Longear Love

When we were working on this year’s Vintage Club lineup last year, I knew that the Brighty release was going to be mega-popular, but I had no idea he’d be “four-figures in pre-sale” popular. 

I mean, yeah, I’ve seen the prices for the Micro Run Cornelius, but the prices for most Breyer Longears in general are just crazy. Even the Hickory Hills Wall Street Brighties that were dumped and heavily discounted at Ollie’s a few years back are now going for big bucks.

Though to be honest I did kinda-sorta see the price increase on the Wall Street Brighties. Seeing them at Ollie’s reminded me a little too much of my experience with the S Justadream: a local farm store literally had an entire wall of them – at least two dozen – and I had a good laugh about the misfortunes of their purchasing department when I saw them.

Two years later, they were selling for $250 apiece on eBay, NIB. I could have made a killing, if I had only known. But I didn’t, and I didn’t.

I did a favor for a friend and bought her a carload of those Brighties, and I’d do it again if the opportunity presented itself. I am just not that lucky when it comes to capitalizing on things like that. That’s why I don’t go out of my way to even try, and why I am more-than-sometimes annoyed by hobbyists who somehow manage to make it work. 

The only exception to the recent longears trend is the Balking Mule, especially the original releases in Seal Brown and Bay. This kind of blows my mind, because they were notoriously difficult to find at my local flea markets for years, to the point that they became one of my grails. 

I could have just taken the easy way out and buy one from another hobbyist, but I was determined to wait until I found one locally. Then I found three in the space of one weekend, and I’ve managed to find them on a semi-regular basis since then. I still have two of the three, incidentally, including this very chestnutty-looking Bay: 

I tell myself that that’s what’s going to happen once I find my first vintage Decorator in the wild, but I’m still waiting.

Anyway, I felt especially proud of myself yesterday because I finally managed to find a body quality Standing Donkey at a price that did not make me uncomfortable. I have a couple of Donkey customizing ideas and I wanted to have at least one body on hand when the time and the mood finally align. And you know me, I wasn’t going to take a Dremel and hacksaw to the mint or near-mint examples that inhabit my saleslist on a near-perpetual basis. 

I tried scoring one through a local auction website recently, but (of course!) the price went well above what I expected it to be. 

Love my Lucys

I don’t get quite as excited about variations on more modern releases as I do about older releases. Part of it is my bias towards older models, but some of this variation-parsing also strikes me as an effort by some to either justify collecting multiples of certain releases, or to make their models even more special than someone else’s.

Which I am okay and (sometimes) totally on board with this impulse as a collector. As a historian, though, I see it as another shortcut to madness.

By necessity, I have to stick to more notable (or noticeable) variations, rather than document the entire spectrum. If something appears to be especially attractive or unusual compared to the norm, I'll make note of it, but generally those kinds of variations are of such specialized interest that the likelihood of an average enthusiast noticing it is very low.

(I tend to exit out of most conversations, for instance, that involve the phrase "semi-gloss variation". Mostly because everyone’s definition is so different, and so nebulous, that it’s as meaningless as the word "RARE" in an eBay listing. But I digress.)

The modern impulse to seek even the subtlest variations also stems from the fact that there’s a lot less variation than there used to be in Breyer models, too. Newer releases are more consistent - to the point that I’ve had a few hobbyists tell me with an absolutely straight face that all Breyers are painted completely by machines now - but it's more a matter of bland sameness thumbing a ride with consistency.

There’s still some minor variation built into the more modern masking techniques. When you think about it, there has to be: it’s a relatively thin and fragile adhesive masking material that’s being placed on an irregular and three-dimensional surface.

Most of these variations are minor - a slightly different cut edge, or a spot or marking placed a little higher or lower than it’s supposed to be. But sometimes…well, take a look a the speckled behinds of my two Lucys and see why even I took notice of this:

I was going to keep both of them because Gloss and Matte, duh, but that their butt spots are so different is a nice plus. Their stickers are on opposite shoulders too, but that's just a post-production thing. I don't usually note sticker placement at all, unless it's in some really weird spot like the middle of a forehead or stuck to a model's private parts.

