upset as many are about the lack of true "Britishness" regarding the Celebration Horse "Mariah’s Boon", and the Store Special "Taskin". They are, if not true British breeds, at least British-flavoured.

I am as mystified as everyone else over the Early Bird Special: a Stretched Morgan mold, in Liver Chestnut? That’s one peculiar choice for a British-themed BreyerFest. Aren’t Morgans like the quintessential American breed? Kind of wondering how they’ll spin that one. (As a product of "New" England? Maybe? Whatever.)

"Bennington" seems a little blah from the picture, but that’s probably more the photographer’s fault than the horse. I certainly wouldn’t complain if I won one.

The dapply-dun-silver-whatever that is the SR Cigar "Aintree" is beautiful, but my preference between the two now public Tent SRs is the British White Bull "Bowland", on the Charolais Bull mold. I’ve wanted a British White for years, so that one’s a no-brainer for me. There’s at least one other Tent SR that’s on my must-have list, but since the photos haven’t officially been made public yet, I’ll have to continue refraining comment. (HINT: I kinda-sorta gave you a clue the last time I talked about them.)

I’m running way short of time today (work + driveway shoveling) so I’ll finish up the BreyerFest 2012 discussion tomorrow.

It's Pink?

2012-01-26T17:41:00.003-05:00

My original plan with the Breyer Blossoms program was to just buy my birth month’s horse (April) as my representative sample and ignore/bypass the rest. For all the usual reasons: no space, no money, not a lot of interest.

Judging from the photographs I’ve seen on the Breyer Facebook page, it appears that the only month I’ve seen so far that I do not like is …April. They went with a hot pink base color? Seriously?

Some daisies do come in pink; English Daisies (Bellis Perennis) have been a staple in my garden for several years now. They’re prolific, easy-to-grow, and low maintenance - essentially, a very pretty weed. But they’re not the kind of daisies that immediately spring to most folks’ minds, either.

I am not a huge fan of the color Pink. I was never a "girly girl", was never into Barbies, and my skin tone precludes me from wearing it. I don’t even use it that much in my quilting projects, even though it’s a pretty versatile and useful color, from a design perspective.

I like the other "pink" horse released this week a little better: the semi-Decorator Valentine’s Day Web Special "I’m Yours". If you haven’t seen her yet, it’s a realistic red roan Bluegrass Bandit with a kiss-shaped star, and faint kiss prints on her flanks, similar to the hearts on last year’s Huckleberry Bey.

I’m a little surprised they didn’t call her "The Kissing Bandit", but I suppose they probably didn’t want to deal with the trouble that would come their way from the parents of the more underaged components of their target audience. (The ones old enough to use Google, but not old enough yet to have had "The Talk".)

I haven’t taken a gander at the current debate about it on Blab, or elsewhere. If it’s anything like the tenor the Blab "disappeared" discussions took last week, I’m probably not missing much. I do not understand why it’s perfectly acceptable for a customizer to add exotic flourishes to a realistic paint job, but it’s an unforgivable sin if it’s part of a production paint job.

Some people like a little frou-frou, and some don’t. Depends on the model for me. I’m a tiny bit disappointed that it’s not a straight up red roan, since I already have one nonrealistic Bluegrass Bandit in the herd, but not disappointed enough to not enter for it.

What concerns me now that Reeves has moved so much of its customer interaction online is that the bugaboos and preferences of a very active, very vocal minority of those customers might end up dictating the kind of models that get released for everyone. Not everyone wants glossy, nonmetallic finishes on only conformationally-correct models by sculptors X, Y - but good heavens, not Z!

There should be room enough, and releases enough, for everyone here.

Red Flags

2012-01-23T21:05:00.002-05:00

Reeves finally got around to crediting former JAH subscribers for the remainder of their subscriptions - online store credit codes, as I expected. I’ll save mine up for either the next Web Special I win, or for BreyerFest tickets, whatever comes up first.

I wanted to write about the Valentine’s Day SR, but since Reeves hasn’t "officially" released the body shots to the public yet (as of this posting), I’ll have to put off my commentary until next time.

That’s okay, it’ll give me time to polish it into something other than me complaining about other people complaining. Been there, done that. Repeatedly.

Instead, let’s complain about something else today - like that second dubious Red Pegasus that sold on eBay for an undeserving amount of money. There’s something I can get good and righteous about!

Sigh. There are some models that just set me off. You know about the Black Adios, and I’ve (so far) spared you the ugly details about why I don’t own an SR Buckskin Adios. I’ve already done a post about my annoyance over people claiming they have Kansas City Shams, and someday soon you’ll know why I feel the same way about the "Trakehner Society" Trakehners.

This week, the Red Pegasus has entered that hallowed canon.

I’ve written before about my frustration about giving advice to people about the authenticity of rare or questionable models. All too often, it’s merely a formality: what the owner is seeking is validation of their purchase. Tell them that you have serious doubts about a model's authenticity, and some of them will either (a) tell you you don’t know what you’re talking about, or (b) go find someone else that will tell them it’s authentic.

Not a lot, mind you, but enough to give me pause.

So anyway, in spite of the fact that the seller’s story was extremely dubious to begin with - and some details later proven demonstrably false, on Blab - the second one still sold for almost $400.

What I fear most is not that it will encourage this seller - and others of similar moral caliber - to mysteriously "discover" more Red Pegasi in the attic. That’s a given. No, it’s that these auctions will be used as proof of the authenticity of future auctions to come. "Gosh, two other ones just like it sold on eBay for mucho bucks, so it’s gotta be real! Collectors must know something I don’t know!"

Ah, if only that were so. I won’t point out anyone in particular, or name any names, but there are some profoundly uninformed hobbyists out there. The kind that buy first, and ask questions later. (A philosophy that I have recommended in the past - but only in smaller, more affordable doses.)

As far as I know, there’s only one Red Pegasus that I - and most other model horse historians - would consider above reproach. All we have is one model, and some theories. No ephemera, no other corroborating evidence of any kind.

This is not the kind of evidence to bet big money on.

Privacy vs. Ponies

2012-01-20T21:56:00.005-05:00

All sorts of things I’d like to talk about today, but I suppose I am obligated to talk about the dustup that happened earlier today on Blab, regarding the stolen BreyerFest Special Run photos.

Someone - or someones, I’m not sure - apparently "hacked" their way into the less public parts of Reeves’ server, and downloaded photographs of several as-yet-unannounced BreyerFest Special Runs, as well as body shots of both sides of the upcoming Valentine’s Day Special. And then they posted them in a couple of threads on Model Horse Blab.

Reeves caught wind of it, contacted Blab, and the threads were locked down, removed from public access, and the person or persons responsible for the hacking and publishing were suspended from Blab, with insinuations that possible legal action to follow.

I just happened to be on Blab around the time the photos were being posted, and my first thought (after "ooh, I want…") was "Uh oh, someone’s been sneaking around the back end of the Breyer web site. Again."

I understand Reeves’ dismay at the situation, and I do not fault them for the swiftness or the intensity of their reaction. On the other hand, this has happened before, and Reeves should not have been surprised that it happened again. I am sort of shocked that, in light of those previous incidents, that they hadn’t beef up their security protocols by now.

This does not mean I express any sense of approval for the actions of the hacker(s) in question.

I’ve said this on numerous occasions: I love my hobby, but some of my fellow hobbyists I can do without. They don’t just lie, steal, or cut in line. They will have their children proxy show for them at youth-only live shows, trample a disabled woman in a wheelchair, and casually express (non-hobby related) opinions so offensive they’d leave most decent people dumbstruck.

Being a hobbyist does not automatically make you a good person. It just makes you someone I happen to have something in common with.

Because of this web site, and because of my reputation, I also happen to have access to a lot of (legally) sensitive Breyer information. I try my best to not spread anything questionable around, thought from time to time it does slip out, accidentally. There’s a lot of data in my head, and sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what is and isn’t permissible to say. If I do blurt out anything unacceptable, it’s not with any intent to do an Anonymous-style "gotcha" on anyone.

(Conceivably, I could, but I like enough of you that I want to stick around in the hobby a while longer, y’know?)

I didn’t download any of those pictures, nor will I relay any information about them, except in the most general sense (Glossies! Pintos! Vintage molds!) I suspect within the week, the privacy issue regarding much of that information will be moot. (That’s why they were on the server in the first place, right?)

Eating Your Mistakes

2012-01-17T18:45:00.002-05:00

Just passing through today. In addition to the crazy work schedule, I have been feeling unwell the past few days. I was a little afraid it might be a touch of whatever intestinal nastiness that has been floating around in these parts (it took out an entire elementary school!) but I think the explanation is a little more innocuous than that.

I’m a decent cook, and a good baker, but the making of candy - fudges, pralines, truffles, even simple barks - stumps me. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to overcome this deficit in my culinary repertoire.

So far, not so good. So rather than let my friends, family and coworkers suffer, I’ve been eating the mistakes. (This weekend it was Peanut Not-Very-Brittle.)

It’s advice I wish more hobbyists would take to heart.

I haven’t been able to cruise the shopping sites for my usual research lately, but frankly, it’s been a bit of a relief. I was getting annoyed with seeing the same stuff, listed over and over and over.

And I’m not talking about low-end, bottom feeder stuff. These are things that a lot of hobbyists and collectors are still willing to purchase, even in this economy - low piece run SRs, high quality show prospects, and the like. It’s the prices that are killing the potential sale: too many of them are being listed at what seems to be the seller’s "break even" point.

If you’re going to buy into the notion that your collection is part of your investment portfolio (assuming, arguendo: it's not an idea I endorse) you’re going to have to accept that sometimes, investments tank. It’s no reflection on you as a hobbyist or person, it just happens.

Happens to me, all the time. I consider it a very good year, honestly, if I can break about even on what I buy versus what I sell. If I happen to profit, hey, good for me! But most of my enjoyment is in the hunt, not the profit.

Another factor in all of this is the way the selling sites are set up: eBay allows you to list up to fifty items for free every month, and MH$P lets you list a certain number of items per month for fairly low (or no) cost. So once you make the initial investment in putting together the ad, it’s simply a matter of renewing it over and over until the darn thing finally sells.

There’s also the rationale that repetition leads to sales. There’s a reason why shopping channels like QVC "schedule" selling times in one-hour increments. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes of someone telling you how wonderful that kitchen doohickey is, repeatedly, before your brain decides it’s time to pull out the credit card.

I don’t know if that’s the case in the online model horse world, though. Every time I see the same item listed again and again - at the same price, for weeks on end - it makes me not want to deal with that seller, ever. It tells me that something’s wrong, and it’s not necessarily the model’s fault.

(Sometimes it is, but that's another issue entirely.)

Cut the price to something the current market will bear, or take it off the market. "Eat" your failures, and move on. You’ll feel sick in the short term, but you’ll recover.

One Bright Spot

2012-01-14T18:01:00.004-05:00

Wow, I had no idea this joint’s been jumpin’ while I was indisposed.

Work continues to not be as profitable as it could be. I’m stuck in the same situation I was last year: I’m getting put into smaller assignments with fewer hours, while less experienced and less accurate people are getting put into larger assignments with more hours.

It’s meant to be a compliment to me that I can be trusted on these smaller assignments (less supervision, more customer interaction), and not just lumped into the pool of available bodies. The downside is that working these "premium" assignments doesn’t come with any "premium" pay. It’s the same hourly rate, regardless, and (usually) no compensation for mileage.

So found myself in a situation last week where I would have had to drive 80 miles for 2 hours of work, while others were driving 50 miles for 10 hours of work. (That situation was resolved, more or less, but not without a lot of unnecessary kvetching by all parties.)

I did almost end up with 40 hours last week - a fine accomplishment, if it wasn’t for the fact that there was a not-insignificant number of people who ended up with more overtime last week than I had for all of last year.

And they wonder why I’ve been in a less than pleasant mood when I’ve been calling the office lately? I can do without the "honor" of making less money.

On to more pleasant subjects. Like the arrival of my latest grail, who I had the great pleasure of opening up last night:

(Yes, I know, the desk is mess.)

Yep, the WEG Traditional Man o’ War re-issue, one of only 48. Isn’t he beautiful? I feel extremely lucky to have gotten him at all: I just happened to hop on the Internet at just the right time. Another minute or two more, and I doubt I would have even seen him at all.

It’s a little hard to tell from my photograph, but he’s definitely a darker and richer shade of red chestnut than I’ve seen on most Traditional Man o’ Wars. A lot of them tend toward the orange or even pink, but this shade is much closer to the one they’ve been using on more recent releases like the Foundation Stallion Toreo, but without the metallic undertones.

Another difference: most of the original releases also have a mane and tail that are either slightly darker, or slightly grayer, than the body color, but the WEG MOW’s mane and tail are almost exactly the same shade as the body. It wasn’t a problem unique to him; a lot of earlier Breyer Chestnuts tended to have significantly darker mane and tails, a consequence of the company’s early inability to distinguish between Bay and Chestnut (and later between Chestnut and Red Dun, with Yellow Mount.)

The most obvious difference is the head, with the extra shading and the masked facial marking. And there’s the tag, too.

I was amazed that I got the Man o’ War for the price that I did, especially since the mold’s fortunes seem to be on the upswing lately. He’ll probably be the only WEG re-issue I’ll be owning in the near future (and possibly) distant future, however; the prices people are asking for many of the other super-limited WEG re-issues are somewhere in the ridiculous level. ($500 for the Haflinger, that’s barely distinguishable from the SR Strikey? Girlfriend, please.)

Letting Sleeping Molds Lie

2012-01-11T19:30:00.003-05:00

This is the kind of week I’ve been having: the post I was working on for today just vanished, completely and utterly. I was typing along, making a few grammatical corrections, and then the file just disappeared. It left no evidence behind of even existing: no recovered files, work files, error messages, nothing.

Great, just awesome. As if I wasn’t already in a pretty cranky mood. It’s mostly due to work, the circumstances of which I’d rather not talk about in public. All that can be said is that I’m very much looking forward to Friday.

The horses have also been the furthest things from my mind. I did get a package on Monday that I’d like to talk about, but it won’t be until Friday before I get a chance to even open it. The anticipation is probably the only thing keeping me from randomly smashing things with my fists.

I did see, in passing, that the old Trakehner mold has a newly resculpted tail, for the upcoming Hickstead release. I haven’t had a chance to take a good look at the photos yet, much less see one in person, but I have to say that I’m feeling a little apprehensive about the whole thing.

I understand the need to freshen up molds to keep them viable, but with the Trakehner, I’m not quite seeing the point. We already have another, more modern standing Warmblood mold: the Idocus. Why try to make the Trakehner into something they already have?

I have nothing against change: my entire life has been defined by the fact that I seem to do nothing but. What’s jarring to me is the dissimilarities in the style of these more modern hairdos compared with the molds they are applied to. As someone who was trained as an art historian, I find conflicting styles within a single artwork jarring and obvious: that’s one of the things we look for. Sometimes, it’s the only thing we’ll see.

Hess’s sculpts, particularly his pieces from the mid-1970s onward, tend to be loose and impressionistic, in stark contrast to the tighter and cleaner styles that are more in fashion today. I may be committing a great heresy by even mentioning them in the same sentence, but I think the only current Breyer sculptor who comes close to capturing that impressionistic feel is Brigitte Eberl.

(Before some of you get your knickers in a knot, remember that style and quality are two completely different things.)

Anyway, like I said, I’m not quite seeing the point with this particular change in the mold. I’m a little concerned that the tail isn’t going to look like it "goes with" it, the same way the new tail for the Stock Horse Stallion doesn’t look quite right to me. I am a little too fond of the old Trakehner mold, and I don’t want to find myself reduced to obsessing over his tail.

Back to work, again.

Forgettable

2012-01-08T15:18:00.004-05:00

I can’t believe I forgot about the Llanarth True Briton model in my discussion of potential BreyerFest Pony specials. Again! What is it about that mold that sinks it down my own personal memory hole?

(Yeah, I also forgot about the Cantering Welsh Pony and Newsworthy, but the forgetfulness doesn’t sting as much with them, somehow.)

Another pony that seems to inspire forgetfulness is the Galiceno Pony. Here she is in her original release of Bay:

It’s easy to see why she’s overlooked: like a lot of Breyer molds from the late 1970s, she’s a little on the bland and generic side (Stud Spider, anyone?) The mold itself is competently done, with a rather nicely sculpted head, but it’s definitely not one that inspires collector passion.

The mold has come in a small, but not displeasing assortment of colors over the years. In addition to the Bay, there have been two shades of Dun - a lighter shade as the 743 Criollo Pony, and a more metallic one for the BreyerFest 2004 Maracas Contest Prize - and a masked Black Leopard Appaloosa, as the portrait model for the POA Foundation Sire Black Hand. (Very well done, in my opinion.)

Then there was Freckle Doll, another one of Reeves’ more inexplicable pinto paint jobs:

I know I wasn’t the only one who opened the box, flipped her around, and then proceeded to yell out loud "That’s it - one big white splotch? Are you serious?"

I like to imagine that the Powers-That-Be must have forgotten that the mold already came in Bay, rubberstamped it for production, only realizing a day or two later the magnitude of the mistake. Which some brilliant quick thinker "solved" with a bit of acetone and a cotton ball.

I have absolutely nothing to back me up on this hypothesis, other than the wealth of other crazy-but-true stories I’ve heard that would make it seem not-implausible, at least.

The one advantage to the mold’s generic nature is that you can dress it up any way you want, and turn it into almost anything you need. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Galiceno could turn up as a BreyerFest special this year. I think she’d be rather fetching in some shade of gray, dappled or otherwise.

Betting on the Ponies

2012-01-05T20:57:00.004-05:00

I’ve had a lot of "Where am I? What day is it?" moments this week: I’ve essentially either been at work, or asleep, since 3 a.m. Tuesday. (Don’t ask.) Mercifully, I have this evening off, though I plan on spending most of it catching a few more snores before starting it all over again at 3 a.m. tomorrow.

(Blast these early assignments!)

It appears that the Taskin model is going to be a Store Special, after all. I haven’t followed up on the links though, to confirm, so take it with a grain of salt. No confirmation on the piece count, from what I’ve seen, but I expect it to be in the 500-750 range. The most recent Store Specials were 750 pieces, but the Dusty didn’t sell all that well, so 500 pieces wouldn’t be out of the question either.

I haven’t given much time or thought to BreyerFest, otherwise. It is about that time of year when they start peppering us with the PR though, isn’t it? I’m curious to see how they handle this in the post-JAH era. Since I’ll be on this work routine for the next couple of weeks, you guys will probably get the scoop on the latest BF news well before I do.

From what I can see, most of the current BreyerFest speculation seems to be focusing on potential pony-based SRs. A Bouncer is a no-brainer, and the 2004 XMAS SR Highland Pony Piper also a very distinct possibility, especially as the designated "Nonplastic" release.

I know there’s a lot of "hatin’" concerning the Traditional Hackney mold, but I wouldn’t rule him out as a possible mixed/crossbred pony, to compensate for his chunkiness. Most of us would prefer a new plastic Hackney, it’s true, but I think it’s more likely we’ll see one as a new resin in the "Breeds of the World" series, if at all.

(Did you know that the H-R Brookside Stella was among the molds considered for release by Breyer, back in the 1970s? I’m assuming the technical challenges posed by the mold put her out of contention. But oh, if only…)

I wouldn’t object to an SR of the original old Shetland, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they didn’t. No disrespect intended towards the Shetland Pony mold, but I think we’re long overdue for a new mold Shetland, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one shows up in the very near future. BreyerFest? Maybe.

If it’s not, I’m hoping it’s a Dales Pony. There’s a chance they could take the cheap and easy route, and just slap an appropriate paint job on the Piper mold, but I’m really hoping the fact that they specifically name dropped the Dales in the BreyerFest writeup in the last issue of JAH means a new mold is in the works.

You have no idea how much this idea excites me: I don’t know what it is, but I just love Dales Ponies! They most closely approximate my image of the ideal pony: sturdy, sensible, versatile, a little on the big side, a bit shaggy (but not excessively so), who also cleans up well if need be.

If I were a nonclumsy Nonplastics collector, I’d have an entire army of Hadrians.

Getting late (relatively speaking.) Time for bed.

A Draft of Champagne

2012-01-02T19:50:00.002-05:00

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous. My next grail search didn’t even last the weekend.

Dang, I’m gonna have to start dreaming bigger. I’m not a gambling person, at all, but the next time a friend or coworker asks me if I want to go to the casino, I’m taking them up on the offer.

(You’ll have to wait a little longer than a weekend, however, before you find out who this latest grail was. He ain’t here yet, anyway.)

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a picture of the possible BreyerFest Store Special for this year: a champagne buckskin Goffert!

http://www.villavanners.com/welcome.htm

I say possible because the wording on the web site about it is open to interpretation:

Villa Vanners is proud to announce that Taskin has been chosen to be a limited edition Breyer model. He will be appearing at Breyerfest British Invasion next July.

He could just as easily be a Line Special, Web Special, or even a Mid-Year, based on that description.

If he really is going to be the Store Special, he’ll definitely go over better than last year’s bland little Dusty. A big, fluffy draft horse in an unusual color? Duh. If he looks as promising as he sounds, I might even get one myself.

The usual suspects are making the usual grumping and harumping noises (Gypsy Vanners are a scam! It’s not a British Breed! I hate Goffert!), but one of my New Year’s resolutions is to pay less attention to the negativity in the hobby, and in life in general. I’m not going to turn into a Pollyanna by any means, but good grief, some of the stuff I’ve been seeing in the model horse community over the past month or so is enough to make me consider joining a religious order.

(What’s up with everyone wanting to sue everyone else, all of a sudden?)

Sometimes a pretty horsie is just a pretty horsie. Nothing wrong with that.

I already made some changes to my diet and lifestyle last month, so I’m thinking about something a little more nebulous in the resolution department. I liked the discipline I developed during NaNoWriMo, so I might apply the same working regimen to other unfinished business here. (Quilting and sewing this month, I think.)

I’ll also like to take a bit of a mental breather from the horse stuff. It’s not going to affect anything here; it’s more a matter of slightly refocusing and compartmentalizing, creating a space my personal life where the horses need not intrude.

Sometimes it’s good to get away from the horses once and a while, too.

Stripes

2011-12-31T22:22:00.005-05:00

I finally found one of my most coveted grails:

It’s the #154 "Bay" Blanket Pony of the Americas, with the factory striped hooves. It’s the version that appears in the Dealer’s Catalog and Collector’s Manual in 1979, the year it was released, as well as on the original version of the box it came in (which I also have, but can’t find at the moment.) Here it is in the Dealer's Catalog:

This is what a more typical Bay POA looks like, with dark gray-brown or black hooves:

You’ll notice that the color appears to be different too - it’s definitely darker and richer in the striped hoof version, with darker splash spotting. However, I haven’t seen enough of these variations to tell if this is an actual characteristic of this particular paint job, or a consequence of the natural variation that occurs over the length of production.

I had’t noticed much variation in the paint job of the Bay POAs before, but I it’s also true that that’s not the first thing I’ve been looking for when I’ve been looking at them. It’s those darn hooves that have transfixed me ever since I saw them on the darn box, ca. 1979. The Bay POA that came in that box - the same non-striped one you see above - was by no means deficient qualitatively, but it wasn’t the one I really wanted. I wanted the one with those cute little striped toes!

After several years of looking, I had become convinced that the striped hoof versions were, like so many other items seen in the catalogs and manuals of the times, preproduction or test pieces that were either long gone, or now beyond my reach. Those striped hooves, I reasoned, must have been deemed a detail that was deemed too fussy, or funny-looking, or too expensive for long-term production.

Then eBay came along, and I started seeing just enough of them to convince me that they may have been a legitimate - albeit very briefly issued - variation. Or possibly used on the original salesman’s sample pieces: I have noticed that salesman’s samples do seem to turn up on eBay with a greater frequency than normal, due to the very nature of the site.

In either case, I realized that my "grail" wasn’t completely unattainable.

Alas, I wasn’t the only one who was looking, apparently. I always got outbid or outmaneuvered, until now. Now I can exhale, and find another possibly-not-unattainable grail to obsess over now.

Coincidence, not Intent

2011-12-29T21:03:00.003-05:00

Like a lot of hobbyists, I was sort of expecting that since it was intended as a "gift" that there would be few (if any) of the Glossy War Horse SRs up for pre-sale. Then one person gets a $500 offer, and bingo, at least two others turn up on MH$P with similar starting prices.

Oh well. At least none of them have shown up on eBay. Yet.

(Nothing wrong with them reselling it, but I always thought the number one rule on regifting was being discreet about it. I suppose "not listing it on eBay" counts as discretion, nowadays.)

I wouldn’t read too much into Reeves having an account on eBay themselves, now (breyeranimalcreations); according to their profile, they’ve had it since February of 2009, and are only now starting to use it, presumably as part of their increased online presence.

I don’t foresee them using the account to actively compete against other hobbyists/vendors; I could see them using it to make things like Test Colors, Artist’s Proofs, and charity models (like Hermes?) available to people who couldn’t attend or participate in the events they are usually exclusive to. That would be a good thing, I think. (Online auctions ending simultaneous to the BreyerFest ones would create some interesting theatre, don’t you think?)

As I mentioned in the last post, the only 2012 release I’ll be actively looking for in the coming year will be the new Fury/Prancer, partly because he was so completely unexpected. He’s right up there on the list of "models least likely to get a rerelease," at least as a free-standing piece.

I wouldn’t call myself the Fury/Prancer mold’s number one fan, but I like him enough to put him in my masthead. A Black Pinto Prancer was one of my first "official" hobby purchases; I bought it, sight unseen, excited at the possibility of owning a model that was born before I was.

The color they selected for the new release is interesting; when I first saw it, it made me think of the small SR or Test Color batch Bay Pinto Western Prancing Horses Breyer made sometime in the late 1960s. Here’s a picture of one from Marney’s album, which I presume was hers:

I’m going to assume the selection of the color is a coincidence, and not an intentional homage to this known Breyer obscurity. They wanted to go with a suitably vintage-looking paint job, and the Fury/Prancer came in just about every color they made back then, except some variation of the Bay. Reeves could have gone with something solid, like a Charcoal, or with another pattern, like Gray Appaloosa, but I get the sense they were fairly committed to a pinto paint job.

If the mold’s currently in production, there’s always the possibility of one of those other vintage-flavored releases this year, right? I’d especially be interested in a Gray Appaloosa one, myself.

Rinty and The War Horse

2011-12-26T21:42:00.005-05:00

I should probably go buy a lottery ticket: not only did I win one of those auctions I didn’t think I had a shot on, I got picked for the Glossy War Horse giveaway, too.

I had completely forgotten about it most of Christmas Day, until my brother asked me about it. I had a good excuse: dinner included Barbecue Ribs, Mashed Potatoes with cheese and bacon, Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic Breadcrumbs, and Rhubarb Pie. I think cookies may been involved, but I might have passed out before then.

The office was already looking a wee bit crowded, but now it looks like my plans to lay off any serious selling until Spring might have to be modified.

