Sunday, May 23, 2021

Reasons and Reactions

My first reaction upon reading the latest Test Color Lottery e-mail: we only have ourselves to blame for the price increase.

My second reaction: other than Lafayette and the VIP drawing, I haven’t been able to get much of anything out of my Collector’s Club membership this year, so I totally have the money for it.

And I’ve been wanting to add a few more Brown Sunshines to the family, and the Buckeyes (Matte and Gloss) in particular. I put my entry in, and I’ll see what happens. 

If nothing else, it’s cheaper than what some of the True Blue models are going for. (Shakes head, adds more people to my “naughty” list, moves on.)

In other news, I was happy to see that a recent eBay purchase arrived yesterday – a box lot of vintage Stablemates in their original packaging!

While I’ve never been a “gotta have ‘em all in their original packages” kind of gal, the price was right and it’s not like Reeves has been getting a lot of my money lately, so hey. 

Then I picked up the box and noticed something:

They shipped it in an original Stablemates packing case from 1975?!? 

Needless to say, I was both excited, and confused. 

Excited because early boxes or cases like this are extremely hard to find: they were literally designed to be thrown away. So the box itself is also staying. In fact, it’s probably my favorite part of the purchase.

But I am also confused: if this had been a known option, I would have asked for the box to be wrapped in paper first so I could have received it in better condition. I went through a similar experience very recently with the Traditional Wooden Stable, after all. 

And if I want to be nitpicky, it’s technically it’s not even the correct box: according to what’s printed on it, it supposedly contained an assortment of Foals, and what I bought were not the Foals. I know this because I just happened to be looking at the 1976 Dealer’s Catalog for (undisclosable) reasons:

A second really cool and also pretty cheap acquisition also arrived with the Stablemates, but I’ll get to that next here in a day or two (I had some scheduling issues last week that have since been resolved. I think.)

2 comments:

Suzanne said...

This Stablemate shipping box story just affirms my belief that there is a sentient, supreme being of some sort...that just loves playing jokes on us!

Amber said...

I ordered a SM lot from that seller, too, and received them in a similar box. Unfortunately, my box has the red marker on all four sides, but I was still delighted to get it.