Kindness

My apologies for my absence: in addition to the back problems, I have also acquired a cold. I am significantly better today than yesterday, but it will be a couple more days before I’m back to my sassier self.

The biggest bummer is that I have been unable to work on any of my various quilting projects: the motivation and inspiration are there, but the Nyquil has been putting the kibosh on my ability to get anything meaningful done.  

I was also not selected from the alleged waitlist for Garret. I think it’s the predictability of it that’s bothering me more than anything; it reminds me of elementary school gift exchanges and door prizes, when I was so often the last person picked from the random draws that by the sixth grade I had begun to dread it.

The only time this terrible superpower worked for me was when a friend of mine held a live show and the last door prize selected was actually the best: I don’t think she knew my history with such things, but it definitely made my day, and I will never forget that kindness.

And speaking of kindness, thank you for the offers to sell your Garrets at cost to me; I’m fine, really. I prefer to have my collection grow organically, and it’s clearly not meant to be right now anyway: it’s been a very good year otherwise, and I really need to focus on selling more and buying less. 

For those of you still in the mood to buy more, the Collector’s Club Appreciation Sale is tomorrow, offering the same assortment of models they offered earlier in the year. The WinterFest Trueno and Mouse are also still available while supplies last. 

I am baffled and a little saddened that there were collectors buying Trueno and Mouse secondhand even during the initial sale period. Have collectors become so conditioned to assume that every purchase requires a Collector’s Club membership that they assumed these did as well? 

Always do your research, people; it does not always help, but it never hurts.

And that’s about all the energy I have today; I need to save a little for work.

Black Points

Since I’ve been buying a lot of less desirable Collector’s Club Appreciation Glossies recently (the mule Buckeye is on his way!) the currently crop of Glossies has been less of a temptation, especially since my favorite of the bunch – the Black Brishen Sjoerd – seems to be everyone else’s least-loved. 

Conversely, I am not too keen on the Peptoboomsmal: I tried my best to love him or even like the Dundee/Australian Stock Horse mold –the 2022 Flagship Special Romeo should have been a no-brainer for me, for a couple of reasons – but I am having a hard time warming up to him. 

The other two are also very nice, but they are more in the like, rather than love category: the Morgan is pretty, but also pretty huge, and the Totilas is a bit tippy.  

So I took a pass on the offer this time. Maybe I’ll be able to trade for a Glossy Sjoerd at BreyerFest: I just finished my sales list and it’s definitely an eclectic one. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone to trade something for it!

My mind is on a dozen different things today (someone or something literally bent some of my metal garden fenceposts to the ground, and I have no idea how) so I’ll wrap up a couple of talking points from the comments and move on to other topics next time. 

The color on the Vintage Custom Black Stallion was not extensively retouched; if anything, he’s actually a bit darker than I received him, since I had a hard time matching his highlights. Any perceived brightness can be attributed to a fresh application of varnish and outdoor lighting. Like Reeves, photography is not my strongest suit! 

As for my opinion of the final disposition of the Test Color Appaloosa Performance Horse: I am assuming, unless proven otherwise, that the sale was taken private: there are always ways. The conversation about him that appeared shortly afterward may well have contributed to his disappearance. I think the fact that my other purchase – also a Test Color! – happened a few hours later, yet was not canceled actually strengthens this argument. 

A hobbyist who was genuinely concerned about the seller would have also seen the Classic and insisted that one be canceled as well. The fact that they let that one go suggests to me that it was someone who either had no idea it was a Test, or was a “high point” collector with little interest or concern for plain, Chicago-era Classics. (Or regard for what their fellow hobbyists think of them, too.)

Because an odd little Black Stallion with four stockings and gray hooves definitely doesn’t have the same allure as an early BreyerFest Auction Test Color that’s been “missing” for 30 years, or the same potential for a financial return on their investment. 

For the record, I am not a fan of “high point” collectors of any stripe: they tend to throw their money around rather carelessly, distorting the market in the process and make life difficult for collectors of more modest means.

Lost Goodies

I wish they didn’t post that picture of the Gloss Bravour 54s on the Breyer web site: I made a commitment to finish my unfinished projects this year, and nothing I am currently working on can be shoehorned into a Diorama Contest entry. And it is making me a little bit sad, because I do love the old Hess Trakehner, and there are already a couple of them beyond my reach. 

