Relief, Rather Than Joy

The month of August is continuing to mess with my head; all I will say about the week is that I am very much looking forward to the weekend, as it is the only time I am allowed to get anything done. (And this will be going away sometime in September. Busy season at work and all…)

I also wanted to be clever about this reveal, but since my time is extremely short today, I will just cut to the chase:

You know what was funny about this? When I opened her up, my immediate reaction was not joy, but relief. And frankly, sometimes the feeling of relief is better.

I mean, I am extremely grateful and stunned that I basically got almost everything I wanted out of this year’s BreyerFest (except a Raffle Model). But for the moment, I’m getting more satisfaction over the fact that for the first time in a long time, it feels like things might be going my way. Am I out of that darkly forested section of my life, at last?

My hope is that this eventually translates into something beyond these material totems. But for the moment, pretty horses will suffice.

(FWIW, she does have three or four noticeable factory flaws, but I’ll worry about those another day.)

From KY to WY

Just passing through, obviously, since I am in between vacays here, but I thought I’d share a few things I picked up in Kentucky:

Yes, that’s a Glossy Marciea Bey. 

First I swore, then I started crying; I was doing pretty lousy at the show prior to that, and even briefly contemplated leaving early. But things got better, and I managed to exceed my goals in the end. (I mean, obviously: winning a Glossy Prize Model wasn’t something I imagined was possible!) 

Even so, if I ever get the idea to do show at BreyerFest Live again, you are all invited to come to my house (unannounced!) and hit me with a 2 x 4. With a nail in it, if necessary.

Because dang, that was hard work. I probably could have eaten an entire pizza afterwards and not even felt it. 

I also got Fifth in the Stablemates Collector’s Class, but didn’t do diddly in Commonality: it’s kind of hard to compete with people who are willing to spend $15,000 to win a $1,500 prize model. At least I gave it a shot, and I can now check off a couple more things off the Bucket List. 

Yes, that Surprise is Glossy, and represents the first time in over ten years since I’ve been able to pull a Gloss Surprise at in-person, from-the-actual-line BreyerFest. I ended up getting a second in the same color, but traded that for the Decorator; (I almost got the Gloss Roan Pinto, but there was a communications issue. Worked out in the end, anyway.) He’s super nice, too, so he might end up in the showstring someday.

I got both Scurries, thank goodness, so my Emma collection (except for the rerelease, and Test Colors) remains complete.

I also tried to get the Roan Araba variation in the Leftover Line, since my Gloss obviously needed a sister, and because I usually always end up with a Roan every year at BreyerFest. But she was just the regular Black one, alas. When my credit card was declined on the fourth(!) pass through the leftover line, I figured it was time to surrender.

I laughed a little when I saw that the BreyerFest Chevaliere was a Roan, because the majority of my Volunteer Models have been Roans. I ran into more than a few people who assumed (incorrectly!) that I was volunteering, but I just want to remind everyone that that was definitely not the case this year. 

It was a little annoying to see so many Chevalieres for sale, but that’s all I’ll say about it. Eh, I’m more “Team Smoky Black” this year…

I did end up with a Volunteer Model (not Chevaliere!) from a kindly benefactor, but that is another story, for another time.

As far as quantities on the variations, I have no idea what’s going on. They’re pretty scarce, but they don’t seem excruciatingly rare: I have a feeling that they’re going to be in the same range as the Horse of a Different Color variation quantities, so a few hundred of each, perhaps? I think that is a good number/range to shoot for, if they continue to do this sort of thing: that quantity range means that they’ll still be expensive, but theoretically “gettable” for people who collect those molds, especially less popular ones.

Jump and Drive and Wells are both 50/50; the loose mane JD and the Gloss Wells just seem a little rarer right now because those are the variations most people want right now. I also have a feeling the Stagecoach Surprises were evenly split, or close to; the Decorator seems a little rarer because the color is exciting and new and everyone wants it. 

The only other variation I “need” is the Action Foal, since I got the standard Standing Foal, and I don’t think that one will be hard to come by. I will not be in market for one for at least a couple of weeks, and by then we’ll know what the splits actually are and we will all be able to negotiate more fairly.   

There’s a lot more, of course, including some not so nice stuff, but now is not the time to dwell on any of that; I have to finish packing and printing my itineraries and stuff. And also apparently I have been assigned Encore Baby Watch, and I need to make sure my camera is in good working order!

The First Round

Struggling with the words again, today. I just finished up a big writing project for work which has left me with an overwhelming need to work with my hands, but it looks like the sewing machine is going to be out of commission for a few weeks due to a service backup, too. 

Tax paperwork and inventory it is then, for the month of January…

For obvious reasons, I’d rather not be one of those people, but so far I haven’t been all that into this year’s BreyerFest reveals. Except for the Constantia Via Lattea, of course. And much to my relief, she’s a Limited Edition!

