In The News

My spoiler-free Picard review: it was a very satisfying series finale.

It doesn’t need a signal boost, especially now that it’s over, but the auction to benefit the effort to save the Beebe Ranch from development should at least be noted: 

https://www.breyerhorses.com/blogs/news/benefit-test-run-misty-and-stormy-up-for-auction

Misty and Stormy look so good in Gold Charm Pinto! While I realize this was probably the quickest and easiest way to generate the funds for the Museum of Chincoteague Island’s fundraiser, I am a little bummed that a way couldn’t be found for the less-well-heeled among us to get in on the action via a Special Run of some sort. I have… a lot of Misties, and a few more would not be unwelcome.

Yeah, I know I could just… donate. And I might. But a memento of the effort is always nice.

Reeves also made the announcement that they’d be packaging most of the BreyerFest Special Runs this year in more recyclable packaging, including honeycomb paper. I’ve been using kraft paper as one of my primary packing materials for years, and I have not had any significant problems with it: it’s lightweight, shapeable, easier to store, has multiple other uses (paper-mache!) and it is (of course!) biodegradable. 

I recycle as much bubble wrap and other packaging as I can that enters this house, but a lot of people… do not, as anyone who has either worked in a factory or retail environment can attest.  

(I do my part: 95% of the boxes I use are from work, and I haven’t had to buy craft cardboard for years!)

And many hobbyists seem to forget that most Breyer models in the 1950s and 1960s were packaged quite similarly – or with even less – and were perfectly fine. 

Speaking of the environment, I’ll be planting trees in a park in my hometown on Arbor Day. Arbor Day just coincidentally happens to fall on my birthday this year, so cake may also be a part of the festivities, if any of y’all want to show up to watch me and my coworkers dig holes in the ground. 

And finally, I have some more awkward and ironic news: it appears that (as of this moment) I will not be joining the ranks of volunteers at BreyerFest this year. 

I knew there was a possibility that this would happen, since live showing often (but not always!) eliminates you from contention. And people who volunteer frequently are often given “time off” for no other reason than to give other people a chance to participate.

But it does me a little bereft of things to do at BreyerFest outside of the show, other than selling and socializing. All the workshops are long sold out, and most of the more interesting seminars (to me) are the same day of the show. 

I mean, I do need to sell more stuff, and I have been feeling pretty lonely lately, so more socializing with “my people” doesn’t hurt. But still, it is kind of a downer as I’ve now got to rearrange my plans yet again….

Four Mares

I bought another box lot of bodies, mostly because I was feeling some weird anxiety over the slim pickings now residing in my body box. They were super-duper cheap too, so even with the very modest (mostly single digit) prices I tend to assign to them, I’ll still make a nice little profit at BreyerFest.

As long as I don’t take too many of them for my own personal use. (One, maybe two, tops! I swear!) 

I still have a ton of stuff (nearly a whole ‘nother bin) I couldn’t bring last year, so now all I’ll “need” to restock for BreyerFest are a few more goodies for my totally decimated Dollar Table. 

I do plan on trying to sell as much as I can before Kentucky (still not sure if the Wyoming excursion is going to be right before, or right after!) but I like having a little bit of something for everyone. 

I put in for the Weather Girl Flamingo but, as I expected, nothing came of it. I have lots of pretty Weather Girls already (my exceptionally nice BreyerFest Jasmine places at every show!), and it would have been nice to add her to the herd, but I’m not going to fret about it. 

Another beautiful girl who’s probably not coming home with me:

But this one is by choice: like a lot of BreyerFest models this year, Othello is another shelf hog. “Tilly” certainly won’t lack for suitors, and at least that clears the mold from Surprise contention. On the other hand, that also means that the Hamilton speculation will get even more out of hand...

Speaking of Saddlebreds, the Crystal is based on the Calliope:

I don’t collect the Crystals – I may have mentioned this before, but I was (literally!) born clumsy, so I try to avoid buying breakable things unless they’re cheap, or already broken. I don’t think I even own a single glass or crystal animal of any kind or brand. I do have a couple of very inexpensive bits of slag glass I have picked up in my travels, though I would hesitate to say that I actually collect it. 

