This raises all sorts of questions about those Golden Charm Appaloosa and Honey Bay Lady Phases and the 2013 Mother Lode models, too. Ones I’ll set aside for now because I’m elbow deep in tax paperwork today and I promised myself I’d get that done by the end of the weekend.
The online discussion of this particular Test Color is a little frustrating, but not entirely unexpected: an entire generation of hobbyists have grown up assuming that what they see in BreyerFest Benefit Auctions (and donation pieces to hobby events/organizations) are Test Colors, when most of them are more akin to Factory Customs.
(Not all, but the percentage does vary from year to year.)
Most of the Test Colors featured in the earliest BreyerFest Auctions – particularly the ones in the 1990s – were actual Test Colors, featuring strange or unappealing colors on molds now considered undesirable.
As their stable of molds and color techniques improved, so did the auction pieces, and their prices, thus creating the crazy feedback loop we have today. Something that’s both (or neither) a good thing or a bad thing, but again, a topic for another day.
So now Reeves offers up something closer to the actual nature of a Test Color – unapologetically and unequivocally an experiment, dings and all – and this has been deemed unsatisfactory by a lot of hobbyists.
As someone who owns multiple Test Colors with issues (a three-legged Dapple Gray Family Arabian Mare, a bloated Bay Stormy, a Sorrel Classic Quarter Horse Foal with about 300 rubs) condition is not an issue for me. The price is not terrible, and his provenance is fabulous: I’d love to have him live here. He’d make an especially nice companion to my 4-stocking Stud Spider variation!
That’s not my decision to make, unfortunately. Stud Spider does have his fans, enough to make me wonder why he hasn’t been a part of the Vintage Club program, except as a color inspiration to the Man o’ War Storm.
Incidentally, I’ve decided that my next big Breyer “Grail” is going to be one of those early funky BreyerFest Auction Tests. Someone put up a 1990s Morganglanz on eBay a few years back for a not-at-all terrible price, and I’m still kicking myself for not buying him.
4 comments:
Another superb post. I agree completely with you Andrea! Except I don't want him... I refuse to want a horse I can't afford. It's the best, and about the only, weapon I have. Besides, I already have a lot of blues.
I regret selling my green dun san domingo as he was one of those off putting 90's tests, but college expenses and food were more important!
Good luck we are hoping for this blue guy too!
I often wonder where those old tests wound up. I saw a while back that someone discovered one in a body lot and I so hope that the rabicano roan Sham I adored is in a loving home. I do wish I had a picture of the ah, interesting, rainbow Trakehner that someone brought to a very early Breyerfest. I *think* his owner said he came from one of the non-KY Breyerfests that year they did 4. He did not look like some of the modern rainbows, more like someone was goofing off and having fun at the factory.
I bought a blood bay Merrylegs at an early 90s BF. $100... I ended up selling him a few years later, regret it now. I always wonder who has him now.
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