Opportunities

Another quick one, guys – nothing personal, just the usual deadlines and anxieties cramping my style here. I’m hoping everything will be significantly better by the end of next week, but I can’t make any promises. 

In spite of the state of my office, I haven’t been able to buy as much as I’ve wanted to in recent months. 

Some of it is my chronic lack of free time and the plethora of commitments. 

Some of it is the fact that my Web Special entries are apparently being thrown into a deep, dark Internet well, never to be seen again. 

The local flea market is also no longer an option: I’d rather not discuss it in detail, but it’s not a matter of time or money, but of personal safety. 

A lot of it is the fact that the majority of hobby sales have migrated to Facebook, and dear readers, you know that’s not a place I’ll ever be comfortable going. (I will conveniently delete my cranky rant about how Facebook will probably destroy civilization as we know it.)

And finally, a lot of hobbyists have collectively decided that the only acceptable form of payment is now… Postal Money Orders? Which I would be fine with, if not for the fact that getting to the local Post Office is also a challenge for me, most days. (Which is also why I haven’t put any effort into my online sales at all.)

Sigh.

Anyways, that’s why the sale in Dowagiac is still tempts me. But unless I manage to pull off the impossible and get the project I’m working on done (or nearly done) by Friday, it’s not going to happen. 

(Spoiler: it’s not going to happen.)

I did recently buy one nice little treasure recently: a Chicago-Era Factory Unpainted Elephant!

I probably paid a little too much for it, but as I explained above, my options are pretty limited, and he came with as solid a provenance as these things can. He’s still pretty yellow, but he’s brightening up quicker than I anticipated, so that’s a nice bonus.

I don’t have a lot of Unpainted models, but I’m always open to the opportunities as they arise. 

Value-Added

First, just to let you know, I was not the lucky stiff who snagged the Presentation Series *Witez II on eBay today. My luck’s been good, but not THAT good. I’m (mostly) okay with that.

Second, and case you were wondering: yes, I know all about the #82 Donkey with Baskets on eBay. In fact – and as you might have guessed – I knew about it before most of you guys did.

What’s blowing my mind right now is that I could… probably afford it right now. But considering the state of the world right now, keeping my discretionary purchases to a minimum seems like a wiser choice for me. 

(Though I am mulling over these new Grab Bags Reeves is offering that allegedly have some actual good stuff in them, not just the usual Regular Run warehouse leftovers. I think I might wait until I see the contents of a few pop up online before I decide, though.)

As some of you also know, I got insanely lucky several years ago when I located this treasure on eBay, for a sum very much within my budget:

Both of the Elephant with Howdah and the Donkey with Baskets came out around the same time – early in 1958 – and left just as quickly. I presume that they were originally made to capitalize on the success of their other value-added products, most notably the Western Pony Groomers.

However, most of these other value-added models – which grew to include such oddments as the French Poodle Sewing Kits and the infamous “Candy Packers” – were primarily sold via holiday catalogs. The Elephant with Howdah and Donkey with Baskets appear to be Breyer’s the only contemporaneous attempts to add these kinds of items to their Regular Run lineup.

Ones that obviously failed, based on the scarcity of both items.

Why both items were discontinued so quickly is a mystery. Was the fact that they were significantly more expensive ($1.50 instead of $1.00, wholesale) or that customers also expected something inside those baskets, like candy or office supplies?

Regardless of the reasons behind their mysterious disappearances, a return of either does not seem so far-fetched now, especially in light of this year’s Vintage Club releases.

Worth the Wait

Whoa, yesterday just flew right past me! Like many of you at the moment, I’m pretty much in full panic mode. I’m not sure why; everything is going about as well as can be expected, the car is half-packed, and the various assorted costume bits are coming along just fine.

Habit, I guess? I’m always fearful that I will forget one thing…

Just a couple of Auction lots that can’t pass without comment.

Pearly + Liver Chestnut + Minimal Pinto = this paint job is my everything! A modern reinterpretation of Matte Charcoal, and I’m loving it!

The Gloss Dark Palomino on this Five-Gaiter is pretty sexy too:

Either one of those colors would look good on almost anything. Motor vehicles, Christmas ornaments, household appliances….

I don’t know if the Gaiter will go for particularly big money, though: Five-Gaiters (except for Decorators) are a tough sell right now. Even fairly decent Woodgrains and #53 Gloss Palominos can be had for well under $50.

I’ve been around long enough to see the fortunes rise and fall on most models. Remember when the #465 Khemosabi was all the rage on eBay? When the original release of the AQHA Ideal Quarter Horse, new in box, could guarantee you at least a $150 payout? When a JAH Saddlebred Weanling could set you back $400?

That’s why I try to follow my own tastes and hew closely to my budget. And wait: I literally cannot afford to be impatient.

