It’s interesting that they’re offering him in both Gloss and Matte, since offering that option with some of the Premier Club releases has led to some difficulties, especially when people start making returns.
Glosses run out, Reeves offers Mattes, people get indignant when that happens and then stomp over to their favorite corner of the Internet to gripe about what an incompetent bunch of doody-heads they are for not obviously making the entire run Glossy, because duh.
Sigh.
Part of the appeal of Gloss Finishes – separate from the “Ooh, shiny!” factor – is that it has been traditionally associated with Vintage models, especially the scarcer and more desirable releases of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The thing is that Gloss does not automatically mean rare. In many cases, it’s the Matte-finished variation of a Vintage model that’s the scarcer one. How many times, for instance, have you seen a #43 Matte Palomino Western Pony? Or a #71 Matte Walking Horned Hereford Bull?
(I got the former purely by accident, and finding the latter took… years. And years.)
And as far as desirability goes, Breyer gradually phased out Gloss in the 1960s due to collector demand for more realistic-looking models. Liking Glosses in the 1970s and most of the 1980s put you in the minority camp, for sure.
In other words, the pendulum swings. (Speaking of, someday I shall tell you about the BreyerFest where I walked around the hotel and bought every decent Chalky I could find, because nobody else was really looking at them at the time…)
I like a beautiful deep Gloss as much as the next person (that QVC Gloss Bay Justin Morgan Sherman is staring at me right now from behind my monitor) but some models look just as good – or better! – in Matte.
So I am fine with both options on Fletcher, though my initial reaction was tilted a bit in favor of the Matte. My guess is that it’ll be the scarcer of the two finishes too, but that’s only an incidental consideration.
I’m not sure if I’ll even be ordering – it’ll all depend on how well my holiday sales go. It’s a good thing they’re giving us until the end of November to decide.
3 comments:
If every Breyer out there came in a choice of matte and gloss, I would choose gloss every time. The color is just richer, the subtle shading comes out, and gloss finish is more durable too.
So yeah, maybe I'm a weirdo, but I prefer gloss if given a choice.
I prefer matte in only two instances......they are easier to photograph and they are probably better as bodies as far as paint adhesion goes.
I would guess the reason that models in the 50's/60's came in gloss is because they wanted them to look like the china models many of them were based off of. I also thought they dropped the gloss afterwards just to save on paint and labor. If they did it to be more realistic, I guess that was lost on me. Because I just hands-down prefer gloss. It makes the color look so rich and they look like expensive china. And less likely to get scuffed.
I never got turned on to gloss until about 4-5 years ago, and after I started showing the idea of gloss was a slam-dunk bit of knowledge into my head. They are SO MUCH better for the exhibitor for ease of transport without so much worry about damage, and the colors just POP! I am definitely in the GLOSS! camp now!
I am so addicted to gloss there coloring is is so rich and beautiful. Just like the 2015 special run Ganache.
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