A Reintroduction

I am not completely happy with it – the curses of an artistic temperament, alas – but this year’s Sampler is up! 

It’s been up since early Thursday morning, but I wanted to do my shopping trip yesterday and I didn’t have time to make my formal announcement. My “trip” was unusual, but I’ll talk about it another day when I’m feeling a little less out of sorts.

(How unusual? At one point I was stuck in traffic behind the 2023 Corvette! That is not a typo, and no time travel was involved.)

As a bonus, I’ll offer up color versions of the pictures accompanying the Early Micro Runs article. I was originally going to include them in color in the Sampler, but I decided to keep it all in black and white instead. 

(By the way, printed copies will be available next week: I’m kind of wiped right now and I just want to chill for most of the weekend.)

It really is kind of remarkable that I have pictures of all these things, especially since I physically own none of them. I was present for raffles of the Rose Gray Proud Arabian Mare and the Red Bay Cantering Welsh Pony, but didn’t win either of them, naturally. Even back then I was not so lucky.

Oh, and for those of you joining us for BreyerFest, howdy! The current content has been a little BreyerFest-focused because it’s that time of the year, but it can – and does – change. 

I try to post about ten times a month (every three days or so) and while most of the content is about Breyer History, it sometimes veers off into other topics I am interested in, including: quilting, comic books, art history, old movies, gardening, and the weird stuff that only seems to happen to me (yes, I’m one of THOSE people!)

I’ve been collecting since 1974, been involved in the hobby since 1978, and I’ve done work for Breyer – off and on – since I published my first article in the original Just About Horses in 1985. I still occasionally do work for them, but as you’ll see, I’m also not afraid about calling them out when they sometimes do dumb things. 

I’ve done everything in the hobby from live showing to customizing to pedigree assignment (we called it “breeding” back in the old days!) but my first love has been researching and obsessing over model horse history, particularly Breyer History. 

I will confess that I don’t know everything, I am occasionally wrong, and I am sometimes a bit of a drama queen (if you didn’t already get that from the blog title). 

I also occasionally – and absolutely unintentionally, I swear – talk about models before they’re released. This is super-awkward because there are some things that I’m not supposed to talk about. 

Like the Corvette, time travel is not involved, and I make no claims of psychic abilities: I just know the market and the product well enough to be able to make better predictions than most. Whether I realize I am doing it or not.

And in case you’re going to ask, my social media presence is a light one. I have a pretty busy offline life, and other than this blog, my Internet activity is not a priority. 

I also do not have a Facebook account, and hope to keep it that way. Long story short: aside from the fact it is not a good fit for the way I socialize in general, I also happen to think that Facebook’s business model is doing more harm to the world than good, so I try to keep my interaction with it to a bare minimum.   

And Now, A Nonadventure!

It’s October and all I want to do is hibernate! Alas, I have no time for that silliness.

Speaking of silliness, I suppose I should tell you about my desperate and ultimately failed attempt at trying to get on Antiques Roadshow earlier this year. To bring Breyers, or horses, or frankly anything other than rusty old Civil War guns and pawn shop guitars to the masses…

One of their shooting locations this year was less than 20 minutes (!) from the house, so I applied for free tickets.

Didn’t get drawn for them. I was not expecting to, but still annoying, and disappointing.

Then they made more tickets available. Didn’t get drawn for those, either.

Then they offered “free” tickets if you made a donation to the local PBS station. That was a no-go from the start, since the amount they were asking as a suitable donation was greater than my BreyerFest budget.

Then they offered tickets to people who could write a compelling enough essay about an object that they wanted to bring. There were a significant number of tickets available (150, I think?) and I can write things.

Surely I could thwart my lack of luck with the power of my words! So I did write ups on three horse-related items.

First, the large, hand-colored photograph I have of Midnight Sun. Aside from the strangeness of an obvious relic from Harlinsdale Farm turning up in a flea market in Michigan, I thought it’d also make for an excellent segue into educating the public about the ongoing efforts to save the breed from the scourge of the Big Lick. And I could bring a Breyer Midnight Sun as part of the package!

Nope.

Second, on the letter I have written by Wild Horse Annie to Marguerite Henry talking about the newly-released Breyer Hobo (among other things). One equine legend writing to another equine legend about a third equine legend (Breyer, ahem). Aside from the sheer uniqueness of the letter, I could also have brought along a Classic Hobo and possibly other Marguerite Henry-inspired models for illustrative purposes.

Nope on that one, too.