A good reminder for those of you who might get enraptured by whatever Reeves throws at us next week: unless it’s something you know really is a once-in-a-lifetime chance (like my Gold Charm Man o’ War was) it’s worth it to wait.

Something new and exciting will turn up in a few weeks, or a few months, and suddenly what’s hot will be not. And if you still love it and want it and need it, it’ll be there for you at a better price.

Usually. Not always, but usually.

(This is what I keep telling myself whenever another Stablemate rarity shows up on the open market. Someday you shall be mine, Emperor’s Gold Bar! And it won’t cost me an actual gold bar to acquire you!)

One more comment before I go back to torturing myself with the hot glue gun.

I don’t know where this tidbit of information came from – I am assuming it’s a misinterpretation or misreading of the entry for it in Nancy Young’s Breyer Molds & Models – but there are way more than three Woodgrain Elephants in the world.

Woodgrain Elephants are still pretty rare – not quite as rare, say, as the Woodgrain Polled Hereford Bull or Buffalo, or the Elephant with Howdah, but definitely not something you see everyday.

But it does concern me that that bit of bad information may have had an effect on the outcome of the auction on eBay. (I missed it previously, because I’ve been avoiding eBay the past month or so, because it’s such a huge time suck.)

Well-informed collectors are less likely to overspend.

Wildlife Adventures

The past few days could have gone better.

First, it took me two days to renew my driver’s license because the system was apparently down. Nationwide. Of course.

Second, I scheduled an early appointment next week on a day I was originally scheduled off, then they sent me a revised work schedule with a double shift on that very day. Awesome. 

And third, work ran late yesterday, so I wasn’t able to do all the errands and other things I needed to get done. (What time I did have had to be spent waiting in line at the Secretary of State office.) There’s an “event” going on in town today that makes completing any task that doesn’t involve staying at home almost impossible.

And I’d really rather not deal with impossible on my birthday, y’know? So I have to spend my special day taking care of things around the house.

At least I’ll have carrot cake.

The nicest gift I received today was a bundle of letters Dad wrote home to Grandma when he was in the Coast Guard; Mom found them cleaning out her walk-in closet and wondered if I wanted them.

Well, yeah!

His handwriting and spelling were terrible, and even then he had a bad habit of randomly omitting words. (It used to drive us all nuts. Finish your darn sentences, Dad!) But it’s nice to hear his kind and silly voice again, now ten years gone.

So much better than dealing with the bluster going on outside.

Anyway, let’s talk horses: I have actually bought a few others worth talking about. This one especially so:

Yes, I have finally acquired the infamous Pink Camo Duchess and Gorilla, aka the Pony Gals Wildlife Adventure Gift Set! The stars aligned: the timing was right, the price was good, and I had money in the Paypal account.

This is not the first instance of a Breyer primate; that honor goes to the “Corky and Bimbo” Circus Boy set, who was portrayed on the television show by a pre-Monkees Mickey Dolenz, billed back then as Mickey Braddock. Here’s an article from the November 1956 issue of Toys and Novelties:

Zoom in on the article and you’ll see Breyer near the bottom of the list of attending licencees (at their original Lake Street address).

The original 1950s Circus Boy set is not particularly rare or expensive, but he’s definitely one of those things I want to find in the wild. Just because.

Holi Daze

Another spectacular day at the flea market – unrelated to the potential/pending business of last week – but I wrote this ahead of time, so you’ll have to wait a few days to see what turned up this week.

(Plus they were filthy dirty. I think one was covered in…gravy? Yeah, let’s go with gravy…)

Here’s another BreyerFest piece unpacked/unboxed – the Elephant Holi, making friends with his teapot buddy:

I was somewhat concerned that the Holi of the photographs – pinking, freckles et al – was not going to be the Holi we would see in Kentucky. I was very happy to have my fears allayed when I saw him in the Artisan’s Gallery Thursday night!

I was a little surprised that he didn’t sell as well as many had thought. Since I was preoccupied with all my other duties on Friday and most of Saturday, I was lucky enough to make arrangements with a friend to get a pick up. When I made a quick trip into the Bazaar either late Saturday afternoon or early Sunday morning (I think I made two trips in there, but it’s all a blur, at this point) there were still plenty of Holis to be had.

Most curious.

I suspect a number of factors were at work. First, the Elephant mold has always been something that has a wider appeal to people more outside of the hobby than in. Second, the decals probably put some hobbyists off: aside from pushing it into “Decorator” territory, the long-term viability of complex decals on a mostly-wrinkly surface was also a not-wholly-unjustified concern.

(So far, so good on mine, whew!)

Plus, he was a little on the pricey side – $45, when you could have gotten the two-piece Dally and Spanky set for five dollars less.

In the long run, Holi will sell out, and eventually will become a more in-demand piece. Especially once hobby outsiders find out about him.

