Sometimes The Only Way Out Is Through

Hey guys, still alive – though not doing much kicking, understandably. Having good days and bad days; hopefully more good than bad moving forward, once the new meds finally kick in.

And if not, Mom’s been crushing it with the vanilla milkshakes.

The worst part of this whole situation is the fact is that I can’t get anything done. I finally have a perfectly legitimate excuse to quilt to my heart’s content, and I can’t, dammit!

And speaking of that, If I haven’t gotten back with anyone, I apologize; I really do appreciate all the cards and plants and letters. Especially the cards and letters – y’all know how much I love ephemera! And feel free to drop me a note anytime. I read everything. 

If you were wondering what my hypothetical BreyerFest selections are, they should be pretty obvious:

As far as Limited Editions go, it’s: Blue Zeus and the Best of BreyerFest Stablemates. Blue Zeus because he’s a Blue Roan Fireheart and the actual live horse I’m basing my Mesteno Custom on. 

The Stablemates are a no-brainer: Stablemates were the first  models I bought with my own money back in the Dark Ages. I am also pretty keen on the mold matches: they are uncannily on point this year, though one is also pretty darn obvious. (I can only imagine what kind of ruckus would have been kicked up if they didn’t pick the Fighting Stallion for Kick Up Your Heels.) 

I think Flowers, the 2021 Raffle Model Bonheur on the Loping Quarter Horse, is probably my favorite here. Such a pretty shade of Chestnut!

Special Runs: I Will Survive (Quagga), and either Fight Song (Pinto Lipizzan) or The Edge of Glory (Ashquar). In spite of my declaration to the contrary, it looks like at least one of my selections this will be chosen purely on sentiment alone. And partly because it’s unavoidable at this point: sometime the only way out of a difficult situation is through.

Positive Spins

I’ve been trying to put a more positive spin on things lately, pretty much because I don’t have much say in the matter. 

In debilitating pain and unable to eat much? Oh well, I wanted to change my diet and lose weight anyway. And all my jeans are fitting again! (Still haven’t found a meal replacement shake that doesn’t take revolting though. And I am absolutely not a picky eater!)

The weird turn that this year’s BreyerFest theme has taken? That means I’ll be picking out models I want based purely on aesthetics, rather than be cluttered by any lingering sentiments about the name or concept. Which means I’m digging the Dunalino True North: one of my favorite colors on one of my favorite newer molds!

I’m not sure why everyone is wigging out about the breed assignment; it wouldn’t be any different from the majority of other releases that have come out since… forever. If half your showstring isn’t some flavor of fence-jumper, you’re just not being creative.

Speaking of fence-jumpers, the latest Limited Edition reveal for BreyerFest certainly isn’t disappointing! The original Brown Sunshine release kinda-sorta had a pre-release party at BreyerFest in 1996, but Alan a Day’s Work represents the first true BreyerFest Exclusive on the mold. Special Runs on the Brown Sunshine mold are fairly rare in general, with the last one being Greenacres for the Ponies & Palm Trees Event in 2022.

Unfortunately, there’s no positive spin I can put on the Spokes & Spurs Exclusive Event thing: as a single-type person with just one official club membership to my name, the odds of me getting picked are just not very good. And I’d really rather not try to formulate a “Plan D” vacation at this point. I don’t have time for that nonsense.

Best to put that one in a box and come back to it later, I guess.

And finally, I suppose I should say something publicly about latest in big model horse news: the sale of Stone Horses. 

All I’ll say is that I had (a) I was not surprised, and (b) I had suspected something was in the works for a bit.

It’s been well over a decade since I’ve bought any Stone Horses at all, and nothing I saw in any of the news or press releases is going to persuade me to change course. 

Credit, Where Credit Is Due

I am still not feeling great, but I am definitely better than I was a couple days ago; I’m hoping this course of treatment is successful, so I can actually move on and finish all the stuff around the house I couldn’t do over my Winter Break. 

Technically I am not in any condition to rant further about the distressing turn the generic (nonportrait) Special Runs for this year’s BreyerFest have taken, but I have to say that I am finding it increasingly more depressing than the Horse Heroes situation. At least those were named after “heroes” of a sort; the connection between “overcoming adversity” and “Girl Power ballads” is more than a bit stretched.

All marketing, in the end, is a cash grab capitalizing on current trends and fads, so I tend to cut most companies a lot of slack when it comes to new product marketing: the purpose of a company is to make money. (I get into this argument with people at work all the time. “Why are we making this, and not that?” Because that’s what’s selling right now.)

But this turn feels so obvious, contrived, and contrary to what they themselves have been trying to do for the past several years, which is make the hobby more inclusive. A balance could have been struck here; you could have folded “Girl Power ballads” into it with just the Stablemates, and not steer the entire theme in that direction.  

Nope, never mind, let’s go back to yet another variation of Princesses and Cowgirls!

Bummer for all of us who are not sparkly pink aspiring Girlbosses. 

(I wear size 11 shoes look terrible in pastels, and am a bookish introvert: it was never an option.)