I might still put it off. Other than the Vintage Club stuff, and the "Limited Edition Retro Release" of the Fury/Prancer next year, I don’t foresee myself adding too many more herd members between now and then. I like the Roan Bouncer, too, but as hot as that mold is right now, I’m more than happy to let other folks buy up the first few batches. There's always the possibility that Reeves might pull another semi-random gloss/matte thing too, like they did with the Valentine and Heartbreaker set.

(With the Lady Phase set most likely, if they do. Because the possibility of random gloss Bouncers is a little too terrifying to contemplate.)

Among my more conventional holiday gifts was the book about Rin Tin Tin I had mentioned earlier. Just as I suspected, the "figurine" that inspired the author Susan Orlean to write the book - and to which she devotes the entire prologue to - was a Breyer Rin Tin Tin: there’s a picture of one right on page two.

I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, but from my brief skimming of the text, it's not only central to the narrative, it's actually called out as a Breyer. So what we’ve got here is a book by a bestselling author that really was inspired by a Breyer model.

Sweet. I mean, I would have bought the book anyway, since I'm also a little obsessed with silent movies in general, but goodness, silent movies and Breyer models, all in one book? Put the cookie dough back in the freezer, ladies, I am out for the count.

In light of their promotion surrounding The War Horse (another story about an animal, set during the First World War), of the launching of the Vintage Club, and (what I presume will be a series of) Limited Edition Retro Releases, re-releasing the Rin Tin Tin seems like the most logical and obvious thing to do, n’est-ce pas?

Regardless, it’s still a book worth adding to your Breyer reference library, if you’re into that sort of thing as much as I am. (As I assume a significant portion of you do.)

More Condition Issues

2011-12-23T22:11:00.004-05:00

I sometimes joke that if I were any more clumsy than I already am, I’d qualify for a handicapped parking permit.

Well, just to let you know, I’ve fallen down the steps twice now, in three days. Nothing damaged, as far as I can tell, but I already have a rather high threshold for pain (on account of the clumsiness) so I might not be the best judge.

My Silver Filigree Weather Girl also survived a slight tumble, fortunately while still boxed. (It wasn’t me, I swear.) I have to say that I’m liking these new shipping boxes Reeves is using now. They’re a lot strong than they look, and a lot sturdier than the ones they were using previously, which looked and felt like they were made out of recycled paper towels. They are a bit snug in the size department, though. I know they’ve got size requirements to meet, but an extra half-inch here or there would definitely inspire a little more confidence.

While we’re on the topic, look what just happened to show up on eBay this week - a 1979 Lady Phase, with some interesting condition issues:

1979 Lady Phase

Before y’all get super-upset with the hobbyist in question, let me remind you that things were a little different back then. Making alterations - adding or removing markings, or tweaking the mold - wasn’t that big a deal back then. Even I did it: I will not go into detail, but I did some unspeakable things to an SR Red Roan Running Mare.

We were all young and kinda dumb. Plus, you know, there were a bunch of different buckskin Lady Phases floating around, and we didn’t bother trying to distinguish between them until much later, when we realized, duh, that some of them really were sorta rare. (And I didn’t realize that the Running Mare was an SR one until the damage was done.)

It looks like the latest NAMHSA controversy has flamed out. As expected, it was much ado about nothing. Not nothing nothing, but blown out of proportion to the actual incident. More proof that an e-mail list is good for nonlinear information (announcements, requests, questions that do not require lengthy answers) and not for anything that requires follow through, or follow up (debates, discussions, socializing.)

Just to clarify, the kind of web site or hub I’m envisioning probably wouldn’t include a discussion forum. Discussion forums are good for the things that e-mail lists generally are not (debating-discussing-socializing), but not so great with handling nonlinear information, especially when topics start to drift.

It’s the nonlinear information that I’m most concerned about: news and general information that should be available to most people - hobbyists and nonhobbyists alike - with just a click or two, without any further involvement or commitment. The bulk of it would include announcements about special runs, contests, live shows, volunteer opportunities, real horse stuff of specific interest to hobbyists, model horses in the media, etc.

(I'm not sure articles on more narrowly defined topics would be necessary, or helpful, at least in the beginning.)

The rest of it would be devoted to promoting the hobby online, especially to the hobby-curious, with general information of what the hobby is about, what it entails, and where to go for more information. The sort of thing I imagined that NAMHSA should have been doing from the onset, rather than going all in on a national show, instead.

If we want to get serious about making the hobby to grow and prosper, we need to make the online hobby presence less intimidating to newbies, and easier to navigate.

More Information Wonkery

2011-12-20T22:41:00.002-05:00

Did a little Snoopy Dance yesterday upon receiving notification of "winning" a Mont Tremblant. I’m thinking of calling her Le Quatrieme, which roughly translates from the French as "the fourth one", since she will be my fourth Silver Filigree.

I suspect that she’ll probably be the last horse I get this year, though, since it’s very likely that I’ve used up the last bit of good karma I had to get her. I’m not writing off The War Horse drawing or any of the eBay auctions on my watch list, yet, but I’d totally understand if I come up zero for everything else for the remainder of the month.

Which is fine, actually. Bills to pay, and all that.

I see that they shipped out the Stablemates Hermes models this week - and no surprise, someone turned around and sold one already, for a nice little profit. It’s nobody’s business but the buyer’s and the seller’s, I suppose, but I does make me wonder if the buyer was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the distribution of the model.

It’s become quite clear to me that the information about Hermes hasn’t been as widely distributed as it should have been.

Sadly, this is rather typical of the online hobby, as a whole. One of the things that drives me absolutely crazy is that, in spite of its relatively small and self-contained nature of the online hobby, reliable information does not travel well within it. Information that is - or should be - widely known or generally accepted just isn’t.

It’s not too bad in places like Fallen-Leaves or Blab where, because of the format, anything and everything becomes grist for the mill. The problem there is more of the "operator error" type: there are individual members of those boards who seem phenomenally clueless, but the information is still theoretically available to them. And sometimes, a question from a genuinely uninformed hobbyist will sparks a worthwhile debate or discussion.

Whenever I take one of my semi-regular trips to places like Haynet, or Breyer’s Facebook page, however, I always find myself taking a deep breath before I click. Questions of fact you thought were answered months ago, and in excruciating detail, are still up for debate.

It’s partly the audience: these are the kind of places where low-information, low-involvement, or very narrowly focused hobbyists tend to congregate, and where high-information, high-involvement, more general interest hobbyists have largely fled for greener pastures. These places have become largely self-contained, and where new or revitalizing information rarely seems to venture.

Part of me wants to help out in some of the lower-information forums, but the very format of these places simply isn’t really designed to handle either extended discussions, or to aggregate information, as the current brouhaha going on in the NAMHSA-Discussion Yahoo Group illustrates all too well.

Transitioning these low-information hobbyists to more high-information formats would seem to be the solution to the problem, but it’s not as simple as that. Some people are very wedded to their information sources of choice - and very much against others.

I agree, in theory, that the Blab forum format would go a long way in tempering some of the periodic dust-ups that occur on the NAMHSA-Discussion list, but there is a not-insignificant group of hobbyists who’d rather eat live goldfish than even venture there. Either because of the reputation it has among certain classes of hobbyists, or because the format itself seems too overwhelming.

If I had time to create a non-partisan, model horse news hub, I’d do it, but I don’t. I barely have time to answer my e-mails or edit my link list, much less start a hub.

Mont Tremblant, Etc.

2011-12-17T22:34:00.004-05:00

In retaliation for the kind of crummy day I had today, I ate most of a large bag of M & Ms. Probably not the best move on my part, but it really was the best choice of solutions I had available to me.

I also opened my Fall in Love today; he’s very nice. A couple of odd little flaws, but nothing to freak out about. His masking is very clean, and he has just the right amount of shimmer in his coat. I’m not quite sure where to put him yet; the odd shape of the Nokota Horse mold makes it a little difficult to accommodate on a shelf.

The name of the SR Mont Tremblant Weather Girl suggested to me the kind of vacation "the right kind of people" take during their winter break. So I was fully expecting the announcement of the lottery/drawing to happen over the Christmas weekend, with the winners being notified on the first day after the holiday (as just the thing to blow your gifted moolah on!)

This weekend? Okey-dokey.

The piece count on her is interesting - 350, instead of the 150-200 piece runs we were assuming were (going to be) the norm with the revamped Web Special program. It may still be the case, with Mont Tremblant’s upped piece count due to the overwhelming demand the Silver Filigree special runs have had in the past. I don’t think it’ll affect the resale value too much, either: the run is still (technically) quite small, and the demand for Silver Filigrees (and Weather Girls) is still quite high.

The announcement of a "gift horse" drawing - in the form of a 100 piece gloss SR for The War Horse, on the Foundation Stallion mold - is a very pleasant surprise. I may be indifferent to the charms of the movie itself, but not to a super-limited glossy Foundation Stallion.

I wonder if they’ll be making gifting a semi-regular thing? (Hmm. Limited Edition pastel-colored Stablemates in Easter Egg packaging, for Easter? I could go for that!)

Lost in the hubbub surrounding the special runs was announcement of the resolution of the international ordering problems on the Breyer web site. Remember when everyone was getting all righteously indignant about this last month?

It gets fixed, and nobody seems to notice or care, presumably because they’ve all moved on to the next outrage. Which I’m guessing is Thrillseeker, based on the length of that thread about it on Blab. (I didn’t get drawn for one, so my interest in that discussion has been fairly minimal.)

Speaking of, it seems that Reeves has finally decided on making its presence known there as "NewBreyerHelper." They haven’t formally said as much, but it does appear to be someone using the editorial we in postings about matters pertaining to the web site today. An interesting development, to say the least (I wonder how many "friend" requests they’ve gotten by now?) I’m guessing it’s part of a run up to the "forum" Reeves has mentioned in passing on the new web site.

I’ve got holiday projects to finish, so toodles…

The 1963 Dealer's Catalog

2011-12-14T22:30:00.002-05:00

Sure wish I could remember what brand of batting I used on the quilt I finished yesterday, because it felt like I was quilting through cardboard. I can just barely flex my fingers today, so if you see any typos above and beyond my usual quota, there’s my excuse.

(Web surfing’s been extremely entertaining today, to say the least.)

I got all excited last week when I noticed someone had listed a "1965" Breyer Dealer’s Catalog on eBay. Alas, it was only a 1963 with the 1964 inserts:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCARCE-Vintage-1965-BREYER-ANIMAL-CREATIONS-Horse-DEALERS-COLOR-Manual-CATALOG-/190610885026?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c614b49a2

A true 1965 Dealer’s Catalog is very similar to the 1963, but comes with an extra, bound-in signature, rather than loose insert sheets. Since I have the 1963 and the 1964 inserts, I didn’t pay any more attention to the auction after that. The letter that it came with would have been nice, but I already have two that predate that.

I was doing a little bit of research on some completed listings yesterday, and when I ran across it again, I did a double take on the price. I really wasn’t expecting it to go quite that high: I thought it’d land somewhere in the $200-225 range, not $300+.

It is true that I paid about the same amount of money for my 1963 Catalog with 1964 inserts. However, my lot also came with the Red Bird Sales pages that included the (so far) only known documentation for the original Buckskin Running Mare and Foal. When I bid on that lot way back when, the majority of my money was going towards those extras. The Dealer’s Catalog just happened to be an excellent "comes with."

What was shocking to me about the price on this latest auction is that the 1963 is probably the least rare of the pre-1970 Dealer’s Catalogs. They’re by no means "common," but of all the other known Dealer’s Catalogs, the 1963 is the easiest to obtain - easier than most of the late 1960s, even.

I think that is because I think Breyer printed up way more of them than they did of any of the other early Dealer’s Catalogs.

But why, and to what end?

I suspect that Breyer blew a big wad of cash on the 1963 catalog in an effort to upgrade the image of the brand in the eyes of retail buyers. It was clearly designed to do more than just sell specific products to existing buyers: it’s 16 pages, and in full color. Most of Breyer’s PR materials prior were either smaller in scale, or made limited use of color printing.

In some respects, I think it might have also served double duty as Breyer’s first "Collector’s Manual." It wouldn’t surprise me if Breyer had kept a few cases of this Dealer’s Catalog in the offices to mail out to all the kids that were writing to them back then. My 1963 Catalog came in a lot with a similar letter to a prospective collector, too.

It’s still a very, very good thing to have in anyone’s reference collection, but dang, I sure hope that price is not a harbinger of future ephemera auctions to come.

Buckskin Lady Phases

2011-12-11T22:46:00.003-05:00

The Seasonal Affective Disorder must be kicking in, because I’m feeling spectacularly unmotivated today. I haven’t even begun making one of Mom’s Christmas presents, and the other two aren’t looking so hot either.

I have lots of time on my hands for the next two weeks, so everything will be fine. It’s just the getting started part that’s hard, especially when you’re trying to finish at least a half dozen other projects, too.

Here’s one of those handful of things - besides Fall in Love - that I’ve added to my own herd recently:

It’s the 1980 Model Horse Congress Buckskin Lady Phase, the one with the pinked nose, B mold mark, and black eartips!

That means I now have examples of all three Buckskin Lady Phases special runs: the 1979 VaLes Solid Buckskin with charcoal/black nose, the 1980 MHC Special Run, and the 1983/84 J.C. Penney’s Buckskin with bald face.

(Yes, I know the JCP one comes in a solid-faced variation. Notice that I prefaced my statement with the phrase "examples of"? )

One of the most infuriating bits of misinformation that gets passed around on the Internet is that of the alleged rarity of the Buckskin Lady Phase. A case could be made for the 1979 or the 1980 ones being especially difficult to acquire, and I wouldn’t argue with that: there were only about 200 made of the 1979 SR, and about 240 made of the 1980.

On the other hand, however, the J.C. Penney version was probably one of the most popular Christmas special runs Breyer ever made: according to Nancy Young’s Breyer Molds & Models, around 8,000 sets were made over the course of its two year run.

Eight thousand pieces is not "rare," neither then nor now.

I can remember a time when Buckskin Lady Phases were so common that customizers resorted to using them as bodies. Lady Phases became unexpectedly hard to find right around the time she was discontinued in 1985. The story goes - as I heard it from Marney, anyway - was that the last batch of Lady Phases made before she was discontinued in 1985 were lost in a fire.

With no fresh bodies available in the store, no new regular runs on the horizon, and several hundred - if not thousands - of Buckskin ones cluttering up hobbyist shelves, what else are you going to do?

(FYI: I don’t believe enough Buckskin Lady Phases were lost to customizing to affect their overall rarity. Enough to skew the perception within the hobby, maybe, but not overall.)

In the intervening years, a lot of hobbyists conflated the 1979 and 1980 special runs with the later J.C. Penney run. You’d think with all the Buckskin Lady Phases floating around that hobbyists would do the math and realize that they weren’t quite as rare as they thought they were.

Alas, many of our fellow hobbyists just aren’t that good at math. And are all too often plagued by the ghosts of wishful thinking.

Even so, the 1979 and 1980 special runs are still genuinely hard to come by. On average, I see about one of the 1979 pieces up for sale or auction per year, if that; the 1980 examples aren’t a whole lot more numerous.

I was lucky enough to get my 1979 one in 1979, straight from the dealer (yeah, I’m THAT old.) I had been shopping around for a 1980 for some time now, but the few that had come up recently had been significantly out of my price range.

This little lady wasn’t because (obviously) she wasn’t mint. I’m not much of a shower, so I’m totally okay with that. I’m not exactly mint, myself.

Showcase Collection

2011-12-08T21:01:00.004-05:00

My Fall in Love arrived today, but I haven’t opened it yet, because there’s nothing better than getting a box with your name on it in the mail, am I right? I just want to savor that moment a little bit longer.

(No, I’m not waiting ‘til Christmas. I have another package coming in a day or two, so I’ll open it then.)

I was just going over my horse paperwork again, yesterday - good gravy, I bought a lot of stuff this year. Fortunately, the bulk of the purchases consisted of either items I was picking up for others, or were a part of those three collections I acquired (over 100 pieces, right there.) I really didn’t buy too much for me myself, outside of the things I picked up at BFest.

Even after all that buying, I only have about two tubs worth of horses in inventory - a lot for most hobbyists, but about average for me. I should be happy to have as "little" to sell as I do right now, other than books and bodies. Even less would be better, but with the Mont Tremblant coming up, I’m not going to hold my breath. Whatever sells, sells.

If you’re interested in buying anything of mine, all the hobby things that I want to sell will be listed on MH$P by Friday night. The only other stuff I plan on selling by the end of the year will be a few non-hobby, non-horsy odds and ends I might toss on eBay sometime over the weekend.

Speaking of both boxes and eBay, you’ve probably noticed that pair of horses in Showcase packaging - a Palomino Five-Gaiter and a Bay Family Mare - and the prices they’re bringing.

(From the 1971 Collector’s Manual)

There were 54 different models that were released in the Showcase packaging from 1970 through 1972, though because of the fragile nature of the plastic used to make the plastic clamshell box, it’s highly unlikely anyone will be able to acquire a complete collection. A few pieces, including the Black Grazing Mare, Alabaster Western Pony, Smoke Running Mare and Foal, and the Appaloosa FAS and FAM were only available for a single year, making them rarer still.

Here’s the list, more or less; I didn't distinguish between the two slightly different variations in the packaging itself (also worth noting: they dropped the trailing zero on the issue numbers for the Yellow Mount and the Indian Ponies after 1970):

0130 Bay Arabian Stallion
370 Appaloosa Arabian Stallion
380 Appaloosa Arabian Mare
400 Palomino Arabian Stallion
410 Black Pinto Western Pony
430 Palomino Western Pony
450 White Western Pony
470 "Famous Thoroughbred" Man o' War
480 Black Morgan
490 Bay Morgan
500 Palomino Arabian Mare
520 Sorrel Five-Gaiter
530 Palomino Five-Gaiter
550 Black Pinto Western Horse
570 Palomino Western Horse
700 Alabaster Arabian Stallion
0800 Alabaster Arabian Mare
800 Clydesdale
830 Clydesdale Mare
840 Clydesdale Foal
970 Sorrel Appaloosa Gelding
980 Buckskin Quarter Horse
1010 Liver Chestnut Quarter Horse Yearling
1020 Palomino Quarter Horse Yearling
1030 Sandy Bay Appaloosa Yearling
1100 Smoke Western Prancing Horse
1110 Buckskin Western Prancing Horse
1120 Palomino Western Prancing Horse
1140 Bay Western Prancing Horse
1150 Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse
1190 Red Roan Running Mare
1200 Alabaster Running Mare
1210 Smoke Running Mare
1230 Dapple Running Mare
1240 Chestnut Running Mare
1300 Alabaster Running Foal
1310 Smoke Running Foal
1330 Dapple Running Foal
1340 Chestnut Running Foal
1400 Bay Arabian Mare
1410 Bay Grazing Mare
1420 Black Grazing Mare
1430 Palomino Grazing Mare
1750 Brown Pinto Indian Pony
1760 Buckskin Indian Pony
1770 White Indian Pony
2000 White Old Timer
2010 Charcoal Arabian Stallion
2020 Charcoal Arabian Mare
2050 Dapple Old Timer
2110 Alabaster Proud Arabian Stallion
2120 Mahogany Proud Arabian Stallion
5000 "Famous Standardbred" Adios
5100 "Famous Paint Horse" Yellow Mount

It’s one of the few examples of rare packaging that I don’t have in my collection yet, and at those prices they been bringing, it’s not going to happen anytime in the near future. I guess I got a little spoiled that I was able to acquire all of the packaging examples I did before this crazy little boomlet on them took off.

I’ll just have to wait - and hope - that one shows up in these parts someday.

Scary Christmas

2011-12-05T23:19:00.004-05:00

This is what we have to resort to in order to have a Christmas tree this year:

Everything (except the fort) is made from felt, fabric or gold lame. We may eventually replace the deck furniture with some picket fencing or that plastic lattice you put under your porch to keep the groundhogs out, so we don’t have to spend out days chasing the canine version around the house with her latest treasures.

Speaking of Christmas, here’s your "Scary Christmas" craft item for the year, from my vintage craft archive:

It's Frosty’s Cousin Slushy!

It’s from an otherwise tasteful book of simple, understated holiday craft projects called Christmas Magic, written by Margaret Perry, and published by Doubleday in 1964. I had high hopes for the book when I picked it up last year at the local book sale - if they thought a drunken snowman with a mace was worth putting on the cover, it had to be good, right? Alas, nothing else in it was quite as frightening. Bummer.

I started listing more stuff on MH$P this week, again; more average stuff, nothing especially noteworthy. Then again, their lack of spectacularness just might make them stand out. How many people are selling their Thrillseekers and Fall in Loves, anyhow? I understand needing to make a quick buck around the holidays, but the odds of selling aren’t so great when you’re competing with 15 to 20 other identical items.

(I’m still mulling over the right way to sell all of my extra bodies. I might just list most of the less trendy/correct ones together and have people mix and match their own assortments.)

I suppose I should have something a little bit Breyer and/or history related here, for a change. So here’s something that's also vaguely Christmas-y, a nice old Breyer #77 Elk:

This example is actually quite early; he lacks the USA mold mark, which means he’s from 1968 or 1969. That’s pretty much the only way you can distinguish an early Elk from a later one, unless you’re lucky enough to find one with a Blue Ribbon sticker. The paint job on the original release of the Elk, which ran from 1968 through 1997, didn’t vary much. Earlier ones tend to be a little more brownish, and later ones a bit more reddish, but neither the variation nor its correlation with age is strong enough for most collectors to bother with.

His giant rack doesn’t help, either. Like the Moose or the Longhorn Bull, he’s another one of those models that eats up way too much valuable shelf space.

I put off getting an Elk for several years, hoping I’d find a nice, cheap one at the flea market eventually. Despite the model’s long run, though, I never did find one at a suitable price or condition there.

I found the Elk of my dreams on - where else? - eBay.

In a fit of boredom or curiosity one day, I started clicking on Breyer Elk auctions, and happened to find this fellow - complete with a detail shot of his mold mark, sans USA. Normally I make fun of eBay listers who post mold mark shots, which I usually mock as the sign of a Breyer amateur. (Silly peoples, most of us clicking on the auction don’t need no mold mark shot to tell us it’s the real deal.)

In this case, it was actually helpful, since it provided me the one real clue to his true age. He didn’t have a sticker, but that was his only real negative. The price was right (very cheap) as was the condition (very near mint.)

You know, come to think of it, I still haven't found a whole lot of Elks at the flea markets around here, since then. Interesting.

Winning

2011-12-02T21:47:00.002-05:00

50,328 words later:
It turned out better than I expected it to be; it actually has a beginning, middle and end, a (somewhat) coherent plot, and a few genuinely touching moments. Not bad for something that has just about everything in it except ninjas and zombies.

(I’m saving the ninjas for the BreyerFest novel. Duh. Zombies, on the other hand: just not a fan of the concept.)

I have no delusions that it’s anywhere near publishable, though I’m not sure if I’m going to chalk it up as an interesting experiment, or make an attempt to fix it later. I do believe could be made publishable, but I so do not want to even look at it right now. I am all fictioned out for the rest of the year.

If I do it again next year, I’ll probably switch genres and go with something more traditionally science-fictional. I’m a huge fan of Golden Age (1930s-1940s) SF; back in high school, when I wasn’t writing mopey fantasies about my magical flying horse who could talk, it was crazy SF pastiches neither my classmates nor most of my English teachers completely got. (I must admit, in retrospect, that A. E. van Vogt was probably not the best choice to model my writing style after. Hey, at least I hadn't heard of Harry Stephen Keeler at that point.)

Another win this week: Fall in Love. That sort of took me by surprise, since my luck with the Web Specials in the past year has been so not good. (Must have been my time!) Interesting how they made it "orderable" to the winners via their accounts on the web site. That’s actually a modestly intelligent way of doing it. (No icky phones, yes!)

That makes him Nokota Horse number five here. I’d love to have more, but eight out of the ten releases of the mold that I don’t have came in piece runs of less than 100, and six of those eight were piece runs of less than 50. I’d probably have more success trying to collect Faberge eggs, on my budget. Or the Esprit mold.

I was going to close out with a picture of the Christmas Tree, and show you why we’re calling it "Fort Christmas Tree" this year, but the camera wasn’t cooperating today, partly a consequence of my brother upgrading my computer system this week. (Like the Breyer web site, the system is still not quite fully operational.) I’ll have to try again, tomorrow.

Vintage

2011-11-29T23:33:00.002-05:00

Note to self: stop buying collections from non-collectors. Way more work than they’re worth, frankly. Nothing more disheartening to pick up a box and hear loose bits rolling around - loose bits that you know aren’t Stablemate-sized.

I don’t mind a good-sized body box, but mine is now verging on the ridiculous. Anyone in the market for some older bodies? No respectable body box should be without a few vintage clunkers!

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the word vintage, especially in respect to Reeves’ new "Vintage Collectors Club." Some collectors are understandably a little concerned about what Reeves’ definition of the word might entail.

The word vintage originally applied only to wines; it migrated across the rest of the collectible spectrum when the word antique fell out of favor, a consequence, partly, of the fact that it does have a legal definition. (In most jurisdictions, this definition is usually something along the lines of "an object of personal property of 100 years of age or more.")

Like the word rare, however, vintage has been bandied about in the world of collectible so much, and so carelessly, that it has essentially lost all meaning.

If I had my druthers, I’d define vintage in the Breyer world as "any mold, model or color originally designed, produced or released prior to the acquisition of the Breyer brand by Reeves," which would include anything made prior to 1985.

It’s a (relatively) neat and clean cut off point, and it’s by no means an arbitrary one, either. The acquisition of Breyer, by Reeves, represents a significant turning point in the history of the brand. After that point, molds and models became a more realistic, and a more "finished" product. Reeves has spent a considerable amount of effort catering to the collectibles crowd, a trend that existed in the Chicago era from the very beginning, but which did not become fully implemented until the Reeves era.

There’s also the Chris Hess factor: if there’s any one thing that hobbyists agree on, it’s that Chris Hess molds are vintage. The bulk of Hess’s work for the company was done by 1985: only Touch of Class in 1986, and the much-delayed Secretariat in 1987, remained to be released.

A time-based definition could work, too: "any mold, model or color originally designed, produced or released at least 25 years ago." Or whatever number we happen to decide sounds reasonable. Twenty-five seems like a reasonable enough distance from the present, for me. (I think it used to be the same amount of time required to get a "classic" license plate in Michigan, but don’t quote me on that.)

I have no idea what concept of vintage Reeves has in mind. I suppose, like most things, they'll just make it up as they go along.

Cutting out early again: I’m trying to finish the novel tonight. I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow, so I am free to pull an all-nighter, if I have to. I don’t think have to - I only have about 1500 words to go, more or less, which should take about 3 or 4 hours to pull out of me. However, I’m starting to get harassed by the rest of the residents of this household on my general lack of non-novelly activities in said household.

Better for me if I can get done as much as I can tonight, and leave the rest of the day to defending Fort Christmas Tree. (More on that, next time.)

Fall in Love

2011-11-26T23:18:00.002-05:00

Got all my shopping done on Friday in the space of an hour; fortunately, all I had to do was pick up a couple of things at Walgreens and a few supplies from the craft store. Clipped my coupons, got up at a leisurely hour, did my business, and went home. No "competitive shopping" for me.

