WinterFest?

My life is weird, part one million: this past week included my shoes melting and an extended argument about a toilet. I also unintentionally manifested an entire box of French Vanilla coffee creamer.

(Yeah, the same nonsense I can do with models I can now do with food. Except a decent vegetarian corn chowder: that search continues.)

First, some of you were a little confused about the references to the legs on the Family Arabian Foal: I was referring to how she looked from the front, rather than the sides. Here’s a shot to show you how different the leg positions are on my belly-stamped FAF, compared to a slightly later Bay example.

Most of my FAFs (I have… so many) look more like the Bay than the Woodgrain. It could just be that this specific Woodgrain Foal was made this way, or got this way somehow; legs have a habit of going wonky in storage. Maybe there is something more to it, and maybe there isn’t. I haven’t seen enough of these Foals in person to make any assumptions.

Someone mentioned the Old Mold version of the Stallion in the comments – yes, he is most definitely an underappreciated early rarity! But ironically, not a hard one to collect: I think I have a complete collection of them now, and I don’t think any one example cost me more than fifty dollars (the Woodgrain, I believe: I think because he had a Tenite sticker? Back is still too achy for me to dig him out.)

The only significant difference between an Old Mold Stallion and an early Family Arabian Stallion is the mold stamp: Old Molds don’t have it, though most Gray Appaloosas seem to have the partial one. There may be some other subtle differences, but I’ve never been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that couldn’t be ascribed to an incidental manufacturing error. 

Second, this WinterFest thing is interesting; I was just thinking that it was about time for another Duende Special Run. I do like Trueno, and how this paint job makes his mane looks like icicles, but I don’t know if I like him enough to pursue him.

https://www.breyerhorses.com/pages/breyers-winterfest-2023

The same can probably be said of the braided-mane version of Nikolas, named Mouse. Other people have done some digging in my stead and discovered that they are going to be both relatively plentiful and inexpensive, so I may have time to change my mind.

Mouse reminds me a little bit of another one of the customs I’ve been working, too. I’ll probably be putting most of my customizing on hiatus after the Thanksgiving work break, though, to focus on my quilts instead. 

The garage is cold and quilts are warm; that’s all there really is to that.

What else they have in store for this thing we’ll all have to wait and see. I might do a workshop or two if I can find the spare time. (Tempted by the Zebra one, but I fear my patience for painting stripes is very limited.)

Cooler Things

It just amuses and baffles me that I can’t “win” 1000-piece Special Runs, but Test Colors, 50-piece runs, and things other hobbyists are like “what, they made that?” No problemo!

(Yeah, still no Vail. At this point I’m just laughing and shaking my head about it.)

The Bay Lady Roxana has soared past my upper bidding limit; but that’s fine: I went and bought some box lots on the Internet for less that are probably worth more; I’ll find out by the end of the week!

So here’s another cool thing I have been looking for for an insanely long time:

As you might have guessed – because it’s me we’re talking about here – this is no ordinary Family Arabian Foal. Check out the location of her mold mark!

(Just above the drip mark.)

The belly-stamped Foals are obviously very early; in fact, I think they represent the “first state” of the mold, before any of the multitude of other changes were made to it. 

The Family Arabian Foal was likely Breyer’s most popular and in-demand mold through the 1960s and a large portion of the 1970s, and because of the wear and tear of near-constant production, it went through many repairs and revisions. So many, in fact, that with a little extra research, we could probably create a pretty accurate year-by-year timeline of the changes.

(Sorry folks, I do not have the time for that right now!)

Looking for a belly-stamped FAF has been awkward, to say the least, and is complicated by the fact that the best place you would think to find something like this – BreyerFest – has also become one of the less likely. Unless it’s a Test Color, Oddity, Rare SR, New in Box or another known rare variation (like the Sorrels), people don’t bring Family Arabians to sell, because they’re old-fashioned, common and allegedly boring. 

Fortunately, on places like eBay, a lot of sellers don’t know or don’t care: they just want to make a sale. The more diligent ones do what sellers selling items outside of their comfort zone usually do: they photograph everything, including the location of the mold marks. 

Although there are instances where the presence or absence of certain mold marks is historically important, usually it isn’t, so most of us roll our eyes when we see that photo included in a listing. Yeah, I already know that’s a Breyer, doofus.

But in this case, it’s what made the difference for me. I immediately saw it and jumped on it like a cat on a can of tuna. 

I’m beginning to wonder if the FAF was the first – or one of the first – molds to receive the mold mark, before they decided that putting it on the inside hind leg was the way to go. The change happened very quickly, and before they revised the curled eartips: curled eartip FAFs with the standard leg stamp are a little uncommon, but not super-rare. 

(The Shetland Pony also received a belly-stamp around the same time, but it never got removed or repositioned).

Theoretically, the Belly Stamp Foals should only exist in the original four Family Arabian/Old Mold colors: Alabaster, Bay, Woodgrain and Gray Appaloosa. Palomino and Charcoal didn’t show up until later; how much later I am not sure, but I do know I still haven’t found any evidence of Palomino or Charcoal FAFs with the curled eartips.

I haven’t done a comprehensive, point-by-point study of the Foal to figure out what else was changed or corrected from the first state of the mold to the second. Having a sample size of only one is also not helpful, because you don’t know if the variations are the result of a molding or production change, or just something idiosyncratic to that particular Foal.

The Foal’s legs are definitely not in the same places as most of my later examples, but that could just mean the cooling boards weren’t ready yet and everything was assembled by hand, as was the case with the original In-Between Mares around the same time.

Even though Breyer had been producing horses for nearly a decade by the time this Foal was manufactured, she does feel a little – primitive? Maybe they had rush orders to fill, and even though they didn’t have a production process or even all the equipment “ready”, they just got them done by any means necessary?

(I work in a production facility: some of the crazy stuff we do to get product out the door...)

The real question, though, is this: just how rare are these Foals numerically? 

Well, the first problem here is that we don’t have any production records from this period to establish a lower limit. We also have to consider that the mold change happened very early, maybe/likely after the first production run; this first production run could have even been a test batch! It’s been over sixty years now since they were produced, so a lot of them have gone to the model horse graveyard by now, too. 

