At Last, an Elk

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I have been campaigning for a Special Run Elk forever. At last, my wish has been granted, with Inari!

As for his name, “Inari” refers to the largest municipality in Finland, located within the heart of Finnish Lapland. It is also where they also hold the Reindeer Championship Race.

Yes, an Elk is not a Reindeer, but close enough is good enough for me.

And points for Reeves for making the BreyerFest Nonhorse Special Run actually kind of on point to the “racing” theme, in contrast to the two previous announcements – the Saturday Raffle Horse Woodford (on the Shannondell) and the Mare and Foal Set Julep and Pim (on the new Traditional Lipizzan Mare and Foal).

Mind you, I think both of those releases are quite beautiful – and if I somehow win a Woodford you’ll have to pry him from my pasty white hands – but it’s painfully obvious that they’ve gone out of their way to make these new molds fit a theme they are not designed for.

When you have a more nebulous concept with few obvious mold choices – like last year’s “India” theme – you can pull that sort of thing off better. But trying to sell a Draft Horse, a couple of Lipizzaners and an Andalusian as part of a racing theme?

Seriously, guys? I know you’ve got a business to run and hot new molds to promote, but you could try to be a bit more subtle about it?

Off the soapbox, and back to the Elk. (Who is now penciled in on top of my buy list for BreyerFest, if you haven’t already figured that one out.)

The Elk mold has had only two previous releases: the original #77 that ran from 1968 through 1997, and the #396 Rocky Mountain Elk that ran from 1998 through 2005.

Until now, Fans of the Elk mold have had to content themselves with variations of the original #77, and his 29(!) year run provided a few. Although the color didn’t vary a lot, it did vary: earlier examples are definitely lighter and browner, while later examples are redder and more chestnutty. Early Elks sometimes came with Blue Ribbon Stickers, and lack the USA mold mark. Pieces made near the end of its run (in early 1997) came with those mildly creepy, experimental bi-eyes.

Inari gives me hope that the Silver Charm Elk of my Christmas dreams might just come true. Then again, a lot of us are still waiting for a Holiday release of the Zebra mold after the BreyerFest release of the Caves of Lascaux back in 2015.

So I am not getting my hopes up, yet.

Elks Club

Almost caught up on the sleep, almost finished unpacking, and I just did a preliminary inventory of what I brought back.

In short: not much! My sales list was basically cut in half – and my pre-BreyerFest sales list was over six pages long!

I was genuinely surprised that I sold that much – including every single body I brought (all 43) So for the first time in a while, my trip was completely, utterly revenue-neutral. Yay me!

Other than the Man o’ War, I didn’t buy all that much beyond the Store and Line Specials. And even a few of those will probably be heading out the door soon; the only Samba Surprise Esprit I was interested in was the Decorator – Glossy or Matte, it didn’t matter – and I ended up with a Matte Palomino. Although it is actually the scarcest of the non-Decorator Mattes, it was the least interesting one for me, so he’ll get rehomed in the near future.

One of the few pieces I brought home that will be sticking around is this handsome Red Chestnut variation of the Elk, shown here with his older (no USA mold mark) and more brownish cousin:

Like my Chestnut Buffalo, this Elk is a late, probable end-of-run variation. I had been looking, half-heartedly, for this particular variation on eBay, but I was hesitant to pull the trigger and buy one due to my budget.

Until I sudden found myself at BreyerFest flush with cash, and in the presence of one nice enough to spend it on.

I was not alone in this assessment. He actually had to hide behind a curtain in our room for a while, as a stunning number of shoppers walking into our room made grabby hands in his general direction.

Vintage Breyer Elks generally sell pretty consistently online and offline, but even I was a little taken aback by how popular a fellow my guy was this year. I guess I shouldn’t have been, though – one of my first sales at BreyerFest this year was a (slightly) bloated Elk out of my Body Box. (Not the strangest thing I have ever sold at BreyerFest, but definitely up there.)

So Reeves, if you’re reading, I really hope you are considering an Elk as one of your Christmas Web Specials this year (or next – I can wait). I can personally attest that there’s definitely a market for him.

Scary Christmas

This is what we have to resort to in order to have a Christmas tree this year:


Everything (except the fort) is made from felt, fabric or gold lame. We may eventually replace the deck furniture with some picket fencing or that plastic lattice you put under your porch to keep the groundhogs out, so we don’t have to spend out days chasing the canine version around the house with her latest treasures.

Speaking of Christmas, here’s your "Scary Christmas" craft item for the year, from my vintage craft archive:


It's Frosty’s Cousin Slushy!

It’s from an otherwise tasteful book of simple, understated holiday craft projects called Christmas Magic, written by Margaret Perry, and published by Doubleday in 1964. I had high hopes for the book when I picked it up last year at the local book sale - if they thought a drunken snowman with a mace was worth putting on the cover, it had to be good, right? Alas, nothing else in it was quite as frightening. Bummer.

