Rumor Roundup

I really need to learn how to estimate my time better: I’m still dreadfully behind on my To-Do list. And so much has happened in the past couple of days in model horse land, it’s like a whole new landscape every time I log on.

Since I still haven’t located the thumb drive with those extra posts I wrote during my Illinois excursion, we’ll do a brief roundup of that news…

The latest Collectors Club Web Special is the Show Jumping Warmblood in a Glossy Solid…Chestnut? Palomino? Dunalino? Something warm and sunny, appropriate for the god who totes the Sun around in his chariot: Apollo. A solid color on a Web Special is a nice change of pace, and he is quite handsome, but my even my emergency fun-money fund is completely tapped out. I hate to pass on him, but I just might have to.

I made a late-night semi-awesome Buy It Now purchase on eBay a couple days ago. You’ll see why I jumped on that BIN button like Vita on a bone when it gets here in a few days.

In other eBay purchases, another one of my lots from That Guy with That Stuff on eBay has arrived, in another painfully small box. The Cow and Calf set I bid on was not the Cow and Calf set I received. Normally this would be an automatic return, but it’s a little more complicated than that: they were not the oddities I bid on, but they were still oddities nonetheless.

The auction pictures showed a Holstein Cow with a gray udder, and a Calf with tan hooves. What I received was a Holstein Cow that appears to be a cull, and a Calf with gray ears, gray muzzle, and a solid black tail.

(I’d show you all a picture, but my battery charger for the camera is packed away. Also.)

So yeah, kind of a weird situation. I don’t have time to deal with any extra drama at this point, so I think I’ll just let it go. At the price I paid, they could have been ordinary Regular Runs, and I still would have been a good deal. Anything after that is a bonus. (I also don’t think there was any genuine malice intended: That Guy, like so many of our friends and family, might not be able to tell one subtly different set of Cows from another. So it goes.)

Reeves released the BreyerFest 2013 App, which would matter to me more if I did anything more with my phone than send and receive phone calls. (I’d rather not even have one, but that’s another issue entirely.) Half the hobby is complaining about having to pay a whole 99 cents for it, and the other half are complaining that it’s not available on Android.

My brother actually downloaded the 2012 App to his phone last year just for kicks (allegedly) and found it quite admirable, and I generally take his word with these sort of things. (BTW, my brother is fully BreyerFest-trained and knows what Woodgrains, Decorators and Hagen-Renakers are. And he’s single. If you're looking.)

Per intel from the Mother’s Day Kids-Only Breyer Headquarters Tour, the previously announced mid-year release of "Trooper" is going to be on the Cleveland Bay mold. The photographs I’ve seen are all fuzzy and somewhat unreliable, so there’s no way I’m going to pass judgment on him based on that. A Dark Bay/Sunburnt Black Cleveland Bay seems like a winner to me, at least conceptually.

Also speaking of unreliable, the same source just happened to spot what appeared (to them) to be some Decorator-y Shetland Ponies. That’s all there really is to that bit of news, Everything else is speculation - including the initial reports that you have, or will run into in the next several hours that they might be somehow related to this year’s BreyerFest Surprise/Gambler’s Choice model.

It must also be noted that the much-circulated photo of proposed Vintage Club SRs from last year also featured a Copenhagen Pinto Shetland Pony, so it might also be related to that. Or any number of things. Might not even be a Shetland Pony at all, for all I know. 

There was more than that, I'm sure, but that To-Do List is not going to complete itself. Unfortunately.

Road Trip, Part Two

If I were sensible, I’d be in bed right now. But sensible is not a word that really applies to anything I’ve done in the past three days. Road trip to a location I’ve never been to before, on a week’s notice, to help someone I haven’t seen in a couple of decades, driving an ancient, high-mileage station wagon?

Sensible? No. Was it worth it? Yes, but we’ll have a bigger discussion of that some other day. All I can say today is that I think the experience will be very useful for dealing with future auctions of this type, which - not to get too morbid or maudlin about it - may be a not-too-distant inevitability for many of us.

First, I’d like to thank: my boss, who allowed me the time off on such short notice, and in spite of a heavy schedule; the weather, for cooperating; my Russian mechanic, who keeps my ancient car (aka "Sherman") in good enough shape to drive to Illinois and back; and to the people at Munda Auctions, who allowed us to do the work we requested to do, and were actually quite nice to work with.

We didn’t quite get to do quite as much work as we wanted, due to the sheer volume of stuff and the limited amount of time we had at our disposal, but we got the most of it and the worst of it done.