And finally, there’s the latest Test Color, a Bay Pinto Misty:

Oh, you precious creature: the one I want the most, and have the least hope of acquiring. Collectively, vintage Test Color Misties aren’t exceedingly rare, though most of the ones I’ve seen have been solid-colored: Bay, Black, Alabaster, and (my personal favorite!) Dapple Gray. I think there are some Appaloosa-flavored ones out there, too. 

I’ll be working quite a bit of overtime over the next month or so, so if the Universe happens to be listening, I can totally afford it.

Winning

Let’s start off on a happy note: some the nasturtiums I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted! I was fearful that the chipmunks had dug up and eaten all the seeds, but it appears that some were spared. 

The seeds were an accidental gift (a mistake in my order) so I didn’t have anything invested in them emotionally or financially, but it’s still a happy and welcome surprise. The last time I attempted to plant nasturtiums (several years ago) those blasted chipmunks didn’t save me a single seed! 

I had another emotionally rough day here yesterday (and I am considering therapy for it, not gonna lie) but I did, at least, finish unpacking the car. (That shoebox of Stablemates is staying right where it is, though.) Here’s a group shot of my winners:

To recap: the Misty (Marigold) won Sectional and Division, the Thornycroft (Presto) Sectional Reserve (as a Spanish Mustang), and the Gloss Liver Chestnut Ginger Horse Smart Chic Olena (Forty Winks) won a very competitive Quarter Horse Stallion class. My fourth NAN card of the day came from my Stablemates G1 Bay Arabian Stallion (Trajan) who is still packed in the shoebox.

The Misty has NANed in both Collectibility and Breed before, incidentally. I think the Arabian has NANed in Breed, too, but I am not 100 percent certain and I would have to look up the particulars to be sure. (Not that it matters to me, since I don’t do NAN for lots of reasons. I am all about the ribbons!)

Winning a ribbon in any class is a thrill, but to do it in a very competitive class like Quarter Horse Stallions almost feels like more of an accomplishment than winning Sectionals in smaller, slightly less crowded Sections. (Though I’ll still take whatever I can get!)

Originally I was going to bring my Matte version, because I like him better personally, but Glosses tend to show better and my example really does have excellent dappling. 

Glad I did, since most of my other Stock breeds didn’t do a darn thing. Even the ones who had done alright in the past two shows. The mysteries of live showing, alas…

No more live shows or model horse-related road trips until after BreyerFest. It looks like I’ll have to skip that big estate sale on the other side of the state next week because of other commitments, unfortunately. I was not going to buy, just observe, but even that is a stretch with my schedule now.

Shrinky Misty

This sinus infection is totally kicking my butt, so here’s a picture of that Shrinky Misty to entertain you in ways I cannot:

When I am not pondering the mysteries of model horse history, I design and (not as expediently as I wish) sew quilts. It’s my philosophy that with the right combination of pattern, texture and design you can get literally any two colors to work together in a quilt.

This model is making me rethink this philosophy. Highlighter Orange and Tan? I don’t think so.

Like Chalkies, Shrinkies are not necessarily limited to or defined by a specific time period. You can find Breyer models that have shrunk, warped and turned a peculiar shade of something else from just any time in Breyer’s past. It’s just that the ones from the late 1980s are more abundant, more readily available, and turned weirder faster than the rest. 

In fact, all Breyer models – be it five years from now, or 150 years from now – will eventually shrink, warp and discolor. 

There are plenty of models from the 1950s and early 1960s that still look as good as they did when they were manufactured, so don’t freak out just yet. The speed is dependent not just on the chemical composition of the plastic, but on the environment they are kept in.

There was definitely something that went wrong during the “Shrinky Era” of the late 1980s: this was shortly after manufacturing moved from Chicago to New Jersey, and a lot of “institutional memory” was lost in the transition. I suspect it was either a bad batch of raw Cellulose Acetate, or something went slightly awry with the plastic mix that did not get caught immediately because the old pros weren’t around to do periodic quality checks. 

