Coping Strategies

Yesterday, my brother heard me yelling in my office, and promptly told me to walk away from the computer. The WEG Specials? Yeah, it was the WEG Specials.

I couldn’t, of course. Last week’s work schedule really messed me up (gone from home for two days, slept through most of a third) and while the limited Internet access was probably as good a coping strategy as any for dealing with the WEG specials, it’s not something I could avoid forever.

And boy howdy, did it hurt like heck. The exclusive SRs are nice - I wouldn’t mind the Gold Raven, or that Palomino Roxy - but it’s the premium reissues that are really killing me, especially the matte POA Toby and the (cry-sob-whimper) Traditional Man o’ War.

Stab me in the heart, why don’t you Reeves?

Yeah, and real smart move, not limiting the low quantity SRs to one per person, or so many per day. Were they really expecting all those SRs to last for the bulk of 16 days, without any purchase limits? If most of the advertised - and unadvertised - exclusives are gone by now, there’s gonna be a lot of unhappy campers over the next two weeks. (Unless they pull more "surprises" out later in the week.)

My current coping strategy for the rest of the duration of WEG? I’m treating it like every other recent acronymic event (LSE, VRE): ignore, then mope. It’s too far away for a day trip, and I don’t have the money anyway. Might as well be another LSE or VRE, without the formality of a ticket raffle.

At this point I really can’t say any more about the event that wouldn’t involve the heavy, repeated use of expletives. So I won’t.

The flea market was adequate today. The weather was clear, if a tad cold. There seemed to be fewer crazy/creepy people milling about, but more outright tourists - you know, the kind that buy ornamental corn, painted pumpkins, and trivets made out of bottlecaps.

Lots models, but not much worth buying - everything was either body quality, or slightly overpriced. I found that odd, since prices usually start going down near the end of the season. I did find an okay Horned Hereford Bull that’s now sunning in the window, and a few neat old books (nothing horsey.) I also found the Swinging Girl part of a Mastercrafters Swinger Clock - not the clock, just the girl on the swing. It's just my luck, though, that I’m still missing a part to install it in the one clock incomplete clock that I have.

I do have a couple of research-intensive posts in the pipeline, including a little something about the Davy Crockett that I’m hoping to have ready by tomorrow. My schedule is a little less strenuous this week, or at least it appears to be so from first glance.

QVC and Midnight Tango

This shows you where my mind has been lately: as I was watching QVC hawk the “Waiting for Santa” Play Set on Tuesday, all I could think about was the fabric in the flipping sleeping bag. Were the fabrics also exclusive? Could I get bolts of them anywhere?

I'd so totally buy a bolt of Breyer-branded fabric. I've been itching to make a Breyer-themed quilt for years. Fabric with preprinted logos and models would make things so much easier. And just imagine all of the other possibilities: show bags, table covers, tote bags and purses, slipcovers, curtains, evening apparel...


Back to the Play Set. It's nice to see the Midnight Tango mold again; poor thing hasn't been getting much use lately, which is a shame. Since his introduction in 2000, he's only had four other releases:

461 Midnight Tango
1173 Boone's Little Buckaroo
1180 LTD's Red Cloud
4116 Paint By Number Kit

Contrast that with the Traditional Silver, who has had over twenty different releases since 2001. (I don't have a particularly strong opinion of the Silver mold itself one way or another, so I'm sorta baffled by his popularity. And mildly relieved I didn't get pulled for the Early Bird Raffle Silver at Fest this year.)

Even Bouncer has had as many releases since his debut in 2007 (five, if you count the Gloss show prize pieces.)

I didn't get the set, partly because I finally found some of the Pony Gals stuff at a local Target (more Mini Whinnies, yay!) and because they pointed out, several times, that the set would be available later in the year through other retailers. Other retailers they didn't identify, naturally.