That included sorting, boxing, tagging and reassembling families and gift sets, and recovering a few small items that were mistakenly sent there in the first place. (Mostly sentimental pieces of nominal value.) Nothing could be done to match up sets that had already been broken up and listed, and I only had a limited amount of time to evaluate each model for condition, quality, variations and all that.

There were a number of really fine pieces - many of them Live Show Quality, or darn close. (A couple of Lady Phases and an Adios come to mine.) Lots of Special Runs from the 1980s and early 1990s: Belgians, Bucking Broncos, Hanoverians, Balking Mules. Lamps and Clocks. Boxed Christmas Run items, boxed Just About Horses Specials, and an entire carton  - 15 to 20 pieces, give or take - of factory unpainted models, including some of molds that have since been altered. (Don't worry, they'll be listed separately!)

I’m guessing that there will be at least two more sets of auctions that will be majority-Breyer, and that’s not including the other plastics (mostly Hartland) and the chinas, which we didn’t even bother opening or evaluating. I didn’t bring my Hartland or china reference materials, anyway.

I don’t know which items will be listed when.

I did get a chance to get a quick look-see at the auction set up for this Friday: seeing all 300 lots set out in the main auction room was oddly thrilling, even if the bulk of them were relatively common items. Felt like a mini-BreyerFest! There were definitely a few that caught my eye, but I’ve been rather carelessly bidding on those crazy eBay lots from that Arizona seller, so my "fun money" well is currently dry.

(Wish I could be there on Friday anyway, but even my boss is not quite that understanding.)

We talked briefly to the proprietor Doug Munda, and as I mentioned before, everyone there was very nice and very accommodating. (The lady who packs the items to ship? Has relatives in my hometown!) They were quite pleased with the response and progress of the auctions so far, and we also informed him of the kinds of things hobbyists of our sort look for, and might be asking about. They've already had some experience dealing with our type in previous auctions, and with other serious collectors of serious collectibles, toys and figurines, so I don't think anything we said was particularly out of the ordinary. 

That’s all for now, folks. I actually wrote a couple of posts at the hotel about other topics, so you’ll be seeing more actual history stuff in short order.

Great Breyer Graveyards

They just listed a few more items from the Big Hobbyist Auction on the Munda’s web site (May 24th) so I’ve decided to temporarily add the Munda’s Auction site to my link list, for your convenience. The listings this go round are slightly better, though much amusement will still be found there. ("Bat Pinto"? Batman had a horse?)

Like a lot of people, I’m currently intrigued and baffled by the eBay auctions of a vendor out in Arizona: what looks like variations, oddities, culls and outright test colors are being auctioned off in rapid succession, and in great quantity. I’ve already bought a couple of what I’d consider
"safe" lots, where I think my potential loss of investment will be minimal if they don’t turn out to be what I think they might be. The first one has already arrived:

A Fawn without spots, and a Doe with darker than normal ears? Yeah, I know, not the most exciting lot of Breyers ever, but remember who you’re talking to here. This is the kind of stuff I eat for breakfast.

There’s been much speculation about these models and their origins. I’ve done a little of it myself over on Blab, but I’ll expand and continue my thoughts here, for the benefit of a wider audience.

There are several locations that seem to be harbors or wellsprings for rare and odd Breyers. Chicago is the first, of course: that’s where the factory was for the first 35 years or so of production. Then there’s New Jersey, the current location of Reeves International, and where full-scale production continued for the next 15 years, give or take, and still continues on a minimal basis.

California is sometimes seen as another one of the Great Breyer Graveyards, though I think its plentitude is exaggerated, a bit. California is BIG, in every sense of the word, so it’s only natural that there’d be slightly more rare and unusual stuff coming out of California than, say, Kansas or Wyoming. I do think that the Decorator saga has its roots out there, due to the Ungers, toy development gurus and longtime Breyer Sales Reps who were also partly responsible for bringing us Brenda Breyer.

The location that has always fascinated me, however, has been Arizona. When I was just getting into the hobby in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I kept hearing stories about crazy things being found at the flea markets in Arizona. I had relatives out in Las Vegas, and whenever it was casually mentioned that we might go on a road trip to visit them, my thoughts always turned to those magical flea markets I heard so much about.

(The furthest west we got was Arkansas. It involved Elvis, the Kentucky Horse Park, a liquor store, and Breyers. Of course.)