I still haven’t decided whether or not to keep her. She seems pretty stable for Shrinky (no active oozing, doesn’t smell that bad), but I really don’t need another crazy Misty variation. If anyone wants to make an offer and make this decision easier for me, feel free!

Vintage Club Mini Misty and Stormy

Here I thought I was being so clever and prepared today, writing up a post late last night; I log on this afternoon to do some edits and assemble my links and images, and the Vintage Club Stablemates Bonus bombshell drops on us:

Well okay, mostly for you guys. It’s more the timing of it that caught me off guard.

Anyway, what I especially like about this set is how it rather slyly references the second Misty release, the Hagen-Renaker Performing Misty. I’d show you mine, but I don’t have one, because… well, you don’t need to know that story.

The Vintage Club Stablemates release also comes with a super-neat tiny shipper box very similar to the original individual G1 Sears Wishbook releases of the mid 1970s – packaging that was tough to come by and ultra-expensive well before the Stablemates market became so crazy. 

Judging from the reaction I’ve skimmed (however briefly) on the Internet, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that the Mini Misty and Stormy set is going over fairly well.

I am pleased.

In other news… I’ll probably be skipping the Collector’s Club Lucien: I took into consideration that there was a good chance he’d drop today – but I bought my Stablemates Club Priscilla yesterday, regardless.

While I certainly could use a few more Valegros in my life, and I find the pinto pattern on him quite appealing, I am a bit tapped out after my recent spending sprees. Heck, there are still horses that have not escaped the back seat of my car yet.

I am not all that into Buckskin Pintos, either. Everyone has their color/pattern preferences and biases, and when it comes to Buckskins, I prefer mine minimally marked.

I may regret it later, but I could say that about almost any release, really.

I will now go back to the rest of my regularly scheduled evening, which involved me trying to solve a particularly vexing quilt design problem. (Almost got it, I think!)

Blue is the New Silver Filigree

It’s a good thing I decided against participating in NaNoWriMo this year: the words just haven’t been coming for me, not this month and especially not today.

I’ll just have to muddle through today the best I can…

Another thing not coming for me: Benasque. That doesn’t come as a surprise: the more popular something becomes, the less likely I’ll be picked for it. Blue has become the new Silver Filigree.

Since the prices have become more incomprehensible on the secondary more quickly than I anticipated, and I consider the Wait List a wholly imaginary construct in my universe, that’s the end of that.

It wouldn’t be so bothersome if the current “gold rush” with the Scottsdale Stampede Special Runs wasn’t also happening. (Just where are all these people getting all that money? Better question: can I have some?)

I just hate to be reminded about how big a factor money has become in the hobby. I am lucky that I have alternate means of getting an affordable fix, but so many of my fellow hobbyists do not.

I have not been in much of a horse-buying mood anyway – a couple of the items in the Collector’s Club Black Friday Preview were moderately tempting (I still don’t have a Triton. Hmm.) and the new Holiday Mare and Foal Set Wish and Wonder is very cute – and Chalky! – but I’m in more of a mood to sell or purge, not buy.

A few obligatory historical notes: Misty has come in Gray before, and the original #20 release does come in an extremely rare and desirable Chalky variation. Outside of Test Colors, little Stormy has almost always been some sort of Pinto; I have not seen or heard of any Chalkies of the original #19 release, but the mold was not released until 1977, a couple years beyond the Chalky Era (ca. 1973-1975).

Outside of some Club stuff, the only horse-related things I’ve bought in the past couple of weeks were a few vintage horse books for my (still-depleted) stash from a Salvation Army store a few days ago.

Oh, I’m still in the habit of window shopping: I had a few half-hearted attempts to suss out some goodies from Walmart (but left empty-handed), the Clydesdale Mare Alba has reappeared on the shelves of the local Tractor Supply Store and continues to tempt me, and I’ve spotted a few intriguing variations on eBay.

(I’m looking at Dogs, again. Just missed a Matte Black Poodle again, grrr!)

On the plus side of all of this, my bank accounts will be well-rested when all the December promotions finally drop.

