After a Night of Writing, Furiously

So there, ta-dah!

Actually, I’m not that excited about it; basically the story got a little too big to handle too quickly, and like the last time, I ended up dispensing with a lot of plot offstage, this time in some flashbacks and an extended epilogue. And the original beginning I had planned became the end. For now.

I thought it started well, and it’s certainly salvageable. Just…yeah, it's over and done with. I can move on to other projects for a month or two, without the word count guilt.

In celebration, I ate a bunch of curly fries and opened up a couple packages, including my fancy new Prancer:

Nifty! I do find the black reins are a little distracting, the mock overspray a bit silly and overdone, and most Fury/Prancers didn’t come with painted eyewhites (only some of the Black Beauties did).

But unlike the upcoming Retro Release on the Western Pony, this one kinda-sorta looks like something that could have been made back then. Sort of like what a Connoisseur would have looked like if the program existed fifty years ago.

(A Connoisseur Racehorse does make me giggle. I’d probably buy it, too.)

Looking at the snap saddle makes me wish (again) Reeves would institute a spare parts program as a perk of the Collector’s Club or Vintage Club. I think a lot of people would appreciate being able to get replacement hats for their Old Timers, and replacement saddles for their Western Horses/Ponies/Prancers. (And the hats would make excellent keychains. Just saying!)

That’s all you’re getting today: my brain is still totally fried from yesterday’s massive write-a-thon.

I think I’ll go make cookies; I’m thinking something in the shortbread family, but I have a gluten-free chocolate walnut meringue-type thingie that I’ve been itching to try. (Not because I have to, but because I want to. They sound absolutely decadent. I could use a little decadence right now.)  

Another PSA: Fake Glosses

I feel totally yucky today. My back hurts, I have a rash on my hands, I’m absolutely freezing, and I had to work with a couple of real "Debbie Downers" at work yesterday.

(Yeah, I know, the irony.)

The homemade chicken soup I had for lunch helped a little. I’d crawl back to bed if I could, but I have way too much stuff to do today, and no minions to pick up the slack.

You might have heard about yet another Fake Gloss controversy that had been stirring things up on Blab and in the MHHR Yahoo Group. I don’t know enough about the persons or models involved to comment on the specifics of the situation, but there are some good (and repeatable!) points to be made here about the Gloss Finishes in general.

First - and this might come as a bit of a shocker, from me - is that the absence of a Certificate of Authenticity is not necessarily the red flag. Some of the earlier modern Glossies - and some of the random glosses that appear on the shelves, from time to time - don’t have them. And faking a certificate of that sort is easier than faking a Gloss Finish.

That’s not to say they don’t have any value. If a model came with one to begin with, I’d certainly be looking for it, and negotiate accordingly based on its appearance - or absence. It adds to the provenance, which is always a net positive, financially and historically.

Second, as to whether or not an average collector can be fooled by an aftermarket gloss finish: Yes, most definitely. Remember, it’s only the incompetent forgers who get caught. The problem is that incompetent forgers make up the majority, so most hobbyists make the assumption that fakes should be completely obvious in person.

They are not. Any good art historian can tell you that even the best collections have a few questionable items in it. I have a few models myself that I definitely consider iffy. But I’ve also seen models that looked very iffy that were unassailably authentic. There’s a lot of room for error, and even the best of us get fooled from time to time. It happens. There's no shame in making the occasional mistake.

That being said, there are a number of hobbyists - not just newbies, but people who’ve been around a while too, and should know better - who genuinely can’t see even very obvious fakes. Sometimes it’s in self-interest: they paid a lot of money for something, or their reputation would be on the line if it was discovered that they were easily fooled. So whatever issues that might be there get rationalized away.

A lot of the time, though, it’s a matter of them genuinely not knowing what a real gloss looks like. There have been instances when someone’s brought me a "Rare!" Gloss to examine, and they were painfully, obviously faked. As in chunks of newspaper or hair embedded in the gloss, large strange drips in places they shouldn’t be, or deep unnatural yellowing of the gloss itself.

Pointing them out always leads to inevitable mutterings of "I didn’t see that" or "Isn’t that how a gloss is supposed to look?" 

