Sharing is Caring

Although I think I am through the worst of the cold, I have to say that I am very sick of being sick. The past two months have been plagued by insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, back pain and (this week) a nasty cold. 

I am trying to accept it as a slow-motion system crash and hoping that once the cold has run its course, the rest of the year will be both painless and productive. (The heating pad I bought for my office chair gets to stay, though. Why didn’t I buy one of these before?)  

As it is right now I barely have the energy to open up my mail when I get home. So many tempting packages sitting at the foot of my bed; I may just end up saving them all for Christmas anyway.

The Collector’s Club Appreciation Sale sold out a little faster than I anticipated; my guess is that there were fewer pieces available than I suspected. I wasn’t tempted – too much stuff here people, way too much stuff – but looking at the Traditionals they now have in production, I fear I might bite the bullet next year: Mojave, Zorah Belle and Mooney? I’d be delighted with any one of those in gloss!

I am a little bummed that they’re returning to the mini-display boxes with the Stablemates Club releases next year; I much prefer the eminently reusable two-piece cardboard ones myself. It’s not going to affect the status of my membership. Which I need to renew sometime soon…

Since mobility is still a little bit of an issue for me, here are a few brightening up my very cluttered desk. First, the BreyerFest Horse of a Different Color Dada:

There’s nothing particularly special about this one: I just think he’s a neat little guy and he makes me smile. (As does the art movement that inspired him!) Second up is a NIP Buckskin Quarter Horse Mare with the MEXICO mold mark:

I already had loose examples, but I had been wanting a New in Package example for ages, and she just happened showed up on eBay at an extremely reasonable Buy It Now price earlier this year. Contrary to popular opinion, MEXICO-stamped Quarter Horse Mares are not all that rare, but Vintage NIP Stablemates are definitely a thing right now, especially in this fine of a condition. She was included in my Stablemates Collector’s Class Entry at BreyerFest that took Fifth Place.

And finally, one of the customs I had been working on, before I decided to go all-in on quilting for the rest of the year:

Yup, good ol’ Mesteno: The Messenger! I took him up as both a companion piece to the Mesteno’s Mother custom that is also still languishing on my work table, and as an even more extreme artistic challenge. 

He was the experimental piece that ended up in my BreyerFest Free Box, but I either came to my senses or lost them again, and fished him back out. He still has lots of problems that I probably won’t get around to fixing until Spring, but I am rather pleased at my progress, and wanted to share with the group. 

(His tail is just loosely taped on; it won’t be reattached until I’m finally happy with the resculpting.)

Vacation Plans

Another cleanup day here. First, a couple of customs I’ve been fiddling with:

My problem when it comes to ambitious customs like the Mesteno’s Mother is that I never know when to stop. Will she fall to the same fate as many of my other experiments, like the Quarter Horse Gelding I tried to turn into a Suffolk Punch? I have no idea.

The Classic Quarter Horse Mare – who was that bad, but earnestly done custom I found at a Salvation Army years ago – required less work to get to this stage, but I’ve been doing an insane amount of tiny tweaks on her. Most of them to fix mistakes the original customizer made (like floppy ears, and divots in her butt!)

Second I couldn’t muster up a lot of enthusiasm for the latest Birds of a Feather Web Special Sparrow. I mean, she’s pretty, but there have been a lot of pricey and hard-to-obtain Croi Damsha releases lately, and a Chevaliere doesn’t look likely either. I will not be troubled much if I don’t get her.  

(Though it looks like prices on the Christmas Spice Drops have been dropping, and the Green and Red ones I prefer are the less desirable ones, hmm….)

Most of my free time has been spent getting caught up with my vacation prep – Kentucky and Wyoming will be back-to-back, incidentally, though I’m still working on some of the particulars. 

I decided to go ahead and do a couple of Collector’s Classes at BreyerFest Live. I will probably regret it – I am not a big spender, nor is my luck particularly keen – but since the opportunity is there, and judging at that show is notoriously quirky, it was worth the modest entry fees. 

(Believe it or not, even back in “The Good Old Days”, I never actually won a Collector’s Class. It was all about the Decorators and Glossies back then, and I did not have much of either.)

My BreyerFest sales list is being challenging because, in spite of the fact that I haven’t really bought all that much in the past year, I still have way too much to fit in the car again. I sold so much stuff last year, how is that even possible? 

While I am at it, I might as well tell you my vacation plans for next year, since it’s also horse-related and there’s a slim chance someone out there might be able to help with this one:

I want to go to the Kentucky Derby. 

I’ve never been (no, really!) and it being the 150th Anniversary, well, just makes me want to go even more. Ticket sales are going to be insane, I know, and my odds of winning a chance to buy tickets are about as likely as me winning a Test Color Web Raffles. (Which has been never, so far.)

