(It appears that I am having some profound technical difficulties with my computer, yet again. I will spare you the details, but it took me two hours to edit a picture for this post today, which normally takes me about two minutes.)
First, two notes.
One: The Gold Elephant currently on eBay looks like a fake to me, and not a very good one either. Aside from the gold paint looking too bright and pristine, the footings of models from the 1950s through the 1980s were rarely that neat and clean.
As for the price, some hobbyists have a far higher tolerance for risk than others.
Two: Yes, I am aware of the Black Appaloosa Pony of the Americas on MHSP, and I am not going to put in an offer. While I am more confident of that item’s authenticity and I am not entirely uncomfortable with the starting price, I am emotionally tapped out right now.
We’re also just entering the “silly season” of Web Specials, Holiday Promotions and Year-End Sales Events, and I have no doubt that even crazier things are upon us, if that’s even imaginable.
Moving on to the Spanish Fighting Bulls I mentioned previously, here are “The Boys”:
As you can see, one has distinctly painted light gray hooves, and the other has solid black ones. This doesn’t mean that one is significantly older and/or more valuable than the other: with the #73 Spanish Fighting Bull, whether or not he had black or gray hooves was a matter of who was assigned to paint him.
The Spanish Fighting Bull sold moderately well – he was in production from 1970 through 1985 – and even though the mold itself was more complex than many other Breyer Bulls, he also came with a fairly simple Solid Black paint job.
But as I’ve said many times before, quality control at the Chicago factory was a variable thing, and sometimes painters took shortcuts to make production quotas. Details like subtly different hoof colors would be the first to go.
Aside from the hoof color, the other two significant variations of the Black Spanish Fighting Bull include the Presentation Collection piece, and the Chalky Era releases with Gray Plastic horns. Like most Presentation pieces, the former is quite rare, and the latter somewhat less so.
You’ll also very rarely see examples with unpainted ears; they were separately molded pieces attached to the horns and – in the case of the original Black – often weren’t attached until after the body color was painted. That’s why many of them have horns that appear to be very cleanly masked.
The ears would have then been painted with the same paint used to finish the horn tips, but if that step somehow got skipped or missed, sometimes so would the ears!
My original Spanish Fighting Bull is currently in storage, but I think the gray-hooved variation here might be an upgrade. It’ll be a few weeks before I get around to digging him out and I know for sure.
4 comments:
I had to check out that elephant. I love checking what other items an Ebay seller is offering, in part for insight into the seller's personality, In this case it's only repainted Breyers. But if there were a few Western horses or old mold PAM's, then I'd think "maybe"...but good call on the feet-!
I have a bronze elephant from a flea market (currently in storage) and the feet are definitely not painted like that.
I, too, had to nosily go check out the elephant.
I'd expect a real one to have paint more like the Modernistic deer, which tends to be dark and slightly greenish.
The Spanish Fighting Bull is something I’ve been pining for over the last few decades. It’s so hard for me to justify the prices I see on eBay, though. And thrift stores in Southern California don’t have a good supply of Breyers at all, or if they do, they’re aware of eBay prices and charge similar. 🥺
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