The 2024 Regular Run releases are actually pretty great, though. I especially like the Element Series Collection Classics, based on the Eastern – rather than Western – Elements. I think my favorite is the Harper Iridium, because it reminds me of the metallic Super Chase Stablemates I have been utterly unable to locate. Teak is also intriguing; is he the first official Classics-scale release in Woodgrain? My brain is a bit addled by the painkillers, so I am not so sure at the moment…

I am absolutely not a skier (hello, total lack of coordination bordering on disability), but I really like this year’s Christmas Horse Après Ski, too. A Red Bay Big Ben with a Gulastra Plume? Clever, attractive and imaginative – now that’s the (lift) ticket!

I’d like to comment further on the Halloween Horse Beowolf, who initially garnered a pretty enthusiastic response because hello, we are all nerds here. But now that it appears that the design may be at the center of a potential controversy, I’ll wait for more info on that developing story before I say anything more. 

From Marvelpalooza to Taylor Swiftmas

Never have I felt more out of the target demographic than I did with the not-completely-unexpected reveal of the 2024 BreyerFest Stablemates:

Look, I am all for any excuse to bring back Purple Filigree, because Purple Filigree RULES, but I am NOT a “Girl Power Ballad” person. I’ve got nothing against Taylor Swift personally or aesthetically, but my current musical tastes run more toward 1980s Synth Pop, Metal, and Classic Rock. And to be perfectly honest, the very first thing that popped into my head is:

“Oh no, this is Horse Heroes all over again, isn’t it?”

As in, a tangential reference that might end up taking over the whole darn theme, and one that walks right up to the legal borders of infringement?

Yeah, I know it’s only the Stablemates and Celebration Horse that have been revealed so far, and we have about 50 or so more releases to prove me wrong, but it’s still making me nervous.

Especially since I kind of feel the whole “Girl Power” movement is a little troubling in and of itself; all I’ll say here is that there are people in my life who have completely and utterly embraced it, and… I am not particularly fond of their company. 

Update: oof, looks like I was right: they are definitely going 100 percent full bore in that direction. Sigh. The model is beautiful and the Indian Pony always sells well, but seriously, aside from the thematic issues, song lyrics just aren’t very good names.

I am also not thrilled that it’s making me feel old, but some of my ongoing health problems are also to blame for that; I was going to call the doctor yesterday to make an appointment about my back, but I almost ended up in the ER instead for another reason entirely. 

(I’ll leave out the gory details: not because I don’t want to share, but because they may be triggering.)

Pretty Chestnuts

As you know, I’ve had a hard time warming up to the Dundee mold, but I think next year’s BreyerFest Celebration Horse is one I will keep: that is a very pretty shade of chestnut, and I do like minimal pintos:

I’ve been watching a lot archaeological documentaries lately (hello insomnia, my old friend), so when I hear the phrase “Athenian lady”, all I can think of is how the actual ladies of Ancient Athens were the opposite of empowered.

I know it’s just a play on one of the goddess’s many names and I am reading way too much into it; ‘tis the curse of being a history nerd. 

Her story is (fortunately) not as sentimental as a lot of horse stories tend to be. I am not immune to sentimentality, but The Hallmark Channel doesn’t get a lot of airtime in my house, either. 

(As far as the rescue angle is concerned – I am not touching that with a 50-foot pole and a Hazmat suit. All I will say on the matter publicly is that the enemy of your enemy is not your friend.)

I also really like the latest Test Run offering, who is also a lovely shade of chestnut with just a little bit of extra white:

I was just thinking that if I ever got the notion of entering another Collector’s Class at BreyerFest (definitely NOT next year!) I’d want to do a “Hooked on Classics” Test theme, especially since I have… a lot of Classic Test Colors. A documented “Archival” Test would made a very nice addition to that potential entry, since the rest of mine are technically undocumented. 

I’d also like something in Appaloosa and something in Gloss, too, for variety’s sake, but I also know those are even longer shots than this fellow.

Weird Places

Nothing special here, just the standard (initially offered) Surrey and Axle:

When I heard about the variation, I was mildly freaked out that I’d get the Action Stock Horse Foal: even if it had turned out to be a one-in-ten variant, I would have been kind of annoyed, the same way I was a little miffed about having to find the Cremello Uffington secondhand.

A big part of the reason I bought the set was for that Standing Stock Horse Foal. A Few-Spot Appaloosa Lady Phase didn’t hurt, either. I know a lot of hobbyists aren’t fans of Few-Spots, but I am definitely not one of them!

Anyway, crisis averted.

The Standing Stock Horse Foal, incidentally, was one of those “more common” models I was looking for to fill in some holes in my collection, but all the ones I was specifically shopping for were in short supply. Which is super-weird, considering how popular the mold used to be as Breyer’s generic, go-to Stock Horse Foal!

Again, I am not in a rush. I am assuming I will pick up what I need in a box lot somewhere along the way. 

Since I had an unexpected day off last Saturday, I used that opportunity to look at – but not actually buy – some of the newest “Paddock Pals” at my local Dollar General.

I haven’t bought any of them since the initial batch dropped at Five Below a while back, and we didn’t know what the heck was going on. But now we kinda do. It’s what I speculated all along: it’s a budget-priced, entry-level line sold at dollar/discount stores and marketed to younger kids. They even have a web site now with backstories for every single release:

https://paddockpals.breyerkids.com/meetthepaddockpals.html

I like a lot of them, and I may end up buying a couple more in the future, but actually collecting them looks like it is out of the question. 