So my guess (and experience!) would say that unless several come out of the woodwork like the Woodgrain Old Mold Foal did, I’d say she was pretty rare. I do think these Foals are probably a little more common than we realize, because most hobbyists have been unaware of this variation’s existence, until now. And now they will look!

I’d love to have a complete set of four, but I’m happy with just the one, for now.

Decision Fatigue

Another short post again today – not only did I have entirely too much fun over my long weekend, I came home to a rather prodigious pile of work that I need to attack tout de suite. 

I haven’t really unpacked anything yet either, or even downloaded the picture from our epic Legion of Doom meeting… 

The driving part was more or less successful. Other than getting lost in the same place twice, but I’m putting that little incident in a box, taping the box shut, tossing it in a dumpster, and setting the dumpster on fire. As one does. 

(FYI: I am, and always have been, directionally challenged. And GPS doesn’t really help, but that’s not a story you need to hear today.)

I was also good and didn’t buy anything other than food, though the temptations were there. I have a pretty specific shopping list this year, and nothing on that list happened to be at the Swap Meet. 

In terms of showing, I didn’t start off well, but I finished with a Sectional Reserve (my Thornycroft) and a Sectional and Division Champ (my airbrushed Misty). Not quite as good as the last show I went to, but the selection of Collectibility classes was limited, and I decided to avoid them this time around as a challenge to myself. 

My goals were one Rosette, five NAN cards, and 15 placings. I think I ended up with only four NAN cards, but the other goals were met. 

My Morgans that all NAN’ed last time didn’t even place this time. Which kind of blew my mind, but I guess I should have expected that: as I remembered from my old showing days in the 1980s, every time I crossed a state line to show, the judges’ personal preferences seemed to flip completely, too. Lesson (re)learned, I guess.

Since I probably owe you all at least one picture, here’s that dilemma I briefly touched on a little while back: 

So, which one of these Old Mold Appaloosa Stallions do I keep – my original, sentimental favorite (R) with the darker shading and heavy speckling, or the new arrival (L) who is in better condition, but is a little on the light side, both color and spot-wise?

Keeping both is not an option, by the way. Despite my family’s insistence to the contrary, the house is not a museum. 

The Second IBM

When it comes to collectibles, rarest is such a loaded word: in a hobby where 25-30 Test Colors are distributed yearly, even being unique doesn’t guarantee value or even interest.

For an item to be truly valuable nowadays, there has to be more to it than mere rarity or uniqueness.

Prior to the early 1990s, Marney Walerius’s original Gray Appaloosa In-Between Mare qualified on both counts: it was not only (apparently) unique, but historically significant as Breyer’s first failed attempt at replacing the Old Mold Mare in their product lineup after the legal dispute with Hagen-Renaker.

Then a second piece – a Woodgrain, this time – showed up in California in the early 1990s, and turned the hobby on its head. What was once an unattainable oddity was now, hypothetically, available. It was no longer a thing that could be acquired and owned by one person sequentially, it could actually be something that could be collected by multiple hobbyists.

So ironically, by being less “rare”, the In-Between Mare probably became even more valuable!

I don’t have any idea about the exact number of In-Between Mares floating around the hobby, because of the simple fact that many hobbyists have a hard time distinguishing the Family Arabian Mare from the Old Mold/Proud Arabian Mare: a mold that bridges that gap could also be sitting in many collections completely unrecognized.

It is just not rare enough that I still have hopes of finding one on the secondary market, someday: a “new” one turns up on the market every four-five years or so, more often than some other items I can think of (#82 Donkey with Baskets, ahem.)

I had a momentarily breathless moment a few weeks ago when I spotted a Woodgrain FAM at a local flea market, from a far enough distance that I thought my moment had come, but she wasn’t so it didn’t.

I didn’t have the $1000 to hit the “Buy It Now” option on a Woodgrain IBM on eBay a few years back, and I certainly don’t have the money to buy the one up for auction now.

Not that I hadn’t given it some thought: the Woodgrain at auction is that “second” piece I mentioned/pictured above. I would love to have something with that kind of provenance and historical import, but alas, my bank account still says Not Today.

A Short History of Alabaster: Part II

For some reason this did not drop as scheduled on Saturday. So here is the conclusion, four days late....

I don’t think it was a popularity issue that doomed the “new” White paint job, but a manufacturing one: it was hard color to maintain consistency from model to model and the gray paint, applied over (not under) the Matte topcoat, rubbed off easily.

Confusing? Yes, very.

Honestly, this color confusion shouldn’t really be too surprising: we are talking about a company that had a hard time distinguishing between Bay and Chestnut. Having all these different names for a color as allegedly uncomplicated as White? Just par for the course.

Some argument could be made that Alabaster was in itself just another one of Breyer’s “Decorator” colors, albeit its simplest and most subtle. Like Smoke and Charcoal, Alabaster is not a term that was used in the real horse world to any significant degree, and bears only a coincidental resemblance to colors horses actually come in.

Matte finishes were still relatively uncommon at the time and used then primarily as a sealing topcoat for Woodgrains. The term might have been invented to help call out what was then something unusual and distinctive. Or as I’ve speculated with the color Charcoal, the term may have come from an offhand reference in a book or magazine.

Another point in favor of labeling Alabaster a Decorator color is that the term Smoke – another quasi-realistic color – debuted on the Running Mare and Foal at exactly the same time as Alabaster, and was even paired and marketed with it in deliberately mismatched Mare and Foal sets.

Then there is the matter of Gloss Alabaster: believe it or not, this term never comes up in early Breyer ephemera. It appears to be a hobbyist creation: through the 1960s and until Gloss finishes were phased out, Breyer always referred to Gloss Alabasters as White.

There were a number of reasons why white-colored horses, in all their names and forms, became a staple in the Breyer line through the 1960s and 1970s.

First and foremost: yes, they were a little cheaper to manufacture. They required fewer painting steps, and less paint. There was also less production waste. In an era where multiple simultaneous releases of a mold were the norm, it was common practice to set aside lighter-colored culls to repaint with a darker color later, rather than discarding or regrinding them.