Third, I wrote about the horse-themed photo album I found a couple years ago, featuring photos of the previous owner’s horses, his trip to Cheyenne Frontier Days (in 1946!), carefully annotated photos from a day at the racetrack in June 1942, all that good stuff. And there was a photograph in the album of a WWII-era Navy baseball team that might have included Yogi Berra, too.

If they weren’t interested in any of the horse stuff, surely the baseball angle would have drawn them in, right? I mean, after guitars and Civil War relics, there seems to be baseball stuff in every episode of Antiques Roadshow, am I right?

Nope. Strike three.

Sorry guys, but apparently they didn’t find me or my stuff interesting enough. This I found a little more devastating than losing a random lottery-type thing: I expect to lose random lotteries, but I pride myself on being at least minimally interesting to almost everybody!

I suppose if I had something horse-related that was also Detroit-related, like Seabiscuit (who started his “comeback” here) or Man o’ War (the Match Race against Sir Barton was just across the river, in Windsor), or The Lone Ranger (which originated in Detroit), or a verifiable piece of a local carousel, because Detroit’s Golden Age corresponded almost exactly with the Golden Age of Carousels, and there were probably more wooden carousels here per capita than any other place on Earth, y’all.
 
But I didn’t have any of that. So like most my other attempts to bring attention to the hobby to the masses, I found myself sitting home. Again.

So many people in the hobby try to hide their interest in the hobby from the public eye. Ironically, I do everything short of tap-dancing down I-75 in a hot pink tutu during rush hour, and I see nary a shrug in my direction.

Sigh. 

Gray Hoof Midnight Sun

It’s been another long couple of days here, so here’s a treasure I unearthed during the recent collection cleanout (it’s almost done now, thank goodness):

It’s the Gray Hoof variation of the Midnight Sun! He’s not in the best condition, but I’m glad to have him, as he’s a remarkably tough bugger to find. It was the first/original variation of the #60 Midnight Sun release, who debuted in 1972.

The slightly later – and more common – variation of the Midnight Sun has some tan or light brown shading on those hooves and significantly more overspray issues, to the point where they sometimes appear to have short, foggy gray socks.

(You silly kids who think quality control is a recent issue! Pshaw!)

The hooves of the gray-hooved variation of Midnight Sun tend to be neater and cleaner, with my example being a bit on the fuzzier end.

I made the mistake of passing a near mint but somewhat pricey example (for me) at a local antique show; to assuage my guilt, I promised myself that I would buy the next available one I could find, and a couple years later this guy turned up on eBay.

I’d love to upgrade him, but he’s somewhat of a low priority right now; basically it’s another “I’ll buy him when I see him” situation. Since I’m trying to minimize my extracurricular purchases this year, I am not optimistic that it’ll happen any time soon, but I am not one to say never in my neck of the woods.

More New Old Photos

Friday already?

Still up to my eyeballs in old business, of both the hobby and nonhobby sort. So more new old pictures today. First up, another vintage Test Color:

A Resist Dapple Gray Midnight Sun! I believe this might have been another one of those early 1970s "Micro" Runs that may have been repurposed Test Colors. Like the better-known Traditional Man o’ War in Dapple Gray, the Red Chestnut Midnight Sun, and the Cantering Welsh Pony in Dapple Gray.

By the way, those early Cantering Welshies predated the 1985 Just About Horses Special Run by several years, and don’t look anything like them. The one I saw in person looked more like the Midnight Sun, above, except a little darker.

The second photo is part of a small set of pictures of one wall of Marney’s collection - what appears to be her Arabian Shelf:

Yep, those are Test Colors on the far right side there. I suspect that some of the Glosses on the shelf are Test Colors, too, and not merely Old Molds. There are some Proud Arabian Mares in the Test Color Album that appear to be attempts at recreating Old Mold colors and finishes. Some of them in that album might be the same models seen in this photo, but for a variety of reasons (size, quality, angle of photos) it’s difficult to confirm. The Chestnut Proud Arabian Stallion might be this guy, though:

I know there was some controversy a few years ago about the authenticity of a Gloss Proud Arabian Mare - with the Breyer mold mark - that made its way to eBay. I was less skeptical than most about it, but I didn’t have the money then to verify my hunch.

The plastic bags on the Customs (aka "Repaint/Remakes") were a not-uncommon practice back then. It was done partly to cut down on the dusting and protect the paint job, but primarily to keep the mohair manes and tails clean.