I started listing more stuff on MH$P this week, again; more average stuff, nothing especially noteworthy. Then again, their lack of spectacularness just might make them stand out. How many people are selling their Thrillseekers and Fall in Loves, anyhow? I understand needing to make a quick buck around the holidays, but the odds of selling aren’t so great when you’re competing with 15 to 20 other identical items.

(I’m still mulling over the right way to sell all of my extra bodies. I might just list most of the less trendy/correct ones together and have people mix and match their own assortments.)

I suppose I should have something a little bit Breyer and/or history related here, for a change. So here’s something that's also vaguely Christmas-y, a nice old Breyer #77 Elk:


This example is actually quite early; he lacks the USA mold mark, which means he’s from 1968 or 1969. That’s pretty much the only way you can distinguish an early Elk from a later one, unless you’re lucky enough to find one with a Blue Ribbon sticker. The paint job on the original release of the Elk, which ran from 1968 through 1997, didn’t vary much. Earlier ones tend to be a little more brownish, and later ones a bit more reddish, but neither the variation nor its correlation with age is strong enough for most collectors to bother with.

His giant rack doesn’t help, either. Like the Moose or the Longhorn Bull, he’s another one of those models that eats up way too much valuable shelf space.

I put off getting an Elk for several years, hoping I’d find a nice, cheap one at the flea market eventually. Despite the model’s long run, though, I never did find one at a suitable price or condition there.

I found the Elk of my dreams on - where else? - eBay.

In a fit of boredom or curiosity one day, I started clicking on Breyer Elk auctions, and happened to find this fellow - complete with a detail shot of his mold mark, sans USA. Normally I make fun of eBay listers who post mold mark shots, which I usually mock as the sign of a Breyer amateur. (Silly peoples, most of us clicking on the auction don’t need no mold mark shot to tell us it’s the real deal.)

In this case, it was actually helpful, since it provided me the one real clue to his true age. He didn’t have a sticker, but that was his only real negative. The price was right (very cheap) as was the condition (very near mint.)

You know, come to think of it, I still haven't found a whole lot of Elks at the flea markets around here, since then. Interesting.

Cobbler, not Scones

Up until Thursday night, I had a leisurely Saturday all planned out: bake some scones in the morning, write a long, detailed blog post in the afternoon, and then an evening finishing up a couple of small sewing projects that I’ve allowed to drag on just a bit too long.

Nope, nope and … nope. Sigh. The scones are going to have to wait. Hope you don’t mind the quick little cobbler I’ve thrown together today.

If you’re doing another Appaloosa Connoisseur model and you’re going to go with a "Great Artist" theme, the guy who did the spotty-dotty thing was Seurat, not Kandinsky. It was Kandinsky’s friend and contemporary Franz Marc - cofounder of "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider movement) - who had the larger fondness for horses. Google "Franz Marc" and "Blue Horses": you tell me that a big-butt Belgian in the same shade of blue as the "Big Lex" would not be an absolutely perfect addition to this series.

I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the idea: I doubt they’d go for two German Expressionist artists in a mere four-horse series. (How about the Traditional Zebra painted in a primitive bay or dun, as a Lascaux Cave horse? Too obscure?)

This is no knock on the winner, but the winning entry for the Diamond Dreams Contest was almost exactly what I imagined it would be. Most of my fondest - or best - model horse memories involve fires, plane crashes and celebrity cameos: more like a Nicholas Cage movie, than a Hallmark Special. My live hasn’t had all that many Hallmark moments. (It’s not a knock on Hallmark, that’s just how my life’s turned out.)

I do have one story with a talking animal … no, that one wouldn’t have worked, either.

I think most of you know my opinion about events like the Sunshine Celebration down in Florida: they’re contrary to the spirit of egalitarianism that helped build the hobby. Having a super-exclusive event with super-exclusive horses that the same handful of people go to every darn time is a bad thing.

I wish they would stop doing them, but it apparently makes them enough money, and strokes the egos of the right kind of people. I’ve been studiously avoiding adding my commentary to all of those discussions, because I’m just too tired and distracted to deal with the ensuing Kabuki theatrics.

It looks like the "Oven Mitt" Horse really is the 2011 Holiday Horse. Some hobbyists are using it as another reason to Breyer-bash, but really, it’s more funny-bad than bad-bad. No matter how much thought or effort you put into something, every once and a while you’re going to end up with a first-class turkey.

Speaking of Breyer and Christmas, look what I found in The Spirit of Christmas, Book Four (published in 1990, by Leisure Arts):


If Reeves was looking for something a little bit different in their Holiday offerings, they could do worse than to offer a Santa on a Reindeer. Add a little dressy, carousel-inspired tack, a Victorian-inspired Santa with a sack full of (preferably non-candified) treats, and there you go. And if they really wanted spice things up, every ninth one would have a red nose (the Elk, not the Santa.)

FYI: the creepy brown thing next to the clock is supposed to be a gnome. The book includes a pattern for it, if you're the kind of parent inclined to dement your children's holiday dreams.

(And it's not even the scariest thing in this alleged holiday idea book. Two words: Santa Moobs.)