But white was one of the most popular horse colors with the general public too, partly fueled by pop culture figures like The Lone Ranger’s Silver and Hopalong Cassidy’s Topper.

Although derided in recent years as a cheap, plain, and (at times) a downright lazy color to paint, careful examination reveals that too is not as simple as it seems. The simplicity of the color itself is a deceit: unlike other paint jobs, there’s no place for a minor decorating or molding flaw to hide.

In effect, we see the mold as the moldmaker sees it: no more, no less. That so many molds still succeed and delight is a testament to the craftsmen who helped bring them to life in the first place.

A Short History of Alabaster: Part I

Since I am going to either be away, or occupied with other things through the weekend, I will be queuing up the article I wrote about the history of Alabaster for this year’s Sampler.

Even though Breyer’s history began with a white Western Horse, the term “Alabaster” – the word hobbyists most commonly use to describe white-colored Breyer horses – did not appear in any official Breyer ephemera until ca. 1962.

My recent research has determined the reason why: “Alabaster” was created as a descriptor not just of a color, but a finish. In short, Matte White = Alabaster.

The history of Breyer’s plainest and most basic color, however, is far more complicated than that.

The earliest white-colored Breyer horses of the 1950s were literally White, in both form and name. Models like the Western Horse, Western Pony and Fury Prancer were uniformly described in the ephemera of the time as White: and they were, save for a few touches of gray shading on the hooves and head.

It wasn’t until 1958 that models with more extensive gray shading arrived, in the form of the Old Mold Mare and Foal (and a year later, on the Stallion). While the paint job on the Old Mold Family was very similar to the color we think of as Alabaster (gray manes, tails and body shading) they still weren’t labeled that way. The early ephemera still referred to them as White.

Other white-colored models began to show up shortly after but they were not labeled Alabaster, either. The Shetland Pony, with her gray mane and tail and pink hooves and muzzle, was still White. The Mustang and Five-Gaiter were described as Albino, presumably because the earliest pieces were issued with dark pink eyes, not black ones.

It wasn’t until ca. 1962 that the term “Alabaster” finally appeared in print, to describe the brand new Running Mare and Foal, and a revamped White Fighting Stallion.

What did these three releases have in common? The Running Mare and Foal and the re-released Fighting Stallion all came in a Matte finish. They were followed shortly afterwards by the Rearing Stallion (1965) and Running Stallion (1968), both Matte, and “Alabaster”.

It wasn’t until 1969 that the Family Arabians and the Shetland Pony – among the last remaining glossy White pieces in the Breyer line – were officially labeled Alabasters in existing ephemera. This is almost exactly the same time that Breyer officially began phasing out gloss.

1968 Pricelist:

1969 Pricelist:

I do not think this was a coincidence. Especially since the third white release in the line at the time – the Western Pony – remained glossy. And was still labeled as White.

There seems to be quite a bit of evidence that Breyer was being careful and nuanced when it came to their color terminology in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially with their expanding repertoire of gray-based colors. One that expanded further with the release of the matte Dapple Gray paint job on the Proud Arabian Stallion in 1971.

To complicate matters even more, the term White was still being used. In spite of the fact that neither the Old Timer (released in 1966) nor the Indian Pony (released in 1970) ever came in a Gloss Finish, they were both consistently described in catalogs and other price lists as White well into the 1970s.

What I think was going on there was that a decision was made to turn that particular descriptor into a term for a matte white finish with heavy, almost Smoke-like body shading.

This “new” White didn’t last long: all subsequent “white” releases in the 1970s and 1980s were labeled Alabaster, regardless of the amount of gray shading they came with.

Dating That Flier

Okay, this has been bugging me for a while, and today is as good a day as any to get it out of my system. Recently Reeves sent out a color copy of this flier to Vintage Club members:

I can’t recall if this black and white copy is one I received either directly from Marney, from Reeves themselves, from someone else, or was bought as part of a package of copies that someone within the hobby was selling. The buying/selling/trading of Xeroxed ephemera was quite the booming little business back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when good reference materials were hard to come by.

Some of the earlier and more exotic pages, I later discovered, were copies of the actual archival materials Breyer had, presumably made by Marney herself. So there’s a strong possibility that even if I didn’t get this copy from Reeves, it might be a copy from the very same source material.

There are two things that bug the bananas out of this fresh bit of ephemera, however.

First is the dating: anyone who has dabbled in Breyer history could tell you that Reeves’s claim that this piece of ephemera is from “circa 1963” is wrong, on a couple of levels.

The Old Mold Mare and Foal – later known as the Proud Arabian Mare and Foal – were out of production by 1960, due to the legal dispute with Hagen-Renaker. While photos with the Old Mold Mare and Foal did float around for about a year or so afterwards – presumably by advertisers and retailers using up older PR materials – Breyer had stopped using images of these two molds themselves by early 1960 at the latest.

A more accurate date for this flier, I think, is ca. 1959, and it was designed to announce the arrival of the Family Arabian Stallion and the introduction of the color Bay. My copy of the flip side of this flier shows the Alabaster version of the Stallion all by his lonesome, though listing the Mare and Foal and all the various combos that were available:

I also have a copy of a 1959 press release from Eastman Chemical – Breyer’s Cellulose Acetate supplier at the time – that announces the release of the Bay set:

(Click to enlarge, to read.)

It is also a little troublesome that this bit of ephemera might have been cropped and retouched for release to collectors, unless there was a slightly different copy that I was not aware of without the bottom address and flip arrow. There are other early pieces of ephemera that come with slight variations of format and copy, so it is possible. 

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the exact details of the flier in Reeves’s possession when I saw it oh so long ago. So my fuzzy memory can perhaps give them a bit of a pass on that issue.

But still, guys, the date is Breyer History 101 kind of stuff. You can do better.

Honey vs. Chocolate

I was hoping that they’d bring back that wonderful dark Glossy Bay they put on some of last year’s "Pop the Cork" Surprise Model Nokotas; judging from the prices they were (and are, still) commanding, he was the clear favorite of many. And guess what shows up on the Breyer Blog last week?