(Regarding the latter: I see it all the time, and it never fails to be amuse me.)

Playing Catch Up

I took the day off (for the most part) from blogifying yesterday. Even though I worked fewer hours this week, I was even more tired by the end of it. Some (confidential for now, sorry) stuff came up that complicated things, but I think it was mostly Morpheus playing catching up with me. 

Continuing on that theme…

In case you didn’t already know, there’s a special drawing for Vintage Club members this weekend for 80 pieces of the Special Run Balking Mule Lucy, in Gloss. I don’t know if this represents the portion of the run that wasn’t officially ordered by club members, or just a random number they pulled out of the air. Been putting my entries in, regardless, because ooh, shiny.

The BreyerFest survey forms have also been sent out, via e-mail. I always laugh about "confidentiality" part; I have a fairly distinctive writing voice, so I assume they know it’s me, anyway, and write with that assumption in mind.

There’s a small, blurry, Facebook-derived picture floating around of an alleged new Breyer mold coming out soon, a portrait of Harley D Zip. I didn’t find out about it until the Blab forum topic had reached well over a hundred posts, running the gamut from "OMG I LUV IT!" to "Meh". I think I’ll wait until I see a larger and more official picture before I give it the thumbs up or down. 

I also found a bunch of neat stuff at the flea market last weekend that I never got around to talking about. There were a couple of decent bodies, a Lomonosov Polar Bear Cub, a Limited Edition Royal Doulton Bunnykins figurine, and a book about Draft Horses illustrated by Francis Eustis (going straight to the reference library). The "biggest" finds were a pair of Mastercrafters clocks - one of those mysterious "Quarter Horse Yearling" clocks, and a Swinger with an Onyx case:

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it here or not before, but we’re still unsure of the relationship between the QH Yearling and the goldtoned clock above. The clock clearly predates the Yearling: this example has a postal zone, rather than a zip code in the company address listed on the back. Zones were phased out in the 1960s, but the Quarter Horse Yearling didn’t officially debut until 1970.

Breyer’s relationship with Mastercrafters lasted well beyond the Western Horse/Davy Crockett era, but for how long, and in what capacities, we are not sure.

The Yearling clock is an upgrade, but the Swinger is technically "new" for me - I have had several in the Brown Burl case, but none in the Green Onyx before. In my excitement, I didn’t examine the clock as closely as I should have when I negotiated for it: it is still partially disassembled because it required extensive cleaning.

This is a polite way of saying that it was possibly one of the grossest things I have ever bought at the flea market. (Not The Grossest Thing Ever. You really don’t need to know about that. All I can say is that it wasn’t a horse.)

When I got it home and took it out of the bag, I initially thought that the previous owner had lined the bottom of it with felt.

It was not felt.

It was an encrusted layer of dust, dirt, cigarette smoke, and cat hair. Upon closer examination, it looked like something you’d see getting shoveled out of a window on the TV show Hoarders. The saddest part is that I found an address label under the crud indicating that the previous owner had purchased it, reconditioned, from a clock shop not even ten years ago.

Most of the gross is gone, but it still needs more cleaning and repair work. It’s been an interesting restoration challenge, if nothing else.

(Ooh, freaky. I just noticed that they are stopped at exactly the same time, even though I bought them from two different vendors!)

Homely

The past few days were rough - both scheduling and personal issues came up. On the scheduling issue, apparently nobody noticed in the office that I was the only person not scheduled last weekend - nor did they bother to call me when everybody was begging for extra help because of call-offs. Because everyone assumed I was already working - just not with them.

(They’re blaming it on a software glitch. Sigh. I’ll deal with it after BreyerFest.)