It’s not just that I don’t have the time or space, it’s that they exist in such a weird place. It’s a completely new scale that’s somewhere in between Traditional and Classic, that’s both realistic in terms of anatomy and conformation, but also not really live showable as-is (without special accommodations). And they gave the whole shebang the obsolete name of a now largely obsolete scale: the Little Bits. 

My brain doesn’t quite know how to process them. 

Scurrying About

Things are… better. And I’ll leave it at that. And I have to work this Saturday, too, but that’s mostly unrelated. It sets me behind a bit on my crafting, but I can’t argue with the paycheck! 

I am still moderately amused that I was not chosen for a Yellowstone, even from multiple waitlists. It just slays me that their efforts to make some Special Runs “easier” to acquire (i.e. significantly larger piece runs) usually result in making it harder for me. 

Aiming for the big stuff seems to be working out better, at least for now. I’ll pick up a Yellowstone eventually. 

I was thinking about going to BreyerWest next year, but the flights are all significantly more expensive than my Wyoming adventure was, so it might be a no-go. Off to research Derby tickets, I guess!

(Yikes! Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea either.)

Anywho, the rest of my week is full of meetings and appointments, I’ll keep it short again today. Here’s a better picture of my two Scurries, one of whom is actually a variation of a variation, but one that wasn’t necessarily planned for: 

I find it amusing that the two choices I made on my one and only ticket this year were both 50/50 variation splits. Considering that they were among the less popular choices this year, you think they would have included the variants in them to encourage sales, instead of including them in runs that would have sold out regardless, like Peanutine, and (eventually) Speos.

I also wasn’t overly enamored of them using Hamilton as the Surprise model this year – not because they didn’t turn out nice (most of the color options were really well done) but because it now sets an uncomfortable precedent.

Instead of the unpredictability that was part and parcel of the Surprise before, there’s now going to be an expectation that the Surprise must be the Current Hotness, and if you’ve had more than half of a day’s experience in the Model Horse Internet, you know that for the loudest voices among them that nothing else will now suffice. 

And if Reeves accedes to that demand, the Surprise will no longer be all that… surprising. Or for me, all that interesting.

(Still annoyed that we didn’t get an Old Timer this year. I know the reasons why, but I would have paid that premium, dammit.)

Hoping For Better Days

I’ve occasionally made the joke about how any time I’ve done “well” at BreyerFest, I always end up paying for it in the end, regardless. 

I was hoping to avoid that fate this year – or at least, mitigate the damage – but the shoe might be dropping this week, and to be frank I am kinda scared. I can only hope that I am believed and that I come out of the experience relatively unscathed. 

But there is no guarantee, and I did not sleep a wink Saturday night. 

Needless to say, any positive energy you can send my way would be very appreciated. 

I had some shopping to do on Sunday – mostly craft and storage supplies – and while I was out I finally managed to see some of the Tractor Supply Specials. The Stablemates were quite tempting, and the FFA Decorators were much nicer than I expected, but I managed to walk away without pulling out my wallet. 

If any of the Gibsons had been the Chalky variation, I would have bought one, but they were not. 

Since I’m not feeling particularly chatty again today, here’s another BreyerFest purchase:

This Seabiscuit – and another one painted a semi-leopard Appaloosa, in hobby enamels – were the only purchases I made from the Linda Walter estate. By the time I had made it into the room, most of the better Breyer items were already gone, and I didn’t trust myself to bring home any clinkies unbroken. 

But for some reason this little guy (and his partner) really caught my eye. I already have several variations of the original G1 Seabiscuit, but this one was – as you can see – exceptionally well-shaded. So well-shaded, in fact, that for a brief moment I mistook him for the Hagen-Renaker original.

The melancholy part of all this is that the context is missing. Was he just a lucky find on Linda’s part? Did Marney find a particularly nice one at the factory and send it Linda’s way, because of her love and advocacy of Hagen-Renakers in general? Or nothing at all?

I’ll probably never know.

I had another Stablemate in my showstring that I was having some second thoughts about, and I swapped him out for this guy. 

And I believe he was the first model that even placed for me in the show. For a while I was worried that that would be my only placing (and a tenth, at that), but things got better for me.

I can only hope this week ends the same way. 

Lost in Translation

This has been another not-great week, and I will be grateful when it ends. (Without injury, I hope. No guarantee there, unfortunately.) 

I am currently self-medicating with an extremely elaborate quilt piecing project, art restoration videos, and homemade pound cake.

Let’s focus on some positives. First, the pound cake was a new recipe, and freaking delicious. And second, the latest Vintage Club release has been revealed – a Gambler’s Choice Silver, named Thunderbird!

Boy, that guy was a hard secret to keep under wraps. He looks awesome in all four colors; it appears that the Appaloosa is the online crowd’s clear favorite, but I will be happy with whatever one I comes my way. 

(And he’ll definitely cheaper than trying to buy something like a Goldfinch on the secondary!)