Illustrating my point: I had a heck of a time, pre-BreyerFest, trying to find a reasonably-priced Elephant body for my diorama entry. I had to run some pretty esoteric searches on eBay before a suitable (i.e. not identified as a Breyer!) candidate showed up.

He showed up smelling like the bottom of Grandma’s ashtray, but an overnight soak took care of that problem. All hail, the power of Dawn dish soap!

And Now For Something Completely Vintage

Criminy, Reeves is crushing it this year with the BreyerFest Special Runs:

When they made a reference on the blog to “one of Chris Hess’s most iconic sculpts” I assumed it was going to be one of the “Decorator Five” – the molds used for the original Decorator releases in the 1960s: Mustang, Five-Gaiter, Fighting Stallion, and the Running Mare and Foal.

I figured it had to be either the Mustang or the Running Mare: the Gaiter would have been too hard (even for Reeves!) to reconcile with the theme, the Fighter they seem to reserve for extra-special rarities like raffles and giveaways, and they rarely have a Foal Special independent of a Mare.

I thought it’d be the Mare, because (a) the Mustang recently had a pretty nice release with the 2015 Exclusive Event My Kind of Town, and (b) there was that Translucent Sample Chinese Running Mare that showed up on eBay a little while back that made me think we’d be getting something extra special on that mold in the near future.

But I am completely fine with Darjeeling, who is very reminiscent of the 2015 Western Horse release Glitterati. I am so fine with it, in fact, that I’ll probably be spending the next few days trying to reconcile myself to the notion of having to buy two tickets, instead of the “just one” I promised myself.

It makes me glad, in a way, that the Elephant Holi is a Pop-Up Store Special: while the “Tent of Despair” has its own challenges, at least I won’t have to buy another ticket.

The only thing that has me worried is that I think the Elephant will be fairly popular and may even sell out at the event this year. The Elephant is one of those Nonhorse molds that is a reliable and consistent seller with hobbyists and nonhobbyists alike – and, come to think about it, the ideal kind of Special Run for a venue that’s supposed to be geared (in theory) more towards the tourist/casual collector crowd.

Also, if there is one item in the Breyer lineup – aside from the Celebration Model – that is directly and obviously relevant to the Indian theme, it’s an Elephant.

And it has freckles and gold toenails! Gah! Prior to Holi, most of the previous production releases on the Elephant have had minimal extra detailing, outside of the eyes, mouth and tusks. It’s not something that’s noticed or noted much, because the mold’s plethora of lumps, bumps, wrinkles did most of work in the past.

But now that they’re there, they make such a difference! There is some pretty nice actual shading in the gray paint, too, underneath those decals.

I have no idea if we’ll be getting any more Vintage molds in the lineup, or another Nonhorse Ticket Special. I certainly wouldn’t mind either, though I’m sure my bank accounts would…

An Elephant of Another Color

And right on cue, an all-too-obvious Elephant clue:

Gray with painted decorations, in the same manner Elephants are decorated for the Elephant Festival, which happens a day before the Festival of Colors – Holi – that (not coincidentally!) just wrapped up.

And that’s just about what I expected. I know a lot of people were hoping or expecting a White Elephant, but the more I thought about it, the less likely it became.

First, although a White Elephant named Airavata was the mount of Indra, King of the Gods, White Elephants are more closely associated with the history and mythologies of Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia).

Second, the term “White Elephant” has some rather negative connotations I think Reeves might not have wanted to associate with a Nonhorse Special Run. Wikipedia, again:

The expressions “white elephant” and “gift of a white elephant” came into common use in the middle of the nineteenth century. The phrase was attached to “white elephant swaps” and “white elephant sales” in the early twentieth century. Many church bazaars held “white elephant sales” where donors could unload unwanted bric-a-brac, generating profit from the phenomenon that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Many organizational and church fairs still use the term today. In general use a “white elephant” usually refers to an item that’s not useful (decorative) but may be expensive and odd.

Considering some of the issues they’ve had in the past few years with Nonhorse BreyerFest Specials not selling as well as they hoped, marketing an actual “White Elephant” could be a, uh, little problematic?

The 1950s Pink Elephant was a bit cringe-worthy in retrospect, too. I tend to be somewhat more forgiving of that one since believe that that release – along with its Blue friend – were a one-time/one-run deal designed to use up colored acetate that had been earmarked for another project that had gone by the wayside.

Since the first BreyerFest Elephant Special Run – 2006’s Nimbo – was a straight-up Decorator of the Copenhagen Blue variety, it also seemed unlikely that they’d go with another, unless they were going to do the Surprise SR on it to “complete” the set. But I really doubted they would go for a Nonhorse Surprise.

Decorator Ageless Bronze – like the Commemorative Edition Durango – might have worked, and would have been a nice callback to the infamous “Bronze Glo” models that turn up from time to time, a club of whom the Elephant is a member. (Side note: I am skeptical of many “Bronze Glo” models I’ve seen. Like Gloss, it’s a finish that’s very easy to fake.)