But I owe it to myself to at least try. 

A Momentary Idyll

I am now in full Sampler panic mode, so outside of watering and varmint-trapping*, I now have to bid my garden adieu for the next week and a half. Which is a shame, because my Superbissima Petunias are starting to bloom:

On the plus side, the “use customizing as a creative distraction” plan seems to be working out for me. Here’s the current project, on the Mesteno’s Mother mold:

Looking good (and her head is not nearly that gigantic in person. I am a terrible photographer, etc. etc.) I just need to make a couple more minor cuts and bends, then it’ll be onto the “tin foil and super glue” phase. Then do a little more carving out in spots before I break out the epoxy. 

My goal with this piece is to make modest customizations, mostly to correct some of the more distracting conformation issues, but still keep her recognizable when I’m done. I also want to keep as much of her hair as possible, because that’s really what makes a Mesteno mold a Mesteno mold, for me. (That gigantic forelock had to go, though.)

I haven’t had much opportunity lately to be creative just for the joy of it, which is also why I pulled a Mesteno mold out of my body stash first. If any Breyer equine molds can be described as almost purely artistic pieces, it’s them. 

(The Modernistic Buck and Doe are their own thing entirely.)

I have no illusions of making her a competition-worthy piece. I just want to see what I can do with it. And bonus – anything I try after this will seem easy in comparison!

Anyway, the BreyerFest program is not only out, they’re offering us the opportunity to purchase a hard copy, which is great. I’m not saying that as a person who obsessively saved ephemera: documentation is the very foundation of the hobby, informing almost every aspect of it. Whatever you do, you need tons of reference materials, books, documents, photos, and file folders of stuff. 

They’re also slowly releasing photos of the Test Color auction items, but I’m mostly going to ignore them: that’s way too rich a game for me. 

I purchased my first Test Colors all the way back in 1985; the most expensive one was this little fellow, who cost me the princely sum of… twenty dollars:

That was about the price of a decent, moderately-in-demand discontinued item back then, so it was not outrageous. Though it must be noted that I did pay seven dollars apiece for a Dapple Gray with Black points Proud Arabian Stallion and Mare at the same show (Model Horse Congress), and less than that for the Test Colors I pulled from the Bentley Sales Company sales boxes. 

So I guess he was kind of expensive for me, at the time? 

Anyway, he’s not terribly showable, though I think he did a placement at the BreyerFest Live Show last year because he is certainly eyecatching. I kind of wish Marney – or whoever “finished” him – had gone the extra mile and painted his mane and tail black. Then again, Hess’s Stock Horse Family in general don’t get a lot of second looks these days, unless they happen to be heavily customized. 

Incidentally, I have a pretty messed up Standing Stock Horse Foal in my body box that just might be my follow up to the Mesteno. First things first, though…

*Local groundhogs treat our garden shed like a time-share.

2018 TSC Roundup

Briefly stopped by the local Tractor Supply earlier this week, and got a good look at all the 2018 Special Runs: the Jasper, the Boone, and the Classics Mustang set featuring the Charging Mesteno and the Frolicking Foal.

The Jasper (Desatado) was very nice, but still didn’t impress me enough to buy one. I don’t think Glossiness or Chalkiness would have changed my opinion: it’s the mold, not the color.

I liked the Boone (Cody) more than I thought I would: the color was softer and lighter than I imagined – almost a Perlino Dun – and I liked the Pinto masking on him better than on his big brother Salpicado. They did a very rough-edged style of masking on the Salpicado that I assume was an attempt to simulate the feathery edges you see on some sabinos, but I don’t think it was entirely successful.

The Mustang set intrigues me. The Charging Mesteno mold hasn’t seen much use at all – I think the last time we saw him was nearly ten years ago, on one of the Walmart Mustang sets – and I honestly don’t know why he has been so scarce since.

I can kind of understand why the lumpy-bumpy “Old Man” Mesteno hasn’t been put back into production since his initial release in 1996, but the only thing I could see being an impediment for the Charging Mesteno mold is, like the Nokota Horse, the size and shape of the mold might make it difficult to package him?

I do like his color; it’s very similar to (though not the same as) the Balking Mule Test Color that appeared in my dreams early this week. I also love that they used the Snowcap Appaloosa pattern on the Frolicking Foal: you know me and my fondness for the “less attractive” Appaloosas!

Though I was surprised – and quite pleased – that the Few Spot True North was the second highest moneymaker at the BreyerFest benefit auction this year. It’s reassuring to know that my tastes aren’t quite as “out there” as I assumed, and that the auction results may improve the odds of a more available/affordable release in the future.

