It should have been a nice day. The weather was perfect, I got to sleep in, Tigers beat the Yankees …
Then I woke up, stubbed That Toe again, lost my last quilting thimble, and discovered a little "present" the dog left behind in the chair (before I sat down in it, at least.) I also got yelled at by several people for things I either didn’t do, or had no control over.
Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the last dream I had before I woke up this morning was a rerun. It wasn’t even one of those that you wouldn’t mind having again - one where you remember how to fly, or fall into a giant vat of Stablemates, or something. It was boring, predictable, and no fun at all.
When even your dreams fail you, you know you’re in for a rough day.
I haven’t gotten my Pamplemousse yet, either. Not that I was expecting it today, but seeing the huge glut of them on eBay and MH$P just made me realize that I’m probably going to miss the window of opportunity for unloading mine in a timely manner. I had kinda-sorta come to the conclusion last week that I had to let mine go - no profit, really, just cost plus postage - but apparently so had everyone else.
(I had intended on keeping him, but the money situation is tight and not going to get better in the short term. Last one in, first one out, etc.)
I should have realized that there was going to be a glut of Pamplemousses. We’ve seen this story before, too: remember the "Limited Edition" series of models that began in 1987 with Precipitado Sin Par? These "Limited Editions" were limited not by quantity, but by time: basically, to the number of pieces ordered in a production year.
Many hobbyists - and most casual collectors - made the assumption that the "Limited Editions" implied future scarcity. I mean, if they were only going to make them for a year, then it’s going to be way more rare than some Regular Run item that runs for a couple years or more, right?
Nope. What actually happened was that Reeves ended up making way more of those Limited Edition models than they did of many of their Regular Runs, based on that assumption of future scarcity. Several thousand more, in fact, if the numbers from an internal document I have from 1992 are true (and I have no reason to believe they are not.) Consequently, most of these Limited Editions aren’t terribly hard to find.
I suspect the same thing is happening with the Pamplemousse: I would not be surprised if Reeves sold significantly more pieces of their final JAH Special than they did of several of the more recent releases. It didn’t hurt that they put it out on a very popular mold, in an attractive color, and upped the potential order quantity to two.
It’s a win-win for Reeves: they sell more models, and won’t get stuck with a lot of warehouse overstock. (There will be some - via bounced checks, expired credit cards, and the leftovers reserved to cover damaged items - but not a lot.) The extras that many hobbyists ordered for resale become the responsibility of the buyer to redistribute, effectively making these buyers micro-dealers.
Nice trick, Reeves. Well played.
I only ordered one, and it’s no big catastrophe if I have to keep him. I’ll just have to find something else to sell in the meantime, until the market absorbs all of the extras.
I think it will; as I’ve said, he’s a popular mold in an attractive color. He may not be as "limited" in quantity as other JAH Specials, but he’ll definitely be more limited than most other Othello releases. Not only that, he does have the cachet of being the last official JAH Special, and that means a little something, too.
Showing posts with label JAH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JAH. Show all posts
Friday, October 7, 2011
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Blue Charcoal, Brown Charcoal
I took a well-deserved day off yesterday. I puttered around the house in my PJs, baked some cookies, got caught up on my teevee watching, and even worked up the courage to restart the biggest, scariest quilt project in my craft closet. (Google "Double Wedding Ring Quilt" and you’ll see what I’m getting myself into.)
I see the Cream and Cocoa sets are starting to ship. Very pretty! The price seemed a little on the high side to me; combined with my ongoing space issues, I decided to take a pass on these two for the time being. If I see them in the NPOD next year I’ll definitely reconsider, in spite of my reservations about the whole "Gloss Smoke" thing.
Ah, such is the power of Gloss Charcoal.
Although I’m not a big fan of online polls - they’re far too easy to manipulate - whenever there have been polls about Decorator colors, Gloss Charcoal always comes out on top, or darn near it. And it’s easy to see why: black is very dramatic, and gloss black? Doubly so!
Such was the selling power of Gloss Charcoal that it continued to be produced even after the transition to Matte finishes ca. 1967. Both the Fighting Stallion and Mustang continued being produced in Gloss until they were discontinued in 1970. And one model, the Running Stallion, was actually introduced in Gloss Charcoal in 1968. (If any of these three models exist in a Matte version, it’s darn rare. Or it’s a test color.)
The color did undergo a bit of a shift, however: later Gloss Charcoals are darker, blacker, and less dramatically shaded than their earlier counterparts. No less beautiful, I would argue, just different. Sometimes I refer to the two different hues as "Chocolate" and "Blue," though the only blue tinge detectable in the later, blacker versions is in comparison to the Chocolates.