One good thing happened this week - my Vintage Club Extra Lucy arrived:

Very pretty! (My desk not so much, I know.) As I’ve brought up before, I wouldn’t technically call that a "Vintage" paint job, other than the fact that it replicates the pattern on the Mule that appeared on the first color cover of JAH, back in 1980. Still, no complaints, especially quality-wise. Nice job, Reeves!

This year’s crop of Auction Items is especially nice, too. I think my favorite so far is almost everyone else’s: that stunner of an Appaloosa Performance Horse, in the most amazing sabino paint job I’ve ever seen. (Via the BreyerFest App, and up on the Facebook page.)

Not so crazy about the swish tail - on the issue of the Performance Horse, I am an originalist - but dang, if it wasn’t for the fact that I suspect a lot of other people will also be gunning for him, I’d actually consider bidding.

I make no apologies for have a near-complete collection of the Appaloosa Performance Horse. (It also helps that most of his releases are pretty easy on the wallet, too.) Here’s one of my favorites, the 1984 Christmas SR in Gray Appaloosa:

We didn’t need no stinking mapping, eyewhites or roaning on our Special Runs back then! Though I was a bit bummed they didn’t at least stripe his hooves.

I can’t recall seeing a lot of test colors on this mold before, either, past or recent present. The only one I can think of is the Black Appaloosa one they used as a stand-in for Stud Spider in the 1977 JC Penney's Christmas Catalog. Other than in his original fabulous colorway, he was never a hugely popular model, so the likelihood of spare Performance Horse bodies lying around was slim.

But I always thought he had potential. Just last week I was seriously mulling over a body lot on eBay with a Performance Horse body in it; I was intrigued by the idea of taking one and tweaking/improving it, in the hopes of getting other hobbyists to see what I see.

Then Reeves went ahead and did the job for me! I can only hope that means we’ll be seeing more of him soon, either as a Vintage Club release, or as a Buried Treasure/Vault/Surprise type model. He hasn’t seen a release, in any shape or color, since the #1140 Foundation Appaloosa was discontinued in 2002.

I am also intrigued by the Gloss Palomino Clydesdale Mare. She seems a little - just so slightly - less fancy a paint job than we usually see on Auction pieces, and first made me wonder if Reeves is being sneaky again and showing us the Volunteer Special and just not telling us so.

More likely, though, she’s an actual test for another Vintage Club release; I seem to recall a Gloss Palomino Mustang in that particular photo from way back…

My Three Mules

My day did not start out as well as I hoped.

I had planned to go to a somewhat-local estate sale that had horse-shaped objects, but morning came with a migraine that did not subside until about noon. (You’ve elude me yet again, Hagen-Renaker Cutter! You can’t keep running from me forever.)

(Long story. Funny one, though.)

When I was feeling good enough to get out of bed and get some other work done, I logged onto the Internet to catch up on the news, and found out about the passing of both Roger Ebert and Carmine Infantino. (I never met Roger Ebert, but I did meet Carmine Infantino once. Another long and funny story.)

I seriously thought about crawling back to bed and just forgetting about the day entirely, but then I realized I’d be leaving you guys hanging for yet another day on the Balking Mules. So here they are, in situ:

I used to have quite a few variations of everything in my herd, but I was running out of room real quick, so I pared them down to ones that (a) I really, really liked, (b) had some historical significance, or (c) came with an interesting backstory. The Mules, obviously, fell under (c).

And a little bit of (b), too. Like most Breyer models in the 1960s and through most of the 1970s, they were designed to come in both "lighter" and "darker" colors, to minimize culls. The lighter-colored ones would get painted first during a production run, and any that were messed up would get painted over with the darker paint job, if possible.

The painter that I talked to - one who had worked at the Chicago factory from the early days, forward - told me that the Balking Mules "lighter" and "darker" colors were going to be Chestnut and Seal Brown. She didn’t know why they switched the Chestnut to Bay, especially since the colors were not all that different.

So similar, in fact, that sometimes it’s difficult to determine where a "dark" variation of a Bay ends and a "light" variation of a Seal Brown begins.