Hairing was de rigueur in the 1970s and 1980s: even Foals and Stablemates got the mohair treatment! Keeping them neat and dust-free, though, was a pain in the behind. Periodically replacing the hair wasn’t an option either, since good mohair was expensive and hard-to-find.

Getting the hairdo to look just right was an art all its own, too. During that brief window of time when I did custom work, hairing was the one aspect of it I was actually really good at.

That being said, I was kind of glad to see the trend fade away a bit, at least in this part of the model horse world. Hairing jobs, no matter how carefully tended, don’t age well.

Perfect Compliance

Long week; no need for details, really.

All I’ll say is that is that I don’t think I’ve ever looked this forward to going to Kentucky than this year. It has nothing to do with the theme, or the models, or what I have planned. I just need to get away, and shrink all my troubles down to the size of the model horse hobby.

I haven’t been home or online much the past couple of days, so the post about the history of the Classic Quarter Horse Family knockoffs will be up on Saturday, Sunday at the latest. The carpet in the office is getting cleaned anyway, so it’s probably best not pull the necessary references and add to the chaos.

I have been skimming the pictures of the BreyerFest auction models. Cheapskate me has no plans on bidding, of course. But the past few years of auction models have served as previews of concepts to come, so I’m viewing them more as a "Coming Attractions" trailer.

My favorite so far is the Red Dun on the Latigo mold: I can imagine that color looking good on any number of molds. I love the minimal pinto on the Bluegrass Bandit, too - in fact, one of the few customs that I did for myself way back when was a Family Arabian Stallion in a very similar pattern. But as a production run item? I don’t know if it’s feasible. (Bully if it is!)

I noticed today that the Blab discussion about the Auction pieces has basically descended into a Volunteer SR speculation thread. I have no plans on joining in there; I wasn’t picked this year, so it’s a moot point for me anyway.

Though I secretly hope for a Silver Filigree Family Arabian Stallion - I think it would be very appropriate for an Anniversary theme, and harken back to the first Volunteer Model, the Silver Filigree Proud Arabian Mare - it will be something more mundane. Matte, Realistic, a modestly popular mold that doesn’t require a base, and possibly something from their warehouse body stash.

(Though the FAS is among the body-stashed. Hmm.)

Another mold to cross off the list will be the Midnight Sun.

I will confess that I did break down and buy the Reissue Red Bay "Redmond", more as an historical curiosity than for any specific love of the mold. It most likely represents the last release of this mold, ever. The paint job is also very, very nice - and one I wouldn’t mind seeing on other molds, either. (Vintage ones, especially!)

I think the fact that Breyer spotlighted the "Walk on Washington" on their Facebook page earlier this week makes that abundantly clear that they are aware of the mold’s history, and have no intention of making any more. The Redmonds were made from warehoused bodies made back when, and that this release was a way to use up them up.

I’ve seen some talk - again on Breyer’s Facebook page - about calls for "retiring" the Midnight Sun mold entirely. I’m not sure what people are asking for here: the mold is "retired". It hasn’t been in production since 2002.

A floridly-worded public statement? A video of them throwing it into the Atlantic Ocean? A by-invitation-only regrinding party of any Midnight Suns still in the warehouse?

(Okay, I would actually want to attend the regrinding party, as long as we got to throw models in ourselves. And it’s not limited to Midnight Sun.)

I do think they missed an opportunity with the Redmond release to use it as a way to generate funds and awareness for Walking Horse advocacy groups.

Something along the lines of "When this mold was released back in 1972, there was a lack of knowledge about the abuses going on in the ‘Big Lick’ industry. We have not issued a regular production item since 2002; we have not molded any new pieces since then, and have no intention of doing so in the future. The recent Internet-only Special Run item ‘Redmond’ was generated from previously-molded and warehoused bodies. A portion of the funds generated by the sale of this item will go towards [charity/group name here]."

It wouldn’t make some portions of the model horse hobby happy, but some of those portions are never happy, and like to make a public show of it.

It’s good to encourage a company to do the right thing, but it’s unrealistic to expect perfect compliance from a company you neither run nor own.

Oh No, Not Again - Again!

I had heard rumors about as-yet-unreleased Reissues being spotted at the Factory Tours during the latest Exclusive Event, but I hadn’t given them much thought. I assumed that they’d spring them on us the way they did last year. You know, just setting them out in the Sales Tent, no announcements or nothing.

Nope. Say hello to the latest Warehouse Finds.