I also managed to secure a spare couple of hours of free time earlier this week, and used that opportunity to sort through some e-mails and ephemera, which wasn’t quite as big a mess as I thought it would be. (But yikes, I’ve got some gaps to fill.)  

It also reminded me that I needed to show you guys my other big Ephemera find at BreyerFest this year: 

Breyer got a lot of mail from its fans in the 1970s and early 1980s, to the point where they had to generate in-house materials to deal with it. There was a preprinted postcard that acknowledged your suggestions for future models, that infamous (and somewhat inaccurate) historical list of Breyer releases, and – news to me! – a short history of Breyer (above), and an explainer on how models were made (below):

There’s nothing new or revelatory here, but the wording on the history page is both more clear, and more nuanced than the initial history I heard bandied about it my early days in the hobby. The game of telephone did it no favors! 

The ways information get conveyed, interpreted and distorted haven’t improved much in the decades since, but that’s more of a statement about human nature than of the hobby itself. 

The 1994 BreyerFest Benefit Auction

Well, I thought I had a fabulous weekend, but Monday made me pay for it. We’re talking sitcom-level, head-in-my-hands insanity, here. 

And to top it all off, I didn’t get selected for “Pronghorn” Yellowstone: I’m trying to understand how I managed to get not one, but two BreyerFest Variant Runs and a Live Show Prize model, but I still can’t get selected for Web Specials that are now up to (checks e-mail) 750 pieces?

Madness.

Since I’m in no mood to write today, here’s one of the posts I drafted over the weekend when life was not a snarling mass of chaos, and which I also thought I would not need to deploy until next weekend. So much for best laid plans! 

So here’s a few photos from the 1994 BreyerFest Auction, for your amusement and edification; they were a gift from a friend:

I remember being particularly enamored of both the Brindle Bay Proud Arabian Stallion and the Gloss Black Sham. 

I think the Dark Bay Indian Pony turned up on eBay a couple of years ago at an insanely low Buy It Now price, presumably because the seller probably thought it was the later Saddle Club Belle release. I didn’t save the pictures from that auction so I can’t confirm it, now that I kinda have a picture of the real deal…

I stuck around for some of the auctioneering, but I left part of the way through because I didn’t have the spare money to even buy the Lady Roxana. The only other thing I specifically remember from this auction is the fuss made by someone over the fact that they were auctioning off a Strawberry Roan Pluto that was almost identical to one sold the year before.  

Well, fuss wasn’t quite the word. This person was pissed. It was removed from the auction with the promise of it being destroyed, but I’m not sure that was a sufficiently satisfactory answer. 

Real Test Colors – ones made to test out things for actual production – are rarely unique. Most of the models that appeared at these early Benefit Auctions were actual Tests that were just hanging around the office at the time, and not stuff that was tailored to bidder preferences. 

It swung in the opposite direction for a while, but there seems to be more of a balance today, with some items clearly designed to generate bids, and others that were clearly more experimental. 

Anyway, I now need to take a deep breath and see what the rest of Tuesday has in store for me.

The Spark

It’s been how many weeks now and there’s still no official-official announcement of the Best Customs Contest winners on the BreyerFest Blog. Don’t they usually have it up by now? 

Part of the reason I keep putting off my discussion of it is because I wanted to a have an easily accessible set of photos to refer to, rather than talk about it in the abstract, but I guess I’ll just have to jump in and “do it live”, because I am tired of this topic living in my head.

So here we go.

My argument, which should not be controversial at this point, is this: the BreyerFest Best Customs Contest is broken. 

Let us begin with the elephant in the room: the Most Extreme Custom division. 

Customs that completely obliterate the original, rendering it either an armature, or (even worse) merely filler, contain a rather cynical and nihilistic subtext: the model that we used to build this thing has no worth other than as an armature or filler.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of this particular line of thinking. Not only is it antithetical to my conception of customs as a whole, it does not serve the ultimate goal of Breyer promoting it in the first place. 

I think of customizing as a collaborative art form, a conversation between the original sculptor and the customizing artist. The best Customs, in my mind, are the ones that take the base model in unexpected or innovative directions, but still have it retain the essence of the original sculpture. 

That’s what I had hoped this contest would evolve into: why else would Breyer sponsor it, but to ultimate promote their product? 

Imagine if a pie-filling company sponsored a pie baking contest, but the winner of said contest was a cake with a scoop of pie filling in it. Just because it’s a baked good that contains pie filling does not make it a pie. A giant lump of epoxy with a piece of a Breyer in it is not a custom.

The other sections of the contest are also problematic, albeit in slightly different ways. The Fantasy division has basically evolved into a different flavor of the Extreme Custom division; the Performance Excellence division is the Giant Freestyle Diorama Contest, where bigger is apparently always better... 

The Excellence in Finishwork division – the most popular division, in terms of the sheer number of entries – tends to reward certain styles, colors and techniques over others. My problem with this is that technical proficiency doesn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with artistic merit, and some of them (like the hair-by-hair technique) aren’t even particularly realistic at certain scales.

The Theme division is a mixed bag. I like the concept in theory – I think I was one of the early advocates of it – but the Theme class this year was not… a Customs class. It was a Tackmakers Class. Tackmakers deserve their own yearly contest rather than have one shoehorned into another.