A couple of the customs I’ve been tinkering with are looking better than I expected, but nowhere near Custom Contest territory: all my creative energy went into the garden this weekend, instead. It was the first truly nice weekend this year, and I had to make up for lost time. (Buckets and buckets and buckets of weeds…)

I suppose I could be optimistic and say that since this year’s Celebration Horse was not overly well-received, acquiring a Gloss one second hand might not be as expensive as I anticipated. Kind of like the latest addition to my herd: a Glossy Bandera!

Even though he was clearly the least popular of the Glosses distributed in the Collector’s Club Appreciation Event in 2017, there were still only about 125 of him made. 

Despite his lack of popularity, he’s not all that easy to come by now: I had been looking for one half-heartedly for the past few years, and the ones I did find weren’t at a price I wanted to pay. 

This one I happened to find on eBay, advertised as a run-of-the-mill Bandera, and I ended up getting him for less than I paid for my Regular Run Bandera. (Though, admittedly, I did pay “full price” for an extra dark one in the NPOD that year!)

It kind of fascinates me how more recent models specifically designed for the collector’s market can end up misidentified and/or essentially abandoned in the secondary market. 

Some of it is due to a lack of popularity (like Bandera, obviously) and some of it is via the distribution method: I always wonder what the actual percentage of “chase” Stablemates randomly happen to end up in the hands of people who just grabbed a blind bag or two just for funsies and got lucky. 

I’ve found WEG 2010 models and Vintage Customs at the local flea market, a BreyerFest Shannon and Excalibur at a sale advertised on Craigslist, and over a dozen MOC Special Run Hagen-Renaker mini Cocker Spaniels at an antique store in town, so I know it’s possible to locate these lost goodies on occasion. 

But in today’s super-heated collector’s market, it is increasingly unlikely, even with a mold as “unpopular” as the Hess Trakehner. BreyerFest Glosses, regardless of the mold involved, make collectors a little bit crazy, too. 

That’s about all the thought and consideration I can give the Gloss Bravour 54s, though: I have to focus on getting ready for my “one shot” at potential BreyerFest-specific treasures – the Live Show! – and finish planning for the other vacation. 

(I just booked the tickets and the rental car, so there’s no going back now: I am simultaneously excited and terrified!)

Being Chill

Oof, rough couple of days here: work’s been crazy, and it’s been hotter than the surface of the sun outside. I crashed and burned yesterday out of sheer exhaustion. Alas, it’s pretty much the only day I’ll allow myself the luxury: I just finished one big writing project and I have another one due next week. And after that, I’ll finally be able to get around to BreyerFest prep. 

(And that’s why the Diorama Contest thingy went where all my other Diorama Contest thingies have gone the past three years: back into the craft closet.)

But you know what? I am feeling pretty calm about all of it. Maybe because I haven’t the luxury of being able to worry. 

The same goes for the ever-changing particulars of BreyerFest this year that everyone seems to be fussing about.  

The Special Runs don’t really matter, nor is the distribution plan. The theme doesn’t matter (well, a little: not looking forward to drunken spouses in lederhosen). Other things that don’t matter – to me, anyway: the price of gas, the price of food at the KHP, the heat, the humidity, the flippers, people who try to strongarm you into selling something at half-price on a Thursday, and the crankypants know-it-alls who lecture you about things you’re the expert on. 

All that does matter to me is being in the place appointed for us with the people we haven’t seen in three years. There will be lots ugly-crying, people.

I’ve saved my pennies, I’ve had all my shots, all I have to do now is get all my paperwork done and figure out exactly how much sales stuff I’ll be able to squeeze into my car, because I have to save some space for my volunteer displays, too.

(More on that later!)

On the plus side of that conundrum, however, is if anyone needs a place to sell and couldn’t get room at the Swap Meet, I might have space available for the cost of room-sitting. (Excellent location! Lots of foot traffic! Free candy!) You’d also have to bring your own shelves…

I need to sleep a little, so I will now close with a pretty pony: since I didn’t participate in the latest round of Collector’s Club Appreciation Glossiness, here’s a photo of the last CCA Gloss I did get who I finally unboxed for the last live show – the Black Pinto Smarty Jones!