A Glossy Bay Ashquar, named Ganache. It’s still too early for me to decide if he’s going to be on my want list, but I’m going to hazard a guess that he’s going to be on the list of many others. 

The popularity of this new "Chocolate" Gloss Bay is somewhat reminiscent of the popularity of the vintage "Honey" Gloss Bays, best typified by the Old Mold and Family Arabians, such as this set I sold recently:

(Yeah, I know, the eyewhites on that FAM were scary! And 100 percent real, from what I could tell; they too, were a part of that ca. 1959-62 collection.)

Contrary to what many hobbyists assume, Gloss "Honey" Bays were not that common a color in the Vintage Glossy Era (pre-1967). Aside from the Old Mold/Family Arabians, the only other Regular Run release that came in that color was the Clydesdale Stallion.

And only for a short time: he was one of the first models to switch over to a Matte Finish from the Gloss, by 1963.

The #36 Racehorse was nominally "Bay", but was in reality Chestnut, and the Western Prancing Horse debuted in a "Bay" ca. 1962 that was identical to the Five-Gaiter’s Matte Sorrel. The Glossy Bay Quarter Horse Geldings tended to be more reddish-brown than true Honey. The Running Mares and Foals were the same color as the Gelding, except Matte, though some veer into Semi-Gloss/High Satin territory. (Inexplicably, they called those two "Chestnut" in the catalogs and pricelists!)

There are so few genuine Gloss Bay Fighting Stallions floating around that I cannot honestly make a judgement call on what their "standard" color is supposed to be. They switched him over to a Matte Finish around the same time as the Clydesdale, leaving that color to the Family Arabians alone through the middle of the 1960s. All the Bays that debuted after 1963 were Matte.

There are a few Test Color/Oddball Glossy Honey Bays roaming the hobby landscape, too, including the famous Gloss Bay Pinto Western Prancing Horses. (Wanna talk about grails? Sigh…) I’ve always suspected that the Shetland Pony was supposed to have come in a Gloss Bay, originally, but so far I’ve seen no physical evidence.

So, just like almost all the old Vintage colors, it’s far more commonly seen in more modern releases. (Woodgrain would be one of those exceptions, though I’m thinking for not much longer.)

When the Weather Girl mold finally makes her comeback, I am so hoping that they release her in all of the original Old Mold colors: Gloss Shaded Alabaster, Gloss Appaloosa, Woodgrain, and especially the Gloss Honey Bay.

Red Shift

Just to show you that the Five-Gaiter thing wasn’t me being a pill about condition, here’s a box lot baby I do intend to keep:

A poor three-legged Bay Old Mold Foal! Minus the missing leg, he’s in not bad condition - it’s just the typical ear-nose-hoof rubs and stuff. Since I have had a notoriously hard time finding Old Mold Mares and Foals in any other color than Alabaster, a three-legged Bay Foal is a treasure. He can keep my ragged, 50 cent Gloss Alabaster Fighter company!

As mentioned in the comments last post, I am not sure if early Breyer Bays were subject to color shifting like the Palominos. It’s possible, but I haven’t seen enough early New-in-Box Gloss Bays to compare against more "weathered" Bays, nor have I seen any early Bays where the color was noticeably different from one side to the next that could be indicative of prolonged exposure to the sun, heat or other environmental factors.

It’s definitely an issue with Hartland Bays - like many Hartland Palominos, the red base in the paint fades, leaving the models a distinct shade of green (Olive for the Bay; Chartreuse for the Palominos).

The red shift/red fade does happen with some early Breyers, but tends to be limited to those models that came with pinking of the eyes, ears, muzzle and hooves. Since it is limited to accent areas - and the absence of the pinking tends to be so complete - the lack of pinking is sometimes labeled as a variation or production error.

It’s also not that much of a dealbreaker; while we’d prefer the pinking to remain intact, most hobbyists are not going to turn noses up on an otherwise flawless model without it.

There is some color-shifting going on with Shrinkies, to be sure. Chestnuts turn peachy-pink, and Bays turn to Buckskin. But that’s a slightly different process there - a chemical reaction that is primarily a result of a breakdown of the plastic itself, and not a consequence of environmental issues. (Though excessive sunlight, heat and humidity certainly don’t help!)

Whatever other color shifting may be occurring with some Breyer paint jobs, nevertheless I haven’t seen anything green that didn’t start out green in the first place, either by design (Little Bits Unicorns, some of the Classics Blossoms) or by default (Dappled Green Bay Sham).

There’s been some recent speculation that the reason why Reeves hasn’t released any new "Christmas" Decorators may be due to the issues with color shifting or fading, especially with the color Red. Indeed, it could be the reason why the mythical Christmas Decorators might not have made it past the testing phase back in the 1960s.

But here we are speaking of a hypothetical of a hypothetical: we don’t have any confirmed examples of Christmas Decorators in the first place.

Oh, and re: other posts on the topic of fugitive paint, the most recent - I think - was the one last year about the 2013 Volunteer Clydesdale Mare. I really need to index these posts better…

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.

Time to Revise My Grail List

Instead of kvetching about the timing of another new release that I want that I can’t buy right now (the Warehouse Find Chestnut Western Prancing Horse) I will instead sigh wistfully over a model I never knew I wanted, and that I know I will never have:

A Proud Arabian Mare painted almost identically to the Splash Spot Leopard Appaloosa Western Prancing Horse. Oh, you beautiful creature you!

This photo is from another one of Marney Walerius’s photo albums, a recent acquisition for the archives. There’s no identification material on the back of the photo, and it’s unlike most of the others in the album in terms of style, size and focus. So who or what it is, is a mystery.

My initial reaction was that it might not even be Original Finish at all - an early BHR Repaint, perhaps - but the photo was found in an album that consists entirely of Original Finish Breyers. Marney must have believed (or known) it to be OF as well.

While it’s possible that they could have used an Old Mold Mare body to test a paint job for the Western Prancer - the Mare was discontinued ca. 1960, the WPH introduced ca. 1962 - it seems more likely to me that it’d be a Test of the Proud Arabian Mare rather than the Old Mold Mare.