I know there’s been some talk of creating a “Novice” division, or altering the rules to exclude hobbyists and artists who have done work for Breyer either directly, or indirectly. While well-intentioned, I think both ideas are a little off the mark.

For one, both are hard to define and (ultimately) police. 

Take me, for example.

I’ve been doing customs, on and off, since the early 1980s, but I’ve only just recently started taking it seriously again. I did do some customs for money back then, and sold a few others from my personal showstring, too. At least one of them ended up getting either a Best or Reserve Best Overall at a live show, and this little girl did extremely well for me, too, actually beating out pros like Liz Bouras at Model Horse Congress:

(Yes, she started life as a G1 Arabian Mare.)

I also do work for Reeves on occasion, though obviously it doesn’t involve sculpting.

My situation is far from unique. So how would you write the rules and exceptions for those of us that fall in those gray areas? Threading that needle would not only be difficult, but probably pointless: hobbyists would find the loopholes and technicalities pretty quickly.

My solution would be to revamp both the categories and criteria in a way that would be more inclusive of the greater world of customizing, rather than a narrow subset of it. There also needs to be a division – or divisions – outside of Fantasy where a greater emphasis should be on experimentation and creativity than on technical mastery. 

Craftsmanship is not artistry: it is only a component. I’ve seen lots of artwork – not just Customs, but other mediums and hobbies – that in spite of their masterful technique were dry, boring and tedious.

And on the flip side, I’ve also seen artwork that breaks every conventional rule – artistic, anatomical, technical – that spoke to me on a profound level. 

The perfect custom would be a blend of both, but (in my mind) I think way too much emphasis has been placed on the technical aspects in this contest. 

I am not saying that we eliminate craftsmanship as a criteria. What I am saying is that if you want to encourage more people to participate in this contest, focusing on experimentation and creativity is the way to do that. That’s how most people get started at any given artistic enterprise: they have a spark, and they need to express it.

So, how would we go about that?

It’s a math problem, really: it’s just a matter of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. 

Since it really has devolved into an original sculpture class, I’d either get rid of the Extreme Custom division, or change the judging criteria so that there’s slightly less incentive to sculpt ten pounds of epoxy around two legs and a head. 

If they want to have an original sculpture contest, either make it its own contest, or create a division just for that. 

For one, I’d love to see a “Vintage” class: not for Customs made 20 or 30 years ago, but for Customs made from Vintage molds, preferably Hess ones. The model would still have to recognizable as the foundation model; enhancements that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s – like hairing, flocking, glass eyes, horseshoes et al – could be encouraged. 

While there were artists selling their work and doing work for hire back then, a lot of hobbyists did their own customs out of necessity, and a class like this would hearken back to that pioneering, DYI spirit. 

In 2022, the Theme class was devoted to a single mold, the Geronimo: I want to see a class devoted to a specific mold every year. Something vintage, something new, scale doesn’t matter. I think this would be a great way to promote the Freedom/Classic molds, since there’s always a nice assortment available on the web site for people to buy if needed, and it would be a great way to encourage newbie customizers focusing on Stablemates to level up and push their boundaries.

Other division ideas could include Decorative Finishwork (like Excellence in Finishwork, but with unrealistic colors and designs), splitting the Fantasy division into Equids (Pegasi, Unicorns, Seahorses) and Artistic Interpretations (either based on literary, art historical or archaeological inspiration, or something entirely novel), and adding a Freestyle Diorama section (as a subset of Performance Excellence?)

I wouldn’t expand the divisions beyond ten – actually, ten would be a good number, because then the overall quantities of prize models would be at a relative parity with things like the Diorama Contest and even the Open Show. It would also bring the value of the prizes down a notch, and make the contest a little less appealing as a potential financial windfall for the professionals out there. 

Having more divisions, or divisions that focus more on the creative aspects than the technical ones, does not devalue the prizes won in other divisions, any more than it does in live shows. If anything, it may even enhance them: even though I know the prize is the same for every class at a live show, winning a class with a lot of entries means more to me than winning a less populous one. 

This is only a start; I could talk about this all day. As for those of you who think that things cannot change, let us be reminded of what eventually happened to the Child/Youth Show at BreyerFest: changes were eventually made that made the situation less toxic, and brought it more in line with the original intent of the show, which was to foster participation and a love of live showing. 

I know the stated purpose of the Best Customs Contest is “to honor the best in Breyer model horse customizing”, but with just a few tweaks – maybe some of mine, or yours, or someone else’s – we can also do to the Best Customs Contest what was done to the Child/Youth Show.

Instead of making it purely a cash grab for ultra-rare models – which, in turn, creates some rather ugly behaviors – it could also be used as a way to foster participation in and a love for customizing, diffuse some of the toxicity that has built up around the culture of customizing in recent years, and maybe even become the springboard for future Big Name Artists.

In the end, I think that’s really all what many potential (but intimidated) entrants are asking for when it comes to revamping the Best Customs Contest. Great artwork isn’t always about great technique: sometimes it has a spark that transcends it. And almost anybody, regardless of the where they are on the road to being an artist, can possess that spark. 