A few years ago - when I was working for an antiques dealer, who also was a story unto himself - a number of lots came up on eBay from a seller in Arizona. Lots with multiple pieces of the same item - a half dozen Bassett Hounds, or Benjis, or Charolais Bulls - and one spectacular collection lot with multiple bulls in colors I had never seen before: Brick Reds and Browns and Chocolate Milk Sorrels.

I tried for the lot, but naturally failed: I think it went somewhere in the $4000 to $5000 range, which isn’t as outrageous as it sounds, considering that there were at least 10-12 of those bulls in it, not including the more "normal" looking stuff that was thrown in for good measure. Even at that price, money could have been made.

They looked authentic to me, and apparently, it did to a lot of other people, too.

Since then I’ve always kept a lookout for auctions in the Arizona area, just in case. I’ve come across a few treasures, but I missed this vendor’s auctions earlier this year because I’ve been trying to keep my eBay shopping to a minimum. I was doing so good, until this week!

As to why Arizona, that’s still something of a mystery. Longtime mail-order company Horses International was based in Phoenix, and had many unique Special Runs of its own: perhaps these were samples from the warehouse that somehow came into someone’s possession?

Another theory that I’ve been mulling over is that these were somehow connected to Breyer’s little adventure in Mexico in the late 1970s. Peter Stone got a wild hair and thought that they could move production to Mexico, an endeavor that likely failed due to infrastructure problems. Most - though not all - of these models seem to be from that time period.

It could be that there’s a more mundane reason. Like all of the other Sellers of Unusual Breyers of Dubious Provenance, this seller is not being terribly forthcoming about their origins. Whether it’s because he’s got something to hide, or is just bluffing to cover his lack of knowledge, we also do not know.

All I know is that I performed the Lestoil test on the two most peculiar pieces in my Deer Lot - the Doe with the dark ears, and the spotless Fawn - and nothing but a little dust and dirt came off. 

Paint Them Black

Couple things before I get to the Black Family Arabians.

First, the Sunday BreyerFest Raffle Horse, which is a Liver Chestnut Pinto Brishen. All I’ll say about him is that my computer monitor is defective, because I really don’t see what’s so horrifying about him.

It’s one thing to dislike something, but it’s quite another to take pride in that dislike. Some of the commentary I'm seeing seems to be veering off in that direction.

Second, the One-Day Stablemates are all new molds, in various "Denim"- and "Diamond"-themed Decorator colors, including (gahh!) a Silver Filigree. (They're all on the BreyerFest Blog page, on the Breyer web site.)

They are all awesome, but my favorite is the Icelandic, doing a full tilt tölt. A plastic Icelandic, at last! The Angry/Bucking Horse is pretty neat also, though I’m wondering what to call his color, which is Copenhagen on a clear plastic body. (Clearpagen? Copenclear? Blue Raspberry Snowcone?)

I’m liking them so much I’m seriously considering actually buying some one-day tickets this year, since judging from the reaction I’m seeing online, I’m kinda doubting there will be many - or any - left to sell in the sales tent on Sunday.

Anyway, back to our program.

Here’s the originaluncropped photograph of the Black Family Arabians I showed you previously:

As you might have noticed before, these pieces have hooves that are distinctly nonblack. The vast majority of Black Family Arabians are of the completely black variety. I had heard of Black Family Arabians with brownish or tannish hooves before, but I had assumed they were Test Colors, and not specifically a part of this Special Run.

Someone on Blab opened up a topic in one of the subforums about the hoof color of Black Family Arabians, and I had just archived that very photo above. It now appears that a small percentage of the Special Run - the first batch or so, more than likely - did come with nonblack hooves.

Why did they change to solid black, later on? There are a couple of possibilities. One, Solid Black is easier and cheaper to paint: one color, with no need to worry about overspray issues.

Second, Breyer might have seen it as an opportunity to use up the discontinued Family Arabians in various colors that had been cluttering up the warehouse since the "Implosion" of 1973. Why paint over fresh bodies, when you could paint over unsold leftovers, instead? And since they all came with different hoof colors - gray, pink and black - it might have been easier to deal with that minor issue by getting rid of it altogether.

It was long assumed that the Black Family Arabians were a Special Run for Model Horse Congress in 1978 - one of the first true "Special Runs" targeted towards collectors. And that only about "200" sets were made.

None of that was true, either.

If you look at the photograph more closely, you’ll see a poster on the wall of the comedian Steve Allen, promoting "National Hobby Month". The smaller text on the poster reads "For relaxation…for edification…have a hobby."