First of all, there are a number of photos of other actual Test Colors of the PAM in another of Marney’s  albums, while Old Mold Mare Tests (and variations) are exceedingly rare. Second, there’s the matter of timing: the PAM was introduced in 1971/2, and the Appaloosa WPH was in production through 1973. 

Where this model is now is also a mystery, but that can be said for many of the models contained in these albums. A number of the Tests in these albums have turned up over the years - and I even managed to identify one I had purchased myself, recently. So I am not completely without hope.

Just without room in the budget. Darn you, car payments and doctor bills!

More on the Woodgrain Revival

Feeling just slightly under the weather (probably due to the weather) so here’s a scan I wanted to include in my discussion about the new Woodgrain Clock Saddlebred. It’s from a note from Marney Walerius to Peter Stone, attached to a flier for the 1976 Model Horse Congress, and it gives you an indication of just how long the Woodgrain Revival has been in the making:

1976: that’s just three years after the Woodgrain Fighting Stallion was discontinued, in 1973. Positively microscopic in Breyer time.

Woodgrain Proud Arabian Stallion? Gah! I know he’s no fan favorite, but I can’t even imagine what would happen to the Internet if he (a) did exist, and (b) showed up on eBay or MH$P. (And the Mares and Foals, if they were properly vetted and documented? The very nature of time and space itself might be altered.)

I am somewhat doubtful of his existence, since actual Woodgrain Test Colors are exceedingly rare - modern or vintage. This makes sense, since the Woodgraining process is messy, toxic and is a few degrees more difficult to execute than your standard paint job.

And no, seriously, I have no idea about his whereabouts, or if he was even made at all. All I knew prior to this note is that the notion of bringing back Woodgrains had been in discussion for a very long time; I just didn’t realize it had begun almost from the day they were discontinued in the first place.

Or that a Proud Arabian Stallion may have been involved. It makes sense, though, since Test Colors of other Old Mold colors appear to have been made on the Mare prior to her rerelease in the 1970s, including this beauty from Marney’s photo album:

Another Thriftshop Treasure

Every time I swing by the local Salvation Army, another treasure pops up. This time - an Old Mold Bay Stallion!

Considering his condition, treasure is probably pushing it a bit, but it felt nice rescuing him from a dump bin of not-so-gently-used toys. There were a few older Grand Champions in that bin as well, but as my knowledge of them is woefully inadequate, I figured it’d be best to leave them for someone who is more knowledgeable to sort them all out.

(I get the same slightly anxious feeling whenever I find a box of older MLPs or Lesney Matchbox Cars. There’s probably something good in here, but I don’t have even a glimmer of a clue, and I’d feel slightly guilty for taking the opportunity away from someone who does…)

There was no evidence of the Mare or Foal to be found, though. This didn’t surprise me, as while I’ve had a fair bit of luck locating the Alabasters locally, the Bays continue to elude me.

Other local hobbyists have found them, so it’s not a situation where they weren’t available here. It’s not an issue of rarity, either, as you all know I’ve found things that make Bay Old Mold Mares and Foals look mundane.

It might just be one of those weird sampling errors - like how I’m more likely to find Charcoal Fighting Stallions than Liver Chestnut Quarter Horse Yearlings. It doesn’t mean that the Fighters are more common than the Yearlings, per se, just that that’s how my personal luck runs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does lead to some strange internal monologues.

("Another Charcoal Fighting Stallion? Oh, bother…")

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to find whatever I do find. But given the choice, I’d rather find stuff that I want than stuff that I have to sell to get what I want. If only to save myself a step or two.

The Bay Old Molds are definitely more rare than the Alabasters, that is true. The Alabasters had the advantage of coming out first, and therefore being in production longer, though were not sure exactly how much longer. (And production quantities? No idea!) The Bays also seem to be a bit more desirable among hobbyists, but I’m not sure if that’s because Alabasters are seen as easier to get, or the Bays are considered more attractive.

I actually find the Alabasters a little bit more attractive, personally, because I’ve seen some Alabasters with astounding shading that almost rival their Hagen-Renaker ancestors.

As I already have a somewhat nicer Old Mold Stallion in Bay in the herd, this guy is going on the saleslist, though I’m not sure where. His condition - and general lack of demand for the mold - tell me he’s strictly body box material. But he is an Old Mold, technically, and not beyond salvaging.

It’ll be a few more weeks before I start up selling again, so I have some time to think about it.

The Flip Side

The other side of that Stablemates Flier is interesting too - and will you look at that!

It looks like I have to make a correction on an earlier claim, then: here’s another instance of those unproduced Arabian and Morgan Foal sets being mentioned in Breyer ephemera. (I previously thought they only appeared in the 1975 Pricelist - my bad!)

This sort of thing happens all the time in historical research - not just of the Breyer type. Corrections have to be made because new data shows up, and more often than not, it makes fools of us.

In this case it’s not TOO big a deal: the foals were never produced or released, and hence will (probably) never have to have documentation written up about them. (Unless they, too, show up just to spite us all. With all the things I’ve seen over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.)

However, it has become something of an issue with other items over the years. Hobbyists can become overly fond of their particular history resources, and as a result some of the errors in those resources get carried forward, even when more recent editions or research corrects or contradicts those errors.

In a lot of those cases, the corrections are minor - an errant misspelling, a transposed number, confusion about actual release dates versus catalog release dates - but in some cases, they are not.

The one that bothers me the most is the Boxer. Breyer, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, sent out a "Complete List" of Breyer Releases to hobbyists who asked for it. Although it was extremely helpful as a starting point for many of us (including me!) what we didn’t know at the time was that Breyer had an extremely small base of ephemera to work from.

The earliest dated piece they had was from 1958, so most of the earliest items were given a release date of 1958. Including the Boxer.

Since then we’ve been able to conclude otherwise: the Boxer came out in 1953 (maybe a little bit earlier, but 1953 is the earliest dated appearance in print.) That’s a five-year difference - enough to make a relatively common early Breyer even more so.

And then there’s the case of the Old Mold Mare and Foal, which Marney Walerius was convinced came out in 1956 - and which couldn’t have happened, since the Hagen-Renaker molds they were based on (and sued over!) came out in the Spring of 1957. Claiming the 1956 date insinuates (albeit innocently) that the legal action H-R was pursuing wouldn’t have been valid - though it’s pretty clear from Breyer’s actions in the matter that they most likely were.