(Ironically, I was kinda-sorta pepper sprayed once, in the relative safety of my own home, because someone was too cheap to go buy a can of ground pepper at the store. Peppercorns + Food Processor = Bad Idea. 'Nuff said.)

I spent the rest of the day cussing at (a) dumb people on the Internet, (b) a quilt project that’s way more complicated than it looked on paper, and (c) the Nano novel.

It’s been a good experience for me, but I will be glad to be done with it and move on to other things for a while. I just finished a really emotionally draining scene today, and I am wiped out. (Main character kisses her ex-boyfriend for the first - and only - time. In front of his wife and newborn baby. Didn’t think the scene was going to go there, but dang, that’s where it went.)

Since the new Breyer site didn’t get its hard/official launch until Wednesday, and with most folks having minimal ‘net time on Thursday, it makes sense that the Fall in Love Web Special is being handled as a general, open to the public release.

Running a lottery for the first Web Special a few days after they start offering Collector’s Club memberships - with one of the perks of the membership being the ability to enter drawings for Web Specials? Might strike some folks as a little questionable, both legally and ethically.

I am glad that they abandoned the "don’t call us, we’ll call you" notification method, though truthfully, the lottery method is probably going to make it even less likely for those of us without compliant friends and relatives to "win."

I’m just gonna do my one e-mail entry a day, and hope for the best. I just bought another (small) collection this week, so I won’t be completely heartbroken if it doesn’t happen. (IOW: don’t offer. Seriously. Short on the moolah here.)

I suspect that the Silver Filigree Weather Girl "Mont Tremblant," will be offered strictly to Collector’s Club members, since I’m assuming that that will be at least another week or two in the future - or long enough as Reeves deems the notification timeframe as sufficient.

I’m also assuming is going to be by lottery first to Club members, with the leftovers (if any) being offered to the general public.

(Yeah, I know, leftover Silver Filigree Weather Girls: such a silly thought.)

Well, anyway, like I said, the novel left me a bit wiped. Time to veg out in front of the telly.

The Web Site

2011-11-23T22:38:00.003-05:00

I have to work on the last day of the month, so I’m trying to get a little bit ahead of myself on the Nano novel just in case. Unfortunately, the words were not cooperating today; I’m ahead, but not as much as I want to be.

Maybe I should go work on a quilt or two to clear my head. It’s been a crazy week; I think I deserve it.

Anyway, I was playing with the dog the other day, and it occurred to me that we somehow managed to raise a completely skeptical dog. Vita’s willing to play with you, even though she knows - or suspects - you are not being entirely honest with her when you do. (I’m not going to run up the stairs after the ball, because that just means you’re trying to get a head start on me when we’re playing hide and seek.)

She’s skeptical, but not cynical: even thought it’s true that we’re not always one hundred percent truthful with her, we’re truthful - and sincere - enough to make it worth her while to play with us. If she were cynical, she’d just run off with the ball and play with it by herself every single time.

Anyway, that’s sort of a roundabout way of explaining why I haven’t participated in any of the online discussions about the soft launch of the new Breyer web site on Monday. I’m a skeptic, not a cynic. But I also know better than to toss a ball into an arena full of cynics.

(Another grating thing: if I have to read one more post by hobbyists asking about the remaining issues on the JAH subscriptions, I swear I’m going to go outside and violently break something. People who regularly drop hundreds of dollars on a single model, whinging about twenty dollars worth of subscription fees? Talk to the hoof!)

Yeah, Reeves is not handling the launch as well as they should have; I’m surprised that it took them until this evening to finally send out an e-mail notification about it, and nothing at all on their Facebook page yet, as far as I can tell. (NOTE: I don’t "do" Facebook.)

I’ll just assume they did this "soft" launch as a way of working out the bugs with the early adopters in time for whatever they have planned for Black Friday/Cyber Monday (the web special Nokota, I presume?)

As for the web site itself, s’alright. It’s a little too cluttered for my taste, but I’m a design minimalist at heart. I’d rather they started out simpler, and scaled up, rather than hit us with that level of complexity early on. You know, show us they have mastered basic math before hitting the trigonometry textbook.

The Collector’s Club has turned out to be just an online JAH/forum/online store special access subscription type thing. Eh, whatever. Not crazy about the fee, but it’s not any different than paying for a subscription to a magazine or online forum. During the signup process they asked for an online ID, which I’m assuming means that they really are planning on implementing some sort of discussion forum in the future. (That ought to be …interesting.)

The only other thing I signed up for was the Vintage Club, since that’s my natural inclination. A lot of hobbyists are extremely concerned that the models that they’d be "forced" to buy through the program will be unsellable turkeys, but honestly, I am not that concerned. I’m going to assume that they’re going to stick with fairly "safe" (pre-1965) vintage molds and colors for their first offerings, and they’ll be asking for input from subscribers for the subsequent rounds.

If I had the money and the space, I would have signed up for the Premier Club, too, but I don’t, so I didn’t. Simple as that. I was a little concerned about the undefined piece counts on what’s essentially a Connoisseur Club, too, though if the quality holds up, the piece count would be moot.

It's Not the Heat

2011-11-20T23:11:00.002-05:00

Slowly grinding out those words on the novel: I’m just about caught up to where I need to be, finally. No major breakthroughs, though I think I finally figured out what to do with that painting by Nicholas Poussin.

Seventeenth Century French Classicists and Sasquatch? I know, I know, this novel has bestseller written all over it! (Actually, it seems to have more in common with that new movie The Descendants, which is completely coincidental, since I hadn’t even heard about that movie until about a week ago, and most of the notes for my novel were written about ten years ago.)

I did not win a Thrillseeker. I am okay with that, especially now that a procedure that I’ve been putting off that not related to my teeth may need to be done sooner, rather than later. Nothing serious, just a little bit beyond my budget, and my laughable insurance. I may have to sell something pricey to help pay for it, though that will have to wait until I finally get those 50,000 words out of my system.

I also have a funny feeling that Reeves has something planned within the next week, either for Black Friday or Cyber Monday. No specific intel, but it would make sense: two more web specials, a new web site launch, a couple of clubs that you need to sign up for, all allegedly by the end of the year…

I also would like to officially announce that The Toad will not be making any more public appearances. I got a good gander at him earlier this week, and good gravy, he’s gotten even scarier.

I think I’ve figured out the key component of ooziness: it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. We’ve always had minor but noticeable issues with humidity at the house - a bit too damp in the summer, a bit too dry in the winter - but The Toad became a better barometer than any gauges we had.

While heat does play a part - warm air can hold more moisture than cold air - if you have to make a choice between moderating the heat, or moderating the humidity, turn up that dehumidifier, folks. (If you need any more convincing, it’ll have the added benefit of reducing the risk of mildew, too.)

Design Nerdiness

2011-11-17T22:54:00.004-05:00

Reeves launched an updated Breyer logo a couple of days ago on its Facebook page and in its e-mail communications, and I appear to be the only person who’s happy about it. Well, not so much happy, but glad to see the old logo gone.

Man, I hated that thing. It had overstayed its welcome, as far as I’m concerned; most of the other logos and identity programs the Breyer line has had over the years rarely stuck around for long, but that darn "coffee can" logo lingered for decades.

I called it the "coffee can" logo because it wouldn’t have been out of place on a coffee can. Or anything else. And that was my biggest pet peeve about it: it was just so depressingly generic. All the typefaces in the world they could have based their identity program on, and they went with an off the shelf version of Helvetica Black?

I have nothing against Helvetica family of typefaces in general (so much better than it’s red-headed stepchild, Arial), but Helvetica has a reputation for being almost invisible. That’s sort of the point - and the popularity - of Helvetica: it’s designed to not get in the way of readability.

But it also doesn’t convey much of anything, emotionally. It’s just …there.

Then there’s the issue of the typography itself: namely, that "dropped" letter R in the logo, which was allegedly done intentionally to "catch your eye." You know the saying that "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck"? If it looks like a mistake, and feels like a mistake, it’s probably a mistake. Whether it was intentional or not.

(I remain convinced that the design firm that created this identity program had to have been blowing smoke in their faces. No, no, it’s meant to be that way, really!)

I had/have no problems with the color scheme: blue and yellow/gold have been a part of Breyer's design history since the 1960s - first with the Decorators, and then as a part of the Blue Ribbon Sticker program. I wasn’t too keen on the use of yellow as the dominant color on the packaging, though: while it’s true that it’s very eyecatching (definitely a plus, in a retail environment), yellow is one of the most difficult colors to work with from a design perspective. The right shade can look luxurious - but the wrong shade can look cheap.

It also has some uncomfortable associations with that all too common Breyer problem of, y’know, yellowing plastic. (Unless the intent was camouflage?)

While I’m not too keen on the three-dimensional "bubble" effect on the new logo (a tad too trendy, if you ask me), and it still seems a bit generic, it does feel like a step in the right direction. A little more refined, and up-to-date. I’ll have to see what the web site - and the rest of the new identity program - looks like before I make my final judgment.

(For the record: yes, the redesign of the web site really is happening, and no, I’m not at liberty to reveal anything about it.)

Apple Jack

2011-11-14T23:18:00.003-05:00

Argh! My apologies to anyone who’s been expecting a reply or response from me; this novel appears to be eating my brain. There’s way more plot here than I anticipated. I have no idea where it’s all coming from. (Though I am grateful for it.)

It also made me completely forget about the Breyer Fun Day on Saturday. There was a live show this past weekend, too, but it was at least an hour and a half drive, through some fearsome traffic and construction. Just not worth the effort, especially since I wasn’t buying, selling or showing. Some serious and intense socialization would have been good for the soul, but hey. I decided to go with "novel" this month, instead. Too far in to give up now.

I did go a couple miles out of my way to buy a horse yesterday, though technically, it wasn’t for me, but a friend. It was an Apple Jack:

He does have a few flaws, but he was way better than the other one on the shelf. I’ll be stopping by another store on my way back from work on Wednesday to see if I can upgrade, and if not, no big whoop. He’s cute, but there's no shortage of cute here.

I might regret it a few months or few years from now, (as I am with the Classic Shire B, in Pinto), but I do not have infinite shelf space. I already have a couple Bouncers, including my lovely Seren, and I suspect we may be seeing another Bouncer as an SR for next year’s British-themed BreyerFest, anyway. (As a British Spotted Pony, maybe? Yes, please.)

As for the condition issues that everyone’s been freaking out about, I guess I should rephrase my commentary on my Pamplemousse a bit (which I haven’t bothered to return, and I rather doubt I will.) It wasn’t the flaws that made me question keeping him, it was the timing. Every year I think I can get a little ahead of myself in the fall, as far as my finances go, but this year - like the last few - it hasn’t worked out that way.

But when he came, well, I could think of a half-dozen more useful places the money could have been spend on, at that moment. That handful of flaws present became just a few more nits to pick.

If he were an A+ super awesome OMG oh so bee-you-tee-full paragon of perfection, it might have tamped down my apprehension a bit. But he wasn’t. Staring at that sample Pamplemousse at BreyerFest didn’t help either.

Oddly enough, some of the reactions I’ve been seeing about flaws - on both Pamplemousse, and Breyers in general - within the model horse web have provided me some much needed amusement. Oh, if only the greatest aggravation in my life was finding a couple pieces of lint on a plastic horse!

You know, I’ve been hearing that Breyers haven’t been made "the way they used to be" since I’ve been collecting, which is longer than many of you have probably been alive. (I used to buy my Stablemates at Kmart - for 99 cents apiece! You do the math.) If Breyers have truly been going down hill since then, we’d all be collecting little puddles of vaguely horse-shaped plastic by now.

The quality curve has been going up for some time; most of the quality control issues we’re seeing now are slight regressions on that upward trajectory, not some precipitous and unrecoverable drop.

Most of the production problems Reeves is going through now are a consequence of scale, not a lack of caring. They probably underestimated the demand for Pamplemousse, and in an effort to meet the demand, created an environment where some quality control issues cropped up.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the production demands for the Pamplemousse contributed to the relatively short - and flaw ridden - run of the Apple Jack. The production timing certainly seems about right.

Fads

2011-11-11T23:21:00.004-05:00

I Googled The Greening of Whitney Brown movie that Reeves has been pushing all over its Facebook page, which I presume is in anticipation of some sort of Special Run release. The description, straight from The Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com):

Whitney, a spoiled pre-teen from Philadelphia, is forced to move to the country when her parents feel the squeeze of economic hard times. A fish out of water, far from her comfort zone, she befriends an amazing horse, and undertakes a misguided journey back to her old life, only to discover that her family is her home.

More schmaltz. Sigh. I swear, my next NaNo novel is going to be an attempt to write a YA horse story completely free of sentimental claptrap, where nobody learns nothing, and the horses are absolutely ordinary in every way.

I’m still a little behind on the word count on the current one, but I’m gaining ground. I was worried that I was running out of steam a couple days ago, but then I took a quick inventory of everything that still had to happen yet, and I think I’ll be good for almost the next week or so.

(Interesting fact learned today: Microsoft Word spell checks words like Trakehner and Saddlebred, but is totally okay with Sasquatch. Read into that whatever you wish.)

I almost laughed out loud the other day when I was giving one of my coworkers a ride to work. Out of the blue, she asked me "You seem to know a lot about collectibles. Could you tell me about Hummels?"

I momentarily thought she was punking me, until I realized who it was I was talking to: she’s probably the most guile-free person I’ve ever met. Apparently there was some sort of family dispute over an elderly relative’s collection, and she really did want an honest appraisal of the market for them.

Unlike most of the other collectibles mentioned in that Yahoo article, I think Hummels will eventually make a comeback. They’re well made, have something of a history behind them, and there’s definitely some inherent and appealing (to some) sentimentality there, too. It might take a generation or two, but the market for them will rebound as a new generation of collectors discovers them.

Most collectibles go through a faddish stage, before they fall back to their more natural levels of interest. During the Depression, for instance, stamp collecting became a huge fad - with many enthusiasts regarding their collections as a viable alternative to a bank account. (Not a completely unreasonable conclusion to make, considering the time.)

Believe it or not, I don’t think model horse collecting has ever achieved the status of a "fad." I think there have been internal fads - certain molds or certain colors becoming inordinately popular, for a time - but the model horse hobby, itself? No, not yet.

It’s always been on the periphery of it, though. There’s already a vague, widespread knowledge and understanding of them as a collectible among the general public. (Note: antiquers and flea market vendors are not the general public.) It never takes more than a sentence or two of conversation with anyone I've ever met before I see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes.

I’ve always wondered what it would take for the model horse hobby to make that leap to the "big time." Celebrity endorsements (actual A-Listers, not B-List Country Music Artists or Reality Show Contestants)? Funny viral Internet ads? A documentary on Animal Planet?

I know a lot of hobbyists have been fearful of the possibility, and the price inflation that could come with it. Seems like a silly concern, considering the way the market is today. Could provide a point of pride, too. Yeah, I was into it way before it was cool.

Catch and Release

2011-11-08T22:14:00.002-05:00

Spent the past couple of days trying to get through a bit of a philosophical roadblock in the NaNo novel, and catching up on the word count. Haven’t had much time to think about the horses in the meantime. (Though, ironically, one of the few bits that involved the horses came up in the plot today.)

I did spot another Gloss Valentine and Heartbreaker set, though, at a store I normally wouldn’t have gone to, except for work. I was sort of surprised to still see it there, especially since it was unaccompanied by any of the more common matte-finished ones, on the shelf.

I didn’t buy it: I didn’t need it. I did a "catch and release" on the set, and let it go. Let someone else have the joy of finding it.

Sometimes hobbyists forget - and even I forget - that what an active, vocal subsection of the hobby wants or prefers isn’t necessarily what the general public, casual collectors, or the silent majority of hobbyists want or prefer. They didn’t switch over to matte-finishes in the late 1960s for nothing.

Reeves seems to have done a better-than-average job in estimating the desire of the online hobbyist community for this variation. The prices are a bit elevated on eBay and MH$P, but not hysterically so.

It’s a little too soon to tell if the prices will remain there. The market is in such a state of flux right now. It’s really difficult to tell if the determining factor in that state of flux is the economy, or market saturation. I tend to think it’s the economy: people aren’t buying, because they don’t have the money to spare.

When you’re flush with spendy cash, you can always find room for more horses. Don’t lie: I know you’ve spent just as much time as I have "rearranging" your herd to accommodate just one more horse to the shelf.

Of course, you could switch to Stablemates, but considering the sheer number of Stablemates releases there have been in the past 35+ years - and the average Stablemate addict’s propensity for rationalizing away every slight variation as "essential" - that’s really only a short term solution.

(Been there, done that.)

I’m hoping to be all caught up where I need to be on the novel by tomorrow, so the next post should be somewhat more substantial.

Stablemates are Not Tote Bags

2011-11-05T23:37:00.004-04:00

Something short again, today: I had a particularly brutal overnight assignment that left me unconscious for a good part of yesterday, leaving me a few hundred words behind my daily writing goal. I probably won’t get a whole lot done today either (sigh, company) but I can’t afford to worry about it too much.

The more I worry, the less I get done. I have tomorrow off, and a schedule completely free of obligations. I'll be fine.

By the way, did anyone happen to notice that one little tidbit of BreyerWest information that sort of got lost in the hubbub over the judging? Someone from Reeves said that the leftover Fontanas were specifically going to be earmarked for the BreyerFest sales tent next year.

Yeah, I know: a tossed-off comment from a single, unnamed Reeves employee is not exactly a firm ground to base any speculation on. (Heck, the suggestions of one of those employees may have exacerbated the judging debate. All the more reason why they need to hire folks with a wee bit more model horse experience, methinks.)

They could have just as easily said "They’ll end up on the new web site," or "We’re not quite sure what we’ll do with them yet." Both standard and acceptable nonanswers. Casually mentioning that they’re probably going to "the BreyerFest Store" (aka the NPOD)? Most peculiar.

Knowing them, it’s probably nothing – most of the other BreyerWest SRs have ended up in the NPOD, and it really shouldn’t be that big a deal that Fontana might end up there, too. Yet, I can’t recall them ever mentioning – in public – what leftovers they were specifically earmarked for the store before, especially nine months out. It’s almost like some clever word-of-mouth marketing. (I know, I know, I’m ascribing them way too much cleverness.)

It does make me wonder about those little ASPCA donation/pledge "Hermes" gift models, too. They made 75 of them to give to donors/pledges of $100 or more, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to get 75 donors at that level. The NPOD seems like the most logical place for them to go, but the fact that they were made specifically as a possible incentive for donation might bring up some ethical issues.

http://www.teamaspca.org/participant/steph4molly

I can imagine some folks might be willing to pony up the $100 dollars for them in the NPOD on the condition, perhaps, that the money generated from those models also goes to the ASPCA. That would get around the money issue; if they’re still being used to generate donations, problem solved. (Unless they just donate the remainder to the ASPCA free and clear, to do whatever they see fit with them. Or something else along those lines. That would work, too.)

There’s also the issue of it being a "gift with donation" thing in the first place: I have to admit that the act of offering them kind of squicked me out. A limited-edition Stablemate is not the same as a tote bag or t-shirt. Yeah, there are folks out there who’d be willing to pony up some cash for a Breyer tote bag or t-shirt (see also, the NPOD) but nothing on the same scale as rare, glossy Stablemates.

The person making the donation is already getting a tax deduction for their act of charity. Possibly being able to make money on that act of charity, by reselling the gift that came with? Now there’s an awkward scenario.

I suspect that most hobbyists who have made the required level of donation aren’t thinking of selling, or if they are, it’s only for the sake of generating more donations in kind.

I pity the kind of backlash the first secondary market seller might face, regardless of their motivations. It’s a gift, and they can do with it whatever they want, but an awful lot of hobbyists aren’t quite as charitably minded towards their fellow hobbyists.

(Often for good reason. Sigh.)

Without Much Ado

2011-11-02T22:46:00.004-04:00

Yes, I am a glutton for punishment:

I wasn’t sure I was going to do it, but I figured if I could churn out a decent amount of text the first day, I’d go for it. Besides, the rigor of writing daily will be good for me, even if the writing itself isn’t.

Like all my other attempts at fiction writing, the plot’s the problem. 3,300 words in, and so far the most exciting thing in the whole exercise is an old lady in a Cadillac who drives too fast.

It shouldn’t interfere with the blog; if anything, it ought to help it. I mean, I’m already at the keyboard, right? What better way to avoid writing, than with more writing? Well, I suppose I could avoid writing with quilting, but I just finished another difficult project over the weekend, so maybe not. (At least, not this week.)

I haven’t been paying much attention to the model horse biz the past few days; I’m still doing my usual Internet rounds, but I think I’m still shaking off my October funk. I did notice that they’re coming out with another Traditional Man o’ War - this one, a representation of "Joey" from the book War Horse:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/news/detail.php?eventid=914

Some hobbyists are in a bit of a snit because, goodness gracious, it’s the Traditional Man o’ War, and not something showable. Apparently every new release nowadays has to be on a brand-spanking new mold, or one of the half-dozen or so "acceptable" older molds.

(Guys, you do realize it costs more than $50,000 to bring a brand new mold to market, right? It’s not just one guy working in a workshop anymore, a la Chris Hess.)

I haven’t read the book; I actually don’t read that much equine fiction, as I’m not that big a fan of schmaltz. (Not saying that that book is, just that there seems to be an unnaturally high correlation between the two concepts.) Whether or not he’s an accurate representation of the horse in question, I have no idea.

And I don’t really care. What I do care about is that it’s another Traditional Man o’ War (yay!) and the paint job, from what I can see on Breyer’s Facebook page, seems pretty nice.

(Gosh, do I dare dream that the sample turns up in the NPOD next year?)

I’d like to think that all my recent jibber-jabbering about the Traditional Man o’ War might have had a tiny effect on the selection of the mold, but probably not. He was just due for another release. The press release I linked to above mentions "an affiliation with Michael Morpurgo to make the portrait model of ‘Joey,’" so it’s possible that the author might have had a hand in selecting the mold, just like the Shatners did with All Glory last year.

In other words, it may be more "much ado about nothing," again.

Look, you got three new Eberls this year, new releases of two older ones, and at least two more new molds the next. No worries folks, there'll be plenty of Eberl goodness to go around.

Clubbing, Pt. II

2011-10-30T22:59:00.003-04:00

I didn’t feel like risking hypothermia, so I skipped out on the flea market today: we missed the snow, but still got the cold. There hadn’t been much to see the past few weeks anyway, and I had already blown my wad on Saturday on a couple pairs of work shoes and some quilt supplies at the local Salvation Army.

(Unworn Sanita Professional Clogs, in my size, for nine bucks? Darn right, I’m buying them!)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again and again: collectibles aren’t that good of an investment:

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/113722/worthless-collectibles-street

There’s been some discussion of this on Blab already, but since it ties in with previous post about the new Breyer programs, I’ll add my two cents here, rather than there.

The article refers to collectibles that are considered worthless in the secondary market - among them things like Beanie Babies, Norman Rockwell plates, Hess Trucks, Precious Moments, and anything sold by the Franklin Mint.

Why are they worthless? The article itself doesn’t provide a point by point checklist, but it basically boils down marketing: these are mass-produced items that are specifically targeted towards the collector’s market, and marketed (implicitly, or explicitly) as "investment" vehicles.

The only problem is that when it comes time to "cash in" your investment, the buyers aren’t there.

Seems like Breyers could fit into that definition rather neatly, right?

There are certainly a great many Breyer models that are essentially worthless: take a look at the sheer volume of items listed on eBay and MH$P, many of them priced at body-box level. On the flip side, there are also models that have a great deal of value, and have a good chance (I believe) of retaining a good portion of that value in the long term.

In that sense, I think Breyer models have more in common with collectibles like comic books and PEZ dispensers, rather than Beanie Babies and Precious Moments figurines. While the market for more recently minted comic books, PEZ dispensers and Breyer models is not great, it is not without occasional bright spots. The market for vintage pieces? Also not great, but with a little effort and research, you’ll do okay.

So, what distinguishes comic books, PEZ dispensers, and Breyers from the more worthless types of collectibles?

One word: History.

Having a history means that there was some distance between the start of manufacturing and the onset of direct marketing. That means that there’s a body of "stuff" made prior to the active or organized involvement of either the company or of collectors. It’s stuff that has become genuinely rare or hard to get in good condition because it got used up, worn out, and thrown out - as opposed to direct-marketed things that went straight from the factory warehouse to the collector’s attic.

There’s also history in its more intimate sense: did the objects themselves impact life or history in a meaningful way? Both comic books and Breyer models, for instance, contributed significantly to the happiness of countless children. (They were both certainly a part of mine.)

And thirdly, the history itself should also be interesting on its own. Was there mystery, drama, or complicated legal actions in that history? Lost objects, lost opportunities, or a universe of questions worth investigating?

You’re reading a blog devoted to that third type of history, so I think you already knew that.

Will I be joining up with either of the two new Breyer "clubs"? I remain undecided. My mind's been on other things, lately.

Clubbing, Pt. I

2011-10-27T22:57:00.002-04:00

I will confess that the most exciting part of the JAH was finding out that there’s going to be a (somewhat) local Fun Day event! Yeah, there aren’t going to be any special models involved, but I just might go out and see it for the fun of it. I got a chance to help out, briefly, in the Craft and Activity Tent at BreyerFest this year, and the energy there was so amazing.

The other thing that I notice up front - wow, there were a lot of typos! You think they’d have put a little extra effort into the proofreading, it being the final issue and all.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand - the "5 New Programs" everyone is getting all hot and bothered about. Well, six, actually, if you count the Breyer Collectors Club, which I’m assuming is going to be an amplified version of the e-mail program they have now, coupled with exclusive subscriber-only content and offers available via the new web site. Sort of like an online version of JAH. Since no printing or physical mailing will be involved, I’m guessing the subscription fees will be nominal or even nonexistent.

The Vintage Collectors Club, and the Premier Collection are subscription-style clubs: sign up, pay up, and models and other stuff are shipped to you on a timely basis for a year. Either program will cost you around $500 a year to belong: $540 for the Vintages ($135 x 4 models) or $525 for the Premiers ($175 x 3 models). The former is for "vintage" mold enthusiasts, while the latter is tailored towards fanciers of more realistic newer molds.

The Vintage Collectors Club is limited to 500 subscribers, but the Premier Collection makes no mention of an upper limit. They’re also a little vague on whether or not pieces will be made available to non-subscribers at a higher price, or a later date. They use phrases like "Only members are guaranteed a reservation for all three pieces" and "Members also receive priority in shipping" in the copy.

The Breyer Blossoms thingie is described as a year-long "continuity program", which appears to be just like a subscription club, but with Classics-scale molds, no extra stuff, and with the ability to option out of the program after purchasing just four pieces. Items in the program can also be purchased separately (if you just want your birth month flower, I guess) at a higher price. I'm assuming they'll go with different themes every year: the Zodiac, Holidays, etc.

The Equestral Crystalworks are miniature crystal versions of Traditional molds, available exclusively through the new web site, starting in January. No subscription, prepayments or any of that required. (It’s a little unclear whether or not you have to sign up for the Breyer Collectors Club just to buy stuff on the web site.)