I’ve rambled enough, I suppose; I’ll be offline the rest of the weekend to watch kaiju films, pull weeds, and play with epoxy. 

Confirmation Bias

I decided to skip out on the online show; I made so much progress over the weekend with all my other projects that I’d rather keep that momentum going, rather than get sidetracked by something else again. Photography is not my strong suit, and I would have obsessed over every single picture…

You know what? I’m skipping out on Santino, too; it’s not that I don’t love the Polo Pony mold, or that I have issues with the base warping (though that is pretty annoying). 

It’s just that I’m still just a tad bit overwhelmed with my leftover BreyerFest inventory. I haven’t even gotten around to getting all of the Johanns from last year (and affordable Bays are nonexistent anyway!)

I am still undecided on the Halloween stuff; I love all the Stablemates and the Classic too – I was not expecting a “Creepy Quagga” concept, and I really dig it! I have a little bit of time to think about those, at least.

In case I didn’t make it clear, I did get a Peanutine during my first pass-through the leftover line at BreyerFest. Mine just happened to be one of the perfectly ordinary ones:

Fortunately I was close enough to the front of the line that there were a few left when I went through, so I was happy to get one, regardless of the color. 

I was thinking about the Peanutine today because I made the mistake last night of watching some YouTube videos, and in spite of my impressive haul, I was still mad jealous at the people showing off Raffle Models, Volunteer Models, or even multiple Volunteer Models. 

This led to an extended internal monologue about what a terrible person I was for even going there in my head. I had to remind myself that for a lot of hobbyists, just getting a Peanutine in the first place would have been satisfaction enough. 

Would more be better? Of course! But sometimes you need to pause to enjoy what you do have and what you have accomplished, and not indulge in confirmation bias. It never ends well.

Final Accountings

I had every intention of going to a farm auction Saturday morning, but I got up and said to myself “Do you really need another adventure this weekend?” We had received an insane amount of rain over the past couple of days, so I had a wee bit of concern about roads and bridges not being driveable, too. 

So I finally (FINALLY!) got around to starting my post-BreyerFest inventory. It’s not completely done because there are a few things I need to make some decisions on. (Keep all three Stagecoach Surprises, or surrender one? Does Nemea stay, or go?) 

Hopefully I’ll be able to get to those remainders dealt with next weekend, and get my online sales started in earnest shortly after that. This week I need to focus on cleaning up the garden, since the rains (and the several hundred pounds of debris that came with them – long story!) did quite a number on it.

I also did the final accounting of my BreyerFest Live placings: 

• Fifth in the Stablemates Collector’s Class
• Sectional Champ: Unrealistic Color, Section 2 (!!!)
• 4 NAN Cards: 1 Breed, 3 Collectibility
• 23 total Flats: at least one of every color!

The flats total is a little deceiving, because some of those ribbons were what I call “pity placings”: low placings in classes with a low number of entries. BF Live is also one of the few shows that still does placings to tenth. Most only do to sixth nowadays. 

If you just counted the placings to sixth, I still got 14, which is still pretty decent, all things considered. Certainly far better than I expected, and better than that show I did last September that still occasionally keeps me up at night. 

I am most pleased by my Gloss Silver Bay Stoneleigh Surprise, who earned me the NAN Breed Card with a Second in a fairly large Morgan class of 45 entries! 

I sometimes take my Collectibility placings for granted, but never Breed. I don’t know if it’s just me and a consequence of my focus and buying preferences, but the judging standards for Collectibility feel less subjective than the ones for Breed. 

Oh, and if it is any consolation to anyone out there about my current run of luck, it’s worth noting that (a) it is highly unlikely I’ll see either one of the Tractor Supply Stablemates Chase Pieces, and (b) my luck on biddable eBay auctions continues to suck. 

What kind of crazy market is this that even box lots of busted up and otherwise undesirable bodies still go for a premium? Gah!

About that: since I was planning on doing some serious customizing soon, I was looking to add a few less desirable bodies to the stash to experiment with. Since I have a rather high rate of failure, I feel a lot less guilty tossing three-legged Hess Classics and Rugged Larks into my free box. Until recently, those kinds of bodies to be cheap, bordering on free...

It looks like I’ll have to make do with what I have, which is probably plenty. Should do an inventory of what I do have, while I’m at it.

Relief, Rather Than Joy

The month of August is continuing to mess with my head; all I will say about the week is that I am very much looking forward to the weekend, as it is the only time I am allowed to get anything done. (And this will be going away sometime in September. Busy season at work and all…)

I also wanted to be clever about this reveal, but since my time is extremely short today, I will just cut to the chase:

You know what was funny about this? When I opened her up, my immediate reaction was not joy, but relief. And frankly, sometimes the feeling of relief is better.

I mean, I am extremely grateful and stunned that I basically got almost everything I wanted out of this year’s BreyerFest (except a Raffle Model). But for the moment, I’m getting more satisfaction over the fact that for the first time in a long time, it feels like things might be going my way. Am I out of that darkly forested section of my life, at last?

My hope is that this eventually translates into something beyond these material totems. But for the moment, pretty horses will suffice.

(FWIW, she does have three or four noticeable factory flaws, but I’ll worry about those another day.)