I swear I did not know they were being released on the web site this week, just a few days after I mentioned my hunch. I had a hunch something was coming because we had the White Moose Ghost in March of last year, and the Buried Treasure Lusitano in April the year before.

Logic and recent history.

Sometimes, though, I feel like Reeves is punking me. (Decorator Khemos? Let’s do it! Another web site surprise? Let's move it up to this week!)

So anyway, I bought a Pacer and an Old Timer. because those are molds on my "Approved to Buy" List. I picked up a Sucesion and LeFire too because I’ve been wanting to upgrade my set for a long time, and the prices for them on eBay have been out of my league.

430006 Quarter Horse - Blue Roan (AQHA Horse)
430007 Standardbred - Chestnut (Pacer)
430010 Thoroughbred - Chestnut (Halla/Bolya)
430011 Arabian Mare and Foal (Sucesion and LeFire)
430012 Redmond - Bay (Midnight Sun)
430019 Paint Horse - Bay (Cody/Ranch Horse)
430020 Old Timer - Appaloosa

The Old Timer is sans blinkers and hat, like the Palomino, but it’s too soon to tell just how much the other Reissues vary from the originals, outside of the VIN numbers and better executed paint jobs.

I have a feeling that the Midnight Sun will be the Huck Bey of this group - different enough from the original it was inspired from to qualify as a distinct release on its own. It even has a "real" name as opposed to a generic descriptive one, which I find interesting.

Plus, it’s been 25 years since the original #704 was discontinued, back when Reeves was still having some significant quality control issues. He’ll be different just by virtue of that. (I remember liking the release back then, and having a very hard time finding one that did not have major issues.)

It might be worth noting that this may represent the last official production release of the Midnight Sun mold. Due to the ongoing issues within the real world of Tennessee Walking Horses, there hasn’t been an official production release of the Midnight Sun mold since the last Special Run was made for WCHE in 2002.

The only other Midnight Suns we’ve seen in the meantime have been either auction pieces, or the Unpainted ones Reeves has periodically tried to sell us at BreyerFest.

Those "Whiteware" collections might be the key to figuring out what Reissues may be coming down the pipeline in the future. (There are gaps in the Reissue numbering system that still haven’t been accounted for yet. Seems inevitable to me.) The last boxed Whiteware sets included the following molds:

• Sucesion and LeFire
• Gem Twist
• Belgian
• Cody/Ranch Horse
• Midnight Sun
• Clock Saddlebred
• Clydesdale Mare
• Family Arabian Stallion
• Stock Horse Stallion (original tail)
• Shetland Pony
• Western Prancing Horse

Six of the twelve have turned up as Reissues! So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the other six show up soon. Gem Twist seems the most likely choice, but I would be most excited about the Western Prancing Horse. (Another one on my Buy List!)

Reeves has disabled the parts of the inventory system that allowed us to figure out the rough counts, but (no surprise) the Sucesion and LeFire sets are already gone. Everything else still seems to be available, though.

The Trouble with Midnight Sun

Sort of took the day off yesterday; I even did a little bit of real-world shopping, mostly for necessities, but some Black Friday coupons were involved. Camping out in the Michigan cold? Definitely not!

I’ve been meaning to tackle the issue of Midnight Sun and other Big Lick models for a while, but I didn’t start to collect my thoughts on the subject until the latest long and complicated discussion on Blab.

I lost track of that discussion for a while, so other than bringing up a few points as to why the mold could still be viable in collectibility, I stayed out. Been dealing with a lot of family drama, and I’ve been trying to minimize my contact with it within the model horse world, too.

(Hence my slight shortness on the subject last time. Mom’s been obsessing over a neighbor’s antics to the point where I wonder why she even has cable.)

A brief history of the mold is in order: Midnight Sun really isn’t Midnight Sun: it was originally sculpted as a generic Tennessee Walker, and his identity was assigned later. There’s a possibility that Chris Hess may have partially based the original sculpt on the Grand Wood Carving sculpture of Talk of the Town, the son of Midnight Sun whose exaggerated action gave birth to the Big Lick phenomenon.

Midnight Sun molds can be competitive in collectibility. I know of at least one early 1970s Marney SR in Red Chestnut (a run of five), and the 1984 Congress SR in Flaxen Chestnut, which is a very pretty shade of chestnut, all issues of the mold aside. And Test Colors, of course.

The original Black release of the Midnight Sun does have at least two significant variations that could also be competitive.

