Brown Breyer Horse Day

It was Brown Breyer Horse Day at my house on Friday. First up, my Surprise:

When I saw the solid Strawberry Roans popping up (aka “the boring one”), I had a suspicion that’d be the one I would get. The only question was whether I’d be getting Gloss or Matte, and it looks like me getting a Gloss last year was merely a glitch in The Matrix. 

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like him and will probably be keeping him (I don’t have any other Dundee molds yet, and I love roans in general), but I’d prefer if my Surprises were actually surprises more often. 

The Universe is pretty insistent on reminding me that I am not special, just weird. 

My Seurat is quite lovely in person – his dapples are subtle and well done – but like last year’s Thorn, I was bummed to find out that he was the Gloss/Matte Split model. It just annoys me to heck that models some hobbyists don’t care about at all sudden become ultra-desirable when they spray gloss on them. Can’t y’all just leave those models for people who like the mold on its own merits?

(A little more on that topic later.)

And also, now that I have one in person, I like the mold a lot more than I thought I would. But the existence of a Gloss variation creates problems. I suspect that, being a newer mold, he’ll be even harder to acquire than the Gloss Thorn was. If I do decide to buy another example of this mold in the near future, it’s probably either going to be the original Vermeer, or another release entirely – coming soon, no doubt.

And finally, another surprise that’s not really a surprise, the Volunteer Model:

He arrived in a slightly terrifying-looking box, but fortunately the miles of bubble wrap he came in saved him. He is not entirely surprising because (a) I was expecting the Desatado mold to show up at BreyerFest in some way, though I thought it’d be as the Surprise Model, and (b) he’s a Rabicano. More than half of the Volunteer Models I’ve received have been some variation of Roan, and even though Rabicanos aren’t genotypically Roans, phenotypically they’re pretty close.  

All that being said, he’s very pretty in person and definitely not going anywhere. Coincidentally, during my BreyerFest shopping trip I almost bought a Lightning Ridge that happened to catch my eye. I ended up selling the first one I bought, but this second one had little turquoise blue socks that I found rather charming. I might end up back at that store for an event at the end of the month, and if he’s still there he might come home with me. 

After some interesting developments at work this week, attending that event seems increasingly remote, though. (I should know by the end of this week. I think.)

Nothing else has arrived. I’ll reserve further talk about the shipping situation until a later date, especially since everyone has a pretty firm and unpersuadable opinion of what’s going on anyway. I’d rather wait until we had more actual information to assess the situation, rather than participate in the increasingly dark-sided online hearsay.

In other words: your move, Reeves. (My opinion to them that they are free to take or leave: being blunt and completely honest is usually the only way to extricate yourself from a difficult position.)

As for the Surprise Decorator development with the remaining BreyerFest Special Runs, I have mixed feelings. I think this is probably the only scenario where they could have executed this successfully. And by successfully, I mean people buying Special Runs because of what they were advertised as, rather than as vehicles for potentially rare variations that lead to money-making opportunities. 

(I say “potentially” because even that, at this point, is a matter of speculation.)

The flip side of this is, of course, the fact that I never get those kinds of rarities, and knowing that even more unobtainables are out there is never not a bummer, especially when it involves things you already liked.