There was also another Django in their latest batch of Mystery Stablemates at this TSC too, but since I’m having a hard time selling stuff I already have in the stash, I didn’t feel like I could justify bringing home another to resell. I’ll let someone else have the job of that surprise.

I didn’t bring anybody else home either. The usual excuses: time and money.

Common Praise and the Walmart Mestenos

Some sad news on the passing of Rowland Cheney, best known in our corner of the world as the sculptor of Breyer’s Mesteno series:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lodinews/obituary.aspx?n=rowland-hal-cheney&pid=175193846

I had seen the story on the news about the plane crash; I had no idea that it would later turn out to be model-horse-related.

The Mestenos were not received warmly when they were released in the 1990s, but they’ve grown in popularity since then. A lot of that has to do with their wide availability and the wealth of fascinating (possibly experimental?) colors they were issued in as a part of the Walmart Wild Mustang Series.

As hobbyists, a lot of us get caught up in tracking down the oldest, rarest, weirdest and prettiest things, when it is common-as-dirt models like the Walmart Mustangs that are the real foundation of the hobby.

We start collecting with what is available at hand, and what is available is usually the most common of any given item. That’s just how the odds are: if there’s 490 pieces of one, and 10 of another, you’re simply more likely to find the former than the latter.

Sometimes we get lucky and stumble across the rarity, but often we only find out about it in retrospect. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought something at the flea market because – ooh, it’s a Breyer and it’s cheap! – and a few days or weeks (or years) later I discover that it’s something else – in happy cases, something even better.

Actually, when I’m out horse hunting, I like to think of every model I run across as unique, and in possession of a special and/or secret history. If the price is right and it doesn't seem particularly rare, that's generally my rationale for buying it. 

If it sticks around long enough, I’ll either discover that history – or by staying here a while, add to it (via provenance).

Time to get back to the BreyerFest prep.

The Thing Inside

Looks like everyone else in the hobby did their math, too: the BreyerFest Bear set is sold out now. Everything else is still available, though I’m a bit surprised the Misty and the Adios still are. That Adios is a mighty handsome piece; I’ll definitely consider one once I get the sales-versus-storage issue sorted out here.

It’s hard to believe, but back when the plastic boxes debuted in the mid-1980s, most hobbyists thought they were a good idea. At last, no more mysteries over what you were buying! No sliding around in the box = fewer condition issues! Handpicking was at last a possibility!

I was a little…skeptical. Strapping a horse with zip ties to a bright yellow backer board? We were just swapping one set of condition issues for another. It was the stability of the boxes themselves worried me the most: they seemed kind of flimsy from the get-go, and even under the best conditions I doubted they’d have the same durability (or usefulness!) as the chipboard boxes that preceded them. I feared this sort of thing was in their future:

That Mesteno is so getting liberated after I post this!

The dealer I bought him from at the flea market was very apologetic about the box's condition, but I told him it wasn’t that big a deal. As far as value goes, these plastic boxes are so common and ubiquitous that most of the time, it simply doesn’t matter.

There are a few rereleases - like the Toys R Us Bay Fighting Stallion - where the box may be significant, but most of the time, it just isn’t.  And I think that’s a good thing, something I wish more toy and collectible segments would emulate. The box is not the thing. The thing inside is the thing.

Well, most of the time. Though with the prices the early 1970s Showcase boxes are bringing, I doubt I’ll even have to worry about it.

Patching Together

That big project I’m working on is melting my brain, I swear.  I thought I’d take a little breather from it and catch up a bit on my sewing, until I realized what was up next in my quilting queue:

Points, curves AND insets? I might as well be painting a Reverse Dappled Palomino Roan Pintaloosa, sheesh.

(FYI: it’s a variation of a Depression Era pattern called "Imperial Fan". I found a pile of pieces and some templates at the bottom of a box of scraps, and in a not-rare-enough moment of insanity, I thought it’d be a fun reconstruction project. Yeah. No.)

Lots of news to catch up on. Let’s roll.

The talk is now that the Walmart Special Runs that have been turning up in some stores might be some sort of test, or just a regional release. All I know for sure is that very few people have been able to find them, and they’re not in my neck of the woods either.

There are two OTHER Classics Special Run sets turning up at some Mid-States stores that appear to be a continuation of the old Walmart Mesteno/ Mustang series. They’ve been shipping old Walmart overstock of their Mestenos to the "farm store circuit" for a few years now, so I’m guessing that means that's where the series will now carry on; these newest releases have the new Breyer logo, so it’s definitely not older overstock. Unless it is a test/regional thing, too. 

There are no Mid-States nearby, but I do have a local/regional farm store chain nearby that does get a very nice selection of Breyers in around the holidays, so this will be added incentive to stop in the next time I drive by. You know, just in case there are some enhancements to the selection.