The Breeds of the World series are smaller-scale resins (in-between Classics and Little Bits/Paddock Pals) and will be available either via the web site or via retailers. In other words, they’re just Regular Run items that don’t require you signing up for anything at all.

I’ll comment more on the individual programs next time; I still haven’t had a chance to go through the magazine as thoroughly as I’d like. Company came over, there was some drama with the dog, carpets got cleaned …

BreyerWest, Mostly

2011-10-24T21:52:00.002-04:00

My JAH arrived today. I haven’t finished rifling through it yet, though from what I’ve read so far, my suspicions about the content of the online discussions seem to be right - as in, a lot of the information being discussed isn’t.

So there’s going to be two more Web Specials by the end of the year - one on a favorite mold (a Decorator Nokota Horse) and another in a favorite color (Silver Filigree Weather Girl)? I wouldn’t mind either, but I suspect I will be getting neither. Nothing to do with my finances - where there’s a will, there’s a way and all that - it’s just that my luck with the Web Special program hasn’t been so good lately.

I don’t even want to imagine what the aftermarket prices on a Silver Filigree Weather Girl are going to be. The prices I’m seeing on the BreyerWest Volunteer Glossies are scary enough.

So they put a different tail on the Roxy mold, for Fontana? Hmm. I wasn’t super-keen on the original tail, but it did reflect the character of the horse it was modeled after. A different tail might be more in line with what’s in fashion in the show ring, but I tend to prefer models that have a more specific - as opposed to a more generic - character to them.

I’d have to see one in person before I pass judgment. It might be a while; with all of the other programs and Special Runs coming up in the next couple of months, it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be picking up one of the leftovers. (I’m assuming there were - I haven’t heard otherwise, but I might not have been looking in the right places.)

In other BreyerWest news, Reeves cut back on the show awards, and gave out plain old unglossed Regular Run models to Sectional Champs and Reserves - the horror! (Glosses were still awarded to the Overall Champs and Reserves.) Needless to say, that ticked off a few showers, who evidently thought they were entitled to such things; their kvetching about it apparently helped sour the mood of everyone within earshot.

All I can say is that it’s about time they cut back on those awards; all they’ve done is drawn out the worst in some hobbyists, who have done some very devious things in the past to win. This change is something I’ve been advocating for years, and it looks like a lot of other hobbyists are coming around to my line of thinking, too.

The only mistake they made was in not announcing the change in the program earlier. The way the awards were advertised - as "special Breyer awards" - left a little too much open to interpretation.

Whether this is a preview of downgraded awards to come at BreyerFest, I don’t know. Still, I think something should be done. If not Regular Runs, then something else.

For instance, I wouldn’t mind a modified version of the current program, but with an identical range of prizes awarded at all three shows, rather than three different sets of awards. Sure, that would "up" the piece count on all of the awards, making them slightly less rare and/or valuable, but they’d still have the cachet of being exclusive to the show. A program like that might have the additional benefit of cutting down on the de facto proxy showing a bit.

Or how about coupons redeemable for Breyer merchandise, like Green Stamps. One more Sectional Reserve, and I can get an Equestral Crystal horse! (LOL - could you imagine the little booklet they’d have to include in the show packet for that?)

As you can tell, I've obviously had way too much sugar today. Darn Lemon-Walnut Zucchini Muffins.

More for the Archive

2011-10-22T22:00:00.004-04:00

My copy of the last issue of JAH hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m loath to discuss anything contained therein until it does. I get the sense that there’s a lot of misinformation getting mixed in with the online discussion of it, and I don’t want to unwittingly perpetuate or validate any of it.

I will say I am quite amused by the "access to copies of vintage Breyer memorabilia" they’ll allegedly be including as a perk of the Vintage Collector’s Club membership. Really? Guys, I’ve seen what you got, I’m not that impressed.

(Admittedly, it is me we’re talking about here: I have an original flier for the Money Manager hanging on my wall.)

Speaking of, I picked up a couple more things for the archive yesterday - at the local Salvation Army, of course. First, a copy of the novelization of For the Love of Benji, the film that the notorious Benji and Tiffany Gift Set was based on:

The movie itself did okay on its own - my paperback is a 25th printing - but the success of the film didn’t translate into success for Breyer: they got stuck with a warehouse full of unsold Gift Sets. Some them eventually ended up in the possession of the Bentley Sales Company, who in turn sold them directly to collectors, well into the 1980s.

Second, a copy of The Pony Champions, the sequel to A Pony for Keeps:

I didn’t think anything of it at first; I just reflexively tossed it into my buy pile, like I do with every other horse-themed book I find. Books sell pretty well for me at BreyerFest, and at the prices I pick them up at, I really can’t go wrong with that approach.

Anyway, I didn’t realize what it was until I was inventorying it later in the day, and noticed the names that the names seemed awfully familiar. Of course, the picture on page 12 also helped:

That’s an Old Timer, Ruffian "Lula," Misty, and the A Pony for Keeps Gift Set on the shelf, and a Trakehner "Abdullah" in the window!

And as if that wasn’t enough to convince me to add it to my archive, the fact that the book was also signed by the author didn’t hurt.

I’ve found other signed books here, too; it’s probably a consequence of the location. This is the same "better than the average" Salvation Army where I found the Kaiser Goose Girl a little while back. Is it any wonder that it’s become a regular stop in my rounds?

(Ironically, I’ve never found any actual Breyer merchandise at that location. Hartlands, H-Rs, and miscellaneous china pieces? No problemo. Actual Breyers? Not a one.)

The Other Rare Pluto

2011-10-19T22:38:00.003-04:00

BreyerWest is on the other side of the country, and I am kinda broke, so the fact that it slipped my mind until about yesterday isn’t shocking. I do have a few relatives out that way I could have tapped for a pickup on Fortuna, but I really have to stick to my budget, now that work has officially entered the "slow" season.

I’m currently hemming and hawing on what to do next - another seasonal job, or ramp up the Internet biz? The former would be better for the budget, but the latter is long overdue and may eventually provide a small, year-round income stream. One more thing to think about…

Here is an example of another mold we’ve rarely seen in recent years - the Traditional Lipizzaner Pluto:

This one is the Pluto made specifically for "The Wonderful World of Horses" touring show, in early 1997. The show had been selling the Pluto for several years before it was discontinued, and I assume that Reeves continued to produce them for the show for some time after.

How do I know that this piece is from early 1997? Aside from the 1997 Collector’s Manual it came with, he has factory bi-eyes - a feature that didn’t start appearing until late 1996, and was discontinued by the end of March, 1997. The original #475 Pluto was discontinued at the end of 1995.

The sticker on the upper left hand corner of the box also identifies it as an "Exclusive 28th Anniversary Edition for The WONDERFUL WORLD OF HORSES Starring the ‘World Famous’ Royal Lipizzaner Stallions" (the funky punctuation and capitalization theirs, not mine.)

However, the box label reads "#475 Pluto, The Lipizzaner" - in other words, identical to the Regular Run - so I’d probably classify it more as a "Post Production Run" than a Special Run: a Regular Run item made after its discontinuation, per a standing order from a good (i.e. paying) customer.

Regardless of his status, you don’t see these guys too often; the vast majority of whatever quantity was made were sold as souvenirs to attendees of the show, and not specifically to hobbyists. Hobbyists walking past the sales booths wouldn’t have thought of them as anything other than ho-hum Regular Run Plutos.

Outside of his box, I doubt many would recognize him as anything other than the Regular Run. You’d think that the bi-eyes would be a big "tell," but a lot of collectors seem to be a bit fuzzy on their significance. That’s part of the reason why he’s one of the handful of models I still keep in its original box. If it ever comes to me having to sell him, I want to make sure there’s no mistaking him for a standard #475.

(FYI: that’s a bit of protective foam paper behind him, to prevent box staining.)

I found mine on eBay in late 1999 - not long after they were made. He was a little on the pricey side but well worth it, I think, since I so rarely see them for sale. He’s scarcer than the Spiegel Pluto, at any rate. (That I don’t have. Sigh.)

Equus Non Grata

2011-10-17T00:44:00.003-04:00

I didn’t go to the flea market today. Work didn’t go well the night before (everyone was at each other’s throats, for some reason), the weather was iffy (overcast, drizzly), and I didn’t feel all that awesome to begin with (an unfortunate choice of snack foods, I think.)

I need to get cracking (again) on the stuff I already have to sell, anyway. Life sort of got in the way of me putting things up on eBay, so it looks like I’ll be starting up the MH$P sales again. Like before, nothing impressive, just the usual middle-of-the-road shelf sitters and collection fillers.

Everything sells eventually, but some models are harder to sell than others. One mold that’s become an incredibly difficult sell of late is the Midnight Sun:

For obvious reasons, of course: in light of the recent attention being paid to the continuing practice of soring in the TWH show community, the mold itself has become (justifiably) something of a pariah. Few hobbyists dare to sneak any into their showstrings nowadays, lest they get labeled as condoning the practice.

We haven’t seen a new release on in the Midnight Sun mold since 2002, and I rather doubt we ever will, again.

Other molds have fallen "out of fashion" before, such as the Appaloosa Performance Horse and the Quarter Horse Gelding, but that was due more to shifting tastes than the increasing awareness of abusive showing practices.

I suppose one could still sneak Midnight Suns in under collectibility; an historical entry would require way more ‘splaining’ that it’d be worth. Especially since the true historical type of Tennessee Walking Horse is closer to the Bluegrass Bandit or even the G3 Tennessee Walker than the Midnight Sun mold - which itself doesn’t even really depict Midnight Sun!

And again, the mere existence of such an entry would also bring up the insinuations of acceptance on the shower’s part.

In some ways, the situation with the Midnight Sun mold has become somewhat analogous to the situation that exists with some of the more offensive forms of African-American memorabilia. Should they be preserved purely as a matter of historical interest, or should they be shunned - or even destroyed outright - to actively discourage that line of thinking from ever arising again?

As someone who considers herself something of an historian, I fall somewhere in the murky middle. Blotting out any part of our history may feel right or good, but it rarely works. Even if you manage to eliminate it entirely, it still leaves a hole, and a hole can be as problematic as the thing that once filled it.

I suspect what will actually happen to the Midnight Sun molds will be more of a continuing diminishment - of both interest, and of controversy - to the point of it becoming an embarrassing footnote. Most of the releases of the Midnight Sun, save for the 1984 Model Horse Congress SR, are plentiful enough that a spike in interest due to rarity will probably never become an issue. (Unless hobbyists get all crazy and start using their spare Midnight Suns as kindling.)

I have a small number of Midnight Suns in my collection - mostly variations of the original release, in black - and I have no intention of tossing them in the nearest bonfire. They’re a part of the historical record, for better or worse. I won’t go out of my way to acquire more, unless they happen to fall into my lap somehow, or have some historical significance (i.e. a Marney Test.)

Just Thinking

2011-10-13T22:30:00.002-04:00

There were easily five times the vendors at the flea market this week compared to last, but there wasn’t a darn thing worth buying, at least not at a price anyone was asking. ($27.50 for a Gloss Palomino FAM? I don’t think so!) I’m sure a lot of the vendors were counting on a higher proportion of market visitors being tourists on their way to a cider mill, rather than the locals looking for a deal.

I bought a few groceries and sundries I needed to buy, and left. (A toothbrush, dog treats, potato chips, and a bag of green peppers, almost too beautiful to eat. Yes, the potato chips were a "necessity." You don’t need to know why.)

The fact that I had to pay the second half of the dental bill this week was also weighing on my mind. I wasn’t going to have a whole lot of "walking around" money for the rest of the week, and I didn’t want to fritter it away on stuff that was going to sit on my sales list for months.

(The dental bill turned out to be a little less than I anticipated, so I did splurge on a dollar’s worth of books at the Salvation Army yesterday. I may never get around to reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, but it does "class up" my bookshelves while it waits.)

My minding of the pennies probably explains my muted reaction to Pamplemousse’s arrival on Tuesday, too. He seems like such an extravagance now.

He looks good in Dappled Light Palomino Sabino, but I already knew that: I got to admire/fondle the sample piece up close and personal at BreyerFest in the Hobby Information Booth. Mine has just enough small flaws to make me consider returning him, though I’m not sure I want to bother waiting for a replacement. I will have to give it some thought.

Stopped by the local Tractor Supply on the way home today to check out the holiday selection; just because I’m not in a buying mood doesn’t mean I can’t look, right? Plus, I thought the sight of this year’s Holiday Horse might perk my mood up a bit.

It did. The teeny-tiny bells sewn into the costume just slay me: they manage to look simultaneously adorable, and ridiculous! The "Winter Belle" model itself, sans decorative ovenmitt, seems quite nice - definitely not the same as the red bay #950 Dover release from 1996-1997: the finish is slightly metallic, with an opaque base.

I might pick one up if there are any left after said holiday. Just like everything else this time of year, I’ll have to think about it.

I won’t have to worry about allocating my cash for anyone else this holiday season: it doesn’t appear that there are going to be any store-specific SRs for TSC this year, just the usual XMAS assortment and some regular runs, like Chub, Valentine and Heartbreaker, and the ASPCA Benefit Set. I’m okay with that, especially after last year’s glut of SRs.

I have a suspicion we’ll be getting at least one holiday-themed SR via the Web Special program in the next month or so. Considering my recent luck on those, I’m not even going to think about it until I absolutely have to.

Rin Tin Tin

2011-10-10T21:06:00.004-04:00

Did you hear about the new book about Rin Tin Tin? It’s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief. I was doing a little research on the book itself (to wit: was it worth putting on my holiday gift list?) when I ran across this text on the author’s website:

When I was very young, my grandfather kept a Rin Tin Tin figurine sitting on his desk. I wanted desperately to play with it, and even more desperately I wanted to have a German shepherd dog of my own, a dog just like the star of "The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin", which debuted on television in 1954. I knew nothing about Rin Tin Tin other than that he was the perfect dog, and that he was a character on television. When by chance I learned that Rin Tin Tin was a real dog, not just a television character—a real dog with a real life that was extraordinary—I was drawn into the story and eventually to the idea of writing this book.

http://susanorlean.com/books/rin-tin-tin.php

So I’m guessing that you’re thinking what I’m thinking - that’s the Breyer figurine she’s talking about! I guess the book is worth my time, though I will have to wait until Christmas or thereabouts before I get my hands on a copy. (No room in the budget for fun stuff until then!)

You’d think it’d be logical for Reeves to re-release the Rin Tin Tin figurine, wouldn’t it? You have a well-reviewed biography by a noted author, who just mentions in passing that a Rin Tin Tin figurine partially inspired her to write the book in the first place?

Nice idea, but I’m not counting on it. For one, he’s a dog, not a horse. While Reeves has not been averse to re-releasing the older dog molds, they’re not big sellers. They’ve seemed particularly averse to re-releasing the Rin Tin Tin mold: we haven’t seen it since 1973, when they discontinued the #327 German Shepherd after a brief two-year-ish run. (Like the Proud Arabian Mare, he was prereleased in late 1971 to/for hobbyists.)

His absence is something of a mystery to me, since the German Shepherd has consistently been one of the most popular dog breeds in the United States, far outpacing both the Collie and the Saint Bernard in terms of registrations.

http://www.akc.org/reg/dogreg_stats.cfm

Yet both the Lassie/Collie and the Saint Bernard molds have seen a couple of re-releases in the not-too-distant past! Hmm. (Also puzzling: Wire Fox Terriers are only 97th on the list? Our little brat certainly doesn't act like it.)

Second: just because I think it’s such an obvious idea doesn’t mean Reeves does. I thought a Pancreatic Cancer benefit horse was a far better - and more appropriate - idea than a Breast Cancer benefit horse (hello, Patrick Swayze!) but the more conventional idea won out.

It could be that Reeves got caught a bit flat-footed about the book; I only found out about it a couple months ago myself. It’s not too late to time a re-release of the mold with the inevitable paperback release of the book sometime next year, though. Could be a nice addition to one of their various "horse and book" series, like the Breyer Horse Collection. (One of the lamest names for a series ever, BTW. Isn’t every series basically a "Breyer horse collection"?)

Well Played

2011-10-07T23:00:00.002-04:00

It should have been a nice day. The weather was perfect, I got to sleep in, Tigers beat the Yankees …

Then I woke up, stubbed That Toe again, lost my last quilting thimble, and discovered a little "present" the dog left behind in the chair (before I sat down in it, at least.) I also got yelled at by several people for things I either didn’t do, or had no control over.

Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the last dream I had before I woke up this morning was a rerun. It wasn’t even one of those that you wouldn’t mind having again - one where you remember how to fly, or fall into a giant vat of Stablemates, or something. It was boring, predictable, and no fun at all.

When even your dreams fail you, you know you’re in for a rough day.

I haven’t gotten my Pamplemousse yet, either. Not that I was expecting it today, but seeing the huge glut of them on eBay and MH$P just made me realize that I’m probably going to miss the window of opportunity for unloading mine in a timely manner. I had kinda-sorta come to the conclusion last week that I had to let mine go - no profit, really, just cost plus postage - but apparently so had everyone else.

(I had intended on keeping him, but the money situation is tight and not going to get better in the short term. Last one in, first one out, etc.)

I should have realized that there was going to be a glut of Pamplemousses. We’ve seen this story before, too: remember the "Limited Edition" series of models that began in 1987 with Precipitado Sin Par? These "Limited Editions" were limited not by quantity, but by time: basically, to the number of pieces ordered in a production year.

Many hobbyists - and most casual collectors - made the assumption that the "Limited Editions" implied future scarcity. I mean, if they were only going to make them for a year, then it’s going to be way more rare than some Regular Run item that runs for a couple years or more, right?

Nope. What actually happened was that Reeves ended up making way more of those Limited Edition models than they did of many of their Regular Runs, based on that assumption of future scarcity. Several thousand more, in fact, if the numbers from an internal document I have from 1992 are true (and I have no reason to believe they are not.) Consequently, most of these Limited Editions aren’t terribly hard to find.

I suspect the same thing is happening with the Pamplemousse: I would not be surprised if Reeves sold significantly more pieces of their final JAH Special than they did of several of the more recent releases. It didn’t hurt that they put it out on a very popular mold, in an attractive color, and upped the potential order quantity to two.

It’s a win-win for Reeves: they sell more models, and won’t get stuck with a lot of warehouse overstock. (There will be some - via bounced checks, expired credit cards, and the leftovers reserved to cover damaged items - but not a lot.) The extras that many hobbyists ordered for resale become the responsibility of the buyer to redistribute, effectively making these buyers micro-dealers.

Nice trick, Reeves. Well played.

I only ordered one, and it’s no big catastrophe if I have to keep him. I’ll just have to find something else to sell in the meantime, until the market absorbs all of the extras.

I think it will; as I’ve said, he’s a popular mold in an attractive color. He may not be as "limited" in quantity as other JAH Specials, but he’ll definitely be more limited than most other Othello releases. Not only that, he does have the cachet of being the last official JAH Special, and that means a little something, too.

Minding the Gaps

2011-10-04T21:39:00.004-04:00

The flea market was uncharacteristically depressing. The weather was nice, if a bit cold, but a big chunk of the dealers didn’t bother to show up. Many of those that did were very territorial about their preferred spaces, so that led to a lot of unnecessarily large gaps between them. The whole place looked and felt like a ghost town.

There were a few horses there, but nothing worth buying. All I picked up were some groceries and a couple of inexpensive sterling silver rings. (I’m wearing one right now. I generally go through life fairly unadorned, but it slipped on my finger like it had always been there. Pretty little thing, too - looks like a hobby casting.)

There was a fairly big antique show the week before, which explained that week’s low turnout, but this week? Yeah, it’s October - big yuck - but even so, the turnout is usually better than that.

The restoration projects from the week before went okay. The Gem Twist cleaned up real nice; I wouldn’t call him "live show quality," but he’s definitely not going to shame anybody’s shelf. I was a little concerned about his yellowing, since I hadn’t seen - or dealt with - a yellowed Gem Twist before.

The original release of Gem Twist came in an odd, semi-chalky finish that Reeves experimented with for a few years; they used a very flat, matte white paint as a basecoat, and applied some light shading over top of it. The original release of the Pluto mold came with a similar paint job, and a sprinkling of other Regular Runs and Special Runs have since then. Unlike earlier - and later - white basecoats, the paint isn’t used as a base to apply another color over top of it: it clearly being used as the primary component of the intended color.

I hadn’t seen - and never expected - a model that’s been painted white to turn yellow. Whatever the cause, a light and quick bleach bath got rid of most of the dinginess. The ease of his cleanup leads me to believe that it was just a very fine layer of grime (Air pollution? Ciggie smoke?), and not something inherent in the paint or plastic.

The speckled Fighting Stallion is still a work in progress. Most of the stains are gone, but some of the more persistent ones remain. On top of that, his extended time in the "dunk tank" has led to an unfortunate side effect: he now has a significant amount of water trapped inside him.

Many hobbyists become a little overly concerned about the lack of an obvious vent hole in their models. They needn’t be, especially with their more vintage pieces. Small splits and separations often occur along the seam lines - usually along the mane, between the ears, or under the tail - and they serve the same function as an intentional vent hole, which is to minimize the possibility of bloating and deformation.

In many cases, these seam splits are so slight, they’re basically invisible to the naked eye - until the model gets submerged in water, and a telltale trail of bubbles appears.

I left the Fighter to soak in the bleach bath overnight, so I didn’t notice where the bubbles were coming from - and I still don't know. The split is apparently small enough to allow water to seep in, but not seep out. So now he has a good 3 or 4 ounces of water sloshing around his insides. Amusing, but also annoying: I never thought he’d rise above being body box fodder, but now that he’s got a half cup or so of bleach water trapped inside, even that’s unlikely.

Just swell. Sigh.

Just A Thing

2011-10-01T22:57:00.004-04:00

That was not one of my better weeks. I’ve spent most of today catching up on sleep, and finishing everything I started - and couldn’t finish - during the week. It’s also been cold, wet, and it just turned October. Not exactly conducive to my motivation.

It has come to my attention that the Susecion and Le Fire molds are now something of A Thing: pricey, in demand, and generally pretty hard to get. I hadn’t noticed before because I already had one nice set - the QVC Palominos from 2002 - and hadn’t been in the market for others:

Picked them up for a good price at the flea market a few years back. Not minty-mint, but good enough; I missed out on most of the 2002 QVC Special Runs back when they were released, and I wasn’t about to pay "retail" for them. A couple of small rubs, I can live with.

I had thought the prices on that particular set were just a reflection of the relative scarcity of a lot of the 2002 QVC SRs. Many of them weren’t well publicized, and the piece counts were fairly low (for back then.) Some of them you hardly ever see for sale now; the re-release of the Traditional Man o’ War immediately springs to mind.

Anyway, like I said, I hadn’t been in the market for a set, hence my not-noticing. I have nothing against the molds personally. I just don’t have the space for any more, and other molds have been deemed of higher priority.

Any mention them in certain circles, though, seems to inspire near-apoplectic fits of rage over their anatomical inadequacies (like the crazy face on the mare, and the muley ears on the foal). It’s a rage that seems a little out of proportion to whatever crimes against anatomy they seem to be committing. When I look at them, all I really notice is the tender moment of maternal intimacy.

As to what’s inspiring the high prices, in spite of the hobby’s general dismissal of these molds, I’m not entirely sure. It could be any number of factors - the rather small number of releases, the limited quantity of many of those releases, or the fact that the mold’s been out of circulation for a couple of years now.

I suspect that my initial reaction - the "Aw, that’s kind of sweet" - may be a big factor, too. Nothing sells like cute and sweet. (Don’t be hiding your My Little Ponies in the closet. I know they’re there.)

It could be that it’s "just a thing": all of a sudden something that wasn’t particular popular or noteworthy before then becomes The Thing to have. It happens on eBay all the time. Remember when you could sell a Khemosabi for $100+? Or when there was that unexplainable run on Black Appaloosa Running Stallions? And let’s not forget those other hot items du jour: the original releases of Spirit and Rain.

For hobbyists who do happen to be in the market for a Sucesion and Le Fire set, my only advice to you is to wait it out. In another six months to a year, there might be (no, will be) some other Thing.

Thick and Thin

2011-09-27T15:20:00.004-04:00

If the horses I found Sunday were from the estate sale, I didn’t miss anything: ordinary pieces in ordinary condition. The prices weren’t ordinary, which is why they didn’t come home with me. What did? Just this:

A Battleship Gray Elephant. Good condition, just a couple of small rubs and a small crack on its side, pretty typical of a piece from that era (early 1960s.) I don’t know what it is about this mold, but it’s prone to little cracks and splits in the oddest places. Is it all the bumps, cracks and wrinkles built into the mold that contribute to the problem?

That would make sense, except that there are several other contemporaneous molds with rough finishes that don’t have the same problem. You don’t see it in the Donkey, or the two rough-coated Bulls. The Poodles do tend to get weird little mold flow lines or "squiggles" on their sides that sometimes turns into a crack over time, but that’s not quite the same thing, I believe.

Mold flow lines - which I might have explained before, but I’ll cover here again - are created when the leading edge of hot plastic cools in a mold during the molding process, creating a little wrinkle on the molded surface. It’s not a crack, but it does create a slight weakness in the plastic that could become a crack under the right set of circumstances.

The "right set of circumstances" that leads to cracking include rough play and handling, and storage in an uncontrolled environment (extreme changes in heat and humidity). Neither situation is likely to happen in my house, or in any of yours most likely. To put it plainly, you really shouldn’t be too concerned about finding mold flow lines on your vintage pieces. The odds of them becoming a structural problem are very, very slim.

The problem with the Poodle stems from his weight: he weighs nearly a pound! (For comparison’s sake, the Brahma Bull weighs a mere 12 ounces on average - almost a quarter pound less.) When you’re injecting that much hot plastic into a mold, you’re going to have the kind of cooling issues that lead to mold flow lines.

I strongly suspect that the Elephant’s issues stem from too little of the material, rather than the too much. If there’s not enough plastic to compensate for day-to-day changes in heat and humidity, it’s more likely that the plastic will simply split at its thinnest points, whether there are mold flow lines present or not.

I haven’t been brave enough to cut open a spare Elephant to prove my theory, though. I haven’t run across that many body-quality Elephants, either. Plus, body box Elephants are already a tough sell; cutting them in half wouldn't improve the odds.

I already have one of these fellas, so on the saleslist it goes. He shouldn’t be too expensive, when I finally put him up for sale. Battleship Grays are a bit unusual, but not particularly rare.

No Retail

2011-09-24T22:00:00.003-04:00

Don’t you hate it when you go to a yard sale or estate sale, and you can see the spaces where the model horses used to be? You go to enough of them, you just know, y'know?

There was an estate sale just down the road from my house, and I had to work that morning, so I couldn’t go until several hours after the sale had begun. All I found by then were a few odds and ends that hinted at the existence of better things: a few stray (common, nonhorse) H-R minis in a jewelry tray, a partially assembled Traditional-scale Stagecoach in the basement, a Perillo Indian Nativity set on a bookshelf.

Bit of a bummer, yep. Maybe I'll get lucky and some of those "missing" horses will show up at the flea market tomorrow.

Oh, in case you were interested, the dental work went fine: very little pain or discomfort, except to my checkbook. I wore my Beatrice hat, and the dentist honored his agreement to knock a chunk off of his fee. (Yes, he is awesome.)

