Mr. Right

I have been beset by many minor (and not so) annoyances over the past week. I broke my sewing machine, deer ate most of my Morning Glory seedlings, I’ve had a sinus headache for the past several days, and Vita got a boo-boo. (Nothing serious, just a torn-off toenail.)

And work? Let’s not talk about it. (The same problem I’ve been having for over a year. It just refuses to stay "solved".)

Not "winning" a Magnus doesn’t even rate. I sort of figured I wouldn’t be getting one anyway. Plus, this beautiful boy arrived the other day and made all my grievances fall away, at least temporarily:

I’ve been looking for a "premium" Man o’ War - with the eyewhites, gray hooves, sticker et al - for longer than some of you have been alive. Theoretically, he’s not an exceptionally hard model to locate, but I was always two steps behind, two dollars short, or two minutes too late.

And then, I wasn’t.

So my holiest of "Holy Grails" is finally here - not perfect mint, but close enough - and I don’t know quite what to do with myself. Well, obviously I’ll be needing a new "Holy of Holies", but besides that?

It feels all weird and anti-climatic. Not bad - because now I finally have my "Mr. Right" - but unfamiliar. Like I said, I’ve been wanting him forever, and now the epic quest that lingered in the background of my hobby career has ended.

I wish his arrival had been a little more epic than the journey that preceded it: I found a box lot on eBay, I placed a bid. I woke up the next morning and was shocked to find that I actually won it - at a price significantly less than my upper limit. I briefly hyperventilated, did a Snoopy Dance, then paid for the lot. The end.

The rest of the items in the lot weren’t too shabby, either, though most of them will be heading for my sales list, once I do a little minor cleanup work on them (dust, dirt, and a few marks). They’re all solid, collection-worthy vintage pieces I just happen to already own. 

Based on an odd pieces in this lot - that I will be discussing in my next post - I have reason to believe that this auction might have been one of those fabled "employee lots" that collectors dream about finding. If that’s the case, that makes my latest Man o’ War even more special.