I'm going to guess that this set is going to be another one of those “Big Box Specials,” available for somewhat limited distribution either at one or several of other Big Box retailers like Target, Kmart, Wal-Mart, etc. or through the various local farm chain stores serviced by Mid-States Distributing. Or some combination thereof. Maybe even Tractor Supply: even though the TSC specials are usually labeled as TSC exclusives, the past couple of years they've also been getting a lot of semi-specials in their Holiday toy mix (repackaged older specials, re-issued discontinued items, leftover Wal-Mart stuff, etc.) We'll find out soon enough.

Yes, I am aware that TSC and Mid-States have their own exclusives independent of the other retailers; I'm just trying to come up with a suitable term that covers items that don't appear in any catalog, yet appear in a multiple store chains (i.e. the Bay Appaloosa Classic Frolic Stallion – first at Meijer, now also in Kmart.) “Big Box Specials” is about the best I can come up with at the moment.

Speaking of the notion of “exclusives” I wonder how much the Burbank controversy affected the sales pitch on QVC. I know other collectors have been annoyed by the fact that QVC has advertised other items as “exclusives” that have turned up elsewhere, either as regular runs or store specials. In my admittedly limited exposure to QVC, they've generally been pretty good about parsing their words to cover that possibility, but not pushing it too hard, lest it affect their sales. It was interesting how they really went out of their way to point out the fact that “exclusive” really meant “on QVC first, at this special price.”

I believe that The Nutcracker Prince is technically a true QVC Exclusive; it's not the horse, but the ornament that's packaged with it that makes it so. It probably has its own issue number and all that, but that's something I haven't followed up on yet. (Most QVC items do, or used to, regardless of the model's status as a regular run or special run. Another one of those documentation quandries we have to deal with.)

Glossy Summer Solstice

Well, I wasn't 100% truthful: I did get a couple of nice things in the tent. I did snag a 2006 USET Authentic in the mixed boxed models for $25, a Gloss Riley, a couple of Del Mars, the Toby, the Stablemates Set, and this little beauty: a Glossy Summer Solstice!


I have no idea how many of the gloss were in the store – significantly less than 200. It was hard to tell in the chaos: if I were to hazard a guess, it'd be less than 50. (I didn't see any of the Matte, but that doesn't mean anything: there was a lot of stuff in there I didn't see. Like the VRE models.) I have no idea if they're going to sell more on Shopatron or elsewhere. He has the same item number as the Matte, which is #712020, and no mention is made of the gloss finish on his certificate: the Gloss Rileys were re-numbered and re-certificated.

(I never got around to asking, either, but that's another story.)

You can't really tell from the (very bad) photograph, but this paint job is BEAUTIFUL. It's very reminiscent of the Rejoice “Gwendolyn” from a few years back: richly shaded, slightly pearlescent, and (unlike Gwendolyn) subtly dappled. I love this color, and I wouldn't mind seeing it on just about anything else. (Do I see Collector's Choice entries in this color in the future? I do!) And he was $70, too - $40 less than the Shopatron Store price for the Matte! A real steal, I thought.

Others were not so impressed. I showed off my Solstice to anyone who walked in the room. (Heck, I've been carrying him around the house for the past two days, and I have nobody here to impress!) I found it a wee bit distressing that they were not as enamored of him as I was. Admittedly, some of them were very young hobbyists who have the privilege of already being so blasé about this sort of thing already. (Am I the only person a little squicked by the fact that the Youth Show at BreyerFest has prizes that are always rarer, and often better, than anything else at the event? What's left to aspire to?)

And when you have two raffles, an Early Bird Special, several different SR and glossy live show prize models, a hat contest, a cake topper contest, VRE models in the Tent, and the Deco Surprise Quarter Horse Geldings, too, he kinda gets lost in the crowd. He's rare, but not THAT kind of rare. Not THAT kind of special.

Still, it is a bit troubling. Every model is technically unique. I didn't realize we were approaching the point at which a model has to be literally unique for it to attract any attention at all.