Steve Allen became National Chairman for National Hobby Month in 1977, and there’s a 1977 Collector’s Manual on the tabletop display, in front of the Family Arabian set. It's clear that the Black Family Arabians were designed to be a part of a promotion for National Hobby Month, and to be sold in stores.

It was a nationally marketed Retailer Special Run. There had been "Special Runs" before, technically, in the Christmas/Holiday catalogs, but they weren’t specifically marketed as Special Runs until a few years later.

This photograph was taken for a flier sent to retailers about the Breyer’s participation in the National Hobby Month program. (I don’t own a copy of that particular flier, but I have seen a one.)

Since they were part of a retail program large enough to merit a printed flier, there were obviously more than 200 pieces made. The exact number is unknown - I’ve heard the rumor of around 700, but I don’t have any confirmation of that. Most Special Runs from the late 1970s and early 1980s were in the 100-200 piece range, so a 200 piece count run seemed about right. I don't know how many pieces the Bentley Sales Company ever had in their possession, but whatever amount they had to sell to hobbyists at Model Horse Congress in 1978 were leftovers from a bigger promotion.

While they certainly seen like they’re as rare or rarer than many of the Special Runs that followed, it has to be remembered that a large portion of them were distributed nationally, to toy stores, and not directly into collector hands. It’s very easy for even a relatively "large" special run to disappear into the public market, especially if nobody is looking for them - or has any idea they were all that "special" in the first place.

Think about this: 500 pieces translates into about 10 pieces per state, give or take. 

Crazy Days

Man, another crazy set of days. I just want to go outside and run around the yard like the dog does when she’s in one of her moods. I’m not going to, because the consequences would be inconvenient, at best. I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next several days, and I don’t think they’d let me do it from whatever location they’d send me to if I did.

Anyway, I’ve been given clearance to talk a little about the project I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks. It’s not related to the Black Family Arabians in any way, so that’s going to have to wait a few more days to be discussed, because the matter I want to talk about today is somewhat time sensitive.

Much debate has been made in hobby circles about what to do with our collections when we are gone, or are past the point of managing and/or enjoying them to their fullest. We fret over the how the dispersal of our plentiful herds will happen, and if it will be done in as careful and meticulous a manner as they were assembled.

I was recently contacted by an old acquaintance who was facing this prospect. She has a rather large and impressive collection, but for a variety of reasons - some related to her health - she decided it was time seriously downsize.

When I mean "seriously" I’m talking about 1000 pieces, give or take.

Ebay, understandably, was not a practical solution to this problem.

The decision was made to send it to an auction house, one that would allow online bidding concurrent with the live auction. The collection would be broken up into discrete lots, and descriptions and notations carefully written to accompany them to assist the auction house. They were familiar with Breyers, and had auctioned some in the past, but nothing of this scale.

The first lots went up, and - well, here’s a link to them and you can observe for yourself:

http://www.mundaauctions.com/
(Auction house web site direct link. The auction in question is May 10th.)

https://www.proxibid.com/asp/Catalog.asp?aid=65691
(Direct link to catalog.)

Things did not go according to plan. This is a hobbyist who took a great deal of care to acquire this collection, and had a very good eye for oddities, variations, or just darn good pieces - in Chicago in the 1980s, so you can just imagine the kinds of stuff she has just from a Breyer standpoint. (There are more than just Breyers involved, but I'm assuming by your presence here that that's what you're looking for.)

Of course, none of this work is visible in the auction listings, which are cursory at best, and oddly focused on the dimensions of boxes, rather than the contents within.

After much phoning and e-mailing, it was decided that I’d come in and help curate the rest of the auctions. This will involve sorting, organizing, matching boxes and sets back together, getting proper descriptions written focusing on the details collectors would actually be interested in, and so on.

In the meantime, the auctions that are running now can’t really be changed, and since I haven’t seen them in person yet, I can’t give you any more details than what I can see myself. All I can say for sure is that there’s good stuff to be had there, and will be in the near future.

I have been given the go ahead to "advertise" these auctions, as they are, from every avenue available to me. This is being done in the hope that it will generate a response enthusiastic enough to catch the auction house’s eye, and perhaps garner a little more respect for the items being auctioned off at a later date.

The ultimate goal of this exercise - other than the dispersal of a collection - is, I hope, to set an example for these kinds of sales and auctions in the future, and allay some very real fears that we all have about the dispensation of our beloved herds.

