Dark Chocolate Kelso

I was reviewing the spreadsheets of all my purchases and sales earlier this week, and I was a little amazed at how many of my eBay purchases were box lots.

Judging from my recent bidding history, I don’t think this year will be any different.

Aside from the bargain of it, it’s the excitement of opening the box and seeing what you actually have, compared to the sometimes small, sometimes blurry, and usually insufficient number of photographs you had to go on when you made that decision to bid in the first place.

I’m usually pretty good about bidding up to my max, and no higher, and making that bid on the assumption that whatever I see is in slightly worse condition than it appears. So even if I lose, I don’t lose much, other than time and a bit of enthusiasm.

(Want to lose some enthusiasm real quick? Try rinsing out petrified bugs from a sticky and heavily smoke-encrusted Marx horse’s back end. Ah, the glamorous life of a box lot reseller...)

The box lot that arrived at the house today was filled with many surprises, most of them of the happier variety. Even after I factor out the pieces I’ll be keeping – and I’ll be keeping several – I should be able to break even, at minimum.

It’ll take me two or three additional posts to discuss some of these treasures within. Since time is short today (most of was spent on the road for work), I’ll give you a photo of one of the loveliest of them all. Just look at this stunning, first-year, no-mold-mark Kelso:

Hubba hubba! The photo can’t quite convey just how deep and dark-chocolaty he is in person. In an era when there was a lot of color variations, the original runs of the Classic Racehorses (except for their markings) were relatively stable. Kelsos did get lighter and more traditionally bay-like as time went on, but finding the dark chocolate variation is not difficult.

Finding one this well-executed, however, is another matter. Even if the rest of the lot he came in had been bodies, it would have been worth it for him alone.

But they weren’t, as I’ll show you next time.