The Chalky version is one, naturally. I don’t think I need to explain that.

The earliest (nonChalky) Midnight Sun releases have very distinctive and "clean" (no overspray) gray hooves. It’s quite different from the gray-brown hooves you see on some of the Chalkies and other early examples. It is relatively uncommon; I have one, but he’s in storage right now.

So, if I were judging collectibility, I would not rule the mold out automatically, as long as the model was properly documented/curated as such. In collectibility, we are looking at the model more as an art historical object than as a true representation of a horse. It can be both, but theoretically the anatomical and ethical issues shouldn’t necessarily play a big part in collectibility judging.

Nevertheless, the situation in the Walker world is unique and serious enough that an acknowledgement of the real world issues in the documentation would be necessary, to make it clear that it is being shown as an art historical object only.

As to whether or not I would place it would depend on what’s on the table; in most cases, I think, the mold’s probability of success is relatively low, because desirability does play a part in evaluating collectibility, and the mold has been declining in desirability for some time. This is why I think banning the mold outright is unnecessary: declining desirability will remove it from the showring with less commotion than a ban.

We cannot obliterate the Midnight Sun mold from our history. Aside from the practicality of doing so, they can - and need to - serve as reminders of what has happened before. Erasing things doesn’t necessarily prevent it from happening again, and in fact might make it worse should it reappear. Because for too many people, the absence of evidence does equal evidence of absence.

This is also why I am fine with the Midnight Sun in collectibility - but only as an historical curiosity that should still be studied, not as something that needs to be promoted or perpetuated.

I can understand if some judges want to take swifter action, and take a hardline stand against the mold in all contexts and all situations. I don’t have a lot of Midnight Suns in my collection, outside of the Congress Special Run and the various Black variations, and I doubt I’d ever show any of them in collectibility anyway. I have so many more models that would be more suitable in such classes.

Midnight Sun is at the heart of the discussion that’s raged in the model horse hobby for years: should it strive for absolute realism or idealization? Depict the real horse world as accurately as possible in miniature - warts and all - or "perfect" it with the most idealized/correct representations of breeds or breed standards? (What Does Exist vs. What Should Exist)

While many hobbyists say they are striving for "absolute realism", what they’re actually going for is closer to idealization. If idealization becomes the default standard (which I tend to think it will, eventually) then I believe it is imperative that we strive to promote more humane training methods and natural gaits, and discourage those that are not.

(Note: I don’t necessarily have a problem with either judging philosophy - realism or idealism - as long as the judge or showholder makes it clear which philosophy they subscribe to ahead of time and I can adjust my showstring accordingly.)

Equus Non Grata

I didn’t go to the flea market today. Work didn’t go well the night before (everyone was at each other’s throats, for some reason), the weather was iffy (overcast, drizzly), and I didn’t feel all that awesome to begin with (an unfortunate choice of snack foods, I think.)

I need to get cracking (again) on the stuff I already have to sell, anyway. Life sort of got in the way of me putting things up on eBay, so it looks like I’ll be starting up the MH$P sales again. Like before, nothing impressive, just the usual middle-of-the-road shelf sitters and collection fillers.

Everything sells eventually, but some models are harder to sell than others. One mold that’s become an incredibly difficult sell of late is the Midnight Sun:


For obvious reasons, of course: in light of the recent attention being paid to the continuing practice of soring in the TWH show community, the mold itself has become (justifiably) something of a pariah. Few hobbyists dare to sneak any into their showstrings nowadays, lest they get labeled as condoning the practice.

We haven’t seen a new release on in the Midnight Sun mold since 2002, and I rather doubt we ever will, again.

Other molds have fallen "out of fashion" before, such as the Appaloosa Performance Horse and the Quarter Horse Gelding, but that was due more to shifting tastes than the increasing awareness of abusive showing practices.

I suppose one could still sneak Midnight Suns in under collectibility; an historical entry would require way more ‘splaining’ that it’d be worth. Especially since the true historical type of Tennessee Walking Horse is closer to the Bluegrass Bandit or even the G3 Tennessee Walker than the Midnight Sun mold - which itself doesn’t even really depict Midnight Sun!

And again, the mere existence of such an entry would also bring up the insinuations of acceptance on the shower’s part.

In some ways, the situation with the Midnight Sun mold has become somewhat analogous to the situation that exists with some of the more offensive forms of African-American memorabilia. Should they be preserved purely as a matter of historical interest, or should they be shunned - or even destroyed outright - to actively discourage that line of thinking from ever arising again?