Until Reeves gets its act together and finds a suitable method for minimizing counterfeit glosses (Decals under the gloss? Sparkles in the gloss? A special numbering system?) all we can do is educate ourselves - and others.

Glosses, like Black Test Colors, should always be held to a more rigorous standard of proof.

I understand the temptation, but seriously guys and gals, you know this already: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

My Life is Weird

In spite of all the nonsense and lack of time, I’m still only a few hundred words off the pace of the novel. Not bad. Of course, the office is a complete and total wreck at this point:

My "Black Friday" was pretty quiet. Went to the craft store, got a can of primer with a half off coupon; then I went to the local Salvation Army, bought a few odds and ends (including one of those Traditional-scale Ertl horses) also with the assistance of a coupon.

That was it. I like to save my "standing in line with a crazed mob for hours, in inclement weather" mojo for BreyerFest.

Oh, and I did buy the Pinto Prancer via Reeves’s online Black Friday sale, on Wednesday. I was going to get a Ravel, too, but I turned around, looked at the floor of my office (see above), and decided that was probably not a good idea. But even with the shipping, the Prancer came out ten dollars cheaper than one I could buy locally, so I went for it.

He’s small. I’ll manage to find a place for him somewhere.

I’ve been trying to list things on MHSP and eBay to compensate - and in advance of a possible grail purchase - but I suppose it’ll all depend on how the weekend goes. I already have a few commons up on MHSP - the kind of stuff that’s good for gifting non-hobby or potential-hobby friends. (Hint, hint.)

In addition to all the other stuff I have planned this weekend - like writing, cleaning up the office, finishing up a few stray holiday projects - I also have to "authenticate" (well, more like evaluate and give an opinion on) another potential Breyer rarity this weekend. Unlike the Belgian, this one is coming to meet me, rather than the other way around.

And unlike the Belgian, this one is not going to blow people’s minds in quite the same way, if he is authentic.

I just contemplated that thought a moment longer. How is it that I’m feeling almost blasé about seeing what might be another Chicago-era Test Color/Oddity?

It is on a mold that I am slightly obsessed with, and is something one normally doesn’t see Tests/Oddities on. But I can live without, if need be. I mean, I’m good in the "Chicago-era Test Color/Oddity department".

My life is weird.

Black and White and Red All Over (Again)

I got all caught up on the novel yesterday, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with everything else, so I’m probably going to fall a bit behind again. Ah, well.

Lots of news in the Breyer world this week. First up, another Red Pegasus (or Red "Pegassus") has shown up on eBay. It's just as authentic as all of the other Red Pegasusses that have shown up on eBay. Which means, NOT AT ALL.

Sheesh, sometime I feel like I should have a PSA about them, like they do with Smoke Detector batteries, health screenings, or the ones that tell kids not to take candy from strangers.

Listen to your crazy auntie in the basement: bidding on a Red Pegasus is the equivalent of taking candy from strangers.

Just don’t do it, folks.

Some people are anyways, just like they have with all the previous ones, some of whom will absolutely insist on its authenticity, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and what do I know anyway, because I’m just poor, and jealous, and I don't work for Reeves, or judge or show, and am so unsophisticated that I like to put catsup on my steak …

Fine, whatever.

Next, the Vintage Club is now up for renewal, and the winner of the vote to choose a piece for next year is - the Matte Smoke Five-Gaiter?

Didn’t see that coming. All that online sturm und drang about how matte finishes weren’t vintage enough, and the vote somehow goes to the one selection out of the four that’s NOT glossy?

I kind of figured that the people making the most noise online were the ones who had the weakest understanding of what "vintage" actually meant, but that the voting actually showed some support for that theory is sort of funny.

Still hoping that the Gloss Dapple Gray Man o’ War shows up someplace, though. I want one something bad.

Reeves has also announced a "Live Show Benefit Program" to promote and encourage live showing, especially among youth participants, with a special model - a Black Appaloosa Spirit, named Zuni - as a raffle prize.

Lots of people are jumping up and down at the thought of it, but folks, they’ve tried this before: the Black Proud Arabian Mares from the mid-1980s were also part of a similar program. It’s not something new.