I still have one more appointment to go, so once I wrap up some old business, I’ll start listing more goodies on MHSP soon. I’m seriously contemplating selling another one of my NPOD finds - a Sunshine Celebration "Daytona" - but I’ll wait a week or so and see how everything else shakes out, monetarily. (I hesitate, because I strongly suspect that the Daytona was a photography sample, too. You know my feelings about that.)

I’m in the middle of one of my periodic china cabinet purges; my space for chinas is strictly limited, and I’ve been finding way too much "finger candy" lately. Plus, some redecorating/dogproofing had become necessary. None of those pieces will be for sale until next year, unless you want to swing by the house for a shopping trip. (You can also come over just to shoot the breeze. Give me a couple days’ notice, and I’ll even bake a cake!)

Here’s a closer look at the Bucking Bronco I found last weekend; it’s the #730 Bucking Bronco in "Rose Dun," though he looks more like a Blue Roan to me:

He’s not particularly rare, but he is a nicer-than-average example. He tends to get overlooked because of his similarity to two earlier releases: the #191 Smoke Gray, and the Bentley Sales Steel Gray SR in 1988. In spite of their relative rarity, neither one of them is in high demand, either. Being Classic-scale, and not terribly performance-friendly, does that to a mold.

Although I’m a big fan of the Bucking Bronco, I hadn’t picked up this one - or any of the more recent releases. It’s not due to a lack of enthusiasm, it’s primarily a consequence of my "no retail" buying policy: I very rarely buy models off the shelf, at full retail. It’s gotta be something I know is either very hard to come by, or is so captivating somehow that it has to come home with me right then and there.

Plus, I’ve found that if I’m patient enough, most of the regular run models I want will eventually come to me via the flea market, in a trade, in a group lot, or at BreyerFest.

Every time I do break the rule and make an off-the-shelf splurge, I inevitably find one for half the price - or better! - a few months or a few years later. Not every time, but often enough.

An Interesting Twist

2011-09-21T21:49:00.005-04:00

FYI: I wasn’t even aware of the high-priced resin on Auction Barn while composing my last post on money and value. I had seen that the discussion thread on Blab was insanely long, but hadn’t bothered to take a look because (a) I don’t have that kind of money to spend, (b) I don’t do resins, and (c) Auction Barn is just barely on my radar. (No slight on the site itself, it’s just that there’s generally nothing there of interest to me.) Me being totally crunched for time had a little to do with it, too.

It’s a shame that some thoughtless commenters have made the usual thoughtless comments, and have completely derailed what could have (actually, should have) been a meaningful discussion about the impact a sale like that has on the hobby. Instead, all we get are endless posts about how awesome capitalism is and how good this is for everybody involved - opinions that area about as controversial as the cuteness of kittens and puppies, and about as relevant.

I’m still a little discombobulated from the oral surgery yesterday, so that’s about as far as I’ll venture on that topic, for now. I’m hoping to incorporate most of what I need to say about it in an upcoming post about perspective (the philosophical kind. I’m decidedly less intrigued about the artistic variety.)

I finally found a little time yesterday to clean up the office a bit, so here’s a photo of a few of the weekend’s findings:

The Fighting Stallion is going to be a restoration experiment, the Bucking Bronco is a keeper (near mint, and just super!) and since I already own that particular variation of the Gem Twist, he'll be heading to the sales list after a bit more work.

The Gem Twist is from the first year of production (1993) and though you can’t see them in the photos, he sports the long, fully painted braids. The second version had the same braids, but with "ribbon dots" instead, and the third version had remodeled ribbons with similar dots. I don’t own the second version, but that’s more a matter of a lack of will than a reflection of its rarity: I have no idea which one is the rarest, to be honest. Haven’t bothered to do the research, though I probably should.

Aside from the ribbon remodeling, there was another significant, but invisible, change made to the mold: it was made less tippy. The earlier examples of the Gem Twist mold are extremely unstable; that glorious Moody tail made him exceptionally bottom heavy. You’ll find some that are "weighted" correctly, but it’s very hit or miss, and the guy I picked up Sunday is definitely a miss.

(He’s in otherwise pretty nice shape, other than a light scuffing and yellowing, so whoever owned him previously didn’t play with or display him much.)

Later models made with the Gem Twist mold tend to be less tippy, so Reeves was evidently aware of the problem, and took steps to correct it. I suspect some work was done on the interior surfaces of the mold (some areas shaved, others built up?) to even out the weight distribution. He’s still not the most trustworthy model on the shelf - none of mine are currently on display, mostly because of "Hurricane" Vita - but it does take a little bit more than a sneeze to knock the later examples over.

Stock Market

2011-09-19T00:26:00.002-04:00

Good, good day at the flea market today - lots of cheap, cool stuff, just the way I like it. I could have easily blown my whole wad, without much effort, on things like "Pajamas of Oriental Splendor" (seriously, that’s what the box said!), a chunk of petrified wood, or an animatronic Elvis head (no joke.) I decided to stick to my core competencies: Breyers, books, and minis.

(No pic today - it’s late enough as it is, and my time management skills apparently went on vacation sometime last week. Anyone who’s still waiting on a package or e-mail from me, I am working on it!)

Other than the indiscretion with the Valentine and Heartbreaker set, I’ve been so good with my money over the past two weeks. I’ve been rooting around the deepest, darkest corners of my closets before venturing out shopping, and rocking the coupons when I do have to set foot in the nearest enclosed retail compound.

Money is probably my least favorite topic to talk about in regards to the horses, especially in the contentious area of estimated price or value.

I am not completely uninterested in how much certain models are worth, but I am a little disturbed at how obsessed many hobbyists are with tracking prices - creating spreadsheets, graphs and flowcharts, like it’s the stock market. It is, kinda, but I’ve never been one to think of my horses as that crucial a part of my investment portfolio. (If I come close to breaking even, I’ll be happy.) Its mutable nature also turns me away: my time is better spent tracking down the unknown - and there’s a whole lot of that, in Breyer History - than keeping track of the unknowable.

When pressed, I can spit out the necessary numbers for you, and I’m usually not too far off the mark. I work in inventory services, and any one who works in that industry develops an almost savant-like ability to estimate price and quantity with just a quick glance. But as a general rule, I’m more interested in figuring out the "why" than the "how much".

Like with the Traditional Spirits and Rains: I do not particularly care in how much they’re "worth," except for the fact that their going prices are preventing me from adding them to my collection. I already have a Rain - the Lady Liberty BreyerFest SR from a couple years back - but I never got around to getting a Spirit when I could. (Technically I did own a Ringmaster - for about a week. It was a pick-up for a friend.)

I think there are a number of factors in play with the Spirit and Rain prices. One, neither mold has been in production for three years: that’s an eternity, nowadays. Two, there have been limited number of releases on each mold - two for Rain, and three for Spirit - and because of the cartoonish aspects of the molds, not a lot of future releases seem likely. And three, it’s the movie, silly: movie merchandise sells, and animated movie merchandise sells really well. A quick visit to the toy department at Kmart, Target or Walmart can tell you that.

The fact that the models are fairly good representations of the characters as they appear in the film also helps. (As they say in the industry, they’re very "on model.") That would help explain why the secondary market for the Classic and Stablemates Spirit merchandise isn’t quite as superheated. Out of its proper context (box and/or accessories) there’s nothing to distinguish them from any other Breyer Classic Mustang releases. There’s no mistaking the Traditional Spirit and Rain for anything other than what they’re supposed to be.

That’s also another reason why I have to roll my eyes whenever I see a hobbyist kvetching about Spirit’s eyebrows: you know, if it wasn’t for those eyebrows, you wouldn’t be able to sell your MIB Spirit for 150 dollars now, would you?

At Random

2011-09-15T21:34:00.008-04:00

Been in a quiet, contemplative mood for the past few days. The weather’s been cool and rainy, a reminder that the Fall season is on its way. Fall is my least favorite time of the year, as I may have explained before: about the only thing it has going for it is cheap school supplies.

Haven’t been thinking much about the horses, either, other than the sales items I’ve been posting on MHSP.

Sales are going okay. More would be better, but I’m grateful to have sold what I have so far in this market. I’ll continue to list things through the end of September, then I’ll move on to different moneymaking venture for the month of October. Still trying to decide what, exactly. (Etsy? eBay? Banner ads on the blog?)

One of the ideas I’m mulling over is finally releasing the contents of Marney’s photo album. Most of the work is done; I just haven’t been sufficiently motivated to "package" it. I know there’s a market for it: if there’s one thing that sells consistently, it’s reference information, especially about hobby history.

(There’s no rhyme or reason to the pictures scattered throughout this post; I just picked a few from the album at random. Mostly for your enjoyment, and partly to taunt you.)

I am also seriously contemplating doing NaNoWriMo this year. I have an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, and it feels like it’s ready to be written. I’ll have to dig out my research notes and character sketches to see if any of the material is salvageable.

I never actually "wrote" any of it. Just like the rest of my writing, I need a certain level of familiarity with the subject matter before I feel comfortable enough to string words together. That’s why I haven’t covered some rather obvious subjects here, yet: if I don’t have a sufficient mastery of the material, I don’t feel I could write about it in a competent manner.

If I can’t write about it competently, whatever I do write will feel like a disservice to my readers. Nothing aggravates me more than to read something by someone who clearly didn’t do the homework (that would cover most of the Internet, I think.)

I better log off early today, and finish wrapping up some of those packages.

Mmm, Waffles

2011-09-12T19:43:00.004-04:00

Good weekend at the markets:

The Donkey’s a Chalky, the Japan is unstickered but also unbroken, and the Misty body was a freebie. Unshown: a stack of Arabian Horse News magazines from the early 1960s, and another box of unfinished quilt blocks.

I left a lot of good stuff behind - including a rather fine late 1970s Traditional Man o’ War(!) The prices were good, but as they say on the picking shows, "there wasn’t enough meat on the bone" to bother. I have enough marginal stuff to sell as it is, and these tirekickers are getting tiresome.

(I’m becoming more and more convinced that the Internet needs a "minimum age requirement." Or, at the very least, a reading comprehension test.)

None of the models are keepers; the Donkey is tempting - I don’t have a straight up Chalky one - but I need the money more, and Chalkies are so super hot right now. I already have enough - and find enough, every year - that sacrificing a few to the greater good doesn’t bother me much.

What’s really neat about this Donkey is that she has such clear, distinct waffling on her hooves:

"Waffling" is a term used to describe the texture - similar to that of a waffle - found on the hooves of many early Breyers. It’s typically seen on models that received a "full body" coat of paint: Glossies, Basecoat Chalkies, and Matte Topcoats. The waffling pattern, it is assumed, comes from the perforated drip racks the models were placed on.

Not every vintage Gloss, Chalky or Matte Topcoated model has waffling; sometimes the excess hoof "goop" was cleaned up or ground down during the finishing process. It depended on how messed up the hooves were, and how industrious the painters and finishers were that day, I suppose.

The quality of the hoof bottoms usually doesn’t affect the value of a model one way or another, unless it’s particularly bad. Sometimes the presence of waffling can enhance the value, especially in the case of a finish that may be deemed of questionable authenticity. It’s pretty hard to fake a detail like that.

Presenting Itself

2011-09-09T21:17:00.003-04:00

I just happened to be in That part of town where That farm store is, and what’s sitting on the shelf waiting for me? I swear, I was there just to see if they might have one of those Rocky Mountain Horses!

A glossy Valentine and Heartbreaker set. Sigh. I couldn’t just leave them there, either. Who knows whose hands they’d have fallen into? I had to rescue them! Such a quandary - keep, or sell to one of my regular customers, who’s still looking?

Argh! Time to futilely list more items on MHSP while I decide. (If any of you are interested in a cheap thrill or two, all my listings include postage, just to simplify things. Sometimes when you start dickering about postage, it slows the process down. Money’s great, but I want ‘em gone, too.)

(BTW, that store still had a couple of older Zenyattas from last year, if anyone’s still looking, and any deal needs sweetening.)

To clarify the book scanner thing: book dealers go to used book sales with handheld devices that can tell them how much a book’s current resale value is; if it’s greater than what the book sale is charging, they’ll buy it for their inventory.

I go to used book sales for (a) cheap/obscure reads, (b) to add to my collection, and (c) to stock my BreyerFest sales stash with fun little extras. I don’t make enough to justify buying a scanner, plus I think it’s tacky and a buzzkill. There are some sales that ban the use of scanners outright, though the local sale is not one of them, unfortunately.

I might be listing a few of my better sale books on MHSP too, once I run out of horses to list. Nothing expensive there, either. (Sorry, no Paul Browns - those are keepers!)

So yeah, I saw the Presentation Man o’ War on eBay; I didn’t even bother bookmarking it for later. It went for well over double what I could theoretically pay. Paying for my teeth and my tires take priority right now.

You know, it wasn’t that long ago that Presentation Series pieces were considered … well, not all that big a thing. A lot of collectors then (as now) weren’t too keen on the whole attached base thing. Why spend extra for one with a base, when you could get a freestanding one cheaper? It was nerdy-cool to have a few in your collection - especially if you were a completist - but they weren’t the high demand budget-busters they are now.

Some have been found in this area - mostly Adios, which is not a surprise: there used to be a number of Standardbred farms in the area. The Adios model itself is a fairly easy find around here. I’ve come close: I’ve found a few mounted trophy-like things, but no true Presentation pieces, yet.

I’d be happy with any of them. I’m not particular; I only "need" one for the collection. Aside from cost and rarity, those bases take up an ungodly amount of shelf space: it just wouldn't be practical. Now, I wouldn't turn down a nice-sized collection of them if they did happen to fall in my lap somehow, but what are the odds of that?

(Yeah, I know, it's me we're talking about. When, not if, etc.)

Defining Things

2011-09-06T23:03:00.003-04:00

Went back to the book sale on Monday for the "by the box" sale. I can now safely say that I my book stash is now fully stuffed.

It’s mostly dollar-table stuff, but I generally do pretty well with that. People might hesitate a bit on fifty dollar horses, but not on fifty cent Scholastic paperbacks. Fifty cents here, a dollar there - it all adds up. (Why yes, I do roll my pennies and deposit them in the bank. What, don’t you?)

I’ve been thinking about the term "Grail" a lot in the past couple of days. I don’t have any philosophical or etymological problems with it, the way I do with other hobbyist terms. (Nobody who owns more than a dozen models actually "congas" them, "Congo" is a country in Africa, and hobbiest is NOT A WORD AT ALL. And while I’m on a tear here, may I point out that definitely and defiantly are NOT different spellings of the same word?)

I am a little troubled by its overuse, however. Everything everyone has ever wanted for more than five minutes becomes a "Grail." If you can turn around and get a Grail within six months of it being released in the first place, or with a very large application of money, it’s not a Grail. It’s just something that was on your want list.

When I think of Grails, I think of quests that are years in the making. Models that may not necessarily be "rare," but always seem to elude your grasp, no matter what you do. (And some of the things they make you do are exceedingly stupid.) They taunt you, revealing themselves (casually) in the hands of your nemeses. They walk into your room at BreyerFest in the arms of someone who purchased it in the room next door. (The one you hadn’t had time to visit yet.)

They elude you so that you question whether you’ll ever own them. They make you question if you’re even worthy of owning them. They make you wonder whether the pursuit is even worth all the anguish it's caused you. They make you cry - and make you feel stupid for crying.

Those are Grails.

A Grail is not a singular thing: the heart can hold many different desires. I can rattle off at least a half dozen Grails of my own, each a unique little ache:

Traditional Man o War with eyewhites, battleship gray hooves, and a sticker
A Presentation Series piece (doesn’t matter which one)
A Vintage Decorator (ditto)
Woodgrain Polled Hereford Bull Lamp
The Ford Pinto Family Foal
The 1980s SR Black Blanket Appaloosa POA

The odds of me finding these models via another hobbyist - or at BreyerFest - are exceedingly remote. Oh, some of them will be "available" eventually, but not at a price I can afford (the spare change thing? I really do that.)

I have to depend on lucky strikes on eBay, or at the flea market, and occasionally on the hubris - or outright ignorance - of other hobbyists. This is where the research helps: it’s so much easier to find and acquire rare and wonderful things before everyone else realizes how rare and wonderful they are, too.

Or after everyone has moved on to the latest, trendiest things. I am so glad that I managed to get all the Traditional Man o’ Wars that I’ve got, for instance, before he became cool again. (Didn’t see that one coming, honestly, but glad to have y’all join the party.)

On a Grail

2011-09-04T23:00:00.002-04:00

I must have been the only one standing in line for the book sale that didn’t have a scanner, but I did all right in spite of my "handicap"; even after I factor out the keepers, I should be able to at least double my money on what I found. Mission to replenish my book "sales stash" accomplished.

(It also made up for today’s trip to the flea market, which was a washout - literally. Eh, we needed the rain.)

It’s been a busy three days: cleaned out my closets, finished two mini quilts, read two books, reorganized my quilting binders ("Must Do", "Might Do", and "Good Ideas") and packed up some sales items. If I hadn’t slept in this morning, I probably would have baked a batch of cookies, just for kicks.

A couple of bad incidents have made me focus my attentions on anything but the horses. One appears to be a tirekicker with negligible reading skills; at least I have only one more day of waiting before it goes to the next person on the wait list. (Note to self: change tirekicking policy to a three day maximum, not seven.)

The second incident was me being exceptionally stupid: I hesitated on a Buy It Now on eBay, with fatal consequences. The price wasn’t bad, but after paying out all the money I’ve had to in the past couple of weeks, I made a now incomprehensible decision to bid, instead of buy outright.

The auction got canceled a couple hours later, then relisted.

I was momentarily relieved (ah, it wasn’t auction interference!) But then realized then and there that I had already "lost" the auction, well before it was over. Sniping software was irrelevant: what I could afford to pay pales in comparison to what others can, and surely others would see what I saw.

And they did.

And I was sniped, with three seconds to go, with nary a creeper bid in sight.

It was a Chicago employee lot. With one of my grails in it. An item that I had been sniped before on, about ten years ago. Gah! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of sharing my wisdom via this blog. Why create more (unnecessary?) competition for myself? Every time I give away another "secret," I know it means I’ll be paying for it in ways like this.

But then I see hobbyists making very, very dumb decisions based on bad information, and my desire to correct it - to have them make a decision based on good data, not bad - overrides my own desire to succeed as a hobbyist. If you’re going to spend money foolishly, it might as well be for right reasons.

And I also feel a little bit guilty because I have such a huge informational advantage, and I’d hate to be seen as taking too much of an advantage (or profit) in that. I always forget that there are other hobbyists who do not have that compunction. (Indeed, as some of you have seen in the NPOD, some seem completely unburdened by it.)

I still do okay, in spite of myself.

Nevertheless, I’ll be beating myself up for months over that hesitation.

Paying For It

2011-09-01T22:15:00.003-04:00

More bad news from the dentist; so much for me paying off the credit card from BreyerFest early. No new horses for me for a long while!

On the plus side, I’ll be getting a discount on my next visit. Provided I wear the Princess Beatrice costume to the office.

No, I’m not joking. Hey, I put a lot of effort into that outfit, I’m gonna make it pay!

I did have one new arrival this week (purchased pre-dentist); you’ve probably already seen it, but I just wanted to confirm your suspicions about who ended up with him:

The #114 "Bay" (Five-Gaiter Sorrel) Western Prancing Horse, with the Transitional Saddle. Isn’t he purty? He’s absolutely immaculate, as if someone pulled him straight out of his shipper box.

His near flawless condition leads me to believe he came from the factory that way, though it’s impossible to say. Sure, the saddle doesn’t really fit, but we’re talking a Breyer of mid-1960s vintage here: whether something was in scale or not was pretty low on their list of priorities back then.

(All four legs intact? Check. Ears not chipped? Check. Reins attached? Check. Saddle? Oops!)

Funny how the two Transitional Saddle models I’ve seen on eBay have both been on Western Prancing Horses, and not the Western Horse itself. It’s definitely something worth noting, though it’ll have to take a couple more examples before it rises about the level of mere coincidence.

You probably saw the price I had to pay for him, too. Not expensive, but also not as cheap as I had hoped, either. (Partly my own fault, but we'll talk about that some other day.) On the other hand, it is that time of the year when I buy myself one or two small horse-shaped luxuries on eBay, budget be darned. I was lucky enough to still have a little bit of money in the Paypal account to cover it, this time.

Not a bad little item to "end" the year on, I suppose. Outside of whatever I happen to find at the flea market, antique mall or thrift stores.

A Couple of Brahmas

2011-08-29T21:51:00.007-04:00

Don’t mind the rumbling you hear in the background, that’s just the aftershocks of the massive tantrum I had after … well, we’ll talk about it another day, when I’m a little less ticked off at myself.

The rash is better. It still itches from time to time, but my appearance no longer frightens small children or dogs. Things still won’t be looking pretty for the next couple of weeks, but according to my schedule, I won’t be out and about much then, anyway. Not by choice, and mostly nothing personal - Labor Day just messes up the work schedule.

On the plus side, that means I’ll finally have the time to get those sales up and running on MHSP, like I’ve been meaning to. However, I have also been informed that there may be painting in the house by then, which might entail the dusting and rearranging of things. Swell.

A few middling things at the markets this weekend - a couple of Mastercrafter Clocks (overpriced) and a small pile of disreputable-looking vintage Hartlands (not worth the trouble.)

I did pick up a few bodies, and a few books. I was almost completely cleaned out of my sale books at BreyerFest, so it feels good to replenish the stash. Looking forward to the big local book sale this coming weekend; not looking forward to the jerks who will be standing in line in front of me with their ISBN Scanners.

(Man, those people completely take the fun out of used book sales. All business, no pleasure, y’know? Just like in this hobby, too.)

I had to move a few things around upstairs in the main collection, so I have a couple of my Brahma Bulls that are currently homeless (they’re not going anywhere - I just don’t know where to put them, yet.) Interesting contrast between the two. Here’s the more familiar variation that most of us either know, or own:

This guy’s pretty nice - very clean, no major marks, and he still has lots of pinking, which usually fades into nothingness over time. I was quite pleased with myself when I found him a few years back. He's easy to find, but not always in that good of a condition. Here’s the other:

Quite a difference, eh? The "Black Hump" version is the earliest, seen in most of the pre-1960 ephemera. It’s not just the hump that’s black - so are his horntips, hooves, leg patches, muzzle, etc. It’s worth noting that the black paint is a distinct color from the gray - one is not the diluted (or undiluted) version of the other.

My example is about average on the shading and detail scale - I’ve seen ones that have only had the black hump, and I’ve seen others that could almost pass for Charcoal.

He was a pretty popular mold right out the gate, so while the "Black Hump" variation may seem a little on the uncommon side, he really isn’t too difficult to find - as long as you’re on the lookout for him, of course. Like anything else, if you’re not looking for him, you’re not going to find him. Intentionally.

Peeling Away

2011-08-26T22:25:00.004-04:00

Well, the stuff I had wasn’t working so great on the rash, so I had to take a trip to Urgent Care yesterday to get something stronger - a shot in the tuches and some nasty-tasting medication. I’m already feeling better; luckily for me, I have an extremely efficient metabolism when it comes to drugs.

(Almost too efficient, actually: I used to think it was because I was very fond of grapefruit juice, but cutting them out of my diet didn’t help one way or another. Fortunately, I have a couple of days off here to deal with any additional weirdness that may come up.)

Yes, purple horse is awesome. Normally I’d already have it stripped and evaluated by now, but I really am taken by the idea of incorporating him, as-is, into a Joseph Cornell-style assemblage. Here are a couple of links to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, if the name still doesn’t ring a bell:

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/

By collecting and carefully juxtaposing found objects in small, glass-front boxes, Cornell created visual poems in which surface, form, texture, and light play together. Using things we can see, Cornell made boxes about things we cannot see: ideas, memories, fantasies, and dreams.

And also (warning: the text here is a bit overripe - a common problem in art history writing):

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=48419

The Family Foal that needed to be stripped already is; the paint job underneath is rough enough that I’m considering stripping it to the bare plastic for research purposes. You can see so much more of the molding history of a model once the distraction of the paint job is eliminated, and as I’ve discussed before, the Family Foal has an fascinating and complex history of mold revisions.

The chance of finding a true factory original blank of this vintage is very, very slim, and the painted versions are just common enough to not bother me "destroying" one. Not in the same way I get squicked out by some hobbyists going to town on limited release models that haven’t been released as regular runs yet.

Someone wanted to see the "Neiman Marcus" Longhorn, and here he is:

Just a #384 Texan Longhorn Bull with his brand marks removed, and a Neiman Marcus logo handpainted on (in black enamel). It’s not real obvious in the picture, but it’s very obvious in person. It’s another excellent example of why you shouldn’t base you buying decisions solely on photographs. As someone who was once considered an expert-level user of Photoshop, take it from me: you should be very wary of trusting any online photographs, period.

(Note: I try to keep my digital manipulation to a minimum here - basically to compensate for my complete and somewhat ironic lack of actual photography skills. I'll lighten for detail or contrast, color correct to compensate for inadequate lighting, or add a little extra sharpening for my shaky hands.)

And which is also why I’m rolling my eyes at the kerfuffle on Blab over the photographs of the Fall Release of the Rocky Mountain Horse on El Pastor. How many times do we have to go over this? Fact: we have known for years that we can’t trust the photographs Reeves puts out ahead of their releases. If it’s not quality of the photo, it’s the quality of the editing.

I saw the actual, three-dimensional sample of the Rocky Mountain Horse at BreyerFest, and I thought he was beautiful. In fact, I think he was the only item on the table on Thursday that made me make "grabby hands" motions. Looked just like that Collector’s Choice Chocolate Ethereal, except for the absence of gloss. If they look like that, and I find a nice one at the same semi-local farm store where I found those Zenyattas, it’s coming home with me. This is coming from someone who’s not really "in the market" for current regular runs.

Time to lotion myself up and hit the sack.

Everybody's an Expert

2011-08-23T22:14:00.003-04:00

Something insubstantial today, because I made the mistake, over the weekend, to clean out the corner of the property where the groundhog lives. The groundhog evidently knew what I was up to and decided to engage in some chemical warfare, which has led to a most peculiar, and painful, allergic reaction over a good portion of the right side of my body.

In reality: I’m now suffering a very nasty case of allergic contact dermatitis, probably caused by the perennial helianthus I was yanking out with wild abandon. (Knew that stuff was evil the day I picked it up at the perennial exchange. Knew it!) I got something for it, no worries …yet.

On the plus side, it’s just horrible looking enough to keep some of my more annoying coworkers at a distance. ("Hey, can I borrow some of your …gah! Never mind!")

Sunday was another very strange day at the flea market. I found a nice little box lot of horsey-type stuff, super-cheap - seriously, I could sell the wooden box everything was thrown into for the price I paid for the lot, and then some. Nothing spectacular, just some older FAFs, a Hartland Chubby Walker knock-off and some toyish things:

Yes, some of them have been painted over; I totally love the shade of purple on the Hartland knockoff (the Red Ryder one?); I think I see another crazy, Joseph Cornell-inspired art project in my near future.