All I’m really asking for this year is that I’ll actually get to see the Holiday Animal Special Run before it sells out. Not necessarily buy it, but to see it: sometimes having the ability to purchase something is more important than actually purchasing it.

(But if it’s a Dog mold, I’m definitely buying it.)

Scanners Live in Vain

What the local annual book sale lacked in quantity (for me) it made up for in quality. Among the finds are the 1950 translation of the definitive book about German Shepherds written by the guy who invented the breed, a 1984 edition of the FEI rulebook for Driving(!), and a First Edition-First Printing of Misty of Chincoteague from 1947:

My original Misty of Chincoteague was a 1948 edition that had seen better days, so I was super happy to find an upgrade that was not only in better condition, but was a first-first, too!

Take that, annoying book scanner people!

For those of you unfamiliar with shopping at charity used book sales, there’s a certain class of resellers who use handheld scanners or phone apps to determine if books are worth buying for resale.

They tend to be indiscriminate in their purchases, and focused on more modern books that have scanable barcodes or ISBN numbers. Unless a sale specifically bans them in the first day or hours, they will absolutely overrun the place.

I don’t have an issue with them having an online bookselling business, because I do as well, but a lot of these people are such amateurs.

I showed up an hour late for the sale – aside from the bad traffic, I also had to make a run to the bank, because my Salvation Army shopping spree earlier in the week left me without any fun money at all. Yet I still managed to score some pretty valuable books that were essentially invisible to the scanner people, who were too focused on what their scanners were telling them.

Is there a model horse lesson to be learned from this story?

Of course there is: a tool can’t replace knowledge or experience. A tool is often incapable of distinguishing the subtle nuances that differentiate the valuable from the valueless. This applies to either books, or Breyers.

A Matte Palomino Family Arabian Stallion in ordinary condition? Probably body box material. A mint-in-box Chalky Palomino Family Arabian Stallion with all his paperwork and receipts? That’s a major score!

You want to succeed at collecting? A tool can only take you so far. Work on building the database you carry inside your head.

My other edition of Misty will be going in my BreyerFest book stash (which was absolutely decimated this year) along with a couple of the others. The Fury book is going into my reference library, unless they reissue the Fury mold for BreyerFest next year. (I hope!)

The GSD book will be put online in the near future, because vintage dog reference books have been a really good niche market for me. Just as it was for horse racing, the Metro Detroit area used to be quite a hotbed for dog breeders!

Post-1966 Glosses

Around 1967, Breyer began to phase out Gloss Finishes. Some releases, such as the Family Arabians, were transitioned over to a Matte Finish. Others, like the Alabaster Five-Gaiter and the Gray Appaloosa Fighting Stallion, were discontinued altogether.

A few - well, more than a few, when you think about it - Gloss-Finished models continued to be produced through the late 1960s and well into the 1970s.

A few examples? The Palomino Five-Gaiter continued in Gloss through 1971, the Running Mare and Foal was produced in Gloss Dark Dapple Gray through 1973, and the Horned Hereford Bull was released in Gloss throughout almost the entirety of the 1970s. The Dapple Gray Old Timer and the Brahma Bull didn’t transition to a Matte Finish until much later in their runs.

What didn’t happen as often after 1966 were entirely new releases in Gloss Finishes.

The first, obviously, was the Charcoal Running Stallion in 1968. All of his other original release colors - Alabaster/White, Red Roan, and Black Appaloosa - were Matte-Finished, and at least nominally realistic. I don’t know why they went with Gloss Charcoal for him, other than he looked awesome in it. (A perfectly valid reason, by the way.)

Some of the Family Foals were apparently rereleased in Gloss in the late 1960s, though the reasons why are unknown. Perhaps by customer order or request, as I’ve speculated with other Post Production SRs/Reissues?

In the mid-1970s, some of the newly-released Stablemates came in Gloss Finish variations. The rumor heard way back when was that in the mid-1970s, Breyer was trying to use up the last buckets of the old Gloss varnish lying around, and as a consequence some of that may have been applied to random batches of early (1975/76) Stablemates.