I would have been all-in on another release with the rarely-seen plastic Howdah, but that would have been a little too “Modernistic Buck and Doe”-level obscure, I think. And I say that as someone who has advocated for another release on the Modernistic Buck and Doe.

So an Elephant in fancy festival makeup it is. The only question remaining is whether or not it will be a Ticket Special, or a Pop-Up Store Special? A difficult decision for me, either way.

Picks and Predictions

All those pictures of the Holiday Shermans are making me almost regret not getting one. That’s okay, though, I came home with a decent little haul from the Salvation Army the other day:

I have some interesting things to say about the Stablemates painting kit, but that’s for another day.

I’ve been sort of obsessed with incorporating it into my quilting projects lately, so of course I wasn’t going to turn down a 25-yard spool of giant lime green ric-rac.

The stoneware animals are by a local Michigan artist, and I’m kind of shocked that I bought them as inexpensively as I did, but that’s our local Salvation Army for you. I don’t know if I’m going to keep them yet, or consign them to the sales stash. They are adorable, but the china cabinet’s looking a little crowded.

The blue sari fabric – about three yards – I found the previous week, but I thought I’d include it because “finding a bit of inspiration for the coming year’s BreyerFest” seems to be turning into one of my newer holiday traditions. It’s not quite enough to make a sari (traditionally you need about six) but I do plan on finishing more quilts in the coming year, so an Indian-themed BreyerFest quilt could be a part of that.

Speaking of that, tickets for the event go on sale starting next week, correct?

Generally I’m one of those people who waits until the last minute to buy tickets, depending on the Special Runs offered. Since I’m trying to keep to a tighter budget this year, I might just get it over with and cough up the dough for my one ticket now. And hope if there are any items above and beyond the two allotted to me that I want, they will be unpopular and have plenty of leftovers.

I’ll save myself several months of aggravation and get all of my hopes/dreams/predictions for Special Run items out of the way here and now, too. My predict-o-meter has been somewhat off lately, so take these all with a grain of salt:

The Breyer Elephant mold is of an Indian Elephant, so that’s an obvious choice. The only question here is color; most are assuming either White, or Decorator, but I’d like a fancy Glossy one with lots of shading and detail, and a fancy new Howdah. I’ll be fine with anything, though.

I have no idea what mold the Pop-Up Store Crystal will be, but I’d be surprised if its name is anything other than Koh-i-Noor, for the famous diamond.

Since modern Polo was more or less invented in India, there might be a Polo Pony of some sort. We’ve had a couple of BreyerFest Smarty Polo Ponies lately, so the Classics Polo Pony feels more likely. In a Pinto pattern, if it was my choice to make: that mold has almost always come in either a solid color or some shade of gray.

Something possibly British-themed, to acknowledge India’s history as a British colony. So someone in the Thoroughbred family, maybe?

The famous warhorse Chetak is another potential candidate; he’s described as having a “blue tinge”, which could lend itself to some interesting artistic interpretations.

The Buddha’s horse Kanthaka is another possibility, a White or Aged Gray stallion in Matte or Gloss.

A Baloo and Bagheera set, from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, because someone at Reeves is an unrepentant Disney fan and probably won’t be able to help themselves. I wouldn’t mind this one too much, really, since I really want another Cougar Special Run, and I can always make room for another Bear.

I’d also like to see something that honors the Indian textile industry. If it was me, I would make a two-piece Classics set in pastel colors and decals, one called Paisley, and the other Calico. This wouldn’t be that hard to pull off, since they still have paisley decals from the Bucking Bronco releases a few years back, as well as all the floral motifs from the Blossoms series and Prince of Chintz.

I am also hoping for least one other pony. For no rhyme or reason, I’d like it to be a Galiceno Pony.

Along the same lines, I’d also like to see either a Weather Girl or the pretty new Premier Club Yasmin in some shade of Chestnut (please?)

I won’t offer up any guesses on the Surprise model because other than last year’s Esprit, it’s been almost impossible to predict.

Now to wait and see how wrong I am!

Pink

I am not really understanding the antagonism over the latest Stablemates Club release Ricochet, the Pink Pearl Florentine Decorator G3 Andalusian:

I dislike the gender stereotyping of Pink as a “girly” color as much as the next person, and I don’t wear it personally because I look terrible in it, but I don’t hate it. There are some colors I like less than others – Magenta, ahem – but I don’t shy away from any of them as an artist.

Whatever works, works. (I’ve found it to be a very versatile color in my quilting projects: it works especially well with browns, yellows, and neutrals.)

Ricochet is not the first official, non-accidental production run model in some shade of Pink: come to think of it, we’ve had a lot.