The strange part was the dealer getting into an argument with me after I paid for it. I’m used to dealers - especially ones that don’t know me - throwing all kinds of BS at me to get me to buy something. But she was trying to impress me after the fact, with other Breyers she had sold in the past.

Everything she mentioned, though, pointed towards them being Hartlands: The Lone Ranger, Tonto, Roy Rogers, etc. And I told her so - either that, or she was confusing them with newer pieces. Nothing rude or anything, just a simple "Oh, those sound more like Hartlands" type of statement.

She got indignant, told me they were OLD, and were marked BREYER, and implied I didn’t have any clue what I was talking about. I started citing chapter and verse about the horses in the box (that the curly eartips on the Family Foals date them to 1961 or 1962 at the latest, that the purple horse was a repainted Hartland copy, etc.) but she wasn’t having any of it.

So I walked away from it. Poor, dumb little me wiIl make money on the deal without even breaking a sweat.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten used to the "regulars" there giving me some props for knowing my stuff. I don’t know everything - nobody does - but I’d like to think that I’m at least the local, "resident" expert. I was just trying to be helpful. Ask around!

I get some of the same from fellow hobbyists, from time to time. Everyone who buys a reference book or two suddenly thinks they’re an expert. Which may well be the case if you’re at a yard sale or auction house, but not at BreyerFest or on MHSP, dearies.

It unnerves me when I see auctions go way higher than they need to, based on bad photography, wishful thinking, or wrong impressions. There have been times when I’ve gone out of my way to dissuade hobbyists from thinking something is more rare than it is, even if it meant me getting less for it in the end.

I tend to err on the side of most hobbyists knowing what they have, generally. There may be some gaps in their knowledge, or finer details they may miss, sure, but unless they’re hard up for cash, or been out of the market for a while, you’ll have to find your crazy-spectacular deals elsewhere.

Spun Gold

2011-08-20T21:58:00.002-04:00

Remember the speculation about the Spun Gold Surprise? Some folks thought that meant straight-up Decorators, while others thought they’d be realistic colors with a "golden" theme, like Chestnuts, Palominos and such.

They split it down the middle: we got "golden" themed colors, with semi-metallic finishes: Champagne, Flaxen Chestnut Overo, and Buckskin Blanket Appaloosa. (Hey, I got that part right! Yay, me!)

So, just like last time, I got a Pinto and an Appaloosa:

There was some carping about the solid "Champagne" version not being a "true" Champagne, but that seemed like nitpicking to me. Heck, a few years ago most hobbyists didn’t even know what the color "Champagne" was. And we’re talking semi-decorator colors on the semi-realistic "Ethereal" mold here; I’m sort of surprised they came as close as they did.

I’ve been wanting to add a few more Ethereals to the herd for some time now, so I was more than happy with his appearance as this year’s Surprise model. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the Surprise within the Surprise - a Gloss Dark Palomino Appaloosa, in the same pattern as the "Fire" - but the execution this time around went off without a hitch, at least. (And not all dumped into roughly the same time slot, like last time.)

At 28-30 pieces distributed, that came out to two Surprises per time slot; roughly calculated, your odds of getting one were about 40 to 1. Still not great, but probably a better bet than the raffle - and you still get a horse out of the deal, if you don’t "win"!

A model with a fairly limited piece count - 390 pieces each of the standard three - on a mold that hasn’t seen a lot of action lately. So hey, not a bad deal, all around.

What’s really nice about the Surprise Tent SR is that it’s really hard to game the system, the way you can (to a degree) with some of the other super-limited models at BreyerFest. Sure, you could buy more tickets to improve your odds, but at 70-85 for the ticket, plus 50-60 dollars a pop per model (or more) and all that time spent standing in line? Most hobbyists aren’t going to invest that kind of effort. Or have that kind of money to play with.

In other words, it’s about as fair a system as we’ll ever have for distributing a rarity as we’ll ever have. You know me, I’m big on the fairness thing. Neither life, nor the hobby are fair, but anything to make it a little more so, I’m all for.

Now that they seem to have worked the kinks out of the Surprise Horses, I sure hope they become a regular feature of BreyerFests to come.

If It Ain't One Thing...

2011-08-19T22:35:00.002-04:00

A rough couple of days here: not so much bad luck, but many petty aggravations. I banged up my knee pretty good, lost another pair of shoes to the dog, the allergies kicked it up a notch, and I keep dropping food on myself. (Yesterday it was an entire can of Diet Mountain Dew.)

Oh, and I had to get a new battery and new tires for the car.

I guess I should be grateful that I didn’t get the call for Red Rocket, then. Or get pulled for Swirling Sky. (Not getting picked for him wasn’t quite as aggravating as not getting picked for a Red Rocket, but it didn’t help. There’s always the wait list…)

I’m in the process of making a big sale to a regular customer that should cover the cost of my car troubles, though. If I can spare some time this weekend, I might even get a chance to throw a few items up on MHSP, too. Bodies and small items, I think, nothing to lurk about.

It is interesting that we haven’t seen too many Red Rockets up for sale in the secondary market; I don’t know if it’s because it’s not a super-popular mold (i.e. most of the drawing entrants actually wanted it for themselves) or the resellers are being more discreet about it. Fine with it, either way. I’ve got other things to obsess over.

Other than the aggravations, and the Red Rocket thingie, it’s been kind of a boring week. Lots of working, cleaning, sorting and filing. I know I’m probably just weird this way (or perhaps it’s a touch of OCD?), but there’s something very relaxing about taking a big mess of papers and putting them in a logical, usable order.

As such, I was a bit bummed didn’t get to bring back as much ephemera as I wanted to from BreyerFest this year. I still had a substantial pile of stuff from before then that needed to be dealt with, but more is always better, as far as the ephemera is concerned.

Since I’m in the middle of pulling that really big sale from the storage totes (over 20 items - no joke!) I’ll have to leave the post about this year’s BreyerFest Surprise model until tomorrow.

Barry and Wally

2011-08-16T22:21:00.007-04:00

Nope. Not that one either. Third strike in a row on the Web Specials. What was the last one I got? Pace Yourself? This sort of thing keeps up, I'm going to just not bother even applying anymore. I get nauseous enough hoping for potential employers to call; no need to add to that agony.

It wasn’t a completely wasted day: at least I finally got an old restoration project done while waiting. I needed to get that anxious energy out of my body somehow, and I wasn’t in the mood to do any sewing. The sewing project I’m in the middle of - an obscure vintage quilt pattern called "Gardner’s Prize" - would have probably contributed to my stress:

All curves and inset pieces! (Before you question my taste in fabric, I just want to point out that I’m reconstructing it from pieces found in a box of scraps I bought at the flea market last year. Because I want to, that’s why.)

Actually, it’s not all that bad a project for someone at my skill level, but it was definitely not the right project for my anxiety level today. Swabbing, scrubbing, and rinsing was more my speed.

Since I’m still not quite calm enough to write anything that’s both long and/or reasonably coherent, here are some pictures of a couple more NPOD finds, instead. Notice anything different about these "Fun with Model Horses" Gray Flash Gift Sets?

The halters are red - just like they were in the PR photos! The sets that officially hit the market came with blue, pink or lavender halters, not red ones. Not sure why they changed the color on the official releases; my guess would be that they just went with the ribbon stock - and halters - they already had on hand from previous releases, to save some cash.

I don’t know if either of these pieces was the photography sample; I know there were at least two other red halter Flashes in addition to the two that I have. I haven’t unboxed either one to determine if they’re preproduction or sample pieces, though it’s not an unreasonable assumption.

And why, pray tell, haven’t I unboxed them yet?

They’re also packaging samples! Here’s a side shot of the second box above: it’s a mock-up made out of color laser print outs pasted over another Breyer box - with a sheet of plastic over the front to display the prototype sticker! You can even see the red dashed score marks on the box edges.

They’ve been throwing packaging samples in the NPOD for years, too, but most of them are of the fairly subtle sort - different stickers, different UPCs, generic backer boards with handpunched holes, etc. I’ve seen a few with stickers and handwritten notations on them, but this is the first time that I’ve even found true, honest-to-goodness mock-up.

Basically, it's a "packaging test color"!

From experience I’ve learned that it’s a wise thing to linger in the Pit for a little while after the initial rush. Once the majority of the more obvious loot’s been carried away, it sometimes reveals more subtle treasures hiding underneath. So it wasn’t a total shock when I found the Flashes tucked away in a relatively unpillaged corner.

Seeing Red

2011-08-13T21:41:00.002-04:00

Oh, great. Reeves has apparently decided that the "Don’t call us, we’ll call you" method of doling out online Special Runs is the way to go after all.

Worst possible scenario for me, personally, as I’ve already explained in great detail.

I was planning on cutting back on the horse purchases for the rest of the year anyway, but I wanted it to be a test of the strength of my own free will and budgeting skills, not the inevitable consequence of my own personal demons.

I’ll still put in for the Red Rocket anyway, since I am rather fond of the old Belgian mold. If the call comes, I’ll just have to find a way of coping with it that doesn’t involve crying, cursing, or the throwing of things.

I suppose I should say something about the other "Red" model that’s been lighting up the model horse world this week - the alleged Mobilgas SR Red Pegasus on eBay.

I am…dubious. I certainly think it’s possible that an SR was proposed or considered, and maybe even tested at some point, but I’m not so certain that the majority of the ones that have shown up in recent years are authentic.

Look, I’d like it to be real just as much as anyone else, but what I know of this "SR" leads me to be highly skeptical of most of the examples that have turned up in recent years. As someone on Blab pointed out, they could have just as easily been painted by Mobil employees as an internal promotion.

There were a handful of Longhorn Bulls that turned up on eBay a few years ago, with the Neiman Marcus logo "branded" on one hip; they looked real (and seemed plausible) at first glance, but they weren’t. I can’t remember the exact explanation I eventually got about them - I got one quite cheaply, once it was discovered that they were not authentic. (It was something quite innocent, or at least not done with any deliberate intent to deceive.)

I hesitate to use the word hysteria - it’s such a loaded word, especially in the context of a hobby that’s majority female - but I fear that’s the only word that describes the situation here. Evidence has become irrelevant: hobbyists want to believe.

Believing in something, however, does not make it so.

More Pre-Broken Breakables

2011-08-10T17:41:00.007-04:00

I’m so not in the mood for writing right now. The whole world’s in a funk, and has apparently taken me with it.

The same could be said of the flea market. There’s been a strangely tense vibe there; the quality of the merchandise remains good, but some of the newer dealers seem antagonistic to the concept of haggling. Hey, if I wanted to pay antique mall prices, I’d go to the antique mall, not to an open-air flea market wedged between a cemetery and a softball field.

Nevertheless, I did manage to find a few good things this week:

A Lomonosov Cheetah Cub, an H-R Mama Hippo, and a rather tragic Beswick Dachshund with eight breaks - including her neck! She was only a dollar, and it was obvious that her previous owner must have loved her something powerful: she had enough Quake Hold stuck to her bum to stand a Nataf on its head.

At the very least, she’ll make a nice test subject whenever I get around to teaching myself china restoration. Oh, and I did find one other piece, at the local Salvation Army on Monday - a piece of Kaiser! More specifically, a painted bisque 377 Goose Girl:

I had to stop in to check out the shoe department - the Vita Monster ate ANOTHER pair of work shoes - and I did a fly by of the collectibles department, just because. At first I thought it might have been a fake or a knockoff, but nope, it’s the real thing.

Yeah, this is a tonier than average area for a Salvation Army, and the quality of the merchandise is a shade better than average, but a piece of Kaiser sitting on the shelf next to dollar store knick-knacks? Definitely not a normal occurrence, even around here.

She’s not mint - one little curl of her hair is broken off, but who am I to complain? She was only a dollar more than the pair of shoes I found. (Yes, they wrapped them up in separate bags. They're not heathens, y'know.)

I did do a quick run through the rest of the store to make sure there weren’t any other Kaiser pieces floating around. Fortunately not: if I had found, say, a Kaiser horse next to some tacky Hobby Lobby resin Jesus figurine, the cognitive dissonance would have probably killed me.

(Nothing against religious tchotchkes per se, it’s just that I’m a bit of a snob about them: if it’s not a Hartland, or doesn’t glow in the dark, I ain’t interested.)

I suppose I should throw a little Breyer stuff in here.

The BreyerFest Porcelain SR Aurora was nicer than I expected - not enough to motivate me to buy one this year, though I wouldn’t rule it out in the future. If I hadn’t found all that I had found in the Pit this year, I might have bought a few of the other leftover Porcelains there, including the Party Time, and especially last year’s Dances with Wolves.

The only problem with buying more Breyer Porcelains is that it would necessitate me doing a major reorganization the china cabinet, and I’m really not up for that. I’m having a hard enough time getting done all of the other things I need to get done.

Two Forward, One Back

2011-08-07T14:59:00.004-04:00

When you’ve had the week that I had, the only logical response to it is cleaning, filing and sorting. I haven’t yet resorted to dusting though - if I’m not showing it, selling it, or photographing it, there’s absolutely no reason to dust it.

I mean, I do do it on occasion to keep the allergies and the cobwebs down, but anything more than once every year or so seems like an extravagance to me.

In the process, I finally got the "paperwork" for all of the newest arrivals done, too; this encompasses not just logging them into my personal collection inventory, but also jotting down all the relevant observational data about the models themselves, for my research. I hadn’t noticed until yesterday, for instance, that the Bluegrass Bandit mold comes with fully modeled horseshoes.

(Under the Sea is my first example of the mold, hence my not noticing it before.)

I also had a chance to unpack and enjoy my Sorcerer’s Apprentice:

I managed to get all three of the SR resins in the Tent; the Prince Charming has already been rehomed, and the Avalon will be, shortly. They are all lovely, but I break fragile things, so the notion of me keeping all three for myself was out of the question. One’s enough for me.

It’s not like I could have changed my mind and gone back for more, either. Silly Reeves people put every last one of them out Friday morning, with the usual consequences ensuing. So predictable.

If I’ve failed to mention it before, let me mention it now: I had the good fortune to have the honor of being the first person in line on Friday this year. Another BreyerFest accomplishment, checked off the list!

It was one of the coolest moments I’ve ever had at a BreyerFest: I felt like I was leading an Olympic delegation, minus the flag and the dorky matching outfits. (I’d be cool with carrying a flag, but no-can-do on matching windbreakers, serapes or berets. A cape? That, I could do.)

Anyway, what that meant was that for a brief, glorious moment, the NPOD all mine. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry, scream, or set up a blockade to defend my territory. Then I spotted the resins: it wasn’t just one, or a small selection of all three - it was clearly the whole wad.

So my thoughts immediately turned back to business: grab one of each while I can, before the horde behind me gets to pillaging. The samples could (momentarily) wait.

Good thing that I did, since the resins were pretty much gone, I think, by the time I managed to saunter over to the register. (Saunter? Okay, more like drag, with considerable assistance.)

If they do this resin thing again next year, they better darn well spread ‘em out like they were hinting before the event. Even though the NPOD was a little more sedate than it has been in the past few years, I think it has been, in part, because they’ve been doling out the other Store Specials that way. Even if it’s only tamping down the desperation just a tad, it’s a tad that seems to be making the difference.

If they’re going to ramp up the Store Special program with resins now, they might as well follow through.

Digging Deeper

2011-08-04T20:43:00.003-04:00

I did not think that, on a personal awfulness scale, that Monday could have been topped. Then I ran into yesterday.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details, and only give you the one word sufficient to end all inquiries on the quality of that awfulness.

Sewage.

(See? I told you it was a conversation stopper!)

Now that that bit of nastiness is out of the way, onto more pleasant things. I had to do a little reorganization of the storage area yesterday, and in the process I just so happened to find one of my older Pit Samples:

It’s the Shaded Bay Quarter Horse Gelding, from the 2001 J.C. Penney XMAS Catalog SR "Riding Academy Set," sans Rider Doll and the Grooming Kit. He was wrapped in a bag with some bubble wrap, along with a bunch of other models heaped in a pile. Since I was, and am rather fond of the QHG, I picked him up and carried him to the register with the rest of my booty.

That year, by the way, was 2006. I didn’t think much of the disparity of time, assuming that he was just a leftover who overstayed his welcome in the office or warehouse. It was a reasonable assumption: I can’t remember if it was that year, or a year previous, that they had boxes of the spare Grooming Kits and Dolls for sale, separately.

He was - and is - in immaculate condition, so I know he was never boxed or packaged in any way, whatever the case. I haven’t had the time or inclination to dig any deeper, or compare him with other examples to look for any significant differences. In light of the more recent Samples found in the Pit, it might be a good idea.

The provenance is good enough for me, for now, though.

The Stuff of Nightmares

2011-08-02T21:57:00.002-04:00

Well, I don’t think I could have had a worse experience in getting a reservation at the CHIN yesterday. Over two and a half hours of redialing, only to just barely end up with a room on the second floor. (The first time since - 2004?) I thought the hoi polloi had all decided that the CHIN was no longer worthy of their patronage?

(There I go again, believing what people write on public web sites. Completely forgot about the whole righteous "I’m gonna give NAMHSA a piece of my mind" meeting a few years back that wasn’t. All talk, no action - same as it ever was.)

I suppose I should be grateful to get a room at all, but I almost - and I am not exaggerating here - had a nervous breakdown in the process. Everyone who knows me well knows I don’t do phones. I wish I had some other less-obscure phobia to deal with, like heights, or clowns, or speaking in public, but somehow I got stuck with telephones. It’s better than it was (thank therapy for that) but unsolicited "’Sup?" phone calls from me aren’t in anyone’s future.

(If you do somehow score a phone call from me, your first thought should always and ever be "Oh no, what’s wrong?")

I’ve managed to pass the reservation duty on to other family members the past few years, but there was no one available to do the job this time around. I was literally sick the rest of the day, and I wasn’t feeling much better today. I looked pale and morose enough at work this morning that even the coworker going through chemo seemed concerned about me. (Which, in turn, made me feel even worse. Irrational Fear < Cancer.)

I was planning on taking less stuff to sell next year anyway, but less generally means (at best) one less tote. Lord, I hope the rumors about publicly accessible elevators next year are true. Or that a significant number of people change their minds and trot themselves over to the Embassy Suites anyway. ($40-70 more a night, and minimal room sales? Sorry, no can do.)

Enough kvetching. To make up for my drama queen rantings, here’s a picture of another Pit find, a "Master Design Sample" for the Halloween Horse Nosferatu:

(What, you thought that once I did a post on the Pecos, that that would be the end of BreyerFest stuff? Shoot, I have at least another week’s worth of stuff to go here.)

"Master Design Sample" is what it said on the bag he came in, which I am assuming is either a fancy-schmantzy in-house term for Test Color, or some permutation thereof. You’ll notice that his bats, unlike the production version, are sharp and crisp, and that this sunset shading is pretty darn amazing, too. He does have a little wear and tear, which is consistent with him being a True Test, and not something they just did purely for auctioning or raffling.

All the flaws are easily repairable though, should I ever get the notion of showing him. (I already have the perfect name for him: Dormammu!)

I don’t have any promo materials for his original release back in 2002, to check if he’s the actual photography sample. Would be mind-blowing if he was, but irrelevant, since he’s not going anywhere anyway.

Like a lot of hobbyists back when, I was a little bummed by the quality of the production Nosferatus. Not enough to get the screaming-meemies over it, but enough to make me shrug and hope for a cheap one on the secondary market. I suppose this Nosferatu qualifies as both cheap (for a Test Color) and secondhand (via the NPOD.) Funny how that works out.

Now, if I could only snag one of those leftovers Frankensteeds. (There were some rumors floating around that they might drop them in the Pit this year, but as far as I know, that didn't happen.)

Pecos

2011-07-30T21:49:00.002-04:00

So, what do I get for trying to make up a month’s worth of neglect in my garden, in the space of two days? Puffy eyes, a runny nose, and itching in unmentionable places.

At least the garden’s looking respectable now. It’ll be a few more days before I can say the same of myself. Stupid allergies!

I finally got the chance to debox my Pecos; I’m usually pretty diligent about that sort of thing, but as I’ve said before, been busy (and of late, itchy.) I think I got a pretty nice one, with good dappling:

He has a couple of very slight scuffs on his left hip, but they blend in with the dappling. And I don’t intend on showing him anyway, so whatever. He was the nicest of the three I had, and I was not displeased with the ones I had to choose from. Most of the flaws I saw were minor, nitpicky things. Nothing to harass the guy at the ticket window about.

I was hoping to bring home a few more Esprits this year, but that didn’t happen. I think everyone was expecting some form of Esprits in the NPOD - the Chestnuts, the Bays, or at the very least the Dapple Grays - but if there were any in there, they were few and far between.

I can understand their hesitation about the Chestnuts causing some commotion in the Pit, but I thought they’d at least have a decent pile of the Dapple Grays in there. Very odd. (Come to think of it, there was very little WEG stuff, period. Where was Snow Globe Mountain?)

From the lay of the land that I got while scoping out the Pit, I did get a sense that they were holding a few things back, so maybe there’s some crazy Grab Bag-style promotion in the not-too-distant future. Not saying there will be, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

I thought I still had a shot at getting a Gloss Pecos at the Costume Contest this year. I briefly considered not going ahead with my entry, due to the previously mentioned engineering problems, but once I saw the one they had in the Silent Auction, I doubled down and got it done. (After a quick trip to Lowe’s, for supplies.)

As I exited the "Dressing Room" in my full Princess Beatrice regalia - yes including The Hat - I was feeling pretty good about myself. One of the ladies at the Raffle Ticket booth actually burst out laughing at the sight of me. Awesome.

Alas, if you look at the picture of the winners, you will not see me among them. After the first two winners were called, it became pretty clear that the judges and I had differing judging criteria. Most of the entries I thought had a legitimate shot also went unplaced.

Admittedly, I was stretching the definition of a "fairytale character" just a bit by doing a real-life person, but no more so than many of the other entrants. Hey, she’s a Princess, she attended what was described as a "fairytale" wedding, and she wore a hat that defied both the laws of physics and common sense. Seemed like a perfect fit to me. Besides, after I found the matching dress at a local Salvation Army, I felt like it was something I had to do.

Next year’s theme is "British Invasion," so if the Costume entries call for your favorite Brit, past or present, Princess Beatrice just might make a return appearance.

(Because despite of entreaties to the contrary, I’m not selling The Hat for charity.)

In Plain Sight

2011-07-27T20:43:00.003-04:00

I’m finally getting around to cleaning up my financial paperwork from BreyerFest. Not that I didn’t want to deal with it before, I really had other and better things to do before now. Plus, I had already done a rough estimate of the numbers, and they weren’t all that bad. The only real "overage" in the budget came from a handful of select pieces I found in the Pit - items that I couldn’t pass up, because I definitely could not have afforded them elsewhere.

(Not trying to be deliberately dodgy, but a girl’s gotta keep some secrets, y’know?)

I had already "budgeted" a bit for the Samples in the Pit, so this piece - the subject of a recent discussion on Blab - wasn’t part of that overage:

At first glance, it looks like the Zippo from the 2004 J.C. Penney SR Set, the one with the Strapless and the Amber. Notice anything different about him?

Here’s a hint: http://identifyyourbreyer.com/images/410154.jpg

My guy has the Strapless blanket! Or more precisely, the blanket from the 2002 QVC "Artist’s Proof" SR of the Zippo, in chestnut. Neat, eh?

Don’t panic, I didn’t see it at first, either. A little bird told me to be on the lookout for Zippos in the Sample boxes of the Pit this year, and when I saw one, I grabbed it and immediately stashed it in the buy pile. Even if he wasn’t anything special, I figured hey, it’s still a Zippo. I love Zippo! And he comes with a Sample Room/Pit provenance, which is a step up from your garden-variety Special Run.

I was distracted by the glare of flashier things, I guess, so I didn’t pay too much attention to him until last week. As I was poking around the Internet, catching up on a little random research, I thought I’d pull up a picture of the Black App Zippo just for kicks - and holy moley! You could have hit me with a plank.

(Note: I have been hit with planks before. So I know of what I speak here. No, you don’t need to know that story, either.)

My first inclination was to label it another one of those "Mystery/Early Bird Pit Specials" that have turned up in the past few years, like the Gloss Summer Solstices and the Fun Foal Appaloosa PAFs. There’s definitely more than one of him out there, and they are all identically painted. Seems like a logical conclusion, right?

I’m not so sure. From what I’ve been able to gather, these guys were not a deliberate attempt to drive us early risers crazy. (Actually, I’m fairly certain of it.) If they were, they would have been grouped together somewhere else, and not mixed in the Sample boxes willy-nilly. They really were just a part of the Sample Room cleanout.

Admittedly, it is a little odd that there would be a small group of identical, but different from the norm Zippos roaming around the Sample Room; I don’t know what the full story is, there. Still, regardless of what they are - Tests, Prepros, mistakes, whatever - because of the circumstances of their sale, they’ve become another "Early Bird Special" by default.

Crackerjack Prizes

2011-07-24T15:04:00.003-04:00

I love my hobby, I really do, but I am going to be so grateful when I finally get all this year’s BreyerFest business wrapped up. Then I can kick back, relax, watch a movie, work on a quilt without guilt…

That’s the problem with too many hobbyists: some of them really need another hobby to get away to. Lapidary? Pomiculture? Competitive Eating? Anything that keeps people from making way too big a deal over a minor anatomical discrepancy, or freaking out over another 12 year old trying to scam another way-too-gullible veteran hobbyist is okay in my book.

(Unless it leads to links being posted to YouTube videos of hobbyists eating massive amounts of Oreos. I don’t care that they do broadcast that sort of thing on ESPN: nobody nowhere needs to see that.)

Anyway, next up in the NPOD hit parade, a Traditional Man o’ War:

You already know by now: this is no ordinary Man o’ War. Why yes, it’s a Sample - or possibly, a Test Color - of the QVC Man o’ War. He has the shaded naughty bits of the QVC version, with the additional shading around his muzzle. He’s also initialed, and dated: 2/12/02, to be precise. His halter is handpainted, as opposed to the production run pieces that featured masked ones.

I’m really not sure if he’s a "True" Test, or a Sample. The dating and initialing on the belly sort of pushes it over to the Test side for me, but I’ve seen Samples that were dated and initialed, too. In the absence of additional documentation or confirmation, calling it a Sample is the best I can do. It’s a moot point, since he’s not going anywhere.

Funny thing is, I almost didn’t end up with him, at all. I picked him up right away when I found him in the Pit, briefly considered him, and then put him down. Eh, what use do I have with another QVC Man o’ War? I wandered over to the boxed table, where the Packaging Samples hide. (Did I find some? Of course I did, sillies.)

A few minutes later, a friend handed him back to me. " I thought you might want this." I took it as a Really Big Hint: when a model comes back to you like that, you have to take it home with you. Into the pile he went.

I ignored him until I got back to the hotel, and unpacked my "Pit Pile." As soon as I unwrapped him, I instinctively flipped him over - and flipped out. Dang! Major, major score - for me!

That was sort of the secret of the Samples in the Pit. They were all bagged and bubble wrapped, so while you could make out what they were - look, it’s a Pokerjoe! - the finer details of what made them special had to wait until you unwrapped them. Is it a color variation, a mold variation, or possibly an True Test? You won’t know for sure until you unwrap it!