Showing, Not Telling

So I go away for a few days to deal with some stuff, and this is what I come back to?

Look, I absolutely detest the concept of both-siderism – the notion that in certain arguments and situations that everyone is equally awful – because 99 percent of the time, it’s not only is it intellectually lazy, it is also almost universally untrue. 

But let us all agree that both in-person and online BreyerFest attendees have the capability of being either terrible people, terrible to their fellow hobbyists, or both. 

I doubt there is a solution to the Special Run distribution problem that will satisfy everyone. We can make things better, but we can’t make it perfect. I’d like to think that what I proposed last time isn’t necessarily “the” solution, but might lead to some improvements. 

I am still working on my dissertation on the Best Customs Contest, but technical and work-related difficulties are holding me up yet again, with a little bit of bad weather thrown in. I’m hoping everything is better by Tuesday. 

(Laughs nervously.) 

To compensate, here’s a picture of the model that won me the Gloss RD Marciea Bey at BreyerFest Live this year: my Chalky Dapple Gray Hanoverian, who I bought directly from Horses International way back in 1986!

His name is Counter Espionage: that was his original name when I showed him in the 1980s, and I saw no reason to change it. I had gotten some advanced intel on him before he was officially released, and college-age me thought it was an oh-so-clever play on words.

(Countertops, get it? I know, just terrible....)

Since there are not any local live shows around here in the next couple of months, my heart wants me to enter the Online Open Show, but my brain is telling me otherwise; I’ll wait and see how this week pans out before I make that decision. 

Second Chance Sale 2023

Looks like this week isn’t going to be much different from last week, ugh. Anyway…

Like everyone else, I also participated in the Second Chance Sale. Logged on at 1 p.m. on the dot, dropped the two Arabas I planned on in my cart, saw the Peanutines were still available and dropped a couple of those in my cart too. 

Then (big mistake) I poked around on the sales page for a moment to see if there was anything else I really needed, went to check out, and the Peanutines were cart snatched. The Arabas were still there, so I completed my check out and… that was that.

I went back to see if other “good” things were still left and there were, but since I already had everything else that I wanted, I walked away. The Speos Variant was not a must-have for me, and I was only going for another Peanutine because my herd is woefully deficient in rare Brighties, and just one would have been nice. (Seriously, Brighty collectors be crazy.) 

The only surprise about the sale is that people were surprised at all at the quick sellout. 

Uh, why wouldn’t it?

One: it was both advertised and highly anticipated. Seriously, everybody was waiting for this sale to drop.

Two: They allowed way more participants this year, including Online-only attendees.

Three: Everyone saw how much the Variants are going for, and they are not so rare that a gamble was not worth it.

Four: They allowed people to order up to two of everything, and not just one. 

As far as I know, the whole “But they allowed people to buy whole cases at BreyerFest” thing some people were grumbling about was not a significant factor, because that was only two cases total. (And the gamble the buyers took did not pay off: they did not get the Variant they were looking for.)

I also have a hard time mustering much sympathy for the complaint “But why didn’t they advertise the sale at BreyerFest?” They’ve been having these “Leftover” Sales since the beginning of the Special Run sales in the late 1990s. It’s not something they’ve really felt the need to advertise. 

Part of it is because the sale itself is so fluid: they never know what the situation is going to be like at the end of the event. Will there be a lot of models? Or just a few? Sometimes they limit sales to one per person, sometimes two but they have to be different; this year they allowed two the same. 

It’s true it’s been like four years since we’ve had an in-person Leftover Sale – last year there was a concern about the weather, and the two previous were online-only events – but all you had to do was ask any random Reeves employee. (Or me, same diff at this point...)

The only thing I would have changed in the online portion of this sale is getting rid of the option of buying two of the same item in the same transaction: the models with the Variants in them would have sold out regardless, and the one per customer limit per Special Run would have allowed more to participate in the fun.

I could see them pairing up the “one SR of each type” component with a one transaction per ticket/attendee limit, too. Then if there are any models left after that initial sales deadline passes, then they could have a “Last Chance/No Limits” Sale. Whatever is left after that would then go into Grab Bags. 

And if you didn’t get any of the SRs with Variants in them and only want the originally advertised color anyway, I suspect a lot of those will be up for sale soon, at prices not too far from issue price. I’ll probably be selling my Speos (bought it to help out a friend get the Variant, she got it herself anyway) and at least one (optimistically) of my Arabas for cost plus taxes/postage/etc.

That is pretty much all I have left to say about that matter, depending on the contents of my box....

Gibson and Stuff

This is (not) my week: I have maybe fifteen minutes to spare today to let y’all know I am not dead. 

Apparently there are like a bajillion Special Runs for Tractor Supply? Considering I don’t think I ever saw a single blind bag Stablemate last year, my hopes are not high on seeing any this year, especially if my schedule keeps doing what it’s been doing. 

I might try for the Traditional Belgian “Gibson”: aside from being a vintage mold that I already like, and something I presume will be in much less demand, maybe he won’t be as hard to acquire:

But what the heck do I know, I wasn’t even picked from the waitlists for Oriole. On the Forever Saige mold that all the cool kids love to hate. 

(FWIW, I’ve pretty much given up on the whole “Birds of a Feather” Series, anyway.)

