Gris Gris

I passed on the Collector’s Club Appreciation. I considered finishing my order around lunchtime on Friday, but I couldn’t remember my Paypal password and I didn’t feel like manually entering all my data, so I took that as a sign to just let it all go. 

Plus I have a couple of other CCA Glosses I suppose I could trade with, if the need arises. 

In less good model horse news: I have to wave goodbye to my potential Diorama Contest entry. Too many other deadlines for more important things are looming, and I am rather fond of the concept of sleep. 

I don’t feel too bad about abandoning it, since I hardly had a chance to work on it anyway. But that early pre-entry photo deadline was my downfall. I mean, I understand why they did it – it wasn’t entirely about having the photos of all the entries available online, incidentally – but if this is going to be a thing moving forward, the dream of even completing an entry anymore is likely now gone. This time of the year is just so busy for me, so pushing another deadline up three weeks does not work with my schedule, at all.

Which is a huge bummer!

Since I’ll be heading back into lurk mode again shortly, here’s a picture of a not-so-recent acquisition I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking until this weekend, literally: the 2014 Exclusive Event Morganglanz Gris Gris!

He wasn’t that expensive, mercifully, because he’s a Morganglanz: the mold is almost the definition of unloved. I don’t think there’s even been an BreyerFest Auction Test piece of this fellow since… wow, 1996? Really? Poor guy!

Even when he was something new in the 1980s, he didn’t exactly catch the hobby world on fire. While we appreciated that he was doing a (more or less) correct trot, and thus made excellent performance and customizing fodder, that’s about all he had going for him. 

He had a brief renaissance in the early 1990s as a generic, all-purpose sport horse, until prettier molds overtook him. The Gris Gris was preceded by a UK Special Run of Locarno 62 in a nice dark bay in 2008-2009, and followed by the BreyerFest Open Show Reserve Grand Prize Brigadeiros in 2016. 

These last three official production runs of Morganglanz are the only ones actively being sought by… some of us, at least. I haven’t seen a Brigadeiros for sale in forever (they only made 10, so not a surprise). The piece run of Locarno 62 was substantially larger, but since most were sold overseas, he doesn’t turn up stateside much. 

Gris Gris show up occasionally, but most of the ones I’ve seen for sale since the market lost its mind have also been priced way out of proportion to reality. 

(Checks MH$P out of curiosity. Someone is asking $8,000 for a Blue Banner? Oh, lordy….)

This one was in a price range I was comfortable with, and since I’ve made some pretty good deals in recent years, I decided to splurge a little. 

And you know what? He’s so gorgeous in person! I am so glad he is here. Now to find a place for him on my very crowded shelves. 

Now let us end with some good gardening news: while the sunflowers are a lost cause, some of the milkweeds I started last year have finally returned, and there may be beans after all. (It will be dependent on how persistent the deer are.)