Off the top of my head… we’ve had Color Crazy Stablemates, the 2011 BreyerFest Fairytails Flora, the 2014 BreyerFest Stablemate Birthday Cake, the Breast Cancer Awareness Horses, pieces in both the Blossoms and Zodiac series, and of course the notorious Pink Poodle Cotton Candy, on the Small Poodle mold:

Most recently – this year, in fact – we’ve also had the Mini Whinnies Blind Bag Surprise Landing Jumper Strawberry.

While most Pink Breyers are of recent origin, one Pink piece is among the oldest, and rarest: the Pink Elephant, made very briefly in 1958. It was probably made from a batch of pink-colored Tenite purchased for the then-unlaunched Small Poodle mold.

I think. It’s what makes sense from the evidence, since Test pieces of the original Small Poodle mold seem to indicate that they were intended to release it in Pink and Light Blue. (The former being the inspiration for Cotton Candy!)

It would also explain why they’d release an Elephant, otherwise inexplicably, in Blue instead of a more logical color like White.

(Yeah, I saw that Test Color White Elephant on eBay a while back. Sigh. Odds are pretty good for an Elephant Special Run for next year’s Indian-themed ‘Fest, so here’s hoping…)

Stablemates Speculation

First – before you get any ideas – I’ve already secured one, so if you’ve managed to have a few extra, feel free to distribute them to other needy Stablemate collectors elsewhere. I’m good!

I am talking about the Foiled Again Special Run Stablemate that is selling like … a rare Special Run Stablemate on eBay. I would have thought that the enthusiasm for them would be leveling off a bit by now, but they’re still selling at a good clip in the fifty-dollar range, and sometimes better.

This is, by the way, the upper range of what cheapskate me would spend for a limited edition Stablemate. This is also why I don’t own a Silver G1 Saddlebred, the Poop Paperweight, or any of the super-rare German Special Runs. Among many others. (Swirly Exclusive Event Trivia Contest Stablemates, I’m thinking of you.)

The piece run on the Foiled Again appears to be in the range of 3000, give or take a few hundred. While this may seem low, it’s about double the piece run for last year’s BreyerFest One-Day Stablemates (1750, I think?) This is why it seems a little odd to me that they’re going for twice what an average One Day SM goes for, this early in the game.

I’ve seen some rationalization that that’s because the Foiled Again was a publicly distributed item: many of them will be ending up in the hands of nonhobbyists, therefore reducing the number of pieces circulating within the hobby proper.

There is some truth to that, yes: low-number items vanish rather quickly when they are distributed to the general population. Take the fabled Pink and Blue Elephants of the 1950s, for instance: at least a few hundred of each had to have been produced and distributed, but where are most of them now? Not in hobbyist hands!

On the other hand, Reeves went out of their way to let us know when and where it was being distributed.  I suspect that a higher-than-average percentage of racetrack regulars also know what Breyers are and have an inkling that maybe it might be something they don’t just hand off to the kids or grandkids (unless they’re collectors already).

In short, I don’t think the attrition rate on these Stablemates will be as high as other Stablemate Rarities, most of which were very low piece runs, and barely advertised.

But I also don’t think the prices, at the level they seem to be at now (fifty-ish) are too unreasonable.

Not a bargain, but I don’t think you’d be losing a significant amount of money in the long term. Stablemate collectors are a dedicated bunch, and the prices on them seem way more stable (pardon the pun) than they are for other scales.

Allegedly there’s going to be another Foiled Again promotion in the near future, but I haven’t spent much time looking into that, due to work.

Not Being Myself

Missed me? I missed me, too. Schedule issues are continuing to be a problem, though in a slightly different way than before. Alas, I’m going to be (relatively) incommunicado for a few days more.

If you have received an e-mail from me in the past few days, whatever it was, it wasn’t me. It appears that my Google account was spoofed. I’ve already taken all the necessary steps to remedy the problem, with the tiny bit of spare time I had at my disposal today. (Yesterday’s two hour window of "free time" was hogged up by the dog, who insisted on some intense "warm lap" therapy. I’ve missed you too, Vee.)

I probably won’t be able to (genuinely) respond to anyone’s specific questions until the weekend, at the earliest, so anything you get from me before then is also probably not me.

And on top of all that, it looks like I’ll have to add "new desktop computer" to my list of things I’ll be needing to buy in the next few months. There’s been a lot of whining and screeching emanating from my office lately, and for once it ain’t coming from me. 

But, enough of my troubles. Here’s a little gift to assuage the tiny bit of suffering I have inflicted upon you, albeit accidentally: the flier for the 1976 Re-release of the Donkey and Elephant.

It seems silly in retrospect, but for several years the hobby community was a bit mystified by these models. We knew they were from 1976 - the date was on the box - and that they must have had something to do with 1976 being an election year. But that was about it.

The reason why is obvious: we weren’t the target market for them. 1976 was not only an election year, it was also the Nation’s Bicentennial: it seemed like an excellent opportunity to re-market a couple of old regulars for a slightly different clientele - those wanting to express their patriotism via the purchasing of tastefully (or not) themed tchotchkes.