As always, I speak in generalities: there are earlier Charcoals that are profoundly black, and later Charcoals that have a definite Chocolate hue. You see that tendency more in the Matte finish Charcoals than the Gloss, and with Family Arabians more than any of the other vintage Charcoals.
There’s even a variation of the Matte Charcoal Family Arabians that are very, very brown, with shocking hot pink hooves. I suspect that they are very late variations, possibly among the last batches produced; all of the ones I’ve seen had the characteristics of models produced in the early 1970s (the mold marks, the trimming idiosyncracies, the painting style, etc.)
I’ve cut back considerably on my variation addiction, but the Matte Chocolate Charcoal Family Arabians are still on my want list. It’s just something about that color combo that tickles my fancy. (I've been watching way too many home decorating shows, I'm sure that's it.) But they've been darn hard to track down.
It’s not that they’re particularly rare, but that they’re Family Arabians. Aside from the condition issues that plague these models, most hobbyists don’t pay that much attention to Family Arabians generally, especially the matte-finished ones (except the Five-Gaiter Sorrels) and don't bother making note of their variations, outside of chalkiness or mane wisps.
The brown variation is also pretty hard to photograph accurately. Here's a Chocolate Charcoal FAS I picked up at the flea market recently; even with some extensive color correction, the brownness of coat isn't readily apparent:
Stand him next to a standard Matte Charcoal, in natural light, and you'd swear they were from completely different releases. But all the hot chocolate in the world isn't making me go outside to take that picture today, nuh-uh.
I see the Cream and Cocoa sets are starting to ship. Very pretty! The price seemed a little on the high side to me; combined with my ongoing space issues, I decided to take a pass on these two for the time being. If I see them in the NPOD next year I’ll definitely reconsider, in spite of my reservations about the whole "Gloss Smoke" thing.
Ah, such is the power of Gloss Charcoal.
Although I’m not a big fan of online polls - they’re far too easy to manipulate - whenever there have been polls about Decorator colors, Gloss Charcoal always comes out on top, or darn near it. And it’s easy to see why: black is very dramatic, and gloss black? Doubly so!
Such was the selling power of Gloss Charcoal that it continued to be produced even after the transition to Matte finishes ca. 1967. Both the Fighting Stallion and Mustang continued being produced in Gloss until they were discontinued in 1970. And one model, the Running Stallion, was actually introduced in Gloss Charcoal in 1968. (If any of these three models exist in a Matte version, it’s darn rare. Or it’s a test color.)
The color did undergo a bit of a shift, however: later Gloss Charcoals are darker, blacker, and less dramatically shaded than their earlier counterparts. No less beautiful, I would argue, just different. Sometimes I refer to the two different hues as "Chocolate" and "Blue," though the only blue tinge detectable in the later, blacker versions is in comparison to the Chocolates.
As always, I speak in generalities: there are earlier Charcoals that are profoundly black, and later Charcoals that have a definite Chocolate hue. You see that tendency more in the Matte finish Charcoals than the Gloss, and with Family Arabians more than any of the other vintage Charcoals.
There’s even a variation of the Matte Charcoal Family Arabians that are very, very brown, with shocking hot pink hooves. I suspect that they are very late variations, possibly among the last batches produced; all of the ones I’ve seen had the characteristics of models produced in the early 1970s (the mold marks, the trimming idiosyncracies, the painting style, etc.)
I’ve cut back considerably on my variation addiction, but the Matte Chocolate Charcoal Family Arabians are still on my want list. It’s just something about that color combo that tickles my fancy. (I've been watching way too many home decorating shows, I'm sure that's it.) But they've been darn hard to track down.
It’s not that they’re particularly rare, but that they’re Family Arabians. Aside from the condition issues that plague these models, most hobbyists don’t pay that much attention to Family Arabians generally, especially the matte-finished ones (except the Five-Gaiter Sorrels) and don't bother making note of their variations, outside of chalkiness or mane wisps.
The brown variation is also pretty hard to photograph accurately. Here's a Chocolate Charcoal FAS I picked up at the flea market recently; even with some extensive color correction, the brownness of coat isn't readily apparent:
Stand him next to a standard Matte Charcoal, in natural light, and you'd swear they were from completely different releases. But all the hot chocolate in the world isn't making me go outside to take that picture today, nuh-uh.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Where's There's Smoke, There's Charcoal
I don't know what's up with the Cream & Cocoa Grazing Mare and Foal Set seen in the the JAH banner ad on Blab, either: my suspicion is that it's an end of the year JAH Special, probably (hopefully?) a Gambler's Choice, like so many of them have been lately.
This is purely speculation on my part: the twist here, I'm thinking, is that you could get any one of four different combos: Charcoal Mare with Smoke Foal, Smoke Mare with Charcoal Foal, Charcoal Mare with Charcoal Foal, or Smoke Mare with Smoke Foal. Four different possible combos, yet only 4 different models total: if you're lucky, you'd only have to buy two sets to get them all.
