I know a lot of people are not fans of the concept in general, but if the time change manages to reset my internal clock, I am all for it. I am very tired of being very tired.
It’d be fine with the not-sleeping, if I was actually getting anything done. But all the projects I am currently working on are, to put it kindly, long slogs. At what point did I think handpiecing a bed-sized quilt top that includes 684 bias-cut one-inch high equilateral triangles was a good idea?
Anyway, another “lucky” find arrived late last week: a Chalky #23 Bay Shetland Pony!
I’ve had a lot of Bay Shetland Ponies over the years, and none of them really stuck around. The paint jobs were uninspiring, the seams were bad, they had condition issues, you name it. I really wanted a Chalky variation, but all the ones I found either (also) had condition issues, or were overpriced, or sold before I got to them.
Then I found this one for a super-affordable Buy It Now on eBay. I wasn’t 100 percent certain she was a Chalky, but the price was good, even for an ordinary Bay. I would have been happy even if she wasn’t what I thought she was.
But luckily, she was!
In terms of rarity, I’d put her somewhere in the middle of the pack. I think there are more out there than we imagine, because the color did debut in 1973, at the start of the “Chalky Era” (ca. 1973-1975), and new molds and new colors tend to sell really well at the beginning of their runs.
For example: the #99 Appaloosa Performance Horse and #61 El Pastor both debuted in 1974, and are among the “easier” vintage Chalkies to find.
The problem with this release – like the Chalky variation of the Midnight Sun – is that it’s a solid color with minimal markings. Even though she does have a bald face, it can still be difficult to determine if she’s a Chalky, because the overspray that was common on models from that era sometimes mimics chalkiness, especially in the overexposed photographs commonly seen over the Internet.
She was never really a “Grail” model for me: I didn’t go out of my way to find one, or target one, and her absence from my rather abundant collection of Shetland Ponies never really nagged at me the way the Dapple Belgian sometimes did. But I did want one some day.
So when the right model at the right price came at the right moment, I took it.
And she is so lovely: nice dark coloring, and just a couple of itty-bitty marks and dings!
2 comments:
Sometimes the undercoat gives them wonderful depth. Congrats on another beaut!
I've always wanted to have a better understanding of which chalkies are more or less scarce. I remember someone on Blab did a survey of collections a few years ago trying to make that determination. I know just from being in the hobby that the APH, Witez, and El Pastor are comparatively easy to find, whereas I haven't met another collector yet who has a chalky G1 bay Arabian stallion (I'm sure there are others out there). My personal weird thing with chalkies is that I find chalky seal brown Pacers with some regularity. I've found three over the years in the wild.
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