He did place – I think he got a fifth in his class? And I was good with that: black horses tend to be pretty hit and miss when it comes to showing, and that’s largely dependent on the amount of shading and the quality of the mold involved. I calculated that the combination of him being a Chase Piece, and Glossy, and a Smarty Jones would earn at least a lower placing, and I was correct.

End of the Chase

I was not selected for Montana, which amuses me, but not as much as all the people who were selected who are trying to flip them, without much success. 

I wasn’t selected for the Woodgrain Pig Hawthorn either, but I eventually got one four or five waitlist pulls later. (No, really – it was like two weeks after the initial drawing!) And they made only 350 pieces of him.

I’m not going to worry about it, either way. They made 490 of this goofball SR: there’s going to be plenty for everyone who seriously (or unseriously!) needs one. I am not sure if I fall into either the former category, or the latter. If it happens, it happens. 

Besides, I am still mad about Bunyan, and my well of rage is not bottomless. Priorities, people.

On a slightly more cheerful holiday note, I got the Smarty Jones Chase Piece as my CCA Glossy:

I wasn’t able to track a Matte one down locally, and I wasn’t willing to pay the $125 they were charging for them on the web site at the end of last year, so this is a win-win for me. (The Omega Fahim is also pretty spiff, with no box rubs or obvious seams, so it’s all good here.)

Well technically he was the Chase piece: it appears that this year’s CCA models were not Glossed leftovers, but made specifically for the promotion, and probably in more or less equal quantities. (What those quantities were, I don’t know either, sorry.)

Though if they had been really smart, they would have doubled the quantity of the Palomino Hamilton relative to all the other pieces in the promotion. Contrary to what some folks think, Reeves is very aware of the Hamilton mold’s popularity. 

What’s going on in the secondary market is mostly beyond their control, though, and they have no real obligation to do anything about it anyway. While they can mitigate it somewhat with open-ended runs and backordering, even those options are not entirely trouble-free. Every solution comes with its own set of problems. 

In this case it would have been a variation of “They devalued it by producing so many!” argument pushed mostly by people who see their collection as their retirement fund. It doesn’t make much sense to me if they all easily and quickly find homes. Quantity is only one component of this thing we call “Collectibility” and probably not the most important one. 

Since it’s unclear if the promotion actually “sold out”, I am curious if there are any Gloss Leftovers, and if so, where they are going to go. I wouldn’t mind snagging a Chalky variation of the Andalusian – boy, those sure look way nicer than I imagined! – but I’m not sure if I want to take a chance on a Gambler’s Choice of the leftovers if it was offered. 

I already have way too much stuff to sell as it is, and I’d rather not take a chance on a duplicate, even if it would be a relatively easy sale.

Just Take My Paycheck, Please

This week has been pretty traumatic: dentist appointment on Monday (all good!), family medical emergency on Tuesday (everyone is home, and fine), and the Collectors Club Appreciation Event on Wednesday (got my order in in under two minutes, then went to bed.)

The CCA Event was just as much a surprise to me as everyone else; I thought that they’d be skipping it at this point too, but they decided to go with glossing last year’s 70th Anniversary Models – including the Chase Piece Smarty Jones! – and they all look amazing. 

The only CCA horse I’m slightly meh on is the Andalusian, because he’s not significantly different from previous gray-based Andalusian releases, and if I want to add more Moody Andalusians to the family (I do!), it’s going to be either the Slime Green and Silver BreyerFest Surprise SR or the original Black, with lavender undertones. I wouldn’t turn down a Glorioso, either.

The offer is still up, which isn’t entirely surprising, since (a) a lot of people I know opted out this year due to buyer fatigue, and (b) a lot of merchandise was already sold out or out of stock on the web site. For me, I wanted all of the new individually-carded Stablemates but they have been in short supply all year. So I had to opt for an Obsidian instead, whose sparkling dark floofiness has been distracting me every time I spied one in a store somewhere. 

(Also in my order: Omega Fahim, the Palominos and Pintos Stablemates Set, and both pairs of socks. All things I actually wanted.)

Oh, and I don’t know how that happened, but I also managed to get drawn for Zugspitze. The price was a little… painful, but a lot of that is our own darn fault for turning so many of these Web Specials into cash grabs. Of course the price is going to go up.