The same theory also apparently explained that coveted handful of Gloss Chalky Dapple Gray Shires, who appeared around the same time, per a ca. 1975 sales flier:

That wouldn’t explain the continued existence of the Gloss Dapple Gray Old Timer and the Bulls, unless they were pulling them from warehoused backstock until their supply ran out. Which is possible.

What’s always baffled me are the Gloss Misties. What was the reason for releasing her that way initially in 1972, especially after obviously committing to a more realistic - and more Matte-Finished - aesthetic five years earlier? Other than she, too, looked awesome in it?

My hand-airbrushed, possible Salesman's Sample or just super-early Gloss Misty. Beautiful little girl, isn't she? I never tire of looking at her.

Bay + Pinto

The latest Vintage Club pictures are out, of the Gloss Bay Pinto Misty and Stormy, Coral and Reef:

Here’s an interesting little fact: prior to the early 1980s, all Breyer pintos were either Black, or some form of Chestnut ("Brown", Sorrel, Red Dun, Palomino, or actual Chestnut).

The company that brought us Decorators, Smoke, Charcoal, freckly Red Roans and multitudes of odd Appaloosas didn’t get around to producing a Bay Pinto production model until 1982, with the introduction of the Regular Run #230 Overo Pinto Stock Horse Mare.

Later in that same year we received a few more in the form of Christmas/Holiday Special Runs - the Thoroughbred Mare and Suckling Foal, and the "True Bay" Clydesdale Family (who were technically cropouts).

An argument could be made that the #88 Overo Pinto release of the Stud Spider mold, in 1979, could be considered earlier; in the 1960s, Breyer used the same "Five-Gaiter Sorrel" color interchangeably on some of its nominally "Bay" releases.

Even if we accept that line of reasoning - which I don’t, on the premise that Breyer seemed to have finally figured out what "Bay" was by then - that still only gets us to 1979. The only Bay Pintos that existed prior were the famous Gloss Bay Pinto Western Prancing Horses, made for a small group of hobbyists in the early 1960s, and some Test Colors.

Strange, isn’t it? Especially since it is not an uncommon color scheme in the real-horse world, unlike some of the more obscure or trendy that we get so worked up about today. It’s Bay plus Pinto: Breyer had the know-how and the technology to pull that off by the late 1950s.

I wonder what the thinking behind it was that led to this absence? Pintos were not all that common back then, since it necessitated creating elaborate, expensive and delicate metal masks specific to the mold. But did it really never occur to them to airbrush points and maybe a little black to the mane and tail?

Did they not think that consumers would be interested? Was it related to the fact that they had had such a hard time distinguishing between Chestnut and Bay, initially? Or was it as simply them being clueless, and not realizing they hadn’t done it before?

I don't know. I tend to fall into the "they were clueless" camp. It’s as good an explanation as any for many of the brand’s "Huh?" moments, then and now. And the correct one, more often than not.

Monocle

The past couple of days have been quite annoying; two issues I thought were resolved apparently are not. There goes most of my finer plans for Monday …

In the meantime I’ve keeping busy taking care of the horsey paperwork; I've done so much buying and selling in the past two months that I’m not sure who stayed and who went. One of the few things that did manage to stick around after my collection buying-and-selling spree: a Gloss Three-Eyed (aka "Monocle") Misty!

The funny thing was that when I first saw her, I thought that she’d be the quickest way for me to recoup my investment in that collection. Then I went to look at my Misty lineup and realized she’s one of the few that I didn't have.

In my defense, there are a lot of distinct production Variations of the Regular Run Misty to keep track of, possibly more than any other individual Regular Run item. The only other ones that had about as much internal variation were some of the Dapple Grays, like the Proud Arabians and the #85 Azteca.

The Gloss Three-eyed Misty is one of the scarcer Misty Variations. Not as scarce as the Chalky, or the hand-airbrushed ones, but tougher than the Gloss 4-eyed one that most collectors consider the apex of collectible Misties.

The price I paid for this one wasn’t too bad - once I sold off everyone else in that collection. (Nice stuff, but nothing I really needed.)