Breyer did offer these mixed combos before: back at the dawn of Breyer Time (1962-1964, to be precise) you could get mixed Running Mare and Foal sets: you get either get a Smoke Mare with an Alabaster Foal (352), or an Alabaster Mare with a Smoke Foal (351.) The Smoke Mare/Alabaster Foal combo were even used to illustrate the Running Mare and Foal in the Dealer Catalogs back then.
Other combos were available, too, but aside from the Decorators, none of them had unique numbers assigned to them. (If you wanted a “Chestnut” Running Mare and Foal combo, you'd have to write the number 124-134 on your order form, instead!)
Grazing Mare and Foal Sets were briefly available in 1965, and also came with their own unique numbers – 1411 for the Bay, 1422 for the Black, and 1433 for the Palomino – but I have no evidence to suggest they were orderable in mixed combos.
Again, this is purely speculation: with the Cream & Cocoa, they could simply be offering the single set, or maybe just the two different Smoke and Charcoal combos, or whatever. All we've got is a brief, tiny glimpse in a banner ad to go on. I don't know any more than the rest of you on this matter. Heck, the picture is so small, the Smoke might actually be a Honey Palomino! And if that's the case, the “Cream” part of the “Cream & Cocoa” name would make a little more sense.
By the way, there are no true vintage Glossy Smoke models: actually, it's probably better to say that I haven't seen any Gloss Smoke models I could conclusively call authentic. I've seen a handful of Gloss Charcoal models that could possibly pass for a somewhat-dark Smoke, but those are pretty uncommon. It is exceedingly common for a Smoke to be dark enough to pass for Charcoal – common enough that there's often little additional value attached to that variation.
It's probably a little too much to hope that they make the rather nuanced distinction in the advertising between a reproduction of a vintage Decorator color, and a Decorator color done in a vintage style. (And for the record, yes, the VRE Silver Screen Andalusian in Gloss Smoke bugged me a little, too – I don't want hobbyists going off on wild horse chases for models that don't exist. There are enough impossible-to-find rarities out there as it is.)
Ah, well, we'll find out soon enough.
This is purely speculation on my part: the twist here, I'm thinking, is that you could get any one of four different combos: Charcoal Mare with Smoke Foal, Smoke Mare with Charcoal Foal, Charcoal Mare with Charcoal Foal, or Smoke Mare with Smoke Foal. Four different possible combos, yet only 4 different models total: if you're lucky, you'd only have to buy two sets to get them all.
Breyer did offer these mixed combos before: back at the dawn of Breyer Time (1962-1964, to be precise) you could get mixed Running Mare and Foal sets: you get either get a Smoke Mare with an Alabaster Foal (352), or an Alabaster Mare with a Smoke Foal (351.) The Smoke Mare/Alabaster Foal combo were even used to illustrate the Running Mare and Foal in the Dealer Catalogs back then.
Other combos were available, too, but aside from the Decorators, none of them had unique numbers assigned to them. (If you wanted a “Chestnut” Running Mare and Foal combo, you'd have to write the number 124-134 on your order form, instead!)
Grazing Mare and Foal Sets were briefly available in 1965, and also came with their own unique numbers – 1411 for the Bay, 1422 for the Black, and 1433 for the Palomino – but I have no evidence to suggest they were orderable in mixed combos.
Again, this is purely speculation: with the Cream & Cocoa, they could simply be offering the single set, or maybe just the two different Smoke and Charcoal combos, or whatever. All we've got is a brief, tiny glimpse in a banner ad to go on. I don't know any more than the rest of you on this matter. Heck, the picture is so small, the Smoke might actually be a Honey Palomino! And if that's the case, the “Cream” part of the “Cream & Cocoa” name would make a little more sense.
By the way, there are no true vintage Glossy Smoke models: actually, it's probably better to say that I haven't seen any Gloss Smoke models I could conclusively call authentic. I've seen a handful of Gloss Charcoal models that could possibly pass for a somewhat-dark Smoke, but those are pretty uncommon. It is exceedingly common for a Smoke to be dark enough to pass for Charcoal – common enough that there's often little additional value attached to that variation.
It's probably a little too much to hope that they make the rather nuanced distinction in the advertising between a reproduction of a vintage Decorator color, and a Decorator color done in a vintage style. (And for the record, yes, the VRE Silver Screen Andalusian in Gloss Smoke bugged me a little, too – I don't want hobbyists going off on wild horse chases for models that don't exist. There are enough impossible-to-find rarities out there as it is.)
Ah, well, we'll find out soon enough.
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