The only complication here is that I could see the mold being popular here locally because of Kirk Gibson. And since getting celebrities to sign models for me has been a theme lately, it gives me notions…

Speaking of notions, I was also curious why I hadn’t seen anything about the Best Customs Contest this year yet – since I’ve been contemplating giving it a go next year, mostly for funsies and to motivate me finish a custom for once – but then I did track down some of the entrants this year, and oh good lord...

I have words, and as you might have guessed, they are not going to be entirely nice ones. 

But I won’t have time for that – to write it, and deal with the fallout – until next week.  

The 1967 Pricelist

Another quick check-in; I had some unamusing, weather-related difficulties which set me back on my project a bit, so here’s a larger-than-average picture (click on it) of one of my favorite BreyerFest acquisitions this year, in hope that it keeps you occupied while I’m still cleaning up my mess:

It’s an original – not a copy! – of the 1967 Pricelist. These things are so scarce that most of us had to content ourselves with copies, or copies of copies, so this is a major upgrade for my archive. I was honestly kind of surprised it was still available on Saturday, when I found it!

1967 was a transitional year for Breyer; many older, long-running releases were discontinued at the end of 1966 to make way for the more realistic and breed-specific molds the market was now demanding. A year later, the first Collector’s Manual would make its appearance, using the same photos and duotone printing technique.

My Life is Weird: Part 1,738

Just checking in briefly to acknowledge my existence; I have a ton of work to do by the end of the weekend, and noodling around on the Internet is definitely not on the agenda.

Oh, and remember what I said last post about:

Do I need to consider buying lottery tickets this week? Hit the casino? Troll eBay at 3 a.m.?

Uhh… if I just bought what I thought I bought, we’re going to have another awkward discussion about that thing we had many awkward discussions about already. Gah! My life is so weird…

To compensate for my obtuseness, here’s a picture of the Volunteer Model I acquired at BreyerFest this year, who is obviously not a Chevaliere and not Stanhope either (though I came closer to getting one than I expected this year; the fact that I had a model on that callback table at all is still blowing my mind):

This is the #711426 Sonnet, the 2006 Volunteer Special on the Big Ben mold that was, for all intents and purposes, a gift from a very kindly benefactor. I didn’t volunteer for the first time until 2007 (which was such a cluster of a year otherwise: disappearing headcase roommates, missing out on one of the best NPODs ever…) and then not again until 2011. 

I’m one of those people who doesn’t generally go out of their way to purchase “gift” models second hand – like Live Show Prizes or Volunteer Models – because the value of the model, to me, is tied to the emotional investment. If I didn’t do anything to “earn it”, I don’t feel like I need it. 

(I was told that I most certainly did “earn” the Sonnet, and happily took him in the spirit that he was offered.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’d certainly love to have some of them (looking at you, Gloss Bravour), but it’s not a high priority. And the way the market is right now, I can’t afford most of them regardless. 

(Seriously, what the hecking heck, people? Where is this pot of money you all are pulling from?)

Blue-debaker

I’m almost completely caught up on my sleep, but the unpacking – especially from Kentucky – still remains undone. It’s going to be a long time before I finish going through all my mostly-probably-crummy photos too. And I have a project I need to finish ASAP…

I am also now thinking that my travel experience might be best expressed in a book form, rather than a bloggy one. It’s a trip – and a notion – that had been with me for most of my life, and I don’t think the experience can be summed up in a few extended blog posts. 

No worries, you’ll get some photos and deets here eventually, especially the Kentucky bits.

The first day back to work after a long vacation always kind of sucks, regardless of your feelings for the job, so I waited until I got home from it to open the most anticipated package on my doorstep: Studebaker. 

I was a little surprised she was actually still available when I got back to the hotel Friday night. While I wanted the variation like everyone else, I thought that after getting the Holographic Uffington a couple years back that another scarce variation was not in the cards for me, at least not for a good, long while:

No. Freaking. Way. 

How did this happen? Do I need to consider buying lottery tickets this week? Hit the casino? Troll eBay at 3 a.m.? 

Speaking of variations, I still might give the Araba another shot during the second chance sale: her conformation issues aside, her variant sports one of the prettiest production run paint jobs I have ever seen. Since my luck seems to be running very, very hot at the moment, it just might be worth taking the shot, credit card bills be damned.

All that being said, I am not terribly pleased by Reeves deciding to apply the term “Micro Run” to these variations. This is simply not acceptable, people: the general hobby consensus on that term is that it applies only to Special Runs of 100 pieces or fewer (give or take a few, particularly when it comes to some of the Exclusive Event pieces). 

Most of the Special Runs released in the late 1970s and the early 1980s were in the 200-piece range, and we never refer to them as Micro Runs. That’s partly because the term is a recent development – the first time I used it on the blog was back in 2014, I believe – and we really didn’t distinguish smaller runs from larger runs back then, regardless. Christmas Catalog SRs (produced in the thousands) and Model Horse Congress exclusives (produced in quantities of 200-300) were both “Special Runs”, plain and simple.

I think it might be useful to coin a new term for this new class of models, but nothing seems immediately obvious. Short Runs? Small Runs? SR Variants?