Every once and a while I'll run across Mules that are on the very light end of the Bay spectrum, and make me wonder if that particular painter had anything to do with it. Probably not, but it’s still fun to imagine her tweaking somebody’s nose at the factory about that decision.

It didn’t occur to me to ask her what kind of Chestnut the Balking Mule was supposed to be. Flaxen Chestnut, like the Belgian? "Chocolate Milk" Sorrel, like the Five-Gaiter? Or more Red Chestnut, like the Man o’ War?

A few years later, we did get a Special Run of the Mule in the Five-Gaiter Sorrel color, as a part of the Black Horse Ranch set. That I have, along with all of the other Balking Mules, save for the Gloss Charcoal (never got around to it) and the Raffle Model Cactus (didn’t win, can’t afford.) No test colors, either, but considering that the mold was out of production for over twenty years, their scarcity shouldn't be too surprising.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Easter was a bit of a bust, here: chaos, burnt food, and the dog being naughty. Then I had to get to get up for work today at 2:30 a.m. - something I don’t normally do unless horses are involved, and they weren’t. (Tomorrow, maybe.)

Halo did arrive today, but I only just opened the Moose Ghost yesterday, so I think I can wait a day or two, to enjoy him all by his lonesome. He really is as nice as everyone says he is, with just a hint of that iridescent sparkle in the gloss they’ve been experimenting with since last BreyerFest (on the Mariah’s Boon, and the Bell-bottomed Shire Cheerio.)

My BreyerFest ticket also arrived late last week. So far, so good: no ticket trade needed, yet. Unless I find something fabulous and inspiring at the flea market this year, I am forgoing the costume contest this year: the rule changes are still a bit too vague for my liking, and I’d rather minimize the exhaustion and inevitable heartbreak if I can.

I’ve also only committed to one ticket so far: I just finished last year’s inventory paperwork, and well, ouch. Fortunately, most of the models I’m interested in so far aren’t time ticket specific: the Store Special Pinto Brighty, the Other Store Special Bucking Bronco, and the actual Celebration model (Smart Chic, FTW!) I might cough up cash for another ticket depending on the finances, mostly to double my chances of getting one of the Surprise/Gambler’s Choice models, whatever it is.

Because my mind is spinning all sorts of elaborate fantasies about it at this point. (Not sharing, because I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up for nothing.)

And speaking of surprises…they announced the actual Vintage Club Exclusive/Made to Order model today: "Lucy", a Balking Mule in a loud dun appaloosa who (not coincidentally?) looks a lot like one of the first BreyerFest Gambler’s Choice models, the 2009 Quarter Horse Gelding in Appaloosa. The first thing that popped into my mind, however, when I saw her was this cover:

The Fall 1979 issue of Just About Horses - the first one with a full-color cover! (A brief bio of the Balking Mule mold is featured inside.) Kind of an obscure vintage nod, but a clever one. I like it.

So much for the tight reins on my budget. At least the price is not too unreasonable, at $99.95.

The Balking Mule mold and I have an interesting history. It took me YEARS to finally acquire the vintage ones for my collection. In the pre-Internet days, before you could swipe one off of eBay for slightly more than body price, Balking Mules were not easy to come by, and not cheap.

They weren’t completely out of my budget range, but I was determined to find one locally - like I had most of my other "rare" models. It became a thing for me. I wasn’t going to buy one "retail" if I didn’t have to.

I had to wait a very, very long time. I bought the Black Horse Ranch Special Run ones in 1994, and they were awesome, but they weren’t Vintage. Back then.

And then - no joke - I found four in the space of two months, three of them in the same weekend: one at an antique show, and two from a local dealer who I had given some reference material to, and had helped with pricing some of the models from his personal collection.

He later told me that when he found them, he knew he had to save them for me. As a favor for helping him sell off his collection.

I still have those three, because they really were worth the wait. (I also because I overspent a little bit, because of that danged principle!) I justified keeping a second Bay one because it was a variation: so light, it looked like a chestnut.

More on them, next time.