As someone who considers herself something of an historian, I fall somewhere in the murky middle. Blotting out any part of our history may feel right or good, but it rarely works. Even if you manage to eliminate it entirely, it still leaves a hole, and a hole can be as problematic as the thing that once filled it.

I suspect what will actually happen to the Midnight Sun molds will be more of a continuing diminishment - of both interest, and of controversy - to the point of it becoming an embarrassing footnote. Most of the releases of the Midnight Sun, save for the 1984 Model Horse Congress SR, are plentiful enough that a spike in interest due to rarity will probably never become an issue. (Unless hobbyists get all crazy and start using their spare Midnight Suns as kindling.)

I have a small number of Midnight Suns in my collection - mostly variations of the original release, in black - and I have no intention of tossing them in the nearest bonfire. They’re a part of the historical record, for better or worse. I won’t go out of my way to acquire more, unless they happen to fall into my lap somehow, or have some historical significance (i.e. a Marney Test.)

My Midnight Sun Mystery

You’d think that a day that featured ducks with hats, boat anchors and a trip to the bead store would have been more entertaining than it actually was. It wasn’t bad, mind you, but it definitely had the potential to be epic.

It did leave me a little bit exhausted, so today’s another light research day. Let’s talk about another picture another horse that became a Breyer model. Here’s Midnight Sun:


What’s different here is that the picture has just as interesting a story behind it as the model itself. I found it at the local flea market - a market so awesome it’s where other antiquers do their shopping, and where I make most of my fabulous finds.

There used to be quite a few horse farms in the area, and running across framed horse prints or photographs isn’t that unusual. What made this particular print stand out was the size - 24 by 28 inches, framed and matted! And beautifully hand-tinted, an obvious labor of love. It was cheap - I think the vendor was only asking five bucks for it. How could I possibly pass it by?

My first reaction when I saw it was "Ooh, that has to be Midnight Sun!" Or at least someone with a strong family resemblance; the photograph didn’t show up in my initial research, so I just assumed it might have been one of his foals. Eventually, someone either on Blab or Haynet did track the photograph down in an early 1950s encyclopedia and it was, indeed, Midnight Sun himself. (Whoever you were, thank you!)

It made me wonder how this picture ended up in Michigan, of all places. Most of the non-model horse materials I find around here relate to horse racing, of both the Thoroughbred and Standardbred variety. (I find a little bit of Polo-related stuff, too. Apparently a big thing in Detroit in the 1920s!) A huge portrait of a Tennessee Walking Horse Stallion stands out.

I didn’t get many clues from the vendor. I had engaged in the usual flea market banter with him, and the only information he could offer was that the picture, and his other horsey items (books and tack, mostly) came from an estate sale in Tennessee. The picture still had its paper label on the back, indicating that it had been framed in Nashville, so that part rang true.

It was the faint inscription in pencil that’s bothered me, though. I won’t try to give you a close up of the section in question; it’s more impression than pigment, and impossible to photograph. It took me a while to translate it, but it reads:

"To Mrs. Eddie Eggert, Harlinsdale Farm"

Oh dear. It’s not just a nice picture of Midnight Sun - it seems that this might be an honest-to-goodness Midnight Sun artifact. Do I possibly own something I’m not supposed to own?

I haven’t really followed up on the possibility, yet. If someone wants it back, I have no problem in returning it. It’s just sorta been a low priority, and I rather like having this mystery hanging in my office.

Anyway, back to the model itself. The Midnight Sun model isn’t based on Midnight Sun, it’s probably based - at least partly - on a sculpture of his infamous son, The Talk of the Town. Infamous in that his weird, exaggerated gait was responsible for setting in motion the "Big Lick" notion that’s been the bane of the breed ever since.

The sculpture in question is by Grand Wood Carving, a Chicago-based manufacturer of fine art quality wood carvings, whose sculpture of Whirlaway was copied by Breyer as the #36 Racehorse, and whose entire line may have been the inspiration for the Woodgrain Finish. Here’s a scan of a lousy multi-generational copy that I have in my archives:


The story of Grand Wood Carving’s Breyer connections and coincidences is enough to fill at least a week’s worth of posts, and I don’t have the time or energy to go into it today. (I'll get to eventually, no worries.)

Anyway, the original mold was created as a generic Tennessee Walking Horse, not a portrait model. Peter Stone asked for suggestions of famous TWHs from the association down in Tennessee, and they offered up Midnight Sun. Unfortunately, Peter didn’t do any follow up research, or provide samples of the future model to the right persons who would have set him straight. Midnight Sun was flat shod, and came from the pre-Big Lick era!