I have a few duplicates of these fliers from the newly acquired archive, but as you might have guessed, it’s going to be a while before I get around to doing something about them.

Thick and Thin

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.

Time, Space, Rarity

At one point in my very productive yesterday, I had a rubber mallet in one hand, and a FAM body in the other. The absurdity of the moment stuck with me throughout the rest of the day, and as a service to my fellow hobbyists, I will now pass that moment along for your own private amusement.

Do with it what you will. (Need an idea for NaNoWriMo? There you go.)

On a more serious note, let’s get back to the notion of rarity. In light of some of the outrageous prices some rare - and not so rare - items have been bringing lately, it’s definitely a concept that would benefit from an extended discussion.

A couple of days ago, I was updating my files on the Esprit mold, and I was not pleased at what I saw: out of the four releases this mold has had so far, only one of the three - the original #9101 in Dappled Gray - is actually attainable to most hobbyists. There’s only about 30 of the Gloss Dappled Gray BreyerWest Volunteer Model, about 30 of the WEG Volunteer Special, and (allegedly) 250 of the Chestnut "Media" SR.

One of these "Media" Esprits was just auctioned off for a sum well into four figures. (A sum, in fact, that would have relieved me of most of my debts for the rest of the year, if I had been so fortunate to be on the receiving end of such largesse.) In order to collect this mold, one would have to be either extremely lucky, or extremely wealthy.

Since I am neither, it is unlikely that I’ll be seeing many Esprits in my collection in the near future. Sure, there’s the likelihood of future releases, the possibility of BreyerFest SRs, and the slim chance that a few of those Media SRs might end up in the NPOD. But when a mold gets off to such an exclusive start, it’s rather hard to work up the enthusiasm for collecting it in the first place.

It seems odd that the Esprit with the highest piece count among the three rarities is commanding the highest prices, but rarity isn’t merely a matter of numbers. When and Where - the Time and Space of it all - make as much of a difference in the perception of rarity as the actual quantity. The Chestnut Esprit was a gift to "the media," and not to us. The number of them that are in hobbyist hands (at the moment) is smaller than the number of either Volunteer Special. Even though more will inevitably make their way back to us, the perception of extreme rarity will persist for a while.

While it may seem that this is a new phenomenon, there are vintage molds that have disproportionate rare-to-common ratios, too. The Elephant is the most famous of these: how many of you out there have the Blue, the Pink, the Woodgrain and the one with the Howdah?

The piece runs on those Elephants is unknown, but undoubtedly very small: the Blue, Pink and Howdah Elephants only appeared in the ca. 1958 PR materials, and the Woodgrain not at all. But just how small? A few hundred - or a couple thousand?

It may seem absurd to think that rarities like those Elephants could have been made in the thousands, until you factor in Time and Space. They were released in a Time before the hobby was truly organized, much less catered to. And the Space they were released into was not just the hobby, but the world.

A 1500-piece SR may seem "large," especially if it’s distributed exclusively within the hobby. Distribute it to the world though, and it seems vanishingly small. Even if you limited to just the United States, that’d still average out to only 30 pieces per state. (Good for hobbyists in small or low-density states like New Hampshire or Wyoming, not so good for ones in big or high-density states like California or New York.)

The actual number of Pink-Blue-Woodgrain-Howdah Elephants in the hobby proper is hard to gauge, but I doubt it exceeds more than a couple dozen of each. Yet I feel I have a greater chance of acquiring those Elephants than I do the Esprits. The possibility of getting lucky is very real. It’s already happened once: I found a Howdah Elephant on a very slow day on eBay a few years ago.

The Esprits? Not so much. As I hinted above, there’s a slight chance that the supply of Media Esprits within the hobby will go up. Most of the scenarios I see - not just the NPOD, but as raffle and door prizes - won’t result in significantly lower prices for the rest of us, at least not in the short term. Now that a certain plateau has been set, many of those lucky enough to acquire one by these means aren’t going to settle for much less.

That Seventies Catalog

Let's talk about that jobber/distributor toy catalog I mentioned last time. It's the Orgill Brothers and Company 1977 Illustrated Toy Catalog, and it's like a window into my childhood toyland: everything from Barbie, to Bicycles and Breyers, and Beyond! (Literally - Space: 1999 action figures!)

Jobber is a slightly antiquated word for a distributor or wholesaler. A middleman. They'll sell dozens of lines from dozens of manufacturers to simplify and streamline the retailer's ordering process – for a price, of course.