Sort of like a Crackerjack prize.

Crackerjack? Sounds like the perfect name for him.

An Extra Special Buffalo

2011-07-22T22:36:00.004-04:00

Almost caught up with everything here; if you’re expecting an e-mail or PM from me, I'm hoping to catch up on those on Saturday.

One of the many fabulous things I found in the Pit on Friday morning was a Taima - the Connoisseur Tortuga Buffalo - at an exceedingly good price. I didn’t get pulled for one when they came out, and I was way too much of a "Buffalo" myself to pay retail for one. So when the opportunity presented itself Friday morning, into the buy pile he went:

It wasn’t until yesterday, as I was finally starting to unpack the last of my personal stash, that the thought occurred to me: what if, was he, could he be…? He didn’t come with a velvet bag, or a certificate, and he wasn’t numbered. Hmm. So I pulled out my July/August 2010 issue of Just About Horses, and checked.

… all the lumps, bumps, swirls and bubbles match: he IS the very same Sample used to illustrate the announcement in Just About Horses! (The scanner hasn’t been behaving, so you’ll just have to refer to your own copies, folks.)

I actually found myself shaking, for a moment. It has always been a dream of mine to have a photography Sample; I have a few that I suspect might have been, but in this case there is no doubt.

I found myself carrying my newest treasure around the house the rest of the day, holding him up to every available window. In spite of my abundant joy, foremost in my mind were the comments of a couple of fellow hobbyists I shared my find with, who had dismissed him altogether. "Oh, he wasn’t very popular to begin with." "Eh, I thought he was kind of ugly, myself."

Definitely not the responses I was hoping for. Not unexpected, mind you - I’ve lurked on enough boards to know just how catty and judgmental my fellow hobbyists can be - but, yeesh. Way to put a little damper on a momentary bit of happiness.

Look, you don’t have to like the choices other people make when it comes to collecting, but when someone shows you their latest "score", the proper, decorous response is to be happy for them. Especially if they got it for a good price, or through some extremely fortuitous circumstances. They want to share their happiness: for Pete’s sake, let them!

I was already excited to have gotten the Taima for such a good price; now that I know his specialness goes beyond his cheapness - well, I just wanted to share.

(Oh, and FWIW, his name is Basil. After my "Buffalo" Great-Grandfather.)

Signal-to-Noise

2011-07-20T21:09:00.003-04:00

Still cleaning, still sorting. Took a couple more extended naps, too.

The signal-to-noise ratio on BreyerFest rumors and gossip is never great, but this year it was positively abysmal. The "intel" I received prior to Fest was good - right on the money, in many instances, down to specific pieces - but the information getting passed around at the actual event ranged from "kinda off" to "not even on the same planet."

It got so bad at one point that I thought sunspots might have been involved. (There was a full moon. I’ll blame it on that.)

One of the rumors floating around prior to the event was that Samples from the Sample Room cleanout earlier this year would be present. It was not an unreasonable one: not only had they dumped Samples in the Pit in years past, they had made the announcement earlier in the year on their Facebook page, requesting hobbyist help in regards to the Sample Room cleanup.

Anyone paying the least bit of attention could have put it all together.

There’s been some controversy over what distinguishes a "Sample" from a "Test Color." In the case of the pieces in the Tent this year, most of them would be considered "Samples," which are pieces identical to the production run, made prior to full production for minor corrections and approvals. "Sample," basically, is just another term for "Preproduction." (There are some minor differences, I guess. I’m still in no mind to finesse these.)

Prior to the introduction of the VIN numbers, Reeves Samples/Prepros were almost indistinguishable from Regular Run items. Occasionally you’d see some dating and notations on some - "VQS" meaning "Vendor Quality Sample," for instance. Sometimes you’d see some minor change or correction to the piece, added detailing on the hooves or eyes, etc. The kind of little subtleties even most nerds wouldn’t pick up at first glance.

Because the differences are so subtle, provenance is absolutely essential with items like these. Sadly, in the case of many of the Samples thrown into the Pit in prior years, their specialness has been lost to the ages.

Luckily for me, I’ve been pretty anal about keeping most of the loose, free-floating goodies I’ve found in the Pit over the years. That’s because I get picky: I try to stick with molds and colors I already have a fondness for. That way, if it does turn out to be something truly ordinary, it’s no crushing blow. One such example, from this year: a Kennebec Count "Chili"!

I’m pretty sure he is a Sample, but I’ll still love him if he ain’t. You know me and the Kennebec mold.

Still trying to decide on a name, though. I keep thinking I should name him after a Red Hot Chili Pepper, but he looks more like a Bono to me...

Rode Hard, Put Away Wet

2011-07-18T21:01:00.003-04:00

Did y’all miss me?

Sorry about the lack of posts; as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I was a little busy last week. I barely had time to sleep, much less type. I think I got … maybe 20 hours of sleep total from Tuesday through Sunday?

Which would explain why I slept in until 2 p.m. today. I’ve only just now finished unloading the truck, and have only made the most minimal efforts to unpack. I gave myself an extra day off work to recover, and I’m taking advantage of it. My only plans for today were to lounge around the house and eat as much ice cream as I can stand. (Check, and check.)

I have lots of stuff to show everyone, so I’m hoping (but not promising) to make daily posts this week to cover the craziness in full. I had a blast, for the most part, though there were a few things, as always, to complain about.

Unlike the folks elsewhere on the Internet, the hotel will not be one of my complaints. There were some annoyances, but it is what it is, and expecting drastic physical improvements in less than a year seems a little bit too much to ask. Seriously: it’s a ginormous complex on a half dozen levels, built nearly fifty years ago, in multiple stages, on the side of a hill, in a high traffic area. It’s going to take a while to get the job done, is what I’m saying. Next year, we can talk.

(Besides, some of the condition issues are part of the ambiance, by now.)

Anyhoo, today y’all get to see one of the many fabulous things I got to bring home with me - one of the few things I did unpack, just because he’s so special to me: my volunteer model!

A bay ("lavender") roan Silver, named Nottingham. I believe his model number was 711430; I wrote it down somewhere, but it’s on something I haven’t unpacked yet. I think there were 137 pieces produced, more or less. (Yeah, I know, another roan. Good thing I love them so!)

Contrary to popular opinion, I do not hate the Silver mold: I am just annoyed by his overuse. The only other ones I have in my collection currently are the gloss bay Valentino (because he’s beautiful) and the Skullduggery (because I love the Halloween horses.) I’d like a few others - especially the Silver Filigree, or the Hobo - but I’m not in any hurry. I think there were a few Pegasus Silvers in the NPOD this year, but I wasn’t especially motivated to toss one in my buy pile.

No worries: my NPOD pile was still plenty big, and plenty good, but we’ll get to that later in the week. I have to still unpack it all, y’know.

(And before I forget: h/t to "Tumnus" for the upgrade. You are also awesome.)

APH PAS, PAM, and PAF

2011-07-13T01:09:00.004-04:00

You have no idea how angry I am at Blogger right now. The reasons why this post is so late are only partially due to the fact that I was on the road and otherwise indisposed with BreyerFest type things. I'll just ... leave it. I'm too tired to get any more righteous than that.

Checked into the CHIN about 5:30 p.m. The room is still a bit of a wreck, but that's because I've already spent way too much time socializing. (Dudes - Linda Walter is just down the hall!) I'm in Room 331, if you're looking for me, or The Toad, or a little souvenir of your trip.

(Have I mentioned before that I have a ton of stuff to sell?)

The hotel is ... different. So far it looks like mostly cosmetic changes - new carpets, new linens, new faces, that sort of thing. Which I mostly like, except for the wall color: it's baby poop brown! I'm sure it looked great on the paint chip, but y'all know what the lighting is like around here.

The carpeting in the conference all area leaves a bit to be desired, too. (Swirly red, yellow and blue? Must have been on sale.) I think they upgraded their wireless service - it seems much, much faster than in previous years.

I suppose most of you have seen - or heard about - the Appaloosa Proud Arabian Mare and Foal set in the Benefit Auction. The way Breyer worded the post on their Facebook page has convinced some people that these models are vintage Test from the Sample Room.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again - and again: there are no vintage, pre-1985 Test Colors in the Reeves Sample Room. The "vintage" they are referring to is the color, and possibly the molds themselves. The detailing and color aren't consistent with the period that a lot of people are convinced these models came out of (the early 1970s.) The dappling is too fine, and the detailing just a little too good for even the best paint jobs of that era.

(BTW, I just happen to have a pretty nice Appaloosa Performance Horse for sale in my room. You know, if you're looking for one.)

None of the leftover goodies that were in the Chicago facility prior to the sale in late 1984 ever made it to New Jersey. Whatever was faound was either sold to Marney, or to the Bentley Sales Company, who sold them at live shows in the mid-1980s. I know so, because I bought a lot of Tests and Oddities from them. (Remember the Classic Quarter Horse Mares and Foal in Five-Gaiter Sorrel? Bentley Sales.)

And also, I was in the Sample Room way back in 1992, and I didn't see anything that qualified as vintage back then. The stuff that was in there then that's still in there now probably qualifies as vintage, today. (Hey, I've been up since 5 a.m, so you're just going to have to cut me some slack on the grammar.)

It's unlikely that Reeves would be buying vintage Tests, either, especially something like that pair. I wouldn't doubt that Reeves may be discreetly acquiring some vintage pieces here and there, but if they were buying vintage Tests, that's something we'd be hearing about.

It's obvious that this pair is meant ot complement the Proud Arabian Stallion in the Appaloosa Performance Horse colorway - only one of the most well-know, and coveted, of all vintage Tests. Yeah, I've mentioned him here a couple of times, but he's famous enough for the Powers That Be at Reeves to have discovered him on their own without any help from me.

You know, it's funny, but there really aren't a whole lot of "famous" or even "notorious" Test Colors. You'd think with them being unique or distinctive, that they'd be naturally more memorable. But, they're not.

The ones you own personally are memorable to you, of course, but Test Colors other people own? Not really. I've seen several hundred Test Colors over the years, but I can't think of more than a half dozen that I covet. Of those, I think only one or two of them anyone else would have even heard of. (Those would be BreyerFest Auction pieces.)

It's getting late, and I really need to clean off the bed and get some quality sleep time in, while I can.

Random BreyerFest Stuff, and a Test Color

2011-07-09T20:40:00.004-04:00

I think I might have solved my little engineering problem; now to see if I can finish that project before I leave on Tuesday (for reasons I won’t go into here, it would not be practical to finish it in the hotel.)

I’ve been looking over the BreyerFest program just like everyone else, trying to "finalize" my selections. I’m really warming up to the Once Upon a Time, the bay appaloosa Show Jumping Warmblood; I liked him before, but the additional incentive of his relatively low piece count is definitely upping my interest. I have three line tickets this year, so I just might be able to slot him in somewhere.

I may still need to get a Store Special Dusty for a friend of mine, but I doubt I’ll be getting one for myself. I’m still not feeling it for him, which considering my current space issues, is probably for the best. I can’t participate in the Sunday Raffle this year, which is fine by me, since I seem to be in the minority when it comes to the Cleveland Bay King Arthur model. He’s pretty, but not a heartbreaker.

I would love, love, love to get a Perrault - I think I’ve become just a little obsessed with that crazy silver splash spot appaloosa El Pastor. He’s just so … out there. His color scheme reminds me a little of a piece I picked up recently, a possible Test Color for the Shetland Pony Pine:

(Yes, it’s a newtoymens piece, hence my pointed use of the word "possible.")

The only significant difference between this guy and a regular run Pine? A very lightly grayed mane and tail. It’s not noticeable on its own, but side by side with a standard issue Pine, it’s fairly obvious:

I know most folks love those fancy auction Tests, but these more subtle ones are more fascinating to me: it’s as if you can see the design process in action. More shading - or less? Light mane, or dark? What if we switch the markings around a bit?

Speaking of auction Tests, it’s shaping up to be an especially fine crop this year, isn’t it? It’s nice to see that they’re trying to come up with some new ideas for the Zebra mold, and that Esprit is a clever "update" on the old Gray Appaloosa Mustang’s color.

It’s the glossy dappled sooty palomino pinto Stretched Morgan in the Fest program that stopped me cold, though: I submitted a dappled sooty palomino Morgan as a Collector’s Choice piece at least once or twice before. Nuts!

Was it last year, or the year before, that someone on Blab (or elsewhere?) thought that some of the auction pieces were coming out of rejected Collector’s Choice submissions? They might have been on to something there. It would make sense, too, especially if they noticed a lot of suggestions for a certain mold or color: they must figure if the interest is there, so will the money.

I have no idea what the Volunteer model will be; doesn’t matter to me, really, since I’m not the kind of person who sells such things. A Peruvian Paso or Flash would be spiffy, but I’d be happy with a FAM or Lady Roxana.

Back to work!

Live Showing is Hard Work

2011-07-06T21:02:00.013-04:00

BreyerFest Updates: Project A is almost done; all that needs to be done is the decorating, which should take maybe an hour or two; just waiting for the darn thing to dry. Project B isn’t looking so hot; everything is done, except the most important part. I’ll have to do a little more running around tomorrow to see if I can improvise another solution, because I refuse to give up at this point.

Note to self: I’m doing all this for fun, right?

That reminds me of some pictures I received in that archive I purchased a few months back. There were plenty of shiny, happy people in this one group of pictures from the Motor City All Halter Live Shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But others? Not so much.

(First, let me say that I’m not making fun of anybody in the following photos. Heaven knows we’ve all taking less than flattering pictures in the past. Most of my Elementary School photographs come to mind. Sixth grade, in particular.)

It just struck me funny that in this large group of pictures taken to commemorate a fun, enjoyable event, the camera managed to catch more than a few of those fleeting moments where the thought "Why am I doing this again?" was probably foremost in our minds.

If it had just been one or two pics, I wouldn’t have noticed it so much - or, at all - but seeing them all grouped together just made laugh. Mostly out of recognition: late Saturday night at BreyerFest, anyone? Doesn’t matter how much fun we’ve had, we all look like we could use a few stiff drinks and a nap.

Two Lovely Ladies

2011-07-03T23:50:00.005-04:00

Pretty quiet day at the flea market today. Plenty of things worth buying, including a ten-foot-tall unicycle(!) But all I left with was a bag of bagels and a good reading copy (with dustjacket) of Mistress Masham’s Repose, an odd little obscurity by T.H. White, whom most of you may know as the author of The Once and Future King.

I’ve now reached the point in my BreyerFest prep where everything is either going wrong, or falling apart. My scanner died, the dog ate (yes, ATE) my new umbrella, the humidity is like 3000 percent and wreaking absolute havoc on all my assorted projects, and I just paid way more than I wanted to on some new glasses that probably won’t be ready in time for the trip.

Oh, and one of our lovely neighbors has been setting off fireworks - loud, prolonged, and probably illegally obtained - for the past week. Vita doesn’t like them. Really, really doesn’t like them. Kind of hard to get any work done when the dog’s barking her fool head off every night for a week.

(She’s normally not the much of a barker either. It really is just that bad.)

So yeah, I’m a little cranky tonight.

There was a brief discussion about the "Sorrel" Classic Quarter Horse Mares over on Blab, so I thought I’d share mine here. I found these two lovely ladies in the Bentley Sales Dump Bins during my first trip to Model Horse Congress back in 1985:

I found a matching Foal the following year:

My mares did not come out of the six-piece special run batch the other known Sorrel QH Mares came out of. First, they’re not Chalky; second, their markings are quite a bit different from the Chalky ones, and from each other; and third, the rough quality of their seams seems to indicate that my girls were, more than likely, not SRs but actual preproduction Test Colors.

The mares were my first true Test Colors, if I’m remembering correctly. Test Colors weren’t super-hard to get back then, but funding (then, as now) was a bit of a problem. These two mares were mixed in with all the other bodies that Bentley Sales was allowed to take out of the factory to sell, following the sale to Reeves, and were priced like bodies.

As you can see from the photos, they really are body quality, so you’ll never see them competing for anything except shelf space.

If they went through the bother of testing both the Mare and the Foal, the Stallion has to be out there somewhere, right? I was kind of hoping that I’d find the matching Stallion at my third Model Horse Congress, but that didn’t happen. Either he wasn’t in the boxes, or someone else got to him before I did.

Now for Something a Little More Colorful

2011-06-30T18:19:00.005-04:00

(This is how crunched for time I am right now: the following post was written in the back seat of a car during an especially long carpool. Multitasking, woot!)

I see a lot of people are upset that the next Connoisseur horse is another translucent Moody Andalusian. That doesn’t bother me so much; I sort of expected that we’d be getting a duplicate or two at some point in time. What cheeses me off is that they went with Van Gogh as their next Artistic inspiration.

Snore.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Van Gogh as much as the next person, but it’s such a predictable choice. I thought they might have had it in them to go a bit daring – Kandinsky was the first in the series, right? But I guess they just had to play it safe.

Rats. I was really hoping for a Franz Marc Belgian. (And if you don’t know who Franz Marc is, you really should.)

I wonder what’s up with this being the third Translucent release on the Andalusian mold? That’s mighty peculiar. I didn’t think there was anything chemically different between the standard White Tenite and the Clear, except for the pigments. Are they leftovers from the Breast Cancer horse? Or just playing it safe, again?

I was an Art History major in college, and this is (sort of) an Art History blog, so yeah, I’ll probably be sending in the card anyway, depending on what the money situation is after BreyerFest. Him being a Translucent isn’t hurting, either.

Speaking of colorful new releases, I’m really liking the BreyerWest SR Fontana; just the other day I was thinking how nice a pinto release on the Roxy mold would be, and voila! There she was. Like the universe was listening to my thoughts or something. (Oops, there go those delusions of importance again.)

The name kind of cracked me up a little – not that it’s all that funny, unpredictable, or has any special meaning to me. It’s just that with all these genre movies coming out lately, I’ve been letting my nerdiness really hang out: the very first thing that popped in my head when I saw the name was that there must be a serious Trekker in the Reeves offices. (If you don’t get the reference, here you go: D. C. Fontana.)

How bad has it gotten? I actually said this in an actual conversation with a coworker last week:

"I had my first LOC published in Green Lantern back when Alan Moore was still writing backups."

Fortunately, it was one of those kind of coworkers I could say something like that to and not look like a complete dork. The conversation then moved on to voiceover artist Frank Welker, for some crazy reason.

(BTW: not enough Mogo in the Green Lantern movie! The Bzzd cameo was kinda cool, though. Also cool: http://hoosierinanity.blogspot.com/2010/03/yippee-ki-yay-green-lantern.html. The comments are a hoot.)

I don’t know if I’ll actually be buying one, guess it’ll depend on the situation I’m in by the time they make the leftovers available to the rest of us. I’ve been thinking about seriously cutting back on my purchases in the second half of the year to pay for some long-overdue non-horse expenses.

That Other Saddle

2011-06-27T19:53:00.002-04:00

A quiet and not unpleasant morning at the flea market yesterday. Nothing spectacular, just a little bit of everything, including a couple of decent Hartlands. I haven’t been seeing much of them around these parts lately, so it’s nice to know they haven’t been completely "mined" out yet. I don’t have a huge Hartland collection - basically one shelf, a bunch of Tinymites, and some religious figurines. And a couple of those Western Horses that aren’t Western Horses.

Speaking of horses with saddles - and in case you didn’t see it before - here’s a good discussion on Blab of that other saddle I referred to in one of my posts some time back, about the Western Prancing Horse:

http://www.modelhorseblab.com/forums/showthread.php?120941-Seldom-seen-or-forgotten-Breyer-item

The piece I saw was on a Western Prancing Horse, hence my initial belief that it might have been an early WPH accessory, not a Western Horse one. It does seem more logical that this saddle was a transitional one for the Western Horse, when it switched over from the snap-ons to the slip-ons. It’s basically a snap-on saddle without a cinch, molded in white plastic that’s "stained" either gray or tan, like the later slip-ons are.

These saddles were made, presumably, after the decision to discontinue the snap-on saddle was made, but before the mold for the slip-on saddle was ready. And not for long, based on the fact that they don’t seem to be all that common

The exact date on these is a little iffy; the slip-on saddles first appear in Breyer literature in 1968, but Breyer was notorious for reusing older stock photographs back then, so it could have been a year or two earlier than that.

As to why nobody notice them before - well, that’s an easy one. Hobbyists weren’t looking for it. Western Horses are, for the most part, so common and familiar that we rarely take notice of them in the first place. If we do bother to notice that the saddle seems to be a little bit different, we assume that it was either a later substitution or mix up.

It doesn’t help that the Hartland Champs came with a very similar saddle, in a very similar color. That’s what I thought, initially, when I saw that listing several years ago on eBay. "Hmm, why would a WPH have a Hartland saddle on it? Weird." I bookmarked it, then forgot to bid. I’m usually pretty good about following up on my hunches, which is why it still bothers me after all these years.

The one I saw on the WPH must have been accidentally switched out by a previous owner; it’s also not out of the realm of possibility that the saddles got mixed up at the factory. It doesn’t take much to make either saddle fit either horse, just some heat and a little pinching or pulling.

BreyerFest Resins

2011-06-24T22:57:00.003-04:00

Found a little surprise at the local Salvation Army today, on the way home from work:

Another Kay Finch Bunny! I already had one, but this one is in better condition - even with the broken ear. I don’t go out of my way to collect Kay Finch, but if the opportunity arises, I’ll go for it. I think I have four, maybe five pieces total?

I consider them more a part of the décor than part of the herd, along with all the crazy bird figurines that have mysteriously followed me home somehow. Hence, the fuzziness on the numbers.

I probably won’t be going out of my way to pick up any of the "Surprise" Resin Specials, either - unless the opportunity presents itself. I just have too much to do this year at BreyerFest to be loitering around the NPOD all day, stalking the movements of sweaty, stressed-out interns.

(Ahem, you know what I mean.)

I especially like the little one, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice; he sort of reminds me a bit of a Daniel Mueller Carousel Horse, minus the trappings. The other two are nice, too, but nothing stampede-worthy, for me. I might change my mind once I get to see them - like I did with the Radar, last year - but again, not worth worrying about.

If it comes down to choosing between a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, or a WEG Chestnut Esprit, though, I’m going for the Esprit. It has nothing to do with quality or potential resale value, I’m just going to go with what I naturally prefer.

(FYI: I have no idea if there will be Chestnut Esprits in the NPOD. I just picked something comparably rare and/or desirable for illustration value.)

Contrary to what some people might think, I don’t have anything against resins, per se. I have some Nonplastics in my collection - not a lot, but more than you’d imagine. I’m just not too fond of some of the attitudes that seem to come with the topic. Especially the one that assumes that Breyers are merely a stepping stone towards these "better" product.

That line of thinking doesn’t wash with me. First, there are a lot of less-than-quality resins out there that give lie to that. And second, quality - however you define it - isn’t, and shouldn’t be the primary factor for collectors of any stripe. It’s only one of many.

If you’re going to collect, you should collect something because you like it, not because other people like it, or say you should. I like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, so I might get one. It's not a stepping stone to anything but a bigger Breyer collection. End of story.

Notorious

2011-06-21T21:21:00.003-04:00

This cold is now starting to really tick me off. Normally I’d just sleep it off as much as I could, but I’ve got too much to do between now and BreyerFest to "waste" time on things like napping.

One thing that’s probably already a goner: the saleslist. It was going to be a stretch to get it done and out to those of you who requested it, but now it doesn’t look like it’ll even happen. Sorry about that. If it’s any consolation, it also looks like I might have to keep some stuff home anyway, since it doesn’t look like I could possibly squeeze everything I want to sell in the vehicle.

And also, those of you who have expressed an interest in the chinas, please note that I prefer to sell them in person. I’ve had the rottenest luck with shipping anything beyond some of the smaller, more compact miniatures, and considering the quality of the stuff I’ve been finding lately (including that black pinto Lefton foal - I had no idea he was so popular!) I’d really rather not risk it.

As far as the preparations go, they’re going. As long as I don’t contract any other major illnesses, I should be able to get done what I need to get done. The Sampler’s almost finished; all I have to do there is a major rewrite on one of the articles (about the Modernistic Buck and Doe!), proofreading and tweaking. The Happy Ending Contest entry will be started by the end of the week, but I’ll put off assembling the costume for the Costume Contest until the week before. (Oh yes, I’m doing it! Nope, no telling!)

My sleep was restless, and full of strange dreams, so I pretty much walked around the flea market in a daze on Sunday. I only picked up two pieces: a Lomonosov Penguin (note: probably not for sale) and this notorious knockoff of the Western Horse:

It’s notorious, because there are still people out there who believe - and will continue to believe - that this sorry thing is a Breyer. It’s not even really a Breyer knockoff: the details of the molded on tack more closely resemble the original Clock Horse - the (now-assumed-to-be) Hartland piece.

Back when we had less history, and less reference material to go by, this particular brand of knockoff was collected rather avidly as very early Breyers. I remember wanting a "Brown and Gold" one rather badly, and not being able to secure one at an affordable price. ($20-25 back in 1980 - you could get an Alabaster Indian Pony for only a few dollars more, then!)

I was glad that I missed out when, a few years later, I actually saw one in person. Blobby hooves, crude seams, an ill-fitting saddle - and made of styrene? I wasn’t quite the "Diva" then, but I knew that Breyer had nothing to do with that sorry thing.

Some people still thought so, in spite of all that, and even now some people still do. Bad (zombie?) data has a particularly long half-life in the hobby, unfortunately. Just when you think it’s gone for good, it bounces back to life.

I did still want one, but now primarily for research purposes. They crop up from time to time on eBay and on MH$P, but I wasn’t willing to buy one "in the market." For some silly reason I had it in my head that if I bought one, others might buy one, then some folks might get the idea that there might be something more to it, and then those rumors of its alleged Breyerness would get going again, and I didn’t want that.

(It’s a consequence of a living a life smaller than you had hoped: indulging in fleeting delusions of power and influence.)

Actually, it was more me being cheap: I didn’t want to spend more on the postage than what it was really worth, which is considerably less than what they were going for back in 1980. Even if it’s a famous knockoff, it’s still a knockoff, and not a very well constructed one, at that.

A Tale of Two Belgians

2011-06-18T22:40:00.002-04:00

I had a big day full of activities planned, but I was totally wiped after walking the dog this morning. Stupid summer cold is totally kicking my butt today. Can’t even taste the lemon bars I made as a treat for getting through this crazy week.

Hope I feel better in time for the flea market in the morning.

Anyway, here is a picture of one of the Smoke Belgians I picked up in one of those large collections I purchased recently:

Yes, he has a chipped ear. Believe it or not, he was the better of the two Smoke Belgians I had to choose from.

Condition is one of the primary criteria in Collectibility judging, but it is not necessarily the most important. The other Belgian was completely intact, but he just wasn’t as … nice. The masking wasn’t quite as clean, he had a few dings, and his shading wasn’t as soft and velvety as this one. Oh, he’s a good piece - but this guy was just seemed a little bit better. Even with a chipped ear.

The Smoke Belgian is another one of those models that seems to elude my grasp. It’s not that he’s that rare - he ran from 1964 through 1971, a decent length of time - it’s that condition has always been an issue. Every single one I’ve found had something wrong with him. Not just a ding or two, but stains, cracks, chips, seam splits - the whole litany of disqualifiers.