As I’ve explain before, I haven’t had a lot of happy fun time on the Internet lately, so I apparently missed all the brouhaha over Constantia’s Premier Club release paint job. This I do not particularly understand: over-the-top paint jobs on Premier Club releases are just par for the course, right?

I love home improvement-type shows, but I always roll my eyes at the obligatory parts of the show where potential homebuyers complain about the paint or wallpaper. The most superficial, easy-to-fix stuff! If you can’t see the bones because of the paint…

This means all three of last year’s Premier Club releases will have BreyerFest releases this year. That’s not altogether unusual, but it is that they were the first Traditional releases they officially announced. That makes me optimistic that we might see a bit more vintage goodness than average this year?

The other two Premier Club molds aren’t doing much for me, though. In a shocking twist: they’re just not realistic enough for my tastes!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for less realistic/more artistic sculpts: if someone was to randomly send me a von Hamilton in the mail someday, I would not complain at all.

But the Zafirah represents an aspirational body type I simply think shouldn’t be encouraged. The paint job they put on her is lovely, and camouflages some of the issues I have with her, but I don’t know if it’s enough to persuade me to buy her. 

And I feel like I’m the only one in the world right now who is not in love with Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig’s Amazigh Stallion Anamar on any level. 

Well okay, his mane is nice. 

Now I didn’t hate the stenciled dappling on its original Premier Club release; they’ve been experimenting with that concept for years. While they do look a bit odd on Anamar, that’s mostly because of their starkness. With a little tweaking on the technique – using those dapples as base layer, instead of as the finishing touch – they’ll look miles better than the goofy hand-airbrushed star dapples. Probably save on labor costs, too.

But the more realistic color of Speos doesn’t make me want one any more than I did before. He still falls a little too much on the cartoonish side for my tastes. For better or worse, Speos reminds me a little bit of the original chestnut release of Sherman Morgan. Although I have warmed up to Sherman Morgan in more recent years, he’s still not high on my list of favorites.

As for the sneak peek that’s probably Brighty, I am also not overly enthused. At least it’s not going to be another Bull mold? It’s not so much whether or not I’ll like it, but the fact that it will be exceedingly hard to get. 

Even absolutely ordinary, run-of-the-mill Regular Run Brighties are going for $50 to $75 nowadays, which boggles my mind. They don’t strike me as that kind of scarce, but I’ve been out of the Brighty market for a while, so maybe it’s just me. 

Raffles and Sales Lists

I did not think it would take as long as it did, but I think I finally have the sales list sorted out. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had to seriously compose one, and I had no idea I was that out of practice. 

It also didn’t help that there were a few pieces from one of the small collections I bought a while back that needed some serious cleaning up. And there’s just something so relaxing about cleaning horses, you know…

(Are there YouTube videos of people cleaning model horses? If not, there should be…)

Other than a potential upgrade I bought yesterday (because the opportunity presented itself), I don’t think there will be any significant additions to it between now and then. The only question is going to be just how many of the boxed models I’ll be able to get in the car on top of the bins and miscellaneous stuff I have to bring (there are so many bodies!) 

I also feel like I may have made some wrong decisions on what to sell. I’ve never had to intentionally leave stuff home before, and it just feels wrong. But I’m not renting a truck, and I’m not shipping a darn thing, and that’s that. 

I was also unsure about pricing, but I decided to go with the same pricing scheme I’ve always gone with: cheap! I do have a few nice vintage items, variations, and I might bring a CCA Gloss or two if they fit, but most of my stuff is well below the 50 dollar threshold, and the majority is under 25. 

If people think they can resell my stuff at BreyerFest, they’re welcome to try. (I have seen… attempts, before.) I’ll take my cut and move along.

Anyway, today’s the first day I’ve had a chance to skim the program, and I finally got a good look at the Raffle Models:

Not crazy about the names for obvious reasons (ugh, such a cliché). I’m still a little cool to the new Zafirah mold – I’m sure I’ll like her better in person because that’s usually how things work with Breyer photos. But I also tend to be a bit old school when it comes to my Arabians, so her attenuated look is a little concerning. 

But her paint job looks lovely and I do like Dapple Gray Pintos in general, and I am definitely not turning her down if my number gets drawn. 

I like the Troubadour mold better, obviously, though the paint job is a little… goofy? Silver Dapple Morgans tend to be a little more conservatively marked than other breeds that carry the gene, which is kind of why it took a while for it to be identified in the first place. 

That one will hurt a little more when I will inevitably will not get drawn for it, though it would be fitting since the one time I was drawn for a raffle was for another goofily dappled Morgan: Showboat! 

I don’t think it will happen because I unintentionally manifested a Holographic Silver Uffington on this blog last year, and I am pretty sure the Universe is not going to be as accommodating this time around.   

By the way, I did make an attempt to watch a movie last night: I fell asleep about two-thirds of the way in. Maybe next weekend, if I’m not completely exhausted by all the BreyerFest prep by then...