Like the Stretched Morgan and the Running Stallion, Misty isn’t a mold I intended to collect: it chose me. I haven’t gone out of the way to find any of them, I just happened to stumble upon them during my normal search-and-rescue operations, either individually or in collections.

If I’m remembering correctly, it took me a few years before I finally got around to acquiring a regular, run-of-the-mill Misty, too. It’s not that I wasn’t interested, I just figured that she wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Correctly: the original #20 release of the Misty ran for over 30 years - from 1972 through 2006 - and in several different rereleases and sets afterwards.

So it’s no surprise at all that she comes in so many lovely production variations.

It’ll be interesting to see how closely the Gloss Bay Pinto Vintage Club Misty hews to (what I’m presuming will be) the 4-eyed pattern.

Love, Love, Love?

First they promised us the G1 Draft Horse as the Gift Stablemate for the 2014 Vintage Club. That was easy to rationalize: all the Warehouse finds were from previously molded - and warehoused - bodies. You can fit hundreds of Stablemates in a single storage drum, easy-peasy.

Then they offered us Cosette - the Classic Arabian Mare in Chestnut Pinto. Another Hagen-Renaker mold. An apparently open-ended run, too - though limited to two per customer - but still available on the Breyer web site as of my writing this. Well, maybe that one could have been warehoused too, but I was beginning to have my doubts.

Then they sent us a picture of the cover of the soon-to-be-mailed Just About Horses Annual:

Ooh, a new chestnut Carrick! The Zodiac Collection that they hinted at a while back? I’m cool with that. Fan-niversary - is that what they’re calling the next Exclusive Event, or is it just another themed anniversary promotion? Interesting; whatever it is, I hope the Western Horse is involved. The Maureen Love Story…

Whoa, wait a minute. Does that mean what we think it means? 

Then we received notice about the offerings for next year’s Vintage Club:

Oh Good Heavens, a Gloss Palomino Pinto Proud Arabian Mare? I suppose we’ll all find out in a few weeks, as the Annuals make their way out into the world, the circumstances behind the return of the Hagen-Renaker molds. For now, or for good?

Rats, just when I thought it was safe to start upgrading my Proud Arabians!

While everyone is squealing in delight over the Proud Arabian Mare’s return, the model that made me melt into a puddle was the Quarter Horse Gelding. In Black Splash Spot Leopard Appaloosa, like the Western Prancing Horse? Oh, goodness.

The full lineup, in case you haven't heard:

• Black Splash Spot Leopard Quarter Horse Gelding
• Gloss Red Bay Pinto 4-eyed Misty and Stormy
• Gambler’s Choice Decorator Running Stallions
• Gloss Palomino Pinto Proud Arabian Mare - Yellow Mount pattern
• Bonus Model: Dark Dapple Gray Loose Mane Cleveland Bay, aka "Murphy"
• Gift Stablemate: Gloss Alabaster G3 Rearing Andalusian

Interesting that they’re doing a Gambler’s Choice on the Running Stallion; presumably for the benefit of those lucky ones among us who have vintage Running Mares and Foals in need of a match. I thought they'd go with a Gloss/Matte Gambler's Choice first, since there was precedent for that back in the 1960s and 1970s, when they transitioned from mostly Gloss to mostly Matte finishes.

So signing up for the Vintage Club this coming year gets you a rare and lovely PAM, and a super-scarce (125 piece) Decorator? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

There goes my hard-earned Paypal balance.

Crinkles

I never did get around to introducing you to the Silver Filigree Misty I got during the Great Post-BreyerFest Silver Rush:

I call her Crinkles, because she reminds me of the aluminum foil that both my Grandmothers saved and reused until it crinkled to bits. Oddly, the white plastic underneath the silver paint seems shinier and more sparkly than the silver itself, but I think it’s an effect of the textured surface than any trick of the paint.

