Black Beauty Western Pony

Let’s see – the garden’s been abandoned, for now. I gave up on even starting the diorama yesterday. I’m tripping over almost everything in the house and I still haven’t entirely finished either the Sampler or my Sales List.

Yep, full panic mode activated!

I know I’ll pull it out like a superhero, but dang, the view is scary from here!

Anyway, here’s a little something to admire along the way – a Black Beauty Western Pony! Isn’t she cute?

She was one of my earliest in-hobby purchases, from ca. 1980: I think I bought her from an ad in Shari Struzan’s The Hobby Horse, a hobby publication that briefly became the hobby’s oasis after Linda Walter shuttered The Model Horse Shower’s Journal.

(And I only managed to get a subscription to The Hobby Horse because I managed to place a classified in either the last, or next to last issue of the MHSJ. More about that crazy story some other day…)

Back then, we pretty much bought and sold everything sight unseen: in the stores, everything except the Stablemates came in closed cardboard boxes, and it was too much of a hassle to take and send photographs back and forth while negotiating for a horse off of a newsletter sales list.

You took your fellow hobbyists at their word, and sent the money. For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. (Sure, there were some, but not as many as you might have thought.)

I bought her along with the Black Beauty Western Horse, because even then I was kind of obsessed with early Breyer History, and why the heck not?

Keep in mind, I hadn’t even seen an actual Black Beauty Western Horse or Pony at that point, either. So not only was I buying something I hadn’t had a chance to inspect, I had virtually no idea what to expect when they finally got here.

I was obviously pleased, because they’re still here, all these years later….

As a bonus, here’s an ad for the Black Beauty Western Pony from the September 1953 issue of Western Horseman.