I’ve done okay with the Winter Web Specials in general; the only one that still makes me wince slightly in pain at the sight of him is Benasque, and he has that effect on a lot of hobbyists. 

Anyway, so all that’s possibly left for the year are the Christmas Day Special and the Winter Decorator Animal.

As long as the Christmas Day Special isn’t the Fell Pony or something Vintage like the Jeanne Mellin Herrick Friesian or Misty’s Twilight, I might be fine without it? I hope? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess. (The current odds-on favorite is the Croi Damsha/Connemara, and I might be able to resist that.)

I’m a little more concerned about a potential Winter Decorator Animal, especially since my mind went to some interesting places last thinking of possible candidates. In addition to my perennial suggestions – the Silver Charm Elk, and a Wedgwood Blue Polled Hereford Bull – my exhaustion- and Benadryl-fueled brain also thought a Gold Charm Saint Bernard or a Rainbow Calico UniKitten would be pretty awesome.  

(You know you want it. Or want to see it!)

Edit: Fifteen minutes later... 

Collector’s Club Exclusive Micro Run named Bunyan. 

Oh Sweet Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick!

I will now go into the shower and have a good long cry.

More Silly Sales Season Stuff

More Tractor Supply Exclusives are showing up, including the Appaloosa Ethereal Wilder and the Gray Bobby Jo Cirrus. Both are… different than I expected, but not enough to go out of my way to get them. 

The Stablemates Unicorn Foal Surprises are another matter. They might not even be actual Special Runs, but early releases of 2022 product, like the carded Stablemates Unicorn Paint Kits from a few years back. But with the Stablemates market being as crazy as it is, I’m not going to sweat over them, whatever they are.  

Second, the first offering in the 2022 Stablemates Club is an Appaloosa Fighting Stallion named Dax:

Maybe it’s just my Seasonal Affective Disorder kicking it into high gear this year (so much so that I broke down and finally bought a light therapy box this week) but I don’t find him all that exciting either. I mean, he’s nicely done and I love the name and all that, but maybe I’m just a bit tapped out on the Stablemates Fighting Stallion already. 

It also leaves me a little concerned: I’d rather not have the Stablemates line turn into a series of “miniaturized Traditionals”. With the release of the Mini Me of the Premier Club Fireheart, I worry that hobbyists are going to not just expect, but demand that every new Traditional mold release come with a miniature counterpart. I’d prefer entirely new molds, or releases adapted from other sources, like the upcoming Stablemates adaptation of Eberl’s Sharif, Twist. 

The latest Pony for Christmas is also out: a Bouncer named Gingerbread, in a blanket that looks like a Christmas Sweater!

https://www.breyerhorses.com/collections/website-exclusives/products/pony-for-christmas-gingerbread

It’s similar to the Bouncer release Apple Jack, but with two stockings and without the flaxen mane and tail. I am going to presume that, like last year’s Christmas Pony release Honeybunch, that there aren’t any additional markings hidden under the blanket. 

I would not be disappointed if there was, though. I am always up for a new Bouncer, regardless of the color or pattern. (Thought I did originally skip out on the Apple Jack because he looked a little too much like the original Kennebec Count for comfort.)

A bunch of other new, mostly non-horse merchandise has also been added to the web site, including a couple pairs of socks. The purple ones are 100 percent my style:

https://www.breyerhorses.com/collections/new/products/breyer-socks-purple-pinto

If last couple of years have been any indication, the addition of new merchandise to the web site usually precedes the Customer Appreciation Sale. I don’t know if I’m going to participate this year, especially since I just found out I have to work this weekend (and possibly others), and thus kicking my inventory plans down the road yet another week. I don’t need even more horses to account for. 

But if I can stick to mostly apparel and accessories (I do need more socks!) I just might. 

Bay Indian Ponies

Regarding the Tractor Supply Special Run Indian Pony Sayen, I am not understanding why everyone is all “It’s about time we got a simple Bay paint job on the Indian Pony, yay!” when the Red Bay Black Horse Ranch Special Run Indian Pony has… existed since 1987? 