That Seventies Catalog

Let's talk about that jobber/distributor toy catalog I mentioned last time. It's the Orgill Brothers and Company 1977 Illustrated Toy Catalog, and it's like a window into my childhood toyland: everything from Barbie, to Bicycles and Breyers, and Beyond! (Literally - Space: 1999 action figures!)

Jobber is a slightly antiquated word for a distributor or wholesaler. A middleman. They'll sell dozens of lines from dozens of manufacturers to simplify and streamline the retailer's ordering process – for a price, of course.

Every page of it is full of awesome, but the Breyer pages are going to be our focus, naturally. There's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the selection – a couple dozen Traditionals, a few Animals, the Classic Racehorse Assortment, Stablemates Assortment, a few Gift Sets. No secret, previously unknowns special runs or oddball items that I can see. (The Donkey and Elephant are present, but that's overstock from the previous year's Election/Bicentennial promotion, and not really a huge surprise.) Just the kind of horses you'd find in your locally-owned hardware store, the market that Orgill primarily caters to.

Yeah, I did buy some of my models at hardware stores back then! Didn't you?

What's nice about a catalog like this is the ability to compare the wholesale prices with the suggested retail prices. Midnight Sun would cost the retailer 4.39, with a suggested retail of 6.59 – a 33% markup. That's about the same markup Orgill was making: per Breyer's own wholesale pricelists, the cost to the distributor for that same Midnight Sun would have been 2.97!

I have no idea what the markup is now: I'm neither a distributor nor a retailer. Even if I was, there would probably be some contractual mumbo-jumbo about the pricing structure that I would bar me from discussing it in a public forum anyway. But we're talking about 30 year old prices on merchandise that's been long discontinued.

For those of you pining for the days of the Six Dollar Traditional, don't forget that this was in 1977 money. As a genuine chronological youngster of that time period, I can assure you, Six Dollars was not a small sum. Saving that kind of money took herculean effort, especially when you're constantly tempted by one dollar Stablemates and 35 cent comic books.

The most fascinating part of this catalog, though, is the photographs: a I mentioned in my previous post, some of them are OLD, and many don't match the product that's being sold. Here's the Running Stallion:

The Alabaster Running Stallion was discontinued, oh, around 1971. The text under the photo notes that it's the Appaloosa you'd be buying. Likewise with with the Indian Pony, shown here in long-gone Buckskin version:

My favorite is the Fighting Stallion; the stock photo used to illustrate the Alabaster is actually that of the Gray Appaloosa, dating back to at least 1961!

We have our share of vintage prototype pics, too, including our old friend Yellow Mount, taunting us yet again:

Several of the newer items – like Lady Phase, the Charolais Bull, and Hobo – have more contemporaneous photos, so Orgill obvious had access to them. So, what was up with the outdated, incorrect stock photos?

The answer is simple: this catalog is pre-digital. It had to be manually pasted up. Every chunk of text and every photograph had to be physically cut and pasted into place. Lines had to be hand-drawn with a technical pen. Mistakes and cut lines had to be touched up with white paint, with a paint brush. If you look closely at the scans, you can still see a few blotches and cut lines.

It's about as much fun as it sounds. I managed to get into graphic design at the very tail end of the “manual” era, so I did get to experience that fun first hand, briefly. (My first semester in art school included a digital prepress class – in Aldus PageMaker! It was my favorite class, by far. I miss doing digital prepress, I really do...)

So the overworked table jockeys who had to put the toy catalog together probably reused old pages, or cut and pasted chunks of old stats into the new pages. Wherever there was a possible discrepancy, they'd paste in a line of text underneath to cover their behinds, just in case.

I'm sure that shortcuts like this probably led to at least a handful of post-production runs on some of the models in question, unless Breyer got lucky and just happened to run across a box or two of old stock hiding in the factory somewhere. No matter how thoroughly the search, there's always a box or two of some old somethings lurking in the warehouse. Look at the kind of stuff that still turns up in the Ninja Pit every year!

Collectibility, Part 1

Sorry about that – I was a little under the weather there for a couple of days. I'm appreciating the extra hours the boss has been giving me (as does my bank account) but it's certainly starting to take its toll on me physically. I think I've spent most of the past two and a half days sleeping! (And when not sleeping, quilting. Good for the nerves, not so good for the fingertips.)

