Peeking Out of the Cave

In the middle of a bunch of things here, so I’ll do a little cleanup and go back to my cave.

Following up on the Classics discussion in the post previous, the two bodies I pulled out of my body box to tinker with are a pair of Classics: the Mesteno’s Mother and Duchess. I’ve seen both of them get customized by others, but either as simple repaints or armatures, and neither of those approaches works for me.

I happen to think there’s something beautiful inside each of these molds, so my challenge is to reveal it without obliterating the original character of the molds themselves. 

But the bulk of that work won’t happen until after BreyerFest, because I’ve barely worked on my Sampler for this year. I am not too worried about it yet because I know what I want to write about, and I have already penciled in the three-day Fourth of July weekend to do it in. 

The next Bird of a Feather Series release Meadowlark is up, and I like her. But I’m not getting my hopes up because we all know how the market is right now:

Bluegrass Bandit is another model that gets way more negativity thrown at it than the average model, and I’m not sure why. I’m kind of up to my eyeballs in sales items right now, so I wouldn’t be as hurt was with the previous release in this series (Crane). Just… kind of bummed.

(The one I really want at the moment is Milky Way, and the prices are not encouraging.)

Some hobbyists are annoyed that they didn’t get enough forewarning about the Mercy for Animals Hope Gala charity auction lot, which included a Test Color Ayrshire Cow and a Hampshire Pig. I am also not sure why this was a big deal either – the knowing about it part, not the auction itself or the cause.

As you can tell, I haven’t been terribly on top of things in the hobby lately, but I knew about it when it was still live. And promptly ignored it, because it was already well above what was willing to pay. 

I wasn’t going to stick around to watch either, because I’ve never had much fascination with watching other people spending enormous amounts of money on things. Haggling, negotiating, wheeling and dealing can be artful and entertaining to watch, but I am not someone who takes particular joy in treating high-dollar auctions like a spectator sport. 

(And the clapping? Why the clapping?)

I already had a Hampshire Pig anyway:

I always wanted one of the Special Run Pigs from the 1980s, but they’re pretty elusive because they were primarily sold to pig farmers, not hobbyists. When they do show up, they tend to do so pretty randomly. 

And that’s how I got mine: I found him in a box lot of Breyer Animal molds on eBay years ago. I don’t have time to look up the price I paid, but it was neither a steal nor an extravagance, and I’m sure I made up most of the sale selling the excess out of the lot. (I do remember getting my #365 Black Angus Bull out of the same lot. I wanted one anyway, and since he came with...)

The Hampshire appears to be the most “common” of the Special Run Pigs, and I haven’t found any of the others yet at a price I can justify to myself.