I mean, yeah, there were only 400 of them, and a lot of them turned into Shrinky Puddles of Goo, but nevertheless the notion of putting the Indian Pony in a Solid Bay paint job has been visited before. 

I much preferred the Liver Chestnut one that was briefly depicted on the Tractor Supply web site, but I guess that was an unselected prototype that we may or may not see someday somewhere else, like the Zippo Pine Bar “Chance” that ended up a Mid-States Special Run instead. 

I’m currently in the middle of completely revamping my inventory system at home, so the last thing I’m looking for is more models. 

(If I implement it correctly, I’ll never lose track of anything again. I’m hoping.)

Thriller and Equidae have both arrived but are still unopened, and my Second Chance Sale stuff is supposedly going to be here by the end of the day. The answer to the question of my Gran Cavallo – Purple, or Not Purple? – also won’t be answered until at least the weekend. And maybe after I get a few more boxes of inventory done.

(Twelve down, 26 more to go! Oh, joy…)

I also drew up a preliminary list for the Customer Appreciation Sale, if it happens at all this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets delayed or canceled entirely because of the supply chain issues, but it never hurts to be prepared. 

If it does, I just hope all the Stablemates I want are back in stock by that time.  

The Choices Given

My Gambler’s Choices are…

…the Glossy Winx and the Appaloosa Valerio! 

The Winx was what I was hoping for, but the Appaloosa Valerio is a surprise, because I usually don’t get the Appaloosa option with Gambler’s Choices. I thought it’d be either the Rose Gray (who I think is the prettiest of the four) or the Unicorn (weird, but awesome in its own way).

Like most of the Valerios out there, he does have the “squish” problem with his neck, which some hobbyists are assuming – and as someone who did work for a plastics injection molding plant for five years, I nod in agreement – is probably a consequence of him being molded out of Cellulose Acetate instead of ABS.

As someone who sometimes goes out of her way to collect mold oddities, it doesn’t bother me in the least. Though I do hope that they resolve the issue for the 2021 Deluxe Club Membership Stablemate Alborozo, because I know my fellow hobbyists are not as forgiving. 

The only (slight) disappointment about the 2020 CCA offer is finding out about the other Glossies that they only hinted at. And that one of them was the Sable Island Pony. 

Dang it! I was afraid of that.

I’m definitely not considering trading my Winx for one, because her gloss is nice and thick and her shading is top notch and I love the Emerson mold. But I might consider trading either of my previous CCA Glosses (the Pinto Wixom Jake, or the Pinto Roxy Kodi) for one. Eventually. 

Or for a Gloss Catch Me. The ones I have seen are pretty nice looking, too.

Ah well, probably better to savor the choices I have been given, and not worry so much about what I haven’t.

In the meantime, I will be spending the rest of my weekend cleaning up and sorting out the horses that are now out of the car. Turns out that that most of the them are in better shape than I expected (yay!) except for one of the sets I was hoping to keep (boo!) The Bay Old Timer looks pretty good, and is more appealing than I remember, though it might be the nostalgia talking.

There’s also a freakish neon yellow and tan Shrinky Misty in the lot too that I shouldn’t keep, but I find myself… hesitating. The weather is going to be nice all weekend, so pics may be coming of her, next time.

Hindsight Is So 2020

How is it only Thursday? This week has felt at least a month long! 

The first thing I’ll say is that I will devote an entire post to the Celebration Horse controversy, but not today, because I’m still recovering from… all the other stuff.

I get that Reeves is trying to recoup some of the sales “lost” to the absence of an in-person BreyerFest by extending their holiday sales promotions into October. But I paid off my credit cards earlier this year and I kind of want to keep it that way by the end of it, you know? 

I mean, my family is going to be asking some questions in the next week or so about the sheer number of Reeves boxes getting dumped on our doorstep… 

Anyway yes, to start the week I did participate in the Customer Appreciation Sale: all of the revealed/mentioned items – Winx, Buckeye and the Catch Me – were acceptable to me. The Winx and the Buckeye had already been “revealed” through leaks to dealers a while back, but the Catch Me was a surprise. 

The one I’m most forward to seeing in Gloss is the Catch Me: all the ones received by my local retailers were heavily picked through before I got to see them, and therefore probably not the best or most representative examples. And I do love the True North mold.