All the rules and stipulations that go along with the program are, though: the show application includes an entire single-spaced page of them, hoping to counter most of the problems that occurred with its previous incarnations and implementations.

The only problem I see with it - aside from the policing - is how they’re going to select the 30-35 qualifying shows. They want to distribute them as fairly an evenly as possible, in terms of geography.

This is an admirable goal, but as anyone whose been in this hobby for more than a couple of weeks knows, some areas have way more shows than others. Plus, they have to go through the additional hoop of being NAMHSA approved.

It’s probably not encouragement enough to get me back into live showing (yet), but I’m not the target audience. I do think the model is super-neat, but that may be because I have been eyeing the Spirit mold lately.

(As I explained before, though, the only one that’s currently in my price range - the Padre - kind of creeps me out. So no Spirits for me, for now.)

Making Up Stories in My Head Again

Here I thought I was doing extra awesome on the novel today - nearly 2000 words, only a couple hundred short of where I "need" to be - and then I realized I forgot something.

The blog, again. Silly me.

So, here’s a picture of another recent indulgence:

A pretty nice Palomino Western Prancing Horse, with sticker. I’d been on the lookout for years for just the "right" one to add to the herd. I was pretty sure he wasn’t it, either, but the price was, and there was something to him, I dunno, that told me it was necessary to buy him anyway.

Once I opened the box, it only took a few minutes to figure out why: he had the USA mold mark.

With the small Blue Ribbon Sticker, too.

According to my research, this shouldn’t happen: small stickers should only appear on models manufactured from ca. 1966 to ca. 1968, and the larger stickers - the ones with the names - should only appear on models manufactured from ca. 1969 through ca. 1970.

The USA mark was added to many (though not all) Breyer molds sometime around 1970, so any model with a USA mark would have a large Blue Ribbon Sticker, if at all.

For the most part, the chronology appears to be holding up. In the occasions when I it has not, it was either a matter of transposition - a sticker had been transplanted from another model - or it was one of those models or finishes where there’s still a lot of fuzziness about the dates. The Family Arabian Foals, for instance, were apparently re-released in Gloss in the later 1960s.

(Why exactly, we’re not sure. ‘Nother story, anyway.)

Looking at the lists I’ve compiled, I did notice some oddities. Some stickers that should, theoretically, be showing up weren’t.

Take the Bucking Bronco: has anyone actually seen a Bucking Bronco with a large version of the Blue Ribbon Sticker? Both the Black and the Bay were manufactured during the necessary time period. The Rearing Stallion, who is more or less the same scale as the Bucking Bronco, came with both versions of the sticker.

And so too, the Western Prancing Horse. Five of the six early Western Prancing Horses (all but the Black Pinto) were manufactured throughout the entire "Blue Ribbon" era, ca. 1966-ca.1970. But I have yet to see any Western Prancing Horses with the large version of the Blue Ribbon Stickers.

It’s possible it’s a sampling error; stickers are fragile, and I certainly haven’t seen every Breyer model in the world, though it feels like it sometimes. But I've been compiling this data for years now. I may now have to concede that the sticker timeline might be slightly more complicated than I thought it was. Some models that could have made the transition to larger stickers may not have.

Why that was we’ll never know for sure, but there are a couple of plausible theories. Some of these molds might have been lower or slower sellers, for whom another sticker order might have been a waste of time and money. With the Western Prancer, it might have been a space issue: it would have been something of a challenge to fit the words "Western Prancing Horse" legibly on a sticker less than an inch in diameter.

It’s possible that this guy is just another case of transposition, and my brain is just concocting fabulous scenarios to make him more interesting to me. But it still hasn’t changed the fact that I haven’t seen a Western Prancing Horse with a large Blue Ribbon Sticker. Anyone out there who can prove me wrong?

(And if you can, is he for sale?)

Back to Reality

No worries: I took a couple days "off" this week to decompress from the Belgian business. One of those days was pressed upon me unwillingly, due to another particularly unpleasant migraine, that I am going to assume was brought on by the crazy week that preceded it.

(All better now. Well, mostly better. Still not caught up on the danged novel.)