Y'know, I remember when any special run of less than 500 pieces was considered quite the catch. Then it was only models of 350-piece runs or less that managed to excite collectors. Then 200 pieces became the threshold: anything more than that wasn't “rare” enough to be worth the trouble. Now it seems that in the minds of some collectors, if there's more than 100 of any given Special Run, it might as well be a dog toy. Especially if it's not a new or super-popular mold.

(Speaking of mold popularity, how right was I about the volunteer model this year – a Proud Arabian Stallion! Ha! Still would have loved to have one, though. That's one pretty paint job. Sigh.)

My Glossy Summer Solstice is special to me, and that's all that matters.

Those VRE Models in the Pit

For the record, I didn't get any of the VRE models in the tent. I didn't even see them, until after the fact. (Truth be told, I almost completely struck out when it came to the “good stuff” at BreyerFest this year – in the Tent, and elsewhere - but that's another post for another time. One that can't be written until I've moped around the house for a few more days and finished consuming my weight in chocolate.)

There's been considerable hue and cry about the appearance of the leftover VRE models in the Ninja Pit of Death. It came as a surprise to me, too – not that the models were not destroyed, but that they thought it was a good idea to throw them into the tent in the first place.

Bad idea Reeves, bad idea. But I'll get to that in a minute.

I was not surprised that the models were not destroyed: Reeves isn't in the habit of destroying perfectly good models if they don't have to – especially if they're already wrapped and ready to sell. There were rumors of earlier BreyerFest Special Run leftovers (primarily the Three-Piece Classic Thoroughbred Sets) being destroyed and reground, and those rumors weren't the least bit true: I know some of them turned up in the Tent and in other retail venues, including Tuesday Morning.

And if they're not sold as is later on, they're often repurposed: the yellowed JAH Giltedge Hackneys became the BreyerFest Special “Excalibur,” and the leftover Inolvidables became the JAH Special “Causin a Commotion.” (And if you want to go even further back, factory overstock #58 Bay Hanoverians became the fabled Chalky Dapple Gray Hanoverians.)

I wasn't there at the actual Velvet Rope Event to hear what the Reeves employees said first hand about the disposition of the leftover models. I suspect the notion that the leftover VRE Specials being destroyed was probably a combination of misunderstood questions, misinterpreted answers, garbled and incomplete information passed amongst the various Reeves employees in attendance, and wishful thinking on the part of attendees.

That idea just struck me as wrong. It was contrary to what they had done in the past, and the explanation that it was going to be done to “preserve” the value of the VRE models didn't make sense. When you're dealing with piece runs of 100 or less, the destruction of even a handful of models wouldn't preserve the value, it would significantly alter it – up! (Hence the wishful thinking reference, above.) I'd be a little miffed though if I had made my VRE selections based on piece counts, only to find out the piece counts changed afterwards.

I thought Reeves would take the saner route and just use the leftover VRE models as prizes, raffles, auction pieces and giveaways. I don't think too many hobbyists would have been upset if they had done that: they'd still have that cachet of being an exclusive and all that. It's not like they're making “more” of them available – they're just distributing the remainders in an even more exclusive way.

Throwing them in the Ninja Pit of Death was not what I expected. The Medalist Ponies, the exclusive surprise Stablemate Sets, Rileys and Party Girls? Yeah, sure, no problem. Those kinds of things we can plan and compensate for.

The VRE models, not so much: Burbanks marked down to $60.00? What on Earth were they thinking?

The Ninja Pit is almost unmanageable as it is – throwing something that rare into the mix, and marking it down, is only going to make matters worse. Much, much worse. Now that that has happened, hobbyists are going to come to expect it. Unless they make significant changes in the way the Sales Tent is run, an entire army of nunchaku-wielding ninjas on elephants is not going to be enough to control the crowd, much less a single mounted police officer.

I sure would have loved a Burbank, though. It would have made a nice consolation prize in lieu of not getting any of the Deco Surprise QH Geldings.

(Totally my idea, but you guys knew that already. Pardon me while I go mope in a corner and console myself with microwave chicken taquitos.)