Like everyone else, I am all hubba-hubba-yowza about a Gloss Winx: Emerson, in Gloss Dark Bay? Sold. 

And I’ve been casually searching for affordable Brown Sunshines for a big chunk of the year, without much success. I had no idea how popular that mold is right now!

Just last week I was thinking that I should probably put together a couple of alternate CCA “buy” lists, but since they dropped it on us two months early, I just went the easiest route possible and bought 5 of the 6 Fairytale Friends. I was planning on getting them all anyway, saving them as order fillers for free postage, but since my week started out pretty rough (not hobby-related) and I didn’t feel like doing any complicated math, in the cart they went. 

(The last one in the set will get added to my Honeybunch order here in a day or two, because you just know I’m not going to pass up an affordable Pearly Possibly Pinto Palomino Fell Pony Emma.)

As for what other Glosses might show up in the CCA mix, I have no idea. I saw some suggestions that the Brick and Mortar Special Lionel could be a possibility, and I am very much in favor of that, please and thank you, especially since I never got to see any locally and I had plans on handpicking one. 

But I am not going to worry about what I get, regardless.  

Glossy Stock Horses

In case you were wondering, I did participate in the second round of the Collector’s Club Appreciation Sale; I still wanted everything that was left in my cart (minus the sold out items), and the teases that they gave us for the second batch of Glossies – Integrity, Khalid, and even the Stock Horse Stallion King – were all perfectly acceptable.

I couldn’t pass up that Spirit Jersey, especially since it was in that familiar shade of purple (sorry, “Deep Lavender”) that I found so appealing on the Unicorn Zenith. I had been shopping for a new oversized pullover, and since this one was actually cheaper than most of the ones I had been considering, I would have bought it (and the socks) by the end of the year, anyway.

I might even buy a second, if/when the larger sizes go back in stock.

Incidentally, as the Breyer web site states, it’s true that the Stock Horse Stallion has rarely come in Gloss: aside from a few stray Tests and Raffle pieces, the only Production Runs that comes to mind are the 2008 BreyerFest Live Show prize DZ Weedo, and the Gloss version of the 2009 Web Special Summer Solstice, who showed up in the NPOD later that same year.

The Gloss Summer Solstice, in particular, was mostly unnoticed and/or outright ignored when he was “released”, but you don’t see much of either of those Glosses on the secondary market anymore.

It’s not really a surprise that he – or any of the other 1980s Stock Horse Family molds – have had many Gloss releases. Very few Glosses were being produced in the heyday of the Hess Stock Horse Family in the 1980s, and by the time it became a thing again both Breyer and the hobby had moved on to newer and more glamorous molds.

Typical of Chris Hess’s later work, the 1980s Stock Horse molds also have a less “polished” finish than both their predecessors and successors, which doesn’t really lend itself to glossing, though I think it looks perfectly lovely on both the Summer Solstice above, and the King below.

The second round of Glosses aren’t scheduled to ship until the beginning of May – close enough to my birthday that I’ll simply treat it as a de facto birthday present, regardless of who I get. And it’s the thought that counts, right?

The Madness

After having read through a big chunk of the Collector’s Club Appreciation social media brouhaha, I now find myself longing for the days when our biggest arguments were over Palomino Arabians and Breed Standards for Unicorns.

I still don’t see this Glossy Madness ending until this sale – or a variation of it – basically offers Glossies On Demand.

Though to be honest, The Madness wouldn’t go away, it’d just move to another target. I’m old enough to remember when the 1984 Just About Horses Saddlebred Weanling was selling for $250-400 on the secondary market: I was just on eBay earlier today, and saw one for $45 getting no apparent interest. 

(It’s still too soon to tell, but I think it would be absolutely hilarious if it turns out that Reeves actually tailored the quantities of the first set of Glosses to meet hobbyist/collector interest – so we end up with lots of Verdadeses, and not a lot of Enzos?)

Moving on to lighter subjects, here’s Reuben:

He’ll look fabulous next to my BreyerFest Bowland! The only other Charolais Bulls I have at the moment are a “pinto” version of the original #365 release, the Special Run Simmental made for Robbins Weathervane – new in box(!), and what I assume is a cull of the Special Run Red Shorthorn, also for Robbins.