With all the Special Runs they’ve been throwing at us willy-nilly this Fall, it makes me wonder if we’re getting at least one more: this time, another Silver Filigree. Silver Filigrees are not quite a Holiday Web Special tradition, but it’s happened enough that collectors can be forgiven somewhat for thinking it is:

2008: Othello - Silver Snow
2010: Esprit - Alpine
2011: Weather Girl - Mont Tremblant
2013: Brishen - Aspen

It’s interesting to note that these molds were all relatively "new" when their corresponding Silver Filigree Special Run was released. Yes, I considered the Othello "new" then: while the mold existed in Nonplastic form much earlier, the mold made its Plastic debut in 2007 with the popular Christmas Horse Wintersong.

The most likely candidates for a possible Silver Filigree Special would be newer molds like Latigo, Ashquar, or Carrick. However, Carrick is a Tractor Supply Special (Travis); Ashquar is a Flagship Special (Sahran); and Latigo was just announced as a Collectors Club 2015 Web Exclusive (in Palomino Pinto, named Tallulah).

As we’ve seen with the Goffert and Carrick molds this year, though, Reeves isn’t squeamish about putting out multiple unrelated Special Runs from the same mold in rapid succession. For some reason Ashquar seems like the most likely candidate among the most recent mold releases; he’s only had the one release (Sahran) since his debut last year.

But we’re speaking of hypotheticals; I haven’t heard anything concrete. In fact, I haven’t heard anything at all about anything, but I haven't been online much lately. It may well be that Reeves might think we are Silver Charmed and Filligreed out after BreyerFest, and is currently plotting something else.

Or nothing at all.

Actually, I’d love to take a breather and not have to worry about any more Specials of any kind for the rest of the year. Silver Filigrees or otherwise.

Don't think that'll happen, though.

Team Misty

One of the first things I noticed during the inventory cull: my goodness, I have a lot of Misty Variations. I don’t have the exact number at my fingertips, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was enough to field a baseball team. Here’s a somewhat more common member of Team Misty:

What’s notable about this collection is that it doesn’t include the Cold Cast Porcelain, the Special Run Flocky, or the more recent reissues with fancier shading. All of mine are Variations of the standard #20 Misty of Chincoteague.

I’m not giving any of them up, either. This isn’t a case of unconditional love or obsessive obscure Variation-hunting: each one of them is clearly and obviously different from each other even to the less-attentive among us. Hand-airbrushed, 3-Eyed, 4-Eyed, Matte-Finished, Gloss-Finished, Bi-eyed …

Everything except Chalky: Misty is probably one of the rarest Chalky Era Chalkies out there. The 4-eyed Gloss Misty - the alleged Gold Standard of rare Mistys - is positively common compared to the Chalky. I can’t even recall the last time I saw one for sale outright, and it wasn’t a pretty sight the last time one came up on eBay. (Except to the seller, maybe!)

The funny thing is that I’m really not all that into Misty herself - the book, or the mold. (FWIW, Born to Trot is my favorite Marguerite Henry book.) It’s the history of the mold, and all its changes through time that fascinate me.

I’ve been lucky enough to run across most of my Misty models via my usual cheapskate channels: the flea market, the Salvation Army, in box lots. The only one I had to pay "retail" for was for the hand-airbrushed one I found on eBay. For reasons I’d rather not elaborate here, I felt justified in making an exception in her case.

I am sometimes baffled by some hobbyists’ need to collect multiple variations of more recent molds. I understand the love, but the variations are often so minute (It’s slightly Semi-Gloss! The points are dark gray, not black!) that I sometimes find myself scratching my head. Really?

Some of it is the residue of our history: Regular Run models hung around long enough (decades, sometimes!) that legitimately distinct Variations did emerge over time. We could justify having multiple examples of the same release because they really didn’t look the same.

Nowadays releases come and go in an eyeblink - like that odd-looking Pinto Sporthorse Gem Twist - so the opportunity for true Variations to arise is rare. So the standard drops: what would have been considered within the normal range of variation suddenly becomes A Variation. 

Sometimes I get some flak for not "seeing" some variations as Variations, especially in more modern releases. You have to look at it from my perspective: it’s not that I don’t see them, it’s that I had to make a choice between width and depth. Neither choice is perfect: you’re going to lose some data either way.

