No Retail

Don’t you hate it when you go to a yard sale or estate sale, and you can see the spaces where the model horses used to be? You go to enough of them, you just know, y'know?

There was an estate sale just down the road from my house, and I had to work that morning, so I couldn’t go until several hours after the sale had begun. All I found by then were a few odds and ends that hinted at the existence of better things: a few stray (common, nonhorse) H-R minis in a jewelry tray, a partially assembled Traditional-scale Stagecoach in the basement, a Perillo Indian Nativity set on a bookshelf.

Bit of a bummer, yep. Maybe I'll get lucky and some of those "missing" horses will show up at the flea market tomorrow.

Oh, in case you were interested, the dental work went fine: very little pain or discomfort, except to my checkbook. I wore my Beatrice hat, and the dentist honored his agreement to knock a chunk off of his fee. (Yes, he is awesome.)

I still have one more appointment to go, so once I wrap up some old business, I’ll start listing more goodies on MHSP soon. I’m seriously contemplating selling another one of my NPOD finds - a Sunshine Celebration "Daytona" - but I’ll wait a week or so and see how everything else shakes out, monetarily. (I hesitate, because I strongly suspect that the Daytona was a photography sample, too. You know my feelings about that.)

I’m in the middle of one of my periodic china cabinet purges; my space for chinas is strictly limited, and I’ve been finding way too much "finger candy" lately. Plus, some redecorating/dogproofing had become necessary. None of those pieces will be for sale until next year, unless you want to swing by the house for a shopping trip. (You can also come over just to shoot the breeze. Give me a couple days’ notice, and I’ll even bake a cake!)

Here’s a closer look at the Bucking Bronco I found last weekend; it’s the #730 Bucking Bronco in "Rose Dun," though he looks more like a Blue Roan to me:


He’s not particularly rare, but he is a nicer-than-average example. He tends to get overlooked because of his similarity to two earlier releases: the #191 Smoke Gray, and the Bentley Sales Steel Gray SR in 1988. In spite of their relative rarity, neither one of them is in high demand, either. Being Classic-scale, and not terribly performance-friendly, does that to a mold.

Although I’m a big fan of the Bucking Bronco, I hadn’t picked up this one - or any of the more recent releases. It’s not due to a lack of enthusiasm, it’s primarily a consequence of my "no retail" buying policy: I very rarely buy models off the shelf, at full retail. It’s gotta be something I know is either very hard to come by, or is so captivating somehow that it has to come home with me right then and there.

Plus, I’ve found that if I’m patient enough, most of the regular run models I want will eventually come to me via the flea market, in a trade, in a group lot, or at BreyerFest.

Every time I do break the rule and make an off-the-shelf splurge, I inevitably find one for half the price - or better! - a few months or a few years later. Not every time, but often enough.