I had the PBR Signature one, too, but I sold him a little while ago when I was doing a bit of a culling of my Cattle molds. While I liked the release itself just fine, I had a strange/awkward experience when I bought him from a local store, and I really didn’t want to be reminded of that every time I saw him. 

I just order my Stablemates Club Corbin – the past couple of weeks have been nothing if not distracting, hence my delay – that I am hoping will be my last hobby purchases of the year.

As I’ve said before, I’ve had a really good run of luck recently, so whatever Reeves throws our way on Christmas Eve/Day will have to be something pretty darn special for me to reconsider tapping my bank account. I’d rather let someone else who wants it more get it, and not be an intermediary in the process.

This Year's Appreciation Offer

Oh boy, I don’t even know where to begin.

Well, this has been an interesting three days, hasn’t it?

I was excited for the Collector’s Club Appreciation Sale – until I discovered that it was going to go live at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, with no way for me to get Internet access until 3 p.m. at the very earliest.

Initially I thought that because previous sales took hours to sell out, that I still had a chance but alas, no. 

While I was a little on the fence about participating anyway, I did bypass a couple of sales on items that I already had in my cart, just in case. The Double Discount Sale weekend was especially hard to ignore!

My luck has been exceptionally good model-horse-wise for the past month, though: that beautiful Yellow Mount, the Showcase Collection Grazing Mare, an Avoriaz and (literally arriving just hours ago, and still in his box) a Reuben, too.

So I wasn’t as bummed as I could have been.

I was not entirely surprised that Reeves decided to open up the offer again over the weekend for people who were not available to participate previously. The start time (2 p.m. on a Wednesday) was awkward for a lot of people, and there were several reported instances of ordering glitches – Regular Run items that the site interpreted as ineligible for the program.

But the most important factor in their decision wasn’t the whiners on Facebook: it was the fact that it sold out in 27 minutes. (In case you were wondering about the math, that’s an order every two seconds. Yikes!) It’s pretty clear that they vastly underestimated the demand for this offer.

I made some suggestions elsewhere online that next year’s sale should be tweaked to be more inclusive – like (for instance) shifting the start time to something a little bit later to accommodate shift workers on the East Coast, and people on lunch breaks on the West Coast who might not have Internet access at work. (Because surprise, people: not a lot of us do, nor do many of us see it as a hardship.)

And/or also truly making it a Customer Appreciation Sale by opening up the window of opportunity to everyone – but limiting it to a set number of hours. Have a quantity of Glosses on-hand to accommodate the first X number of customers, and have the rest of the orders that get in before the expiration time put on backorder.

And I’ll be darned if I find myself reading the new offer in my e-mail box this afternoon and finding variations of these two ideas being implemented for the Second Chance offer right now.

I also suggested the possibility of making the Gloss item selectable – thus neutralizing the desirability issue a bit, since that means they’d make more of the popular ones and less of the less popular ones. But that was clearly wish fulfillment on my part – who wouldn’t love the option of Glosses made to order?

Speaking about the less popular ones, I feel so sad for all those poor, unwanted Glossy Enzos! I don’t have any particularly negative feelings toward the mold itself (other than its narrowness) and you know I love minimal pintos, so I would not have been among the disappointed if I had gotten one. Though of the original five Glosses, Latigo Dun It is the only one that’s making me wince a bit. Another expensive and possibly unattainable Smart Chic Olena, ouch…

(Looks at my Gloss Kodi, wonders if trading is a possibility.)

Other surprises/not really from the sale: that that goofy Classics/Freedom Series Cupcake sold out, as did the larger sizes of that totally boss Fighting Stallion t-shirt.

The Cupcake has since been restocked, and since the t-shirt is part of their 70th Anniversary lineup it will be, eventually.

It will be interesting to see what the CCA sale will be like next year; I suspect it will be more like the second offering than the first.

The only other changes I’d like to see is (a) fixing the notification issue: in light of the bajillion e-mails they send off during the holiday season, adding another e-mail notification of the sale the day before to all Collector’s Club members shouldn’t be all that hard, and (b) adding a link on the Appreciation Model page to the page that lists all the eligible purchase items would actually be super helpful, especially when one of your first or second choices is sold out and you don’t want to go wandering/wondering around the site looking for a substitution.