(I say "most likely" only because I haven’t seen the paperwork, and with legal paperwork, wording is everything. That paperwork is one of MY holy grails, BTW.)

Neither one of those instances will necessarily affect the value of the pieces in question: Boxers are still going to be modestly priced and lightly collected, and hobbyists will still covet finely preserved specimens of Old Molds almost as much as the H-Rs they were derived from.

The only instance where I see it really mattering - other than in an official/popular history sense - is in the terms of collectibility documentation. If someone judging collectibility prefers one source over another - and theirs isn’t yours - well, I could see some issues there.

(Speaking strictly hypothetical here: not implying anything about anybody.)

Quiet Time

And yet another In-Between Mare pops up on eBay…that’ll make it the third "new" one in the hobby in a year, right?

Like I’ve been telling you, I’m really beginning to think that those Mares are more common than hobbyists realize, because of the perpetual (or eternal?) confusion between the Old Mold/Proud Arabian and the Family Arabian Mares.

A similar thing happened with the Woodgrain Old Mold Mares and Foals, not so long ago: they went from being "virtually nonexistent" to "just really, really rare" when more hobbyists started paying attention to the not-so-subtle differences between the Family Arabians and the Old Mold/Proud Arabians. 

The In-Between Mare ("IBM") is just close enough to the Family Arabian Mare - a mold that most hobbyists don’t even give a first glance to, much less a second - that I think some are still getting passed by, too.

If I had noticed the latest IBM on eBay before it sold - it was a "Buy it Now" at a "mere" $1800 - I might have considered buying it. Yeah, really: I’ve been working just enough - and saving just enough - to have been able to cover it. Plus, I think that price is more in line with where the market will eventually settle to, once the market finally shakes a few more of them out of the tree.

On the other hand, if this is more proof that they are really are more common than we realize, I probably should just bide my time and hope one turns up locally. My local flea market is just good enough for me to give me hope.

The flea market, though, has been fairly quiet for me for the past few weeks. Aside from some odds and ends, the only things I’ve picked up are random sewing supplies - patterns, fabric, and another unfinished vintage quilt project (an applique thingie from the late 1940s or 1950s that, like most projects I find, has to be completely disassembled and re-pieced.)

Everyone (capable of it) should do a little bit of handwork - be it sewing, gardening, painting, woodworking, or even baking. It’s better than therapy, I think; the mostly repetitive nature of the work is soothing, and even if you don’t completely resolve whatever problem you’re dealing with by working it, you at least come out of the experience with a beautiful or useful object.

While I am enjoying - in its own way - all of my BreyerFest prep, I am so looking forward to getting back to my sewing after the trip. I think its absence from my life is one of the things that's been keeping me more agitated than average lately. 

The BreyerFest prep, oddly enough, has been going almost disturbingly well. No drama, no major catastrophes, emergencies, or unexpected expenses. I even came up with three - three! - different costume contest ideas that I either already have the pieces for, or that I can buy at minimal expense. My only decision is which one I should go with. (Or maybe I shall bring them all, and draft friends and roommates into the cause?)

Who's That Girl?

I wasn’t planning on purchasing a Weather Girl any time soon; I was willing to wait for the frenzy to die down a bit before I attempted a shopping excursion. But I just so happened to be in the right part of town for work on Thursday, and figured that since that store was just around the corner, it wouldn’t hurt to look:


Yay! A happy way to spend the last little bit of my tax refund. (The rest went to bills, bleh.)

They had all three colors available, but both the Palominos and Pintos had some condition issues just bothersome enough to leave them behind. The Thunderstorm has a couple, too - a slightly rough seam on the mane, and a small paint blooper on her left hind leg - but nothing that screamed "body quality" to me.

I was a bit tempted by the Palominos, in spite of their masking problems. That has to be the most gorgeous, spot on original finish Palomino paint job I’ve seen in a long, long time: rich, bright, shimmery, and golden. Now that’s Palomino!

My first thought, actually, was how neat it would be if Reeves ever decided to re-issue the Palomino Family Arabians - that’s the shade of Palomino they’d need to be. (The Western Prancing Horse? Yeah, I’d go for that, too.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole concept of the Weather Girl Treasure Hunt might have sprung out of the notion of justifying that Palomino paint job. I’m sure someone at Reeves must have thought that it would be fitting that their newest Arabian should be released in that most iconic (and notorious) color.

Wouldn’t it be neat if the "Rainbow" Reeves is referring to in regards to the Redemption Horse "Rainbow" would be the range of colors the original "Old Molds" came it - Shaded Alabaster, Honey Bay, Gray Appaloosa, and Woodgrain? I think she’d be particularly fetching in Gloss Alabaster, with lipliner and detailed muscle shading. Mmm.

We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose. I’m in no rush to send in for a Rainbow, myself. I managed to get the one Weather Girl I wanted with a minimum of stress and effort, and that’s good enough for me, for now.

Regarding the Palomino Proud Arabian Mare on eBay: oh yes, I’ve seen her. I don’t believe that the Gloss Palomino paint job was ever truly considered a viable color option for the mold’s rerelease in the 1970s. What I think happened in this case is that Marney felt the need to reproduce the original colors of the Old Mold Mare on the Proud Arabian Mare. In the photo album of hers that I own, there are pictures of other PAMs that look like reproduction attempts of other Old Mold paint jobs, too.

If anyone were to run across these other repro/tests today, most would be dismissed either as oddities (at best) or fakes (at worst.) What makes the Palomino different is that the Old Molds never came in Palomino. The color didn’t appear on the successors of the Old Molds, the Family Arabians, until at least 1961 - a year or more after the Old Molds were taken off the market.

Marney was operating under the mistaken assumption, back then, that they did. Instead of recreating something old, she accidentally created something new.

We all know where the gal in the auction will end up, eventually. The rest of us will just have to be content with a much more accessible Sunny.