I was just thinking about the issue of showing in Collectibility classes and the need for documentation. It was a bit of a heated topic there on Blab last week, but I was a bit too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to add my perspective to the discussion when it was going full blazes.

I have given a great deal of thought to what standards I would apply if I were to either show or judge collectibility. That's where my interest in history intersects with the live showing aspect, after all: if I'm going to show or judge in the future, that's where my focus is going to be.

I'd like to preface my comments here with a few qualifying remarks. One, I've only occasionally live shown in recent years. Not for a lack of local opportunities – there's a show literally less than a mile from my house – it's just that my hobby energies have been focused elsewhere. Two, I've also never judged: I've been consulted a few times on collectibility standards, but never actually been asked to show up and actually apply them. (FYI: I haven't been actively seeking that role either, but I'd consider it if it ever came up.)

I'd break it down into four basic criteria: Condition, Quality, Rarity and Desirability.

Condition is the easiest to explain, and understand: it is a measure of the state of preservation of a model. Is it yellowed? Are there any flaws visible to the naked eye, such as rubs, scratches, chips, breaks, paint skips, missing pieces? If restoration has been done, has it been done well? Has it been brought back to its original factory state, or have questionable enhancements been made?

Quality is a measure of the production value of a given model. Not all models of a given run are created equal: some have better shading, cleaner seams, tighter masking or more details. If I were to hazard a guess, only about one in ten production models is live show quality, and only about one in 100 approaches flawless (no model is completely flawless: you can always find something.)

Rarity is not simply about comparing piece counts: some models may have higher piece counts than others, but that doesn't necessarily make them “less rare.” The way the model was distributed, sold, or advertised has an effect on rarity, as well as the when. This is particularly a factor with older or less well-known special runs from the 1970s and 1980s. Some of these weren't necessarily targeted exclusively towards the collector's market: many of them were sold to the general public, and have since become “lost” to us, like the recently discussed Black Blanket POA.

Finally we have Desirability: I call this the “Want It” factor. Some models are simply more desirable than others: an Indian Pony is going to be more desirable than a Lady Roxana. Certain colors are more desirable than others, too: Glosses are the hot trend currently, as are certain non-realistic colors such as Silver Filigree or Charcoal. This is the most subjective of the criteria: every judge is going to have slightly different biases and preferences when it comes to what they would consider “desirable.”

Documentation will have little effect on the judging Condition or Quality. Most flaws or demerits in these criteria are plainly visible to the eye, and can rarely be explained away. There are instances where documentation can spin the less than pristine state of a model into a positive factor in its collectibility. I have a couple of test colors painted on bodies with rough, uncleaned seams: I would explain that these rough seams indicate that they are probably true test colors, likely from the preproduction phase. The rubs and dings on a cull could also be explained away: they are to be expected on models thrown into reject bins, which were likely rejected because of a previously detected mold or paint flaw in the first place.

Documentation is more of a factor in the criteria of Rarity and Desirability. As I hope I've demonstrated in some of my posts, there are many models that are more – or less – rare than we perceived them to be. Not every judge is going to be as well-versed in the scales of rarity for every single model. Faced with a large or involved class, they may opt to ignore what may appear, at first glance, to be a more common version of a model.

The original release of the Midnight Sun is an excellent example here: there are several different versions of the original release in black. One of them is actually rather scarce: the earliest version, which came with distinctly light gray hooves. (And quite different than the more common gray-brown hooves version, which I'd show you if I knew exactly where my Midnight Suns were. Which I don't, at the moment.) Pointing out that particular detail, especially if it is done accurately, not only helps the judge evaluate the Collectibility of a model more accurately, it also demonstrates that the shower has done their research, and that's also a plus.

Desirability, as I said earlier, is the most subjective of my criteria. What is it beyond Condition, Quality and Rarity that makes this model special enough to be considered “more collectible” than others? This is where documentation can make the difference between placings: in a way, it's sort of the “interview” question in a beauty pageant. And like a good response to any interview question, it's the short, concise, and well-phrased answers that give you the edge. And again, it's another opportunity for the hobbyist to show that they've done their research.

See. Told you I spent a lot of time thinking about this!

In regards to the original discussion on Blab, my opinion is this: if documentation is required by the show rules, then that's where the discussion ends, obviously. But for a number of reasons, I'm not in favor of documentation becoming a mandatory requirement, at least not yet. And as for why, I'll explain that tomorrow.