Silver Linings and Gold Trims

Not that one either:

Even though I wasn’t as emotionally invested in Rodney as I had been the two previous Micro Run online Payment-Raffles – Marshall and Dugan – and I’m stretched rather thin financially at the moment, I still entered every day anyway.

I have the two variations of the Dall Sheep – Gray Horn and Tan Horn – and a nice early example of the original Bighorn Ram itself. But I do not have one of the later Reissues, from which the bodies of this Special Run were likely drawn.

I did at one point, but I must not have found the example I had to be particularly appealing enough to keep. (I didn’t find the “right one”, I guess.)

That makes me 0 for 3 since the switch to the online raffle system for Micro Runs, by the way. Y’all know my opinion on this new system, and since I seem to be in the minority about it, that's as far as I'll go.

In the meantime, on to happier things. Here’s another Traditional Man o’ War. There is something special about this guy – can you see it?

He doesn’t have any gold trim on his halter!

Generally hobbyists are quick to label something like this a Cull, but since this model is otherwise flawless (for a model from the early 1970s), I think he is better classified as an Oddity: the gold trim was the last, or one of the last steps in the decorating process, and it was obviously skipped.

A detail like that could have easily been overlooked, especially if it was the end of the day and/or they had to rush an order out. A lot of times even we don’t notice these subtle mistakes, unless it’s a mold we obsess about – like me with the Traditional Man o’ War, currently.

(Which may have been the reason why I got him so cheap!)

Since he has lighter gray (but not Battleship Gray) hooves, a USA mold mark, and warmer orange-brown tones to his body color, this example is probably dateable to the period from 1970-1973.

He also happened to be purchased from the same collection as that mighty fine Bay Proud Arabian Stallion I recently spotlighted, who also from that same time period.

All Dalled Up

I’ve decided that this month I’m going to devote a little time to shuffling and reorganizing the collection, a shelf or a box a day. It seems a less intimidating task that way, plus it gives me the opportunity to stockpile some photos for future posts and topics.

First up are a couple of "office buddies" who are going back into storage; a pair of Bell-bottomed Shires are taking their place in the desktop rotation:

The #85 Dall Sheep was probably released in 1970, shortly after the Bighorn Ram mold it was based on was introduced; the ephemera of that era is, to be charitable, less than clear on the subject. While the original release of the Bighorn Ram continued in production through 1980, the Dall Sheep was discontinued in 1973.

As you can see, in spite of his relatively short production run, he came in two distinct color variations: Gray, and Tan. The Gray ones seem to be more common than the Tan, but I don’t know to what degree. I’m not even sure which variation came first. There are, supposedly, a few pieces out there that have a mix of gray and tan shading, but I can’t recall seeing one personally.

Even though the Gray one may be the more common of the two, I prefer him to the Tan, if only because blue-gray color of the paint contrasts nicely with his pretty brown eyes, an unusual feature for any Breyer release from the 1970s. It’d be decades before see brown eyes again on any Breyer production piece, Horse or Nonhorse.

Although it’s a relatively uncommon Nonhorse release, Dall Sheep aren’t too expensive or too difficult to find. The only exception to that would be if you’re looking for one with a Blue Ribbon Sticker: the few I’ve seen always ended up a little bit beyond my financial comfort zone.