More Loose Ends

Have you seen the train wreck that is today’s Daily Breyer entry on the Facebook page? Holy cow, that’s bad! They’ve had some doozies before, but I this one’s so wrong, it’s not even wrong. It’s wrong in a way that should win a prize for wrongness.

The Old Molds were not introduced until 1958, and the Stallion - who became the Family Arabian Stallion - didn’t arrive on the scene until (probably) 1959. Except that Saturday Night Fever pictured on Breyer’s Facebook page is actually the Proud Arabian Stallion, not a Family Arabian Stallion. And the PAS wasn’t officially released until 1971.

Seriously, how do you manage to confuse the Proud Arabian Stallion with the Family Arabian Stallion? Even my Mother can tell the difference, and her only involvement in the hobby is pretending not to dust my collection when I’m in Kentucky for ‘Fest!

I know in the grand scheme of things these details don’t matter that much, but researching the details of Breyer History is what I do in the hobby and for the hobby. It’s upsetting to see how little the company I research seems to care about getting its own history right.

There, I feel better now. Every once and a while you’ve got to get a rant out of your system, you know?

My schedule for the next couple of weeks looks a little rough, so I’ll spend the rest of my post today tying up some loose ends.

The Woodgrain Donkey pics in the surprisingly robust Donkey discussion thread are duly noted. I’ll probably categorize it as a Test, or part of a small SR of the Ranchcraft type. I still think a lot of hobbyists may be confusing sightings of the Red Mill Donkey for the Woodgrain one, though. I don’t know how rare the Red Mill Donkey is, but it’s certainly less so than a Breyer Woodgrain Donkey would be.

I also live by the motto "Trust, but verify." I’ve had way too many experiences with folks swearing that they heard, or saw, or owned something that turned out not to be what they thought it was. It’s a big problem, especially in the realm of Glossies, Chalkies and Tests; anything questionable of that nature needs an in-person inspection before I’m comfortable in declaring it authentic.

Yes, I am aware of the eBay auctions with the dumbbell stickers - and the insane prices that went with them! The nature and limited release of these stickers means that they’ll always be numerically rare, but $400 rare? I don’t know how long that price point will be sustainable. And I thought the $25 I spent on mine back in the 1990s was a bit high.

A lot of foofah was made on Blab over a report that a couple of Web Specials (Riley, and Summer Solstice) turned up at a hardware store somewhere in the Minnesota, at a slightly discounted price.

The Sales Rep in question probably had some discretion of throwing in some choice items from the warehouse to help close this particular deal; instead of older regular runs or special runs with larger piece counts, they just happened to be Web Specials. This sort of thing happens way more often than most hobbyists realize. Hobbyists don’t pay much attention when the items in question are more common; if they notice them at all, they just write them off as old store stock, and walk on by.

If they still have Summer Solstices and Rileys come June, I think the remainders will end up in the NPOD. Along with the remainder of the Dealer Special Autumns, Medalist Ponies, and whatever "gotta have it" model turns up between now and then. And who knows - maybe the leftover LSE Frankensteeds, too. (From what I’ve read, all of the LSE participants had a chance to buy one, and passed them by; seems only right that the rest of us mere mortals have a chance.)

Saving Hobby History

One shift turned into two back-to-back shifts, thus playing havoc on my schedule. Fooey. It'll be worse in January, when the part-time job temporarily turns full-time, with overtime, and insane. (It's not as awesome as it sounds. Trust me. Other income-making opportunities are welcome.) Not sure if I'm going to cope with it here – write shorter posts, pre-write a bunch, or some combination of the two. We'll cross that proverbial bridge when we come to it.

Back to the Hobby History project.

When I talk to “outsiders” about the model horse hobby, many of them get the impression that it's a relatively new phenomenon, like PEZ collecting. PEZ dispensers have been around for about the same amount of time as Breyer Horses – since the early 1950s – but there wasn't an active or huge PEZ collecting/hobby community until the early 1990s. (I should know: I was one of attendees of the first PEZ convention, the famed Dispens-O-Rama, in 1991! Yes, it was several different flavors of awesome, including Anise.)

So when I tell them that the hobby has been around in some form, in the U.S., since the late 1950s, I get the usual eye-rolls and incredulous looks. So I'll go to my archives and pull out a couple of pieces of documentation to straighten out the wiseacre, including this neat article from the September, 1961 issue of Western Horseman:

Yup, that's an Old Mold Mare they are holding. There's a App FAM and several H-R minis visible, and that's a pot metal Western Horse on the shelf. A favorite quote from the brief article beneath:

“The miniature saddle maker's artistic talents also include pencil sketching and refinishing horse statutes in such colors as real animals.”

Unlike Breyer History, we actually have quite a lot of Hobby History ephemera out there. Prior to the Internet, the hobby was a paper-intensive affair: letters, newsletters, photo shows, the occasional newspaper or magazine articles brought us together and bound us together. I can remember stalking the mailbox on a daily basis, anxiously waiting for the next precious communique from the Model Horse Universe. A big, fat envelope with my name on it = much happiness!

As a student of history, I'm also interested in saving the hobby's collective history, not just of Breyer Horses. Aside from the research opportunities it would provide (i.e. being able to track when certain terms were invented, when color and mold changes occurred, etc.) it'd also provide us some standing and credibility to the Outside World. Showing the Outside World that we've been around for about fifty years will go quite a ways towards taking us more seriously, and proving that we're not a fad, and we're not going away.

Besides, other avocations with papery origins, most notably Science-Fiction and Comic Book Fandom, have made vocal and visible efforts to preserve their history and ephemera, so why not us? Science-fiction fandom just celebrated its 80^th anniversary, in fact! (And some are celebrating by trying to find out what happened to First Fandom's first club president. Cool!)

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58405

There's just one problem: most hobbyists shared my sentimental attachment to this paper, and are loathe to give it up.

I've been trying for some time now to save the physical remnants of our collective history and create at least the rudiments of a hobby archive. I've made a few excellent recoveries and discoveries, but most hobbyists don't want to surrender the tangible evidence of their fondest childhood memories. Then there's the contentious question of who becomes the repository: everyone who has a bigger than average pile of stuff wants to be home of THE archive (including me!)