(All I REALLY want is that "unreleased" set with the light gray Bronco and the white Wolf. Like everyone else)

The Traditional Totilas mold is being delayed until the beginning of the year. It appears to be more of a legal/technical issue, than one of production. It’s only a few more weeks of waiting, anyway.

The Lionheart Esprits are also delayed, but no explanation (or hints of) have been offered. It’s annoying, but my budget’s doing its end of the year tightening, so I’m okay with that, too.

Pictures of some of the 2013 releases are now floating about, including a new Classic mold, a new release on the Smart Chic Olena, a Vintage release on the Western Pony, and some glittery (!) Stablemates.

(Yay, glittery Stablemates!)

I’m going to wait until there are better pictures of the 2013 releases before I do any detailed commentary on them. I’m happy to see that the Vintage release of the Gloss Bay Pinto Fury this year did well enough to merit continuing the series, but the color they appear to have chosen for the Western Pony - Flaxen Chestnut Appaloosa, with detailed out hooves, mane and tail - strikes me as a little more Modern than Vintage.

I hope the splash spots are a little on the sloppy side, like the old splash spots were.

I’ve been periodically skimming the discussion on the Passage to the Pacific. Once I got a gander at some of the pictures of the SRs - including a Black Tobiano Pinto Galiceno, and another PAM, for crying out loud - I checked myself out of that discussion. The freakouts on MH$P are going to be bad enough to witness.

"Old Man" Mesteno

In the on-again, off-again discussion about Shadowfax on Blab, more fuss is being made about Alborozo, again. The insinuation at the heart of the griping is that Reeves "destroyed" the mold because it was either (a) deliberately ticking everybody off for some unknowable reason, or (b) too stupid to realize what an awesome thing they had.

I don’t know the precise circumstances as to why the Alborozo was done the way it was done, but I’m pretty sure wasn’t some vast conspiracy to deprive us of something awesome. It was more like a combination of marketing gimmick, contract negotiations with an artist who had been burned before, and some technological experimentation. That the model itself turned out as nice as it did was just an added benefit.

And you know what? Chances are, if the mold had been allowed to continue production, we’d have picked it to pieces by now, and be so over it anyway. His rarity is a part of the reason many love him so.

We might see a few more glossies, a few tests, and whatever leftovers there may still be in the warehouse, but that’s it. Get over it, folks. He’s done and gone. It’s Spring - go work out your frustration on your garden or your closet, or something. (And if you don’t have a garden or closet to work on, you’re more than welcome to work on mine.)

There are quite a few molds that have had extremely limited - or even singular - releases, though their rarity or singularity has more to due with being too dated, too specialized or just too darn weird to justify new releases. None of these molds, as far as I know, have been "destroyed," so there’s still a slim possibility that more of their kind may grace our shelves in the near or distant future. A short and very incomplete list includes:

Standing Black Angus Bull
Standing Polled Hereford Bull
Modernistic Buck
Modernistic Doe
Benji
Tiffany
Mesteno: Reflections

Some of these models are hot commodities: good luck trying to find the Red Angus Bull - the Black Angus’s single SR release - or one of the Woodgrain Polled Hereford Bulls made for the Ranchcraft Lamp Line. The Modernistic Buck and Doe was manufactured in quite a few odd colors and finishes by its original manufacturer, Nosco, prior to Breyer acquiring the mold ca. 1959-60, but not a lot of collectors are familiar with - or even associate - those earlier releases with the Breyer ones. Benji and Tiffany? There hasn’t been much of a call for Traditional Series Dogs since the 1960s, period. (There might have been some licensing issues, too.)

The Mesteno: Reflections is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. Although not wildly popular in their original release, most of the Mesteno series has seen new life in the Wal-Mart Mustang line. I’m not a huge fan of them myself, but some of the colors they’ve been released in have been quite attractive.

But the "Old Man" Mesteno, as I like to call him, hasn’t been among them. He had only one release - his original one - and hasn’t been seen since. He was the last mold in the series, too, and consequently had the shortest run of all the original Mestenos: just 1996. My "old man" came in a box lot from the infamous "newtoymens" guy on eBay, so he might be a test piece, station sample, or saleman’s sample:


Like most of the Mesteno series, he didn’t "translate" well into plastic, but he’s not completely unappealing. He’s not quite as dashing as the original ("Young Elvis?") Mesteno, but he has a nice silhouette and photographs well. He works better as an "art" horse, rather than a "show" horse: if Reeves does get around to releasing him again, a more decorative finish - Ageless Bronze, Marble or even Woodgrain - would really do him justice, I think.

Might be a good, low-investment way of breaking into the home décor market they’ve been eyeing for a few years now, too. (Just sayin.’)