So this collection came with two Smoke Belgians, and I was pretty excited about the possibility of finding My Smoke Belgian between the two. What sealed the deal, I think, was when the seller gestured to the two of them and mentioned that he was one of her favorites.

"His name was Chester," she said. Dang it, he had a name. I had to keep him. I mean, keep one: she didn’t specifically point out which one of the two was her childhood equine squeeze, so I had the luxury of choosing who got to be Chester.

Initially I thought the intact one was going to be him - chipped ears are usually an automatic out when it comes to collecting - but once I got the two of them home, and cleaned up, it wasn’t so easy a decision.

I finally went with the one I "liked" better, because of all things that go into defining Collectibility, none of that matters if you don’t "like" a model to begin with.

Black Grazing Mares

2011-06-15T21:36:00.004-04:00

Isn’t it funny how some variations drive some hobbyists crazy, while others barely rate a shrug?

The "black hoof" Black Grazing Mare is one of those kind of models. When you point out an example that has the black hooves instead of the standard gray, many hobbyists get that slightly quizzical "Hmm, I never noticed that before" look.

Such is the case with the Grazing Mare and Foal in general. Outside of the occasional Test Color, Oddity or Chalky, those molds never have rated very high in the Collectibility scale. Most collectors aren’t really looking for Grazing Mares and Foals, and what you aren’t looking for you won’t find.

I happened to notice, but only because I was one of those rare birds: the Black Grazing Mare was one of my earliest "grails." I’m not sure why; as I’ve related before I was also obsessed, back in my early days, with finding the alleged test color/variation of the "Solid Black" Scratching Foal, so I’m guessing I must have had a thing for the black horses back then.

Come to think of it, I did already have most of the ones I had already known about, up to that point. Models like the Stretched Morgan, the Bucking Bronco, several of the Stablemates - the Appaloosas and the Pintos, too. Yep, must have.

Anyway, when I found out that the Grazing Mare and Foal had come in Black several years prior to my entering the hobby, OMG, I had to have them.

It took me years to finally find them, and when I did, it was a little anticlimactic. I found a matching set at BreyerFest, for a good price. I was thrilled to have finally found them, but the drama had been drained dry by then. It took me a few years more to find a nice "black hoof" Mare, but that was mostly because my collecting priorities were elsewhere.

The "black hoof" Mare is far more common than the Foal; I’ve only seen a couple of the Foals online, and even then I had my doubts about their authenticity. It’s dreadfully easy to fake black hooves. Fake’s probably too strong a word: it implies malice, and in most cases of hoof painting no malice was intended. It was something hobbyists of a younger persuasion often did to make their favorite horse even better. A little nail polish, or black marker, and voila!

Even thought they’re not all that common, a nice example of the "black hoof" Grazing Mare doesn’t bring that much more than a standard gray hoof one. An authentic black hoof Grazing Foal might merit a little more cash, if anyone other than me was looking for one.

What to Keep

2011-06-12T23:29:00.005-04:00

I didn’t get quite as much done on my paperwork last week, due to some last minute additions to the work schedule. I was out of state almost all day for work, yesterday - as much as I need to get my stuff together for BreyerFest, I needed the hours more. So I may continue to be a little spare on the postings this week, to catch up.

More chinas at the flea market again, today - a couple of nice Japans, and a very distressed (but still adorable) Walker-Renaker Elephant, missing most of his flowers. I’m trying not to keep any of them, but I’ll probably lose the battle on the Elephant, and maybe the Drafter:

There were some bodies and a few interesting books, too, but I gave them a pass; I figured the wallet could use a break this week. I did buy this beautiful framed photograph, though:

It’s definitely a photograph and not a print, in its original frame and matting. It’s entitled "Wild Ponies of Assateague" and it’s dated 1976; I can’t read the signature on the matting. The dealer that I bought it from tends to bring fairly high quality merchandise, so I’m guessing it comes out of the same estate sales that the rest of her wares do. I love it, but I have no idea if I can justify keeping it, especially if it turns out to be worth more than the pittance I paid for it. (Her prices? Also excellent.)

Another item that’s setting my possess-o-meter off is that Moose I picked up in one of those big collections I bought recently:

It’s not just the adorably off-kilter rack he’s sporting, or that he’s got the bubblegum pink nostrils typical of early Breyer Moose (though they don't hurt.) It’s his color: his rack is the basically the same color/tone as the rest of his body. Usually, it’s a couple shades lighter, or a slightly different color.

It’s not a rare variation, but it’s not common, either. Just different. Different enough to make me want to keep him, even though logically, I can’t. The dude’s gigantic! I think the Vita Monster takes up less space, and she’s always getting in the way. A half dozen or so more Moose - nope, not even going to think about it.

(On the plus side, the Moose wouldn’t chew on my shoes, demand to go on long walks to the park 5 or 6 times a day, or whine incessantly whenever we don’t "accidentally" drop enough popcorn on the floor.)

My problem is that I haven’t packed him away in my sales stuff like I should have. He’s a big and awkward shape, and he doesn’t pack well, so he’s taken up more or less permanent residence on the shelf where I keep the most recent sales acquisitions - the ones awaiting cleaning, processing and packing. I see him every day I walk into my office, and the more I see him, the more I think of him as my newest "little" office buddy, and not just as money that could go towards my hotel bill.

You know, every once and a while I have fantasies about being a dealer. I have the contacts, I know my stuff, I’m good at haggling, and I have a knack for finding some of the best things. But darn it, when I buy things, I buy things that I like enough to consider keeping, just in case I can't unload it later on. If something sticks around long enough, I get attached, and attachment leads to sentiment, and sentiment's not a good thing to have a lot of in that line of work.

I’m not too bad about managing my herd - the lack of time, space and money help - but I know I have too many items that are hanging around for strictly sentimental reasons. On the other hand, I could never contemplate being one of those hobbyists who only own a small handful of horses, or none at all though. That just doesn’t comport with the way I think about the hobby at all.

I really can’t keep him. I’ll have to wrap him up in bubble wrap and stick him in another room until BreyerFest.

Good Dog, Bad Dog

2011-06-08T21:40:00.005-04:00

This is what a Good Dog looks like:

Breyer French Poodle with Dog Coat, ca. 1957. The snap on the front of the coat is the same kind of snap used on the early snap saddles. Neat!

You can’t see it, but he has a handpainted red collar - you can actually see the brushstrokes. That’s a little strange, since most of the blue collared Poodles I’ve had have had stenciled collars, and evidence points to the blue collars predating the red collars. The paint’s definitely original, not retouched.

There are all sorts of possible theories as to why they resorted to handpainting the collars. The most likely is that there was a production bottleneck: they might have had a rush order, or outstanding orders, and only so many painting masks to go around. Some of the painters at the factory had to make do with brushes. Hey, they had to handpaint the tongues anyway, right?

(Oddly enough, the eyes and nose are masked - that was a different painting station, I guess!)

I had wanted a "Dog Coat" Poodle for years - basically, ever since I first discovered they existed at all. They’re not expensive when they do come up for sale, partly because a lot of collectors don’t know about them in the first place, but mostly because it’s one of those esoteric things only the really nerdy Breyer kids go for.

This is what a Bad Dog looks like:

The little princess broke my little toe today; she had stolen yet another one of my shoes, and in the process of cornering the thief, she got a little …rough. (And even if it isn’t technically broken, it’s still a lovely shade of purple and hurts like the dickens.)

I have to work a triple shift over the next day and a half, too. Hot, tired, sleep-deprived and in pain: awesome way to start the weekend!

She's lucky she's so darn cute, or I'd be strangling her Homer Simpson-style right now.

Time Management

2011-06-06T16:15:00.005-04:00

Another excellent day at the flea market: a Dall Sheep, the bodies I had arranged a pick up on, a giant bin of auto shop name patches, a pretty little compact, and - whee! - some H-R minis!

(The fire hydrant isn’t, but it came with.) Lady and Tramp’s puppies look about as happy as I felt when I found them. The puppies get to stay, but the other four H-Rs I already have, so they’re going on the sales list. Small, and easy to pack - now that’s more like it!

I did have to leave behind, of all things, a vintage custom Legionario by Linda Leach. That was the last thing I was expecting to see, let me tell you. I’ve found a few other "name" customs at the dirt mall before, but they were clearly body box leftovers. This one was actually salvageable - a little dirty, a few dings, but maybe an hour or so worth of work away from being competitive in a "Vintage Custom" class.

I desperately wanted to rescue him, but the dealer was all "He’s signed by the artist," and stuff. I told her I really didn’t have the money she was asking for him. This was genuinely not a ploy: I blew most of my money on the giant bin of patches!

(Anybody want some? Most excellent for crafting!)

Nope, no budging on the price. In my final parting salvo, I mentioned that I actually, uh, used to know the artist and all that, but she was not impressed. Either she wasn’t or hadn’t been a hobbyist, or she was trying to double head fake me or something.

I don’t go out of my way to collect vintage customs, especially now that they’re the thing, but it was another one of those opportunities that presented itself. It didn’t work out this time, but there’s always next week. Unless someone else gets to him first. (I know you’re out there - I might not see you, but I can see where you've been.)

Speaking of the coming week, my presence in it is going to be a bit scarce. I’m trying something new this year, where I’m going to try and get as much done for BreyerFest as I can at least a month ahead of time. I have a full work schedule, too, so it should be an interesting experiment in time management.

On Upgrading

2011-06-04T19:24:00.005-04:00

That thing I told you I might have to worry about? I have to worry about it. More later, as the situation develops.

Almost finished cleaning and prepping - just in time for the next round of horses! The last few were a bit on the difficult side: they were possible upgrades. How much effort did I really want to invest in them - enough to make them "saleable," or enough to make them collection-worthy?

(There’s not that much difference in those two categories, really - it’s just that that extra half an hour of work that makes that difference doesn’t usually pay off, financially.)

I used to be big on upgrading, but gave up doing it as vigorously as I had because it was too much like work. If I just happen to find something that’s a little bit better than mine, and I have the initiative of pulling and comparing, great. If not, oh well, no biggie.

One of the upgrades I did make was to my Gray Appaloosa Mustang. There’s not a huge difference between the two, when you do a casual, side-by-side comparison:

There was nothing really "wrong" with my original one, per se - good color, condition, nice spotting, and so on. I’ve liked him enough to keep him around for almost twenty years now, without even giving upgrading a second thought. He’s been a good, solid addition to my collection.

It wasn’t a matter of condition: both models have about the same level of minor condition flaws. My original - the slightly lighter one - has a slight roach back (a factory molding error), while the new guy has a strange (also factory) paint blooper on his right cheek.

The newer guy isn’t quite as charcoal-y as he is in the picture, but he’s definitely darker, and he has the cutest little spray of splash spots on his butt that you can’t quite see. It’s a little less common variation than the more extensive spotting on the old guy, but that’s not why I ultimately decided to "trade in." I just liked him a little more.

I’m not sure if the differences in the paint jobs represents an evolution, with one being earlier than the other, or if it’s only representative of the natural variation inherent in this style of painting. The two earliest references we have of the Gray Appaloosa Mustang - the 1961 Inserts, and the 1963 Dealer Catalog - show lighter models with more extensive spots. From the 1961 Insert Sheet:

It’s not something most hobbyists - even me - have given much thought to. No hobbyists were giving it any thought back when the model was in production in the early 1960s, either. In the earliest days of the hobby, hobbyists were more excited about having each other, than they were in the having the rarest, coolest or most unusual things.

The Art of the Deal

2011-06-02T21:21:00.002-04:00

Since I’ve mentioned him in the past couple of posts, I figure you’re entitled to see that Test Color Classic Black Stallion of mine:

The differences from the Regular Run Classic "Sham" are subtle, but significant: aside from being a more Golden than Red Bay, he also has gray hooves, and no heel spot. I’d put him side by side with my Regular Run one to show you, but most of my Classics are packed away, and I’m in no mood to dig.

There was no drama associated with his arrival here: I saw him on someone’s sales list, in one newsletter or another. I inquired, we briefly negotiated, I paid, and he came in the mail a few weeks later. The end.

I miss those kinds of deals. I suppose, technically, that auctioning items like him on eBay today is more fair - at least to the dealer - but I have a hard time accepting that the art of model horse trading has been reduced to a mere numbers game.

Does it always have to be about whomever has the most money at any given time? What of luck, desire and timing?

They’re still there to a degree, especially in places like MH$P, where a past working relationship can lead to some sort of alternative pay/trade/services deal, or can in turn into some other transaction for something else, and so on.

I think that’s why I enjoy going to the flea market so much, and why I like having a good bit of stuff to sell at BreyerFest. I like that delicate dance of negotiation: offers, counteroffers, the gauging of desire and motive. Sure, a few extra bucks could come in real handy, but I’d rather sell it to someone who really, really wants it, as opposed to someone whose motives are less … sentimental?

I don’t always guess right; I can remember a particularly bad deal I got myself into several years ago, regarding an unusual item I had picked up from Marney. I was in need of a little cash, and was going through one of my downsizing phases.

Someone inquired, and gave me a long, long story about how this mold was her favorite, and how having this piece would be so much to her, etc. So I let it go for a little less than I anticipated, and if it had ended there everything would have been hunky-dory. Whatever she did with it after that was her own business.

If only. A couple months later, she sent me her sales list; I can’t remember asking for it, she might have sent it to me as a favor. (We did those sorts of things back then, when we didn’t have the Internet or cheap phone rates. Sales lists were like gold.) It was no favor: that model I sold her was on it - marked up nearly 300 percent! If it had been a hardship sell, I could understand, but there was no mention of that. It was this fabulously rare item she had somehow managed to acquire, and ooh, she could swing you such a deal on it!

Going on and selling it for a profit a few months later, well, them’s the breaks - stuff like that happens all the time. I consider myself something of a "middleman" anyway, so I’m fully aware of - and accept - the fact that other people buy from me to resell. I take my cut, and my dibs, and move on.

But intentionally sending me the sales list with the item on it, a few months later - after she had professed her undying desire to have this model in her collection, forever and ever? That took some nerve.

I later learned that this person had a habit of doing that sort of thing, to other hobbyists with way more experience than me. The reality of the situation is that she probably didn’t remember that I was the one she finagled to get that little treasure.

I made a mental note not to deal with her again, and to be a little less eager to swallow what was such an obvious sob story. And it’s also probably a big part of the reason why I prefer those face-to-face kind of negotiations: it’s not as easy to lie with body language and facial expressions, as it is with words.

Things Left Unsaid

2011-05-31T20:52:00.004-04:00

What a fun weekend: I picked up a rash, got whacked in the head with a doorknob, suffered a couple bloody noses, and lost a filling. (Filling is already fixed: thank you, my awesome dentist.)

In slightly-less-calamitous news, I picked up another collection, too. It’s smaller, and mostly bodies, so prepping is not going to be the big drama it was last week. But this endless parade of bodies is starting to get tiresome. If I get any more, I may consider selling them by the pound!

Among the newest arrivals, this bee-yoo-ti-full Classic Black Stallion, the 660 "Chocolate Bay" Arabian from about ten years ago. Gorgeous shading, with a dead-matte finish, and minty-mint: definitely a keeper!

Among the other non-Breyer goodies: a few nice chinas, a couple bits of jewelry, some fun minis, and a vintage PEZ dispenser - cheap! I stopped collecting PEZ dispensers a few years ago because the vintage ones were so hard to come by around here. I might just keep him for old times’ sake, but that extra bit of cash could come in handy, considering the amount I’ve forked out over the past couple of weekends.

Now on to a topic I’ve had in the queue for a while now: I know this may some heretical - especially coming from moi, the Princess of Provenance - there are times when some pieces of history may be better left undocumented.

I know all sorts of crazy, unknowable things. Several hobbyists have tried to prod me - in person, and online - into touching on some of the craziest, or more controversial bits of this knowledge. Sometimes I do, inadvertently (it’s not just fillings that fall out of my mouth) but there’s quite a body of information that I’ve chosen not to disclose publicly.

The reasons why a lot of this data are undisclosable vary. A lot of it is like a single piece to a 100-piece puzzle that I don’t have a picture to: it might be valuable, but I just don’t know where it fits or what it fits into. Some of it is of dubious veracity, or is tainted by gossip of a highly personal nature, or has a significant element of wish fulfillment within it.

Another category of information has been rendered untouchable because of the nature of the relationship of the person giving it to me - in other words, by insiders. That information usually has a high degree of veracity to it, but because it was given to me in the strictest confidence, it cannot be discussed in public without damaging that relationship.

(The good thing about this kind of information of this sort is that it eventually makes it way out into the real world. I just have the luxury of knowing about it first. FYI, it’s not usually the kind of information I can capitalize on; my checkbook would be in a lot better shape if I could.)

Some information I have is very much tied to the person giving it to me. As in, I learn the why or the how of something, but it’s the kind of why and how that can’t be disclosed without damaging the reputation of the person or persons involved. A reputation should be yours alone to damage.

And then there’s information that many hobbyists simply refuse to believe. Goodness, there’s a lot of that. I’d say that the majority of topics I’ve chosen not to discuss fall into this category. Certain narratives and certain beliefs have become so ingrained in the hobby, that even providing actual documentation to the contrary doesn’t dislodge them. If I want to lecture to a brick wall, I have family members for that.

(Another thing about the weekend, best left unsaid.)

Body Box Black Stallion

2011-05-28T10:24:00.004-04:00

How sad is this - I spent a good hour the other day cleaning up a body box horse. I had a couple dozen other/better horses to work on, but I felt compelled to clean up this little train wreck. I guess I wanted to see how far my mad cleaning skilz could go:

As it just so happens, pretty far. He’s still going back into the body box since (a) he has a chipped ear, (b) several body rubs, and (c) he’s the Traditional Black Stallion mold with those goofy splash dot dapples from the 1990s. He’d have to be minty-mint, in the box, for me to get any serious money for him.

Still, it was kind of a fun exercise, seeing how far I could actually push him into social acceptability. At least now, we he gets ignored in the body box, it won’t be because he’s dirty. It’ll be because he’s a Black Stallion mold. Even I have to admit he’s a bit of a challenge to customize well.

As you may know, I’m not easily squicked by anything, model horse-wise. I love - or at least tolerate willingly - a lot of molds deemed horrible enough to give some hobbyists the vapors. My love of a model is not conditioned on anatomical reality. If some of the parts aren’t exactly where they’re supposed to be, I’m not going to obsess over it too much.

(Just like they’re now doing with the Weather Girl. My only question: gosh, what took them so long to get started?)

But boy, do I ever remember being disappointed when the Traditional Black Stallion mold came out in 1981. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I had definitely imagined something a little grander. He was merely okay.

If Breyer had originally released him as some other horse, in some other color, maybe I would have taken more of a shine to him. He was supposed to be my dream horse, darn it!

I got one anyway because I was (and to a degree, still am) a huge Black Stallion fan, and a couple others in colors I thought looked good on him. Like the Ageless Bronze of the Hyksos, for instance, and the rather pretty Mahogany Bay of the SR Ofir. I’m also a bit intrigued by the odd, multicolored splash spot Appaloosa one, whatever it was supposed to be, though I haven’t gotten around to owning one yet.

A couple years later, they came out with a Classic version of the "The Black" in The Black Stallion Returns Set, and he was a lot closer to my mental picture of him than the Traditional mold. I think I have more of him than I do of the Traditional, including a Test Color for the Sham in the 3345 King of the Wind Set, in a more golden shade of Bay than the Regular Run release.

Time to get back to the "spring cleaning," I guess. The rest of these horses aren’t going to prep and pack themselves.

Rare but Worthless

2011-05-26T09:21:00.005-04:00

It was kind of warm and humid a couple of nights ago, so I started up my window fan, and then I noticed that The Toad - who resides on the same shelf as the fan - looked especially … shiny. It hadn’t been raining (for a change) so the only obvious source of moisture was from within.

Darn it! Looks like someone’s gonna hafta spend some quality time in the fridge between now and July, because I don’t want to change his name to "Horse Parts."

I was on a roll yesterday; I think I found the body I needed for the Happy Endings Contest, and possibly a component of my Costume Ball entry. (Note: it is not footwear.) My coworkers think it’s a fabulous idea, but I’m worried that their affirmations caused some sort of ripple effect in the Universe, meaning I will get picked to volunteer this year.

The one year that I did, I had to sit out on both the NPOD, and a raffle. (Missing that raffle wasn’t too bad, but missing the Pit? Hated it!) Finally coming up with a faboo costume idea, only to have to sit it out? Oh well, best not to think about it unless I have to.

I’m still working my way through the massive pileup on bodies here in the Cave. I’m waffling on a couple of "keepers" here; a couple of obscure variations that are tickling my fancy. Both are technically rare - as in, not made in large quantities, or for an extended period of time - but both are also considered worthless. One of them being this Rugged Lark, here:

He’s one of the early ones without any mold marks. In pretty good shape, too, just a couple of slight nose rubs. I had been thinking about adding one to my collection for the past few years, if for no other reason that I think rare and unwanted things need to be collected, too.

I never got around to him before now, because mold marks aren't the easiest feature to detect in an online auction. Even when a seller says it isn’t there, it usually is, because the mark is different from the typical Breyer mold marks: instead of the familiar copyright horseshoe, it’s a small flat area with a bit of type, often fainted molded. Easy to miss? Yes, very.

Finding one in a less-virtual venue wasn’t any easier. Nothing marks you for more of an amateur at BreyerFest than flipping a horse over to inspect the mold marks. Telling a seller I’m looking for something else, really, often gets me the rolled eyes and the what-an-idiot look. And if the seller knows who I am, sometimes I’ll get the what-did-I-miss look and the dreadful feeling that price negotiations aren’t going to go very far.

The "rare, but worthless" phenomenon occurs in just about every arena of collecting. When I was still active in comic book collecting, I used to obsess over the minutiae in the Overstreet Guide. (It’s mostly a price guide for vintage comics, but there’s a lot of history in it too, once you learn how to "read" it.)

Anyway, as I’d be plowing through my Overstreet, I’d see the notation of "Very Rare - Less than 10 copies known to exist" from time to time. I’d look at the estimated values, and often as not, there’d be no correlation. There were some genuinely rare, virtually extinct comic books out there that nobody wanted. That would always blow my mind.

The reason for that was simple: the content of those comics was undistinguished. The inherent value of most comics is not a function of rarity, but of significance: the first appearance of a major character or team, the first work of a well-known creator, the first printing of an important or award-winning story. A generic, random issue of Action Comics from the mid-1940s with a low print run is worth a lot in Pristine Mint condition, but nowhere near the same amount of money as even the lowest grades of a copy of Action Comics #1 - the first appearance of Superman.

For a while there, I thought about starting an archive of "rare and worthless" comic books, but before that idea ever got off the ground, the horses dragged me back into their world. But the notion of collecting the rare, but worthless still lingers.

Body, Shelf and Show

2011-05-23T20:31:00.003-04:00

Well, that was an odd Sunday. I thought it was going to be a washout - literally, and figuratively. To make a long story short, I ended up buying two entire collections. That’s about 100 models, total.

Yes, you read that right: 100 models. No more worries about not having enough stuff to sell at BreyerFest this year!

(But not one of them is the model I need for my special BreyerFest project. Naturally!)

There were no super-special ZOMG!!1! finds in either collection, though there are definitely some primo pieces here, with a few keepers and upgrades. Most of the stuff is from the 1980s, but there are items from the mid-1960s through the late 1990s. No fancy hobby-specific pieces or special runs, just Regular Run Classics, Traditionals, Animals and Accessories.

Looks like I’ll be spending most of the rest of the week cleaning, cataloging and evaluating everybody (aka "model horse triage": is it body, shelf, or show quality?) Normally that’s my favorite part of the process, but I’ve never had to do it with so many horses all at once. I already feel like I’m behind in my Bfest prep, and then a small town’s worth of sad, dirty and slightly distressed orphans show up on my doorstep demanding my attention. Yaah!

Good news for you guys: cheap horse party in my room at BreyerFest this year! Woot! Most of these guys will be under 20 bucks, and a big chunk of them will be 10 or under. Lots of good starter models or collection builders for beginning hobbyists, or for long-time hobbyists looking to fill a few holes on the shelf. A quick scan doesn’t reveal a lot of obvious show prospects, but I haven’t finished evaluating everyone yet. (Some of the Classics do look very promising.)

Sorry ladies, no pictures of the loot today. Ever have a deranged squirrel get loose in your house and rampage through your basement? (I have; it’s kind of a funny story, actually.) That’s what my office looks like right now. While it has been publicly demonstrated that I am not easily shamed, I draw the line at showing you the current state of the Horse Cave.

(It’s like the Bat Cave, but with more horses, fewer Giant Pennies, and no Batmobile. Sold that off a few years back. Yeah, really. Another funny story ...)

Feeling the Rainbow

2011-05-20T22:37:00.004-04:00

Lots of ground to cover today.

First, I "won" a Nympheas! Yay me! (Is it weird that I still get a bit of a thrill whenever I see my name on the Winners List?) I don’t have many Marabellas in the collection; not for a lack of trying, I just never seem to be in the right place at the right time for the right model. So that’s a happy way to start my weekend.

Second, yes, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for the Costume Ball ever since it was announced on the BreyerFest blog a few days ago. The first idea that popped into my head was hilarious, but probably inappropriate, and possibly illegal in the State of Kentucky. (No, the whip is not involved.) I still might do it if I can’t come up with anything else equally awesome. I thought my costume last year bordered on the inappropriate, and everything turned out fine.

Third, well … the Rainbow Weather Girls are out. I’m surprised at how much I like the Translucent Rainbow variation; I wasn’t a huge fan of their previous Rainbow paint jobs, but it really works on the Translucent plastic. Kudos for them for being able to pull it off so successfully.

I like the Pintaloosa ones too. It seems like an odd choice, but I get it - it’s a paint job with a lot of "color." I would not be displeased to get either the Matte or the Glossy version, if only because my Standing Stock Horse Fun Foal needs a Mommy:

Most of the "Herd" seems to think otherwise. Quelle surprise, non? Whatever. Some hobbyists just gotta complain no matter what. A few more realistic colors would be nice, but I’m not going to snipe, carp and moan about it. Or withhold my UPCs and hope for something "better." I’ll send them in when I finally get around to getting the rest of them, and be happy with whatever shows up on the doorstep.

We got spoiled on the multiple variants on the Hucks and Fun Foals: hobbyists seem to have forgotten that the first couple of Treasure Hunts didn’t have a lot of variations within them, and there wasn’t a huge amount of complaining at the time that there should have been more.

(Well, some: no subject in the hobby ever goes uncomplained about.)

It’s nice that Reeves seems to be going with a simultaneous and random release of multiple variations, something I wish they had done last year with the Othello Treasure Hunt. Allegedly there are going to be four variations total; whether the Gloss and Matte Pintaloosas count as one or two, I don’t know. If they’re going to go with variations on the "color" theme, I’m supposing there’s going to be a "Color Change" painted piece in the mix somewhere.

A Color Change Pintaloosa, maybe? Oh yeah, I’d totally dig that!

Peace Out.