I first became involved on Blab when my name came up in a potential hobby history project; our initial efforts didn't get very far, for a variety of reasons. The topic came up again, in connection with the epic “future of the hobby” thread, and it looks like we might get a little bit further along this time. For one thing, a Facebook page has already been created to help collect and coordinate our collective efforts, and begin the effort to collect oral histories. A link to that page has been provided in my Links of Interest, to the right.

Next post – back to plain ol' Breyer History. Promise!

The Old Mold Stallion

The past 48 hours were rougher than expected; I'll just say that I'm feeling a little vulnerable right now. Nothing to do with you guys or the model horse world at all; if anything, this blog is one of the few things that's kept me from losing it completely. Words are one of the few things I have some control over.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The Old Mold Mare is easily the most popular topic on this blog: anytime I write about her, I get a steady stream of appreciative comments and e-mail. But not a lot of love or attention has been given to her companion, the Old Mold Stallion.

I’m not referring to the Family Arabian Stallion that he became, but the model he was before.

There isn’t much difference between an Old Mold Stallion and a run-of-the-mill Family Arabian Stallion. Except for the extensive remodeling of his male anatomy (which didn’t occur until much later) most of the changes that were made to the model now known as the FAS were subtle, and probably the result of mold maintenance over its 50 year history.

The only thing that really distinguishes an Old Mold Stallion from an FAS is the mold mark: the FAS has one, and the Old Mold Stallion does not. Some Old Mold Stallions do have a very partial mold mark - you can just make out the “MOL” from the word MOLDING, but that’s about it.

Old Mold Stallions come in the same variety of colors that the Old Mold Mares and Foals do: Alabaster, Bay, Appaloosa and Woodgrain. Most hobbyists don't go out of their way to add Old Mold Stallions to their collections, though, so it's hard to tell if any one of these colors is more rare than the others; if they do happen to have one, it's either by sheer accident, or because he happened to tag along with the rest of his family.

There's some evidence that the Old Mold Stallion is probably a little more common than the Old Mold Mares and Foals. While he's very similar to the large Hagen-Renaker Amir, the match is not quite as close as the Mare and Foal are to Zara and Zilla. Unlike the Mare and Foal, who were yanked from production until suitable replacements were created, the FAS was probably allowed to continue production uninterrupted throughout 1959 and 1960.

The Old Mold Stallion probably premiered in 1959, about a year after the Old Mold Mare and Foal; I often wonder why that was. Was he an afterthought? Cash flow issues? Did they have problems with the mold? Or did they catch wind of the impending trouble brewing in California, and make some preemptive changes to the mold?

That's all speculation: there's no evidence for any of it. It could have been something as simple as a strong sales report: if the Mare and Foal are selling really well, just imagine if we added the Stallion!

But how does one go about acquiring this creature, especially on the Internet, where photographs and descriptions of dubious quality are the norm, if not the rule, and the presence or absence of a mold mark is rarely noted?

There are a few subtle distinctions in the paint jobs that can provide clues. Alabasters tends to have lipliner, and (more rarely) muscle shading; Appaloosas have the fine speckle spots, butt blankets and charcoal gray legs with black hooves; Bay usually have lipliner and eyewhites.


(Your eyes are not deceiving you: this fellah really does have factory shaded "boy parts"!)

It's no guarantee, of course: the Stallion never ceased production, and the paint jobs were never completely consistent. I've owned Old Mold Alabaster and Appaloosa Stallions with paint jobs indistinguishable from a run-of-the-mill FAS counterparts. If you do notice these characteristics in a model-of-interest, though, it'd definitely be worth your time to investigate him further.

Toe to Toe

Hmm. Those Summer Solstices are nice. And me with a decent sized check coming this week. Oh, the temptation! I really need to pay off the credit card bill first, though. And fix my teeth. And get new glasses. I could use some new shoes, too, come to think of it. Darn you, life, for getting in the way!

Another short one tonight: tonight's gripe is about the whining and carping about the Proud Arabian Mare mold. To listen to the neighsayers, you'd think the poor mold was little more than a misshapen blob with a slight resemblance to a horse.

Get over yourself. It's a slightly bent leg, not a fifth one:


The degree of bend on the newer Proud Arabian Mares varies from Paso-like paddling to near perpendicularity. Here's a slightly blurry but still legible front end shot of my J.C. Penney's XMAS SR Solid Bay with stripe, ca. 1983. I bought her from a very reputable collector, so I know there was no funny business involved:


I've gotten conflicting stories as to what was wrong or missing from the original Mare's mold when they decided to bring her back. Was it half the mold, part of the mold, or just the cooling boards? I don't know.

The most common explanation I received back in the day was that the cooling board fixtures were missing. These fixtures are essentially metal "braces" that freshly molded parts are placed in to minimize warping and twisting while the plastic is cooling. You can see pictures of some of these fixtures on page 9 of Marney Walerius's Breyer Models:


This bending occurs because Tenite is a semi-synthetic plastic, and is subject to even minor changes in the environment. The heat, the humidity, the quality of the plastic, the quantity of regrind in the plastic, what the mold operator had for dinner the night before can affect the degree of warpage.

Another potential source of the problem is the original source material: the large H-R Zara. As reported in Nancy Young's classic tome Breyer Molds & Models, some Zaras also experience the toeing out phenomenon. In reworking or recasting whatever parts were necessary from the H-R original, the flaw inherent in the Zara mold as it existed back in the early 1970s may have been passed on to her descendant, the Proud Arabian Mare.

I've gotten some flack from a few hobbyists upset with the suggestion that Hagen-Renaker or Maureen Love were ever capable of mistakes - it just had to be Breyer themselves who screwed up something of incomparable beauty! (Those idiots!)

A lot of hobbyists are all too quick to attribute errors - intentional or otherwise - to malice. A mistake or flaw isn't simply a mistake or a flaw, it's just gotta be deliberate ignorance or incompetence!

Nonsense. Mistakes happen. They just do. It isn't incompetence, it's the law of averages at work. Even the most talented, most competence people in the universe make mistakes. Perfection is not achievable. And what would be the whole point of having horse shows if it was?