I finally managed to dig the equipment I needed to out of my often-inaccessible storage closet, so the Samplers will be done in a day or two.
Well, that wasn’t the week I was expecting to have. For one, I was kind of hoping that this year’s BreyerFest Surprise model would remain a surprise until mine actually arrived (which the UPS web site says is August 3rd, but I’ll take that with a grain of salt).
I will be considerate and not talk about the actual mold selection in question until mine gets here. All I’ll say is that I really like all of the colors involved and that I hope I get either a Glossy or a Decorator. Glosses are a rarity for me, Surprise-wise, and I’ve never gotten the Decorator option either.
The first BreyerFest Surprise in 2009 wasn’t a complete mystery to us at all: they told us up front that it was the Quarter Horse Gelding mold, and what the colors and quantities were. They did throw in some rarities – ten pieces each of the Silver Filigree, Gloss Charcoal and Gloss Smoke – but unfortunately things did not go according to plan, and they all got dumped into one time slot instead of being equally distributed throughout the weekend.
Things went a little bit better when they did the second, the Spun Gold Surprise in 2011 on the Ethereal mold. It wasn’t until 2012 and the Stoneleigh Surprises that everything about the Surprise release became a mystery. It was also the first time that Gloss variations of the Matte showed up, and the last time – until last year – that I managed to snag one. And that was only because (I assume) that they upped the ratio of Glosses and made the quantities equal across all available colors.
I am also going to assume, until proven otherwise, that the equal quantities/equal proportions thing is also here to stay. I’d much rather have aftermarket prices be a reflection of desirability rather than merely one of quantity anyway.
That would work out for me because my favorites tend to be on colors that a lot of hobbyists find otherwise undesirable – pintaloosas, double dilutes, funky-as-heck Decorators – and that often ended up being designated as the Matte Rarity. Fortunately my luck with the Matte Rarity Surprises has been better than most, but I still wince every time I see a Quelle Surprise Perlino Lonesome Glory for sale.
2 comments:
Thanks for the history and perspectives! Another good post. I hope you get what you want.
I have been "hiding" various FB groups like crazy, because I also want the Surprise to be a surprise. I still wish Breyer would ship west-to-east, so we'd all (in the US, anyway) have half a chance of receiving our picks at approximately the same time. My East Coast sister and West Coast me were hoping to do an unboxing together, but apparently I won't have mine until the end of next week at the earliest. I am also more of Team Matte, and I (accidentally) saw the Decorator, so hope springs eternal. And this past year, with evacuations, fires, pandemics, family deaths, and scary health news, I just went and bought myself a Quelle Surprise Matte Perlino Lonesome Glory. Life is too short to wait, sometimes.
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