Every page of it is full of awesome, but the Breyer pages are going to be our focus, naturally. There's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the selection – a couple dozen Traditionals, a few Animals, the Classic Racehorse Assortment, Stablemates Assortment, a few Gift Sets. No secret, previously unknowns special runs or oddball items that I can see. (The Donkey and Elephant are present, but that's overstock from the previous year's Election/Bicentennial promotion, and not really a huge surprise.) Just the kind of horses you'd find in your locally-owned hardware store, the market that Orgill primarily caters to.

Yeah, I did buy some of my models at hardware stores back then! Didn't you?

What's nice about a catalog like this is the ability to compare the wholesale prices with the suggested retail prices. Midnight Sun would cost the retailer 4.39, with a suggested retail of 6.59 – a 33% markup. That's about the same markup Orgill was making: per Breyer's own wholesale pricelists, the cost to the distributor for that same Midnight Sun would have been 2.97!

I have no idea what the markup is now: I'm neither a distributor nor a retailer. Even if I was, there would probably be some contractual mumbo-jumbo about the pricing structure that I would bar me from discussing it in a public forum anyway. But we're talking about 30 year old prices on merchandise that's been long discontinued.

For those of you pining for the days of the Six Dollar Traditional, don't forget that this was in 1977 money. As a genuine chronological youngster of that time period, I can assure you, Six Dollars was not a small sum. Saving that kind of money took herculean effort, especially when you're constantly tempted by one dollar Stablemates and 35 cent comic books.

The most fascinating part of this catalog, though, is the photographs: a I mentioned in my previous post, some of them are OLD, and many don't match the product that's being sold. Here's the Running Stallion:

The Alabaster Running Stallion was discontinued, oh, around 1971. The text under the photo notes that it's the Appaloosa you'd be buying. Likewise with with the Indian Pony, shown here in long-gone Buckskin version:

My favorite is the Fighting Stallion; the stock photo used to illustrate the Alabaster is actually that of the Gray Appaloosa, dating back to at least 1961!

We have our share of vintage prototype pics, too, including our old friend Yellow Mount, taunting us yet again:

Several of the newer items – like Lady Phase, the Charolais Bull, and Hobo – have more contemporaneous photos, so Orgill obvious had access to them. So, what was up with the outdated, incorrect stock photos?

The answer is simple: this catalog is pre-digital. It had to be manually pasted up. Every chunk of text and every photograph had to be physically cut and pasted into place. Lines had to be hand-drawn with a technical pen. Mistakes and cut lines had to be touched up with white paint, with a paint brush. If you look closely at the scans, you can still see a few blotches and cut lines.

It's about as much fun as it sounds. I managed to get into graphic design at the very tail end of the “manual” era, so I did get to experience that fun first hand, briefly. (My first semester in art school included a digital prepress class – in Aldus PageMaker! It was my favorite class, by far. I miss doing digital prepress, I really do...)

So the overworked table jockeys who had to put the toy catalog together probably reused old pages, or cut and pasted chunks of old stats into the new pages. Wherever there was a possible discrepancy, they'd paste in a line of text underneath to cover their behinds, just in case.

I'm sure that shortcuts like this probably led to at least a handful of post-production runs on some of the models in question, unless Breyer got lucky and just happened to run across a box or two of old stock hiding in the factory somewhere. No matter how thoroughly the search, there's always a box or two of some old somethings lurking in the warehouse. Look at the kind of stuff that still turns up in the Ninja Pit every year!

Souvenirs

I think I might have to break my vow of model horse poverty and buy the 50^th Anniversary Golden Charm Pinto FAS Web Special on Shopatron. In my defense, (a) my credit card is paid up, (b) I haven't bought my holiday gift to myself yet, and (c) I will be listing several sales horses on MH$P this week.

Well, at least I have a night to sleep on it.

Writing up the descriptors (the fancy word I made up to describe the kind of data I'm collecting on my herd) is going a little more slowly than I planned. I think it's because I hit the boxes with the Little Bits and Classics first; the boxes with Traditionals-only go by much quicker (fewer pieces per box!) Two boxes per day, with occasional breaks for other long-term projects, should get me to my goal by the end of the year.

But there's the memory factor, too: every model has a story. I'm not just talking about my personal history with the model, or its provenance. It's that I'm finding I could, quite realistically, come up with an interesting and detail-rich history post about each and every model. Here's a good example:

It's an early variation of the Breyer Elephant, in battleship gray. There are two different versions of this variation: one is molded in solid, opaque gray plastic, and the other (like this one) is painted in opaque gray paint. They can be hard to tell apart at first glance; the easiest way is to flip them over and check for paint puddling on his feet. Dating these fellows is rather hard: it's assumed that they were manufactured in the 1950s, but photographic evidence for the battleship gray variation is found the 1963 Dealer's Catalog.

(I'll discuss the problem of dating by catalog photos later this week.)

I found this fellow in a rather large collection of Elephant figurines that included several Breyer Elephants. When I spotted the collection at the flea market, from a distance, I made a silent prayer to whatever deity watches over the flea market that there would be at least one of the really rare Breyer Elephants in the herd (Pink, Blue, Woodgrain?)

