Seeing Red

Oh, great. Reeves has apparently decided that the "Don’t call us, we’ll call you" method of doling out online Special Runs is the way to go after all.

Worst possible scenario for me, personally, as I’ve already explained in great detail.

I was planning on cutting back on the horse purchases for the rest of the year anyway, but I wanted it to be a test of the strength of my own free will and budgeting skills, not the inevitable consequence of my own personal demons.

I’ll still put in for the Red Rocket anyway, since I am rather fond of the old Belgian mold. If the call comes, I’ll just have to find a way of coping with it that doesn’t involve crying, cursing, or the throwing of things.

I suppose I should say something about the other "Red" model that’s been lighting up the model horse world this week - the alleged Mobilgas SR Red Pegasus on eBay.

I am…dubious. I certainly think it’s possible that an SR was proposed or considered, and maybe even tested at some point, but I’m not so certain that the majority of the ones that have shown up in recent years are authentic.

Look, I’d like it to be real just as much as anyone else, but what I know of this "SR" leads me to be highly skeptical of most of the examples that have turned up in recent years. As someone on Blab pointed out, they could have just as easily been painted by Mobil employees as an internal promotion.

There were a handful of Longhorn Bulls that turned up on eBay a few years ago, with the Neiman Marcus logo "branded" on one hip; they looked real (and seemed plausible) at first glance, but they weren’t. I can’t remember the exact explanation I eventually got about them - I got one quite cheaply, once it was discovered that they were not authentic. (It was something quite innocent, or at least not done with any deliberate intent to deceive.)

I hesitate to use the word hysteria - it’s such a loaded word, especially in the context of a hobby that’s majority female - but I fear that’s the only word that describes the situation here. Evidence has become irrelevant: hobbyists want to believe.

Believing in something, however, does not make it so.