I will admit that, at several points during the process, I was sorely tempted to do some sort of back door deal for the Belgian. I imagined building a fancy shrine or pedestal to put him on, like some spectacular ancient artifact in a history museum. Then, if anybody deigned come to my house to view my collection, the highlight of the tour would be me drawing the curtain back to behold this mystery that they dare not speak of…

Mine, mine, all mine. My precious.

Then reality slapped me in the face and brought me out of my Decorator-induced stupor. They had some small inkling that it was worth something. Not only that, this was no ordinary storage locker or Grandma’s Attic find: the history still clung to it, like cobwebs.

No, this was too big a thing to never share. As much as I wanted it (I’m the Breyer History Diva, not the Breyer History Nun) there was no way I could take advantage of this situation. It wasn’t about me feeling guilty (mostly), but of me valuing the story more than the model itself.

If I took advantage of the situation, I would not have been able to share the story - or even have gotten as much of the story that I have. The stories are so much more important to me.

I mean, I love the horses, I really do. But if it comes down to it, I am always going to choose the history over the horse, the knowing over the owning. (Which explains some of the more peculiar things in my collection. Three-legged Test Color FAMs, cigarette humidors, jewelry trays, some spectacularly ill-conceived clocks….)

I made that choice years and years ago, when I first entered the hobby, and stumbled around, trying to find my niche in it.

I couldn’t have them all, I couldn’t afford them all, I couldn’t know it all (as much as I tried) or do it all. Then I decided to follow my natural inclination - histories, and stories - and my niche found me.

Sound so corny, but it’s true. There are nearly 500 blog posts here, it must be so.

Are there more big finds out there, with even bigger stories attached to them?

To put it as simply an succinctly as possible: Yes.

I couldn't tell you when or where, though. And even if I could, sometimes I can't. For now.

Getting It All Done

I am just having the hardest time finding the time and motivation for this year’s NaNoWriMo novel. Even though I technically have what most people would consider to be an ungodly amount of free time on my hands (because of the slow work season), it isn’t, actually.

It’s all nonfrivolous work, none of that "alphabetizing canned vegetables in the pantry" stuff that desperate writers turn to when the words don’t work. It includes, among other things, taking care of a high-maintenance dog, helping a coworker build a web site, helping with the Copenhagen Belgian auction, trying to get my own auctions listed, last minute work assignments, fighting the crowds at the last big rummage sale of the season, sorting and inventorying that paperwork…

Even so, I’m not that far behind - maybe half a day’s quota off. And I really don’t even have to leave the house the next couple of days if I don’t have to, so catching up - or getting ahead of myself - is theoretically possible.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, as the old saw goes, so I offer to everyone a photograph from the archives that truly lives up to it - and which is providing me with some unexpected motivation, as well:

It’s a photo from May 1977, of Chris Hess working in the shop. It’s probably partially "staged" - it was part of a group of photographs taken for the Spring 1977 issue of Just About Horses - but still, take a closer look at everything going on here.

The lumpy blob in his hands is that of the Benji, being prepared for the moldmaking process; on the table and off to the side is a Charolais Bull, possibly being used as a reference point for the Standing Black Angus Bull, which would come out the following year. Multiple photographs and other reference materials cover the table - some for the Black Angus, obviously, but also for the Stud Spider, another late 1977/early 1978 release.

Other photographs in the set show him fiddling around with the molded halves of Stud Spider, and of another project he was working on at the time, which was apparently repairing a crack in the Longhorn Bull mold. Other molds that were making their debut around this time - but not seen in this set of photos - included Tiffany, San Domingo, the Galiceno, and the Rough Coat Stock Horse Foal.

And he had the nearly completely sculpts of the Legionario and the Andalusian Family ready for approvals by January 1978.

"Get" the picture now? The man was busy!

You can understand, then, when it raises my hackles just a tad to see hobbyists dismiss Chris Hess’s work as lightly as they do. In the space of a year and a half, he casted or sculpted nearly a dozen molds, largely by himself, many of which are still staples in the Breyer line today.

Every time I’ve found myself getting discouraged by my work load over the past several days, I look at that picture and think: Get it done, get it done. Find the time, and just get it done.