Alas, they were all the same shade of gray, save this one. This guy was the only Elephant worth keeping. The rest of them went straight to the saleslist, where they made me a modest profit that was probably wasted on some other crazy flea market purchase, like my giant bucket of sequins or that five pounds of vintage Czech rhinestones. (They were still in their original packaging!)

Did you notice the sticker? Of course you did! It's a gold foil sticker indicating this fellow was a souvenir of the Will Rogers Turnpike in Oklahoma. Breyers with souvenir stickers or decals aren't uncommon; I see them turn up on eBay or the local dirt malls from time to time. They're not factory issue, so they don't necessarily add anything to the value of a model unless the place or date has a certain significance to it.

This one does.

A few weeks after I purchased the elephant collection, I found an old stash of travel brochures from the late 1950s. I don't go out of my way to collect them, per se, but if I find any that interest me on an artistic or topical level, I'll snap them up. They're cheap and fun, and provide an intriguing window into the previous owner's notions of suitable family vacationing.

And every once and a while, you find a genuine little treasure. In this box, I found a brochure announcing the opening of the Will Rogers Turnpike, in 1957! (I'd scan this little curiosity and share, but I can't find it at the moment - the boxes of horses are getting in the way.)

Highway and turnpike openings in the late 1950s and early 1960s were kind of a big deal, so the fact that the state of Oklahoma thought it was worth celebrating is not all that unusual. I just think it's neat that I found two separate Turnpike souvenirs in the same season, at the same flea market in Michigan, and from two different vendors!

I have no evidence one way or another if the Elephant was a souvenir sold specific to its opening, or was just a gift shoppe item that was available for some time afterwards. The paint job is a pretty early one, so I'd like to think that it was – or at least from the time when the road was still new and exciting, and not just a strip of pavement that took you from Point A to Point B.

Should the Elephant ever have to make that journey to Point B, the brochure is coming with him.

Knock-Offs

I finally found that photo I was looking for. Behold, one of the strangest Breyer knock-offs you'll ever see: a Bucking Bronco mechanical bank!


It's from a 2005 mail-order catalog from Betty's Attic. I love how they didn't even bother to change his name! I was quite tempted to buy this little marvel of modern engineering, as I've always been a big fan of the Bucking Bronco mold, but I managed to resist the urge. If I ever should come across one at a flea market for a not-indecent price, however, I won't hesitate.

I do have a few knock-offs in my collection – they've been something I've kept a small interest in for a number of years now, though I only have a handful of them in the herd due to space issues. My most recent acquisition was this remarkably faithful adaptation of the Elephant:


He's from a company known colloquially in the hobby as “Diamond P.” On their inside hind legs, where the Breyer copyright horseshow would normally be, there's a small, four-pointed diamond shape with a capital letter “P” in it, along with a three digit number and the phrase “Made in Hong Kong.” Here's a shot from the inside hind leg of a Running Mare copy to illustrate:


The actual name of the manufacturer, or the “brand” name the Diamond P models were marketed under is unknown to me: it's another one of those numerous topics I haven't followed up on yet. The extent of my research so far has been to keep a small list of known models and a photo reference file, mostly of pieces that have passed through my hands on their way to someone else.

(FYI: I'm keeping the Elephant.)


Some Diamond P models, like the Elephant, are really good copies; their copy of the standing Donkey is also very good, as well as their version of the Rearing Hartland Mustang. Others, such as the Running Mare in my possession, are just a little off in size, color, and the overall details:


From the selection of models found so far, I'm presuming this particular brand was in its heyday in the late 1960s to early 1970s. There have been other knock-off manufacturers both before and since, some quite notorious. (“Antique” Chinese Big Ben Bronzes, anyone?)

The irony is that Breyer itself started as a company that produced knock-offs - slightly classier and better quality, but still knock-offs. Most of their molds from the 1950s were direct, or near direct copies from other sources:

Western Horse and Pony (Hartland, among others)
Boxer (Boehm)
Poodle (Rosenthal)
Old Mold Stallion, Mare and Foal (Hagen-Renaker)
Racehorse (Grand Wood Carving)
Brahma Bull (Boehm)
Walking Polled Hereford Bull (Boehm)

Most, but not all: the Lassie mold is definitely an original Breyer design, and the Small Poodle, the Rin Tin Tin, Fury, and the Rigid Riders were probably originals. (We have a dated letter and sketch for the Lassie, but nothing for any of the others, yet. Those darn fragmentary records from the 1950s!)

After the Hagen-Renaker lawsuit, Breyer did cool it a bit with the direct knock-offs, for the most part (the jury is still out on the Bassett Hound, and the Adios's story is … complicated.) And those that were knocked-off were modified just enough to keep the lawyers at bay.

All that could change with further research, naturally.