The Chase Never Ends

Blizzard + A Job Cannot Be Done Remotely = Snow Day! Whoo-hoo!

I slept in, made Chocolate Chip French Toast and finished another quilt top that had been a thorn in my side for years. (No more!) I also took a picture of my new beautiful thing I thought I would never have:

I was tempted to cuddle him like a teddy bear the night that I got him, but realized that was probably a bad idea – not because of what he’s technically worth, but because he really is shaped like a brick paver and not all that huggable, really.  

But alas, the chase never really ends, does it? There’s always another grail, or another oddity or rarity on the horizon. I flaked out about a week ago and forgot to bid on a Polled Hereford Bull Nightlight on eBay, and there’s a Woodgrain PHB Lamp on there right now at a price that bigger than my entire travel budget this year, and I plan on travelling quite a lot

(Which consists of two conventions and three live shows, so far.) 

Of all the rarities, oddities and the like, the Lamp is the one I worry least about. Like most of the Ranchcraft Lamps, they were purchased by nonhobbyists fifty some odd years ago, so the possibility of finding one “in the wild” is quite tangible. It’s certainly a stronger possibility than finding Micro Runs, Test Colors and scarce but affordable Special Runs on Craigslist or a local estate sale, outside of the Chicago area or maybe northern New Jersey.

(There’s a Mosaic on our local Craigslist who periodically gets relisted at $1000. Uh, okay…)

Marshall is currently residing on my very crowded nightstand, though I’ll definitely be rearranging things around here so I can admire his beefy, glittery loveliness on a daily basis.  

Pondering Time

I haven’t spent much pondering time on the sneak preview of the BreyerFest Nonhorse Special Run, so I can’t credibly give you my thoughts on what it could be:

Though I am annoyed that, in spite of their blog text teasing us otherwise, the name of the .png file tells me it’s going to be yet another sprocking Marvel-themed character. (Not to be that kind of nerd, but has anyone at Reeves HQ actually been in a comic book store? It’s not that scary guys, I swear!)

What I’m hoping for is either something we haven’t seen before as a BreyerFest Special – like a Moose, or a Polled Hereford Bull (pretty please?) – or something offbeat, like a Kitten with a cape or a Jasper with wings.

...seriously, why haven’t we gotten a legitimate production run Flying Pig yet? If Breyer had the cojones to make a Pink Elephant in 1958, a Flying Pig ought to be a no-brainer. They have the Pig, they have the wings, they’ve already done Tests of the concept, it’s an item with crossover appeal, and it would also kinda-sorta fit with the theme...

(Incidentally, there was a Super Pig, but it was not a DC property.)

I also would not object to any of the Dog molds, since many would be on point with the theme, but they generally haven’t been the best sellers at BreyerFest. (Note to self: still need to buy myself a Beethoven.)

Considering that I’ve either loved or found something to like with all of the announced Special Runs so far (aside from the naming thing), going with something more safe and conventional would save me some money.

Sometimes I wish I could be one of those people who looks for reasons to rule out buying BreyerFest Special Runs, instead of looking for reasons to put them on the list. It would make things far less crowded in my office!

The New PHB

Just because I didn’t come home with a Marshall did not mean I came home from BreyerFest Polled-Hereford-Bull-free:

Although I could have purchased one cheaper locally, I enjoyed the luxury of being able to handpick factory-direct stock in the sales tent on the Sunday afternoon of BreyerFest. While the mold has gained in popularity over the past year or so – thanks, in part, to Marshall – I still had nearly two dozen models to choose from.

And virtually nobody nosing around to see if I had “found” something, even at that late a time. (Truth: I've had people follow me around, for just that reason.)

I picked this one because he was (obviously) different from the others. While the masking is a little different – the mold’s roughly textured finish makes them all unique – what made this example stand out to me was how dark the masked edges were compared to the rest of his coloring.

Most of the other PHBs I inspected had darker masked edges, too, but nothing comparable to this guy. It’s almost like he was outlined in black.

Darker shading along edges isn’t a new thing; it was frequently seen on models from the 1970s, when Breyer was experimenting with freehand airbrushed markings. The best known is Jasper, the Market Hog: on the earliest releases, his big blue-gray spot was lightly outlined and then filled in, leaving a darker edge where the paint overlapped.

In the case of the newer Polled Hereford Bulls, I don’t know if the dark edges were an intentional part of the design, a result of a mandated painting process, or a consequence of the natural tendency of painters to define an edge first, before filling it in.

Whatever the reason, you end up with extra – and usually darker – paint along the mask edges. And in this fellow’s case, to fairly handsome effect.

The Inevitability of Zebras

It was a strangely quiet day at the flea market today, though I still managed to find a few good bodies and a slew of cute china miniatures. My dollar table stuff was absolutely decimated at BreyerFest this year; while I don’t make much money off of that kind of stuff, I like having that kind of “finger candy” around for the more budget-minded shoppers.

Sometimes you get just as much satisfaction buying a dollar mini as you do a $150 Web Special, you know?

Speaking of such, the BreyerFest leftovers are now up on the web site, for your shopping pleasure. Everything is available except the Surprise, the Haute Couture, and now (apparently) the Ganache.

I had been considering the Ganache myself, but I’m glad that that decision has been taken out of my hands, since I’m not really in a physical position to handle anything beyond Stablemates right now. In fact, most of my weekend was spent trying to get the inventory under control. (Still not ideal, but I’m not stubbing my toes on anything anymore!)

I would not have hesitated over a Caves of Lascaux, but none of the Pop-Up/Souvenir Store items – nor the Stablemates (rats!) – are available either, apparently.

While I had rationalized to myself that the Caves of Lascaux wouldn’t be that difficult to obtain, I knew by the Wednesday night of BreyerFest week that it wasn’t going to happen.

I thought the piece count was low, but judging from the demand Reeves probably could have doubled the run count and still sold out. I had no idea of the pent-up demand for this mold – and I don’t think Reeves did, either.

To make a long story short, though, we will be seeing more Zebra releases in the very near future.

In the past, anytime we’ve had a situation where an out-of-production mold returns to production with a low-number Special Run, more and/or larger runs tend to follow. Because the bodies are already there: knowing something of the production process as I do, it is financially impractical to run an injection mold with a piece count as low as 650.

The Web Special Polled Hereford Bull Marshall was a case in point: we hadn’t seen that mold in production since 2004. While it was certainly possible that they had 40 or so of those Bull bodies tucked away in the warehouse somewhere, it was also not a surprise that the mold returned to the Regular Run line a year later.

Whether these soon-to-be Zebra releases will take the form of a Web Special, Christmas Special, or a Regular Run item I couldn’t say.

I will say that I’m rather fond of the notion of a Silver-striped Christmas Zebra; a not-so-implausible idea, considering that they gave us a Wedgewood Blue Pronghorn Antelope last year.  

Fangirl Swooning: 2015