More on the story, of course, as it develops.

My New Favorite Thing

I am substantially better than last time, though still not sufficiently up to snuff to tell you why most of what you know about the Black Family Arabians is probably wrong. Next time, really.

In the meantime, here is my new favorite thing in the whole world - a Bentley Sales Company sales list from 1973:

(Click to enlarge. HUGE DISCLAIMER: in case it is unclear, this is a FORTY-year-old price list. NOTHING on here is available for sale anymore, much less at these prices. Strictly being published here for informational/educational purposes only. That’s what the big-huge VOID is for. Got it?)

We have lots of wholesale price lists from that time period - or before - but not a lot of retail price lists, outside of the limited selections available in the Christmas/Holiday catalogs. From what I can remember, the prices here weren’t too far off from what I saw in our local retail establishments.

What’s a wonder to me about this price list is not how low the prices are - that’s a conversation that’s long since lost its probative value to me - but that it managed to survive at all. The Bentley Sales Company was started in 1969, and the earliest flier in my possession I had from them prior to this was from 1977.

Also, it’s another lovely reminder of just how deep "hobby history" really goes: this is a forty-year-old piece of paper. It’s not even the oldest piece of paper in my collection.

It’s still within living memory, it’s true, but that memory is slowly getting swamped by the Internet, and its endless desire for newness and variety. The latest "hot thing" is replaced by the next "hot thing" sometimes within a matter of weeks.

Time moved so much slower, it seems, back then. "Special Runs" were a rarity, and Regular Run models lasting less than two or three years were very unusual.

1973 was also what I call the "Year of the Implosion": lots and lots of molds, models and colors disappeared at the end of it - and some of them haven’t been seen since, like the German Shepherd and the Large Poodle.

Some of it was motivated, undoubtedly, by the Cellulose Acetate shortage (especially the Poodle), but a bigger part of it was simply a desire to modernize the line. So it was time to say goodbye to most of the Family Arabians, the last of the Woodgrains, and other slower-selling odds and ends like the Kitten.

And to say hello to newly-created in-house molds like the Performance Horse, El Pastor, and the Charolais Bull, and newly-leased molds from Hagen-Renaker, comprising most of the Classics and (then) all of the Stablemates lines. Just for starters.

Oh, The Things I See

Something short and rambly today, since I haven’t gotten any appreciable sleep since, oh, Sunday? (Scheduling issues, again. Not just me, but everybody.)

The special project/secret mission/road trip is kinda on hold for a week. Don’t worry, it’s still a go, and you’ll get all the details about it, in good time. A few weeks ago telling myself that I was ready for a new adventure. Silly me, not expecting the Universe to actually honor one of my wishes, for once…

I am aware of the Chalky Dapple Gray Shire on eBay, and I might have some interesting news to share about that particular topic in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, I’ve seen those prototypes on eBay, too. The sound you hear in the background is my check book laughing at me. Not enough money + slow computer + even slower Internet connection = no prototypes for you!

I have also seen those New Jersey cull lots. Culls, I have plenty of, so those I am not muttering to myself about.

I am a bit shocked at some of the prices they’re bringing, since I can remember being able to buy ‘em for 5-6 bucks back in the good old days, when they were little more than remaking fodder. We laughed - really, we did - at the thought that people would pay a lot for them in the future.

Not because we thought they were worthless, but because they were so plentiful at the time, and cheap. We did assume that they were going to go up. Mostly because we had been told that Reeves would put a tighter cap on factory escapees. Fewer culls = increased rarity, and all that jazz.

So funny, I know. I’ve heard the stories, too - about the New Jersey dumpsters being trashpicked, and truckloads of bodies being "rerouted" to the flea market, and not the landfill. The only thing that truly stopped that from happening was moving production overseas. And not having too many crazy hobbyists living within a reasonable driving distance of China.

In spite of that, I do think there’s probably an upper limit to the pricing on culls: there still are a lot of them out there - in and out of collector hands. They’re not everybody’s cup of tea, either. They were discarded for a reason: otherwise unpainted horses with some paint spritzed or splashed on it are not always very attractive.

Most hobbyists like their horses "finished" in some way - even if it’s just a pure, solid color or a faux "stone" or "fantasy" finish.

With that thought in mind, here is a picture that gives you a hint of what I’ll be talking about next time. It’s a topic I touched briefly on Blab, but I’ll elaborate on it here in greater detail, after a night or two of more restful sleep: