Whiter Shades

That was a surprisingly productive weekend, especially considering it was only 24 hours long for me. Finally finished that one stupid quilt project that refused to be finished, started another, cleaned out some old financial paperwork, and did a bit of prep work on my taxes!

I know I told myself not to buy stuff this year, but (alas) I relented again. My rationale this time: it was cheap and something I wanted!

He’s the later black-eyed version with not a lot of shading, but he’s snowy white and in excellent condition, other than a couple of small stains and hoof edge rubs. And I got him for about the current cost of an off-the-shelf Traditional.

I’ll still need to get the original pink-eyed “Albino” version one of these days, but I suspect I’ll have to cough up a little more cash for that one. They command slightly higher prices not just because they’re earlier pieces, but because they tend to look a little bit fancier, with the pink eyes and extra shading.

I’ve noticed that regardless of the variation – black-eye or pink-eye – the White Five-Gaiters don’t seem to yellow as much as other White/Alabaster/Albino models from the same era. 

Even back then Breyer was aware of Cellulose Acetate’s tendency to yellow or mellow over time, especially when they used a lot of regrind (reground, recycled plastic). I wonder if they purposefully used fresh CA whenever they manufactured the Albino Five-Gaiter because the yellowing would be just that much more noticeable? 

Or was it the fact that he wasn’t as popular as his Palomino or Sorrel siblings? The Albino Five-Gaiter was discontinued by the end of 1966, while the Palomino stuck around through 1971, and the Sorrel until 1986. Fewer models = fewer models that will turn yellow.

Or with him being one of the fancier paint jobs of the era, maybe the majority of them lived the decorative life in a window?

There is also the strong possibility that it is all just a coincidence and I am reading way too much into it. That happens a lot in historical research, especially when so much of the evidence is lost and we have to deduce things from what was left behind: in our case, the models themselves.

Gaiter Bait

I was very fortunate to get the one model (aside from the Centerpiece, which will never happen ever) I wanted out of the event, the Cremello Five-Gaiter Okeeheelee:

(I only just realized today that the Park he’s named after is… full of ‘gators. Nice one, guys!)

I had decided that this was going to be the year I was going to finally acquire those Gloss Alabaster/Albino and Palomino Five-Gaiters that had eluded me all these years. Especially since all the Saddlebred love now belongs to Hamilton, who appears to have replaced both Othello and Silver as the model on everybody’s BreyerFest Surprise Model bingo card.

(Except mine. It’s going to be a while, guys. Seriously.)

But until I got Okeeheelee, it looked like the year was going to be a washout. I kept missing all the good ones – online, and in person – sometime by minutes. Like most models (and most recently, my Alabaster Proud Arabian Stallion) it looks like I’ll have to bide my time until the right ones come along.

So I was plenty pleased – and a bit worried – when I saw Okeeheelee, sitting there right in that sweet spot in between Albino and Palomino. He was my first choice, and my luck in getting picked near the front of lines is generally not good. The same goes with cremellos, sometimes in the most bizarre ways: it took me a year to finally get the “ordinary” Uffington, because the Holographic Silver just had to happen.

I got so lucky: I was seventh in line! I probably shouldn’t have worried, since everyone was having a conniption over the Bouncer, who would have been my first choice if the Gaiter hadn’t been there.

A few more thoughts about the trip itself…

Three things I miss about Florida:

The weather, obviously. Other than the hurricane part: snow is much easier to shovel than water. I spent a lot of my extended Thanksgiving weekend buried under a pile of blankets. 

Secondly, my friends – or more precisely, getting to hang out with other humans I can have interesting conversations with. And by interesting conversations I mean the engineering of stagecoaches, notable Florida Thoroughbreds, or the differences between Puerto Rican-bred and Colombian-bred Paso Finos. You know, normal stuff.

My family doesn’t really want to hear about the horses anymore (something I’m sure some of you might understand), and all my coworkers talk about are reality shows, football and their hair, three things I could not care less about if you paid me to.

And finally: passing as a reasonably put-together and competent person. I sometimes (okay, often) deal with Imposter Syndrome, and being able to walk around and not feel like a completely out-of-place weirdo was nice. 

I get a little of that at BreyerFest, too – the Imposter feeling, not the not-a-weirdo feeling, because I completely lean into the weird in Kentucky – but as I’m not on Facebook (or even the Internet all that much, lately) I managed to avoid knowing who else was going to be present in Florida (with a couple of exceptions). 

So I walked into that situation without any preconceived notions of how I had to behave or who to expect. Kind of like a real vacation, except with the happy coincidence of some of friends coming along for the ride. (In two cases, quite literally!)

And as I mentioned before, all the freaking out at the CSRs in the days leading up to the event also probably helped.

Time to crawl back under those thick, heavy blankets, and look at seed catalogs. 

The Sorrel Family

Here’s the evidence that I am not totally crazy:

Behold! An entire family of Dark Sorrel Family Arabians!

And here’s the Five-Gaiter that came with the Foal, many moons ago. That was such a deal!

The Western Prancing Horse and Fighting Stallion that I have in this variation are on the lighter side, incidentally. 

The fact that there’s a lot of variation in all of these variations is an excellent argument for the idea that these were not a one-off Special Run items, but things with extended production runs. 

That’s obviously the case with the #114 Bay Western Prancer, who appears to have been made in this variation for most of his production run. 

It’s a little less clear with the Fighting Stallion. Based on the fact that early ephemera pictures depict the Sorrel variation, I think he was made in that variation at the beginning of his production run, but switched over to Breyer’s early version of “Bay” (reddish-brown body with black mane and tail and black hooves) pretty quickly. 

This obviously throws the chronology for Gloss Bay Fighters into question, but I do not want to get into that contentious issue today.

So where does that leave the Family Arabians? Good question! I tend to fall into the “it’s a production variation” camp, rather than “previously unknown/undocumented Special Run”, because two of the other Sorrel variations turned out to be just that: variations, not independent Special Runs. 

The questions then become: when, and for how long? Those, I am not so sure about.

Back to the paperwork!

The Test Subject

While I’ve had my share of fabulous Internet finds, the thrill of actually acquiring one still hasn’t faded after all these years. But it doesn’t feel entirely real until it arrives at your front door:

Initially I thought he was one of that class of models where a production color has been altered in some way, usually with the addition (or more rarely, the absence of) an additional layer of factory paint. You see them every once and a while – Chestnuts turned into Bays, Palominos turned into Buckskins.

One of the more recent Special Runs of this type was Koh-I-Noor, a 2018 Web Special on the Totilas mold that was created from leftover pieces from the 2017 Christmas Horse Winter Wonderland.

There are lots of Test Colors of this type that were created in the 1970s and early 1980s, presumably by employees. I also suspect that the small number of Production Run models that were issued in both Palomino and Bay probably had some flawed Palominos turned into Bays, though I’d classify those more as oddities or variations than actual Test Colors. 

So when I bought this Five-Gaiter, I assumed he was one of that subcategory of models, presumably a Sorrel with added black points (among other things). Even his braids are white and red, just like a typical #52 Sorrel Five-Gaiter.

No, this dude is way weirder than that, and I’m not just referring to the arbitrarily added chain reins. He has a masked blaze – like several Five-Gaiter releases in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Wing Commander – and his color definitely has yellow undertones you don’t see in your average vintage Breyer Sorrel. He also has tri-colored eyes similar to the lizard-like “bi-eyes” that were experimented with in 1995, though more neatly rendered. 

You know who he most reminds me of, though? Releases like the Half-Year Shams in the early 1990s, including the infamous “Green Bay” Sham from the #3163 Arabian Stallion and Foal Gift Set. He has the same gray overspray that’s meant to add depth and shading to the base color, but just turns the entire model a weird muddled shade of greenish-gray, instead.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this guy was simply a model that wasn’t so much designed, but experimented upon. In other words, he’s not a Test Color, but a Test Subject. 

And as such, so much more fascinating to me than fancier, more modern Test Colors. 

Buy It Anyway

You’d think I’d be pretty blasé about just about everything Breyer by now, and by and large I am, but sometimes even I see things that leave me a little stupefied. 

During my lunch break at work last night (a little after 3 a.m. Eastern, in case you’re wondering), I’m noshing on my cheese and crackers and window shopping on eBay, until this mystery pops up on the computer screen: 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165089494902?ViewItem=&item=165089494902

My first reaction was (naturally) What the what?

When confronted with models of a questionable nature, it’s generally a good idea to err on the side of caution. Most things are – or turn out to be – absolutely ordinary items that we misinterpret due to a combination of bad photography and wishful thinking. 

I always shake my head when I see things get priced or bid up to some crazy figure in the hope that it’s something that, to my eyes, it is obviously not. (Chalkies and Glossies, ahem.)

Anyway, I had no idea what I was looking at, but it appeared to be Original Finish, it was located in New Jersey, it was cheap, and the postage was free. All that added up to the right side of questionable to me!

So that’s when I discovered how to do a Buy It Now on eBay as a Guest, because of course I couldn’t remember any of my passwords for any of my accounts, because it was 3 a.m. and I thought I would just killing a little time on the Internet.

I guess this might make up for missing out on that pretty sweet Albino Five-Gaiter a few weeks back? Guess I’ll find out in about a week! 

And even if it isn’t all that, the monetary investment was pretty minimal. I’ve spent more on raffle tickets that have gotten me bupkis. 

The Ones That Get Away

Saying this as an historian is a little weird, but sometimes things are best left as mysteries. I found out the identity of the mystery unicyclist, and my world now feels a little less wondrous than it was before.

Moving on…

As any fisherman can tell you, nothing hurts more than the one that got away.

Just the other day I missed getting a pretty sweet Albino Five-Gaiter on eBay by about three seconds – literally! I went to buy it, and it sold before I could finish the transaction.

While it never rose to the status of a grail, I had always hoped to eventually get myself one. Time, money and – most importantly – condition never seemed to work out for me. Vintage Alabasters/Albinos of any sort are notoriously difficult to find in good condition. 

I had thought that now that the Five-Gaiter has moved down another rung in the Breyer Saddlebred hierarchy – with Hamilton now topping the chart – that acquiring one would get a little easier, but apparently that time has not arrived yet.

As I’ve noted before, vintage Breyer Saddlebred molds are relatively easy to collect: whenever the newest Saddlebred mold arrives, all the Saddlebred molds that precede it tend to nosedive in both price and popularity. There are a few exceptions to the rule – the Decorator Five-Gaiters, Translucents like Banner and Gala, and the G1 Saddlebred generally – but for the most part, you can collect them without bankrupting yourself. 

While I like Hamilton as much as the next hobbyist, I’ll always have a soft spot for perhaps the most common Breyer Saddlebred of the bunch: the original #52 Sorrel Five-Gaiter. I keep hoping that that sweet color of his finally makes it onto one of the Saddlebred molds that came after him. 

Or on anything, really. It’s a vintage color that’s been largely overlooked in recent years. I was pleased to see a more modern adaptation of it debut on the on this year’s Seven Arts Surprise model as a “Sable Champagne” Splash Pinto, but I wasn’t lucky enough to get one. Maybe when the prices settle down in a few more months, I hope?

Anyway, there was a pretty nice Black Pinto Clock Saddlebred/American Saddlebred in the last box lot that I bought. I’ve never been a big fan of the mold – he seems so stiff and posed to me – but he’ll probably be sticking around for a little while as I sort out my sales list. I now have about two years’ worth of sales items littering the house, and I haven’t had an ounce of time to do anything about it.

(And I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but it looks like my schedule might be changing again, so I might have even less time for myself. If that’s even possible.)

The only problem here is that any moderately attractive model that hangs around here for any length of time has a habit of staying, especially if they’re a harder-than-average sell. He had a pretty healthy six-year run in the early 2000s (2001 through 2006, to be precise) so most people who needed him already have him. And I don’t necessarily need him. 

The Naming of Colors

On one hand, I think I’ve finally found the colors on the Eberl Andalusian Mare and Foal that finally do it for me, with the Winter Web Special La Molina and Masella:

But on the other, it is highly unlikely that I’ll ever be able to complete the family with a Duende Benasque. 

Eh, I’ll enter anyway and see what happens. If I get them, great! 

If I don’t, I’ll just sit back and watch the trainwreck that the aftermarket sales will be. Since the piece count is 450 (as opposed to the usual 350) on this set, I’m hoping not very, but I’ve seen some frankly very scary prices on eBay lately so I am not that optimistic.

(In case you were wondering, I didn’t even try for that White Boxer.)

It’s interesting that they appear to have settled on the name “Blue Filigree” for Masella’s color: that seems awfully generic and mundane for a color that glossy, iridescent and color-shifting. 

Unless they come up with something better (Glossy Metallic Heliotrope? Dappled Iridescent Cyan? Purple Monkey Dishwasher? Or my personal favorite: Blue Raspberry Snowcone!) I’m going to keep calling it Benasque Blue. 

There is logic and precedent to this: the “Sorrel” color that originated on the #52 Five-Gaiter is often referred to as “Five-Gaiter Sorrel” when it appears on other Breyer releases. (Yeah, Breyer tried rebranding it in the 1970s as “Honey Sorrel” when they put it on the Bell-Bottomed Shire, but that did not stick.)

Speaking of, I’ll close today’s brief post with a picture of my semi-gloss Sorrel Five-Gaiter with eyewhites who also did nothing at the BreyerFest Photo Show this year. I bought him years ago in a box lot on eBay with a mint Sorrel Family Arabian Foal; this is one of the reasons why I presume that the Sorrel Family Arabian Variations are from the early 1960s, and not the later. 

That’s all for today, folks!

Palomino Hamilton

Since I am basically tapped out, and trying to end the year with as little credit card debt as possible, I passed on the Ambrose.

I had a feeling they were going to drop one more bombshell on us before the end of the year. I’m still sorting out my decidedly feelings about the whole thing, so I am going to talk about another topic I’ve put off for a while: the Palomino Hamilton.

If there’s one thing I’d like to say to the rest of the hobby that would actually get listened to and followed, it’d be: chill out about this Hamilton already, people.

If what happened with the first run of the Collector’s Club Appreciation Glossies is any indication, I think Reeves has the situation under control, and production will be calibrated accordingly: a little more of this, a little less of that, with the Pinto Smarty Jones chase piece remaining the rarest, regardless.

I am not going to worry about it until the middle of the year at least, and possibly not until after BreyerFest, when I presume the bulk of production on this particular Gambler’s Choice run will be concluded. And for those of your afeared that a substantial chunk of those will be going to Dremel-happy customizers, I wouldn’t count out another production item on the mold by the end of 2020, either. 

Seattle Soiree Special? Tractor Supply? Brick and Mortar? Any one of the multitudes of Holiday releases? It’s going to happen, people. Plenty of Hamiltons for everybody, whatever your hobby persuasion!

What I find kind of fascinating about this particular release of Hamilton is that he is an intentional callback to another iconic Breyer release: the #53 Palomino Five-Gaiter!

That release used to be such a cornerstone of many hobbyists’ collections in the 1970s and 1980s along with his brother, the #51 Albino, until the mold’s recent fall from favor.

What was interesting about the #53 Palomino was that it was made well into the “Matte Finish” era, not being discontinued until 1971. As far as I know, it was never officially made in a Matte version – sure, I’ve heard the rumors, but I’ve never actually seen one in person.

Later ones are definitely a different shade of Palomino than earlier ones, though some of that can be attributed to the fugitive nature of the Palomino paint Breyer used back then. (Under normal/average environmental conditions, early Breyer Palominos tend to turn slightly brownish with age, to a more golden honey color.)

But yeah, I am definitely not going to get my dander up about the Palomino Hamilton until I absolutely have to. And probably not then, either, likely because we will be obsessed with another (real or perceived) Reeves marketing flub by then.

Manure Occureth

Just a few odds and ends today; I was prepping my next quilt project and discovered it needed way more repairs than I anticipated....

First, I am not as enamored of the latest Test Color as everyone else:

Oh, he’s certainly pretty, but it’s not my favorite shade of Chestnut. If he was a Black Chestnut, or something similar to the Web Special Muir Woods Gloss Red Chestnut, I’d be twisting arms for more entries. As it is, I’ll just be content with my single account.

Incidentally, the Five-Gaiter was not an uncommon Test Color subject in the 1970s and 1980s; he was a much more popular mold back then, before the arrival of much more elegant Traditional-scale representatives of the breed.

(I still haven’t gotten one yet, but if the opportunity ever arose…)

Some Ollie’s Discount Stores have overstock of the Walmart Series 2 Horse Crazy Gift Collection that featured the Bay Django and Grulla Cob/Tushar. The store that’s within reasonable driving distance to my house, alas, doesn’t appear to be one of them.

(I already have the set: I just wanted to see them in the wild.)

The BreyerFest 2019 Leftovers are up; they’ve been up for a few days, but the announcement e-mail finally went out today. So far it appears to only be the “swag” – t-shirts, bottles, bags, hats, whatnot. No word on the Classics, Stablemates Sets or Store Specials (I think Rico was the only one of the Store Specials actually left over?)

Apparently there’s some consternation about the new Unicorn Foals Zoe and Zander. The banner ad and e-mail notification showed a resist/splatter-dappled pair:

But the web site – and apparently, the actual models themselves – are solid:

This doesn’t bother me that much. In fact, I consider it pretty much par for the course: Breyer has a long history of production models not matching their promotional photos. I think my personal favorite mismatch was the Black Appaloosa Scratching Foal with four stockings. His original promo pic from the 1970 Dealer’s Catalog insert:

Looked for that little bugger for years before finally surrendering! (“as shown” – my butt!)

You’d think that the production process would be more streamlined now, and that errors like this could be caught more quickly and corrected.

This might be true, but the same streamlined process that can catch errors doesn’t mean deadlines don’t get missed. In fact, the possibility of being able to change something at the last minute often leads to changes at the last minute – and inevitably, things still get overlooked.

Or, as one of my favorite BreyerFest t-shirts says: Manure Occureth

Hamilton, and Occam’s Razor

Sorry for my relative absence the past week or so guys – things kind of got crazy there for a few days, and there were some lingering aftereffects from the whatever-I-had last week still causing me some inconveniences.

And consequently all my best laid plans for the weekend went out the window.

Although there was no auction or antique show for me today, I did get a chance to see some pretty horses. But that’s a long story, and time is short today.

Let’s (briefly) talk about another thing that flew past me in the week before and of BreyerFest: the Premier Club Hamilton!

He is lovely and makes me wish I had joined the Premier Club this year. When the first sneak preview picture was making the rounds the weekend before BreyerFest, I took one look at it (below), and the first (and only!) logical explanation that popped into my head: well, duh, that’s a Saddlebred. 

Conceptually, it also made sense because Reeves has slowly been “updating” their lineup, replacing Vintage molds of popular breeds with more modern ones. And no Vintage mold has fallen more out of favor than the original rough-and-chunky Five-Gaiter, who I sometimes refer to as “The Racking Drafter”.

In short: he was due for an update. 

So I was surprised (to say the least) at the number of people contorting themselves into explanations of how it could be... almost anything but a Saddlebred.

Occam’s Razor, people: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Not always, but usually.

I need to stumble into bed here in a few moments, so I’ll close with a photo of one of my favorite Five-Gaiters from my collection, a Sample of the Regular Run CH Sprinkles release I picked up in the NPOD a few years ago:

He’s a Sample because you can tell in person that he’s a he, and not a she. And he is one of my favorites because his paint job is even more amazing in person!

Cap

They’ve teased us with imaginary BreyerFest horses before – remember the Palomino Silver from 2009, and the Gold Ethereal from 2010?

But lo and behold, they’ve actually gone and done it this year, with the Early Bird Raffle Model Cap:

Well, more or less – the initial original promo pictures showed a Matte piece without a pearly mane and tail. These concessions were done, I assume, to gussy him up and distinguish him from previous Light Chestnut/Dark Palomino releases of this Saddlebred mold, beginning with the original piece featured on the 50th Anniversary Clock back in 2000.

Gloss because Gloss, and Pearl because it happens to be the traditional gift of 30th anniversaries.

(And who also, incidentally, one of my favorite characters on Steven Universe.)

You all know that I am not the biggest fan of the Clock Saddlebred mold – I don’t actively dislike him, but given the choice between multiple molds in the same color, it’s unlikely he’d be my first choice. But he looks amazing in this color, which was first seen on one of last year’s big hits at the BreyerFest Benefit Auction, that Five-Gaiter:

I was genuinely surprised that the Five-Gaiter went for as much as it did last year. Outside of the original Decorators, and nicely shaded or Chalky examples of the #52 Sorrel, the Five-Gaiter mold is simply not that popular today.

With a little careful shopping, you can acquire a Woodgrain, Palomino or Alabaster for less than the cost of a retail Traditional! That just boggles my mind, since I’m old enough to remember when the Palomino and Alabaster were absolute must-haves for any Breyer collector.

But such is the power of a beautiful, well-executed color that it can make a mold someone is indifferent to, and make it desirable.

If I am lucky enough to win one (ha!) I would give him the rather pedestrian name of Steve – because as most “true believers” should already know, “Cap” is Captain America’s nickname! And generic enough to get around potential trademark issues.

(That industry can be quite, umm, litigious about such things...)

Worth the Wait

Whoa, yesterday just flew right past me! Like many of you at the moment, I’m pretty much in full panic mode. I’m not sure why; everything is going about as well as can be expected, the car is half-packed, and the various assorted costume bits are coming along just fine.

Habit, I guess? I’m always fearful that I will forget one thing…

Just a couple of Auction lots that can’t pass without comment.

Pearly + Liver Chestnut + Minimal Pinto = this paint job is my everything! A modern reinterpretation of Matte Charcoal, and I’m loving it!

The Gloss Dark Palomino on this Five-Gaiter is pretty sexy too:

Either one of those colors would look good on almost anything. Motor vehicles, Christmas ornaments, household appliances….

I don’t know if the Gaiter will go for particularly big money, though: Five-Gaiters (except for Decorators) are a tough sell right now. Even fairly decent Woodgrains and #53 Gloss Palominos can be had for well under $50.

I’ve been around long enough to see the fortunes rise and fall on most models. Remember when the #465 Khemosabi was all the rage on eBay? When the original release of the AQHA Ideal Quarter Horse, new in box, could guarantee you at least a $150 payout? When a JAH Saddlebred Weanling could set you back $400?

That’s why I try to follow my own tastes and hew closely to my budget. And wait: I literally cannot afford to be impatient.

A good reminder for those of you who might get enraptured by whatever Reeves throws at us next week: unless it’s something you know really is a once-in-a-lifetime chance (like my Gold Charm Man o’ War was) it’s worth it to wait.

Something new and exciting will turn up in a few weeks, or a few months, and suddenly what’s hot will be not. And if you still love it and want it and need it, it’ll be there for you at a better price.

Usually. Not always, but usually.

(This is what I keep telling myself whenever another Stablemate rarity shows up on the open market. Someday you shall be mine, Emperor’s Gold Bar! And it won’t cost me an actual gold bar to acquire you!)

One more comment before I go back to torturing myself with the hot glue gun.

I don’t know where this tidbit of information came from – I am assuming it’s a misinterpretation or misreading of the entry for it in Nancy Young’s Breyer Molds & Models – but there are way more than three Woodgrain Elephants in the world.

Woodgrain Elephants are still pretty rare – not quite as rare, say, as the Woodgrain Polled Hereford Bull or Buffalo, or the Elephant with Howdah, but definitely not something you see everyday.

But it does concern me that that bit of bad information may have had an effect on the outcome of the auction on eBay. (I missed it previously, because I’ve been avoiding eBay the past month or so, because it’s such a huge time suck.)

Well-informed collectors are less likely to overspend.

Dimples

The one actual nice piece from that box of horrors: a mostly lovely Woodgrain Five-Gaiter!

Woodgrains are almost as hard to find as Blue and Gold Decorators in my part of the world, which I find odd; near as I can figure, retailers either didn’t sell them in this area, or buyers weren’t interested. Any time I bring home a Woodgrain that isn’t a Family Arabian or Fighting Stallion, it’s usually cause enough for dancing. Or cake.

I described this Five-Gaiter as mostly lovely: he does have condition issues. Some are the usual minor condition problems that show up with most vintage models found “in the wild”: eartip rubs, hoof rubs, a few high point nicks and dings. Nothing significant or out of the ordinary.

He also has two factory condition issues. The first you can’t really make out in the photos, but his graining coat is slightly pixilated. Basically, that paint/stain was either a little too wet, or the conditions in the factory were just a little bit too humid, causing the paint to bead.

It’s not the same thing as the bubbling that sometimes occurs on Woodgrains, but it is probably related somehow. I’m not planning on testing the theory: I plan on keeping him cool, clean and dry as long as he’s an occupant of this house.

His other problem is a little more amusing:

He has matching butt dimples! More precisely, these are sink marks: indentations in molded plastic that sometimes occur in thick-walled or solid areas of plastic, primarily due to uneven cooling rates. Basically, the plastic starts to cool before that section of the mold is completely filled, pulling it away from the mold wall.

Sink marks are not an uncommon thing to find in Breyer models, especially in the 1970s; just about every Proud Arabian Mare that I ever owned had them on their hooves. Sink marks this big – and matching! – are a little less common.

Both sides of the mold are molded simultaneously, so the fact that they “match” shouldn’t surprise: each side has a similar wall thickness, and experienced the same amount of heat, pressure, and so on. It’s the degree and the placement of those sink marks that surprises, and amuses.

Many naughty euphemisms come to mind. I’ll be good and leave those to your imagination.

Orange is the New Palomino

So crazy here right now - the second collection came in this morning and I’ve been busy cleaning and sorting ever since. Then they changed my work schedule at the last minute, so that leisurely weekend of horse cleaning I was anticipating vanished!

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get some of the better stuff on MH$P by Sunday afternoon, at least. No promises on that.

Both collections came with Palomino Five-Gaiters, both in similar condition (a little beat, but restorable), but completely different in one important respect: Color!

The Honey Palomino one is obviously older, and the Orange one much newer; he’s so "new" that he comes with a USA mark.

The Palomino Five-Gaiter was in production through 1971, and the USA mark was introduced ca. 1970, so one with a USA mark in itself isn’t all that unusual. A scarce and somewhat undercollected variation perhaps - like so many late-in-their-run variations - but not RARE rare. 

The variation in the color is noteworthy, however. As I’ve mentioned before, early Palominos didn’t start out "Honey", they turned that way. The Honey Palomino one above started out life pretty much the same color as his younger brother.

Breyer eventually switched the formula for the Palomino to something less fugitive (less likely to change color) in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Exactly when is unknown, but it’s obvious it had to have been by 1971. That Orange Five-Gaiter has gone through pretty much the same rough-and-tumble life as the Honey one, minus about a decade's worth of time.

But he’s at least 40 years old - and without a hint of browning.

You can see the same phenomenon with the #22 Palomino Pinto Shetland Pony, too. Later Matte and Semi-Gloss examples from the early 1970s are just as bright and cheerful a shade of orange as the one Five-Gaiter, above. I’ve owned enough of those Shetlands - boxed and unboxed, and in every condition from LSQ to body - to conclude that the lack of a color shift is not anomalous, or due to any special handling. The paint was just different by then.

Sadly, I won’t be able to keep either Gaiter; I’ve been looking for a nice one for years, but the timing isn’t right for either one of these pretty boys. Not sure when either of them will be ready for the sales list, though.

Finally, Levi Himself

And here he is, in all his true splash-spotted glory:

There’s been a small bit of controversy about Levi not being an exact replica of the paint jobs and stickers of old. His whites are Chalky or Semi-Chalky, and the sticker refers to "Cellulose Acetate" rather than "Tenite".

I’ll tackle the sticker part first.

The sticker was probably altered for a couple of reasons. Tenite is the brand name of the Cellulose Acetate manufactured by the Eastman Chemical Company. What brands of plastics, and when they were used, is not something I’ve tracked much at all. If Reeves is using other brands of Cellulose Acetate, using the brand name from another company may not be appropriate.

(BTW, different brands of Cellulose Acetate are basically the same, with some minor chemical differences - sort of the way all chocolate chip cookies recipes are nearly, though not absolutely identical. You’d still want to avoid mixing different recipes together because the results might be a little unpredictable, depending on the blend.)

Also, by making the sticker somewhat different from the originals, it removes the temptation to transfer the sticker to someone else.

As far as the Chalky points go, that’s a Vintage feature - most notably seen on releases such as #27 TV’s Fury and the late 1950s version of the Black Beauty Western Horse and Pony.

It seems a little odd to include in a rereleased version of the Appaloosa Mustang’s paint job, especially since I can’t recall ever seeing any Chalky Appaloosa Mustangs.

The first theory that pops into my mind is that it was done to minimize unscrupulous people in the near or distant future from claiming the items as true 1960s vintage.

There may well be some actual vintage Belgians floating around in this color. I don’t know of any, personally, but enough oddball discoveries have been made in recent years that I’m not willing to discount the possibility. (Remember the Gloss Gray Appaloosa Quarter Horse Gelding?)

As I’ve all hammered into your heads, there’s still tons of stuff we don’t - and probably will never - know about the early history of Breyer. Vintage Glossy Chalkies are scarce enough that making that addition to a new Vintage-style release at least seems like a safe bet.

There was one instance of Reeves releasing a Vintage-style item that turned out to have been released before. Though we’re still not sure whether its status was a Test Color, a microscopic Special Run or exceedingly brief Regular Run: the Charcoal Five-Gaiter.

Reeves probably didn’t know about it when they released Rhett in 2001, and I was only familiar with it because I had met the then-only-one-known Vintage Charcoal at a local live show. At the time I assumed he was merely a Test, until another turned up on eBay, which made me think there might be more to his story than that.

A much less elaborate explanation (and thus, more likely) could be this: they liked the way it looked. That was pretty much the explanation they gave us for the Red Bay coloring on the original Traditional Sham, when we protested.

The lack of eyewhites on my Levi doesn’t bother me one way or another. Eyewhites on Gloss Gray Appaloosas were more the exception, than the rule.

Specialness

Wow, so much exciting world in the Breyersphere over the past two days: new molds, new releases, new sculptors, significant changes to the Vintage Club…that I’ll get to in my next post. Partly to digest what I’ve seen, and partly to sort out what I can say about it.

In other more personal news, I finished the collection culling. Sort of. Items have been pulled into and out of various boxes. Roughly 50-75 pieces are strewn about the downstairs and are awaiting pricing, photographing, and the editing of their files from my personal collection database.

All of which will take considerably longer and be a lot less fun than the sorting and reacquainting process. Because getting up to speed with old friends is way more pleasant than updating one’s database and sales list.

One pretty fellow I managed to get reacquainted with was my Chalky Sorrel Five-Gaiter:

Alas, he is not one of Those Chalky Five-Gaiters: an Overpainted Decorator. Nope, he has a U.S.A. mark, so he’s a post-1970 model. I suppose I could imagine that he MIGHT be an overpainted Gloss Palomino, since some of the last of that release did come with that mold mark, but I haven’t heard or seen any evidence of that being the case.

Nor do I intend to find out, because he is otherwise awesome. In fact, he was a regular in my liveshow string back in the 1980s. I doubt he’d do all that well in the ring today, because while he may be Special - a Chalky in Nice Condition - he’s not Special Special like an Overpainted Decorator.

Still, I’m totally okay with that, because he came with a unique and fascinating backstory worth a dozen Decorators.

I found him in a funky little antique/junk shop not far from the Wayne State University campus, in Detroit. I was living on campus, and in my off hours I would wander around the nearby neighborhoods, the kinds that you don’t seen on the national news because they don’t fit the narrative of a dead or dying Detroit.

It was a tiny little enclave of late Victorian homes nestled somewhere in between the University campus and the headquarters of the Burroughs Corporation. All the buildings around it were bland, industrial, and/or deliberately non-ornamental: it seemed almost like a mirage.

In the basement of one of those homes was this little shop, and in that shop I happened to find a few Breyers. I can’t recall if the Chalky Five-Gaiter was there on my first visit, or a later one: I made multiple visits to this place because, as much as I loved visiting the DIA and the main branch of the Detroit Public Library, you really couldn’t buy stuff or strike up a conversation there.

(I had a job on campus, so I did have money to spend on such fripperies. Family was not as thrilled to find new horses hidden in my laundry bag…)

It’s been years since I ventured into that neighborhood; whenever I visit that general area, it’s either to the Library, the DIA, or for work, and none of those places are anywhere near where that neighborhood was.

I’m not even sure if it’s there anymore: there’s been a lot of redevelopment in the area since then, and I can easily imagine it gone. Another junk shop that I used to frequent - the one that the art students frequently raided for materials for their more esoteric projects - certainly is. (Esoteric = boxes of glass eyeballs, old sound effect records from the 1940s, ancient issues of Tiger Beat, etc.)

Part of me doesn’t want to know what happened to it - the shop, the neighborhood, or the people in it. I rather like that little neighborhood as it resides in my mind, and in this horse.

Hiding In Plain Sight

The schedule went all haywire on me again. It was supposed to be a nice, quiet week before the Easter break, but rumor has it that some work policy changes are forthcoming, hence all the last-minute changes.

All I can say is that I am so looking forward to my three-day weekend.

The newest Collector Club Web Special is up and it’s a "chalky blue roan overo" Esprit, named Poseidon. I actually like him, a lot: I love pretty much anything roan, and if any mold can pull off a semi-Decorator paint job, it’s Esprit. I won’t be brokenhearted if I don’t win him, but if I do, he probably won’t be going anywhere.

It’s interesting that the announcement e-mail specifically used the word "chalky" in his color description, as a selling point. They have before - the Clydesdale Magnus comes to mind - but with the current uptick in interest in vintage Chalkies, it did stand out to me.

Chalky prices have been crazy for a while now, but with the recent discussion on Blab about the Decorator overpaints, the market for some of them - the molds used for Decorators, specifically - has really gone through the roof.

(For those of you who are not familiar with them, they would be: the Five-Gaiter, the Running Mare, the Running Foal, the Fighting Stallion, and the Mustang.)

As more collectors hold their Chalkies up to a strong light (literally), more are being revealed. I’m now comfortable with saying that it appears that a significant chunk of the unsold warehouse stock of Decorators was probably "chalked" into other, better-selling colors.

Not all Chalky Gaiters, Running Mares and Foals et al should automatically be assumed to be overpainted Decorators: only the ones without the USA mark have that potential. And the solid colors (Golden Charm, Wedgewood Blue) will be harder to discern in the light than the dappled ones (Florentine, Copenhagen).

I have always wondered why the vintage Decorators were so gosh-darned-it rare, especially when other models from the 1960s with similarly short production runs aren’t quite as hard to find. A nice #191 Gray Bucking Bronco, for instance, can be tough, but not on the same level as almost any given Decorator.

I just assumed that the rarity was a consequence of just how badly the sales did tank. Not entirely: it now appears that Breyer made a concerted effort to make their first dismal foray into the home decorating market disappear, almost completely.

I do have a Chalky Five-Gaiter in my herd; alas, like most of my other Chalkies, he’s in storage somewhere. I haven’t run across him yet in my current culling, mostly due to (again) the time issues. He used to be quite a dependable little show horse for me back in my live showing days. It would be absolutely hysterical to me if he turned out to be a Decorator, too.

Whether he is - or is not - is not going to be found out this weekend. Too much other stuff to catch up on. Like my taxes - and my sleep.

Commander

I feel like such a bad model horse mama. 

I can’t believe it took me this long to finally open up my Vintage Club Commander. The box got tucked up in the blind spot underneath my desk, and I almost completely forgot about him. I’ve been selling off a few odds and ends on eBay - nothing worth mentioning, just the kind of stuff that doesn’t seem to sell elsewhere - and as I was shuffling boxes around, I noticed his.

I had seen some comments here and there about his color being just a little bit off, and after having him sit on my desk for a few days, I think I can see it: mine definitely has a rosy tinge to him. Most vintage Smoke paint jobs have more of a blue-ish cast.

Reeves did try to distinguish the hoof color from the body color: early gray hooves (on all models that sported them) were black-based: black pigment, watered down. So, good for them for noticing that little detail.

Smokes and Charcoals, however, were not black-based - at least, not entirely. They both had a little extra "color" added to help distinguish them from each other.

Early Smokes, as I mentioned above, tended to have a blue tint: if anyone out there is a rock hound, think of the natural blue-gray color of slate or shale. Early Charcoals - until the late 1960s - had a definite brownish cast; early Mission Supply House and Red Bird sales fliers even went so far as to  describe the color as "Charcoal Palomino". It’s a term I believe originated with an as-yet-undiscovered Breyer price list or flier, and has also led me to speculate in the past that the color might have been an early attempt to recreate the color we now know as "silver dapple".

In the late 1960s, Breyer Charcoals switched to a more blue-ish (or at least, less brownish) tone, with the exception of some very late (possibly the last run?) of the Matte Charcoal Family Arabians, who are a distinctive dark chocolate brown without even a hint of black pigment on them.

Those late Charcoal Family Arabians are so different from the earlier Charcoals - even their hoof color is a near-fluorescent pink - that I’ve often wondered if they possibly might have been a Special Run of some sort. (I have no evidence of this, beyond the color being so off-spec.)

The shading is really nice on Commander, and they’ve managed to get most of the little details right - it’s just that the color is just a little bit off. I would have gone with a different ribbon color, too, but I’m just nitpicking at this point.

Back in the Saddle

I've had some modest success on the thrift store circuit over the past few days. No horses worth buying, but I did walk away with a couple of good books, a stack of quilting stencils and a "new" iron. (We go through irons in this house like other people go through disposable pens. Makes no sense to buy them new.)

Actually, it was a bit of a relief that I didn’t find any horses or whatnot. I haven’t had much time to even inventory the sales stuff I got back in December. Plus, I was a bit bummed to find out that the "big ticket" item in that lot turned out to be body quality. I’ll still make money (eventually) but dang it, it’s always something!

Of course, right after I say "they haven’t posted any new news" about BreyerFest, they go and post something on their blog about the live show. Not of direct interest to me, but news, nonetheless.

Although I’ve been something of a critic of the BreyerFest live showing program over the years, I will give Reeves credit for taking the effort to actually promote and recruit that aspect of the hobby, because the hobbyist-based organizations certainly aren’t doing the job.

You got problems with fundraising, volunteering, trust, infrastructure, recruitment and just about everything else, but what’s the big heated debate on NAMHSA-Discussion? How many awards we can give each other at NAN!

Good grief, has anyone in this hobby ever heard the phrase "like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic"? That’s what that is.

It makes all that snide snarking and carping about every move Reeves (or even Peter Stone) makes or doesn’t make seem rather hollow. "Build it, and they will come" is a movie catchphrase, not a legitimate marketing plan.

In other live show related news, there’s actually one of those Liveshow Benefit Program shows (now with Zuni!) within a reasonable driving distance of my house. (Reasonable driving distance = less than three hours one way.)

It actually made me stop and think about attending for about five minutes, until I realized I would not be a very good entrant. Most of my stuff would fall under the banner of collectibility, and well, I could see myself getting into a mess of trouble with that. There’d be the THAT’S NOT GLOSS, THAT’S SEMI-GLOSS, argument, then the THEY MADE MORE THAN 200 BUCKSKIN LADY PHASES, YOU NITWITS discussion, or the THAT’S THE 1988 VERSION OF THE SR, NOT THE 1980 meltdown …

Good grief, I never expected to turn in the model horse world’s version of Rich Morrissey:

http://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col346/

(Short version: guy knew everything about comics, and then some. I knew him, slightly, during my APA days. A wonderful font of obscure information, but also sometimes rather intimidating. To me, anyway, a mere dilettante in that field.)

I just got a shipping notice for Commander, so he’s next up on the blog post queue.

The Luxury Of ...

My schedule is finally returning to (what I would consider) manageable and/or normal.

The second week of the chaos wouldn’t have been so bad if just about everyone in the district hadn’t come down with some sort of nastiness or another: for a while there I thought I was, literally, going to be the last person left standing.

(A rather high percentage of people I work with, alas, do not believe in things like coats, gloves, hand sanitizers or vaccinations. And don’t even get me started on dental hygiene! Sigh.)

It’s going to take at least a couple days to get my circadian rhythms back to normal, though, so it might be a few more days yet before y’all start hearing from me on an individual basis.

Thankfully, nothing particularly model-horse newsworthy appeared to have happened over the past several days, other than the notice about the Vintage Club Commander shipping. (Note to self: add "need to pay for this ASAP" on list of things-to-do.)

Just because he wasn’t my first choice/voting choice doesn’t mean that I am any less enthused about the prospect of his arrival. I am not one of those mold snobs that only prefers a handful of models, or the sculpts of just one or two mold designers.

There are certain molds and sculptors I like more - or less - than others, but I don’t go out of my way to insult them, or browbeat the aficionados of molds on my "less favored" list. (Well, maybe the Silver, a little. Nearly 30 releases in 10 years? Enough already!)

I’m sure several of you can immediately call to mind certain individuals who seem to have made it their hobby life’s work. They think they are being clever, when in fact they come off as "mean girls".

I’m not saying that they necessarily mean girls in real life - I know for a fact that many of them are not. But so much of who you are is defined by how and by what you choose to express yourself about on the Internet that what you are in "real life" is becoming almost irrelevant nowadays.

(Another reason why I don’t "do" Facebook: I’d like to think of my friends and cohobbyists as something greater - or better - than the sum of the thoughts they express there.)

Some Breyer models are not designed specifically for you, or by you. Some of us have had that luxury, but most of us will not. Buy what you like, don't buy what you don't like. There's no need to stress out over what other people like. Or dislike.

(Yes, I struggle with that, too. We all do.)

I have a fair number of Five-Gaiters. Not a lot of the rare and/or desirable ones - none of the Decorators, no Woodgrain, Alabasters or Tests. Not even an Albino/Alabaster, or a decent Palomino. (Partially melted. Long story!) But I am rather fond of my early, semi-gloss Sorrel with the gigantic eyewhites. Such a purty boy!