You can’t focus on both either, because that’ll drive you crazy. There are already enough subtleties to Breyer History that I don't need to complicate it with even more.

Airbrushed Stormy?

Something short today: I had some scheduling conflicts over the weekend, again.

I see that another airbrushed Misty was confirmed; I spotted it in a group lot on eBay last week and suspected it was so, but the dental issue put a kibosh on me bidding on it. (The final price wasn’t too bad, actually, but still out of my budget range.)

I misspoke slightly when the topic was brought up again on Blab; these airbrushed Mistys (Misties?) could be any one of a number of things. If they’re test colors, then a quantity of 5 to 7 pieces would be a reasonable and logical assumption: that’s what a typical test run of that era ran. They could also be salesman’s samples made prior to production and prior to the creation of the painting mask: unfortunately, I have no idea how many salesman’s samples were made on average back then.

The third possibility is that they were early production pieces made prior to the creation of the painting mask. This is what happened with Jasper, the Market Hog, and the early Diamondot Buccaneers.

The "early production piece" idea seems unlikely, though, when you consider how complex Misty’s pattern is: this isn’t just one big, smooth spot or random dabs of black paint! Hand-airbrushing a pinto pattern of Misty’s complexity seems really, really unlikely in a high production environment. A few dozen pieces, maybe, but a couple hundred - or thousands? I don’t think so!

So whatever her origins might be, she's going to be rare, regardless.

Now, what about Stormy? Did she come in an airbrushed version? She did on her original white box from 1977:


And in the 1977 Dealer’s Catalog, too (obviously the same photo, uncropped):

The Stormy seen in the group shot in the Collector’s Manual appears to be the same piece, but it’s a little too small for me to be 100 percent sure.

That means there has to be at least one hand-airbrushed Stormy out there. I haven’t seen any "in the wild," though. The one I got for Christmas back in 1977 isn’t, and neither is the one that came in the box I scanned, above.

I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a few being out there; there was a Stormy on eBay a couple of years ago that looked like it might have been, but the bidding got a little too hot and heavy for me to find out first hand. Now that I’m prowling eBay seriously again (just for research purposes, naturally) maybe I’ll spot another.

Carrot Cake

I got my JAH early last week (yay!) and fell in love with Carrot Cake, the Silver Bay Misty Contest model. My first thought was "Oh great, I have to come up with something REALLY clever for the cake topper contest now." My second thought was of my hand-airbrushed Misty: she’s one test color that’s definitely staying put. Isn’t she lovely?



(Oh, and my third thought was: dang it Breyer, how’d you know it was (a) my birthday this week and (b) that carrot cake is my favorite? Darn you. Darn you all to heck.)

There’s more to my attachment than the fact that she appears to be a preproduction, pre-mask test piece: I found her on eBay last year during a very sad and extremely stressful time in my life. I couldn’t really afford it, but the world was falling apart, and I needed something rare, beautiful and tangible in my life at that very moment. I had to have her: price wasn’t really an object.

(There’s a lot of that kind of thinking, and buying, in the hobby. Deep down, we’re all just lonely little girls who love horses. Neither time nor money seems to change that. Sorry for that maudlin little interlude…)

In Nancy Young’s book there’s a mention, and a photo, of a similar piece: a hand-airbrushed San Domingo. He had been up for auction - and sold for an outrageous price - not long before the Misty turned up. That probably influenced my decision, too. It wasn’t necessarily proof of her authenticity, but it didn’t hurt, either.

You don’t see too many hand-airbrushed, unmasked pintos in the regular run Breyer line. They’re labor-intensive, hard to keep consistent, and easy to screw up. A couple notable exceptions would be the ever-popular chestnut pinto Indian Pony, and early versions of Jasper, the Market Hog. On the early Jaspers, you can even see that they "drew" the outline of his spot first before filling the rest of it in.

In other words, what I’m trying to say is that hand-airbrushing is generally a good indicator of something being either a very early, or very rare. (And occasionally, both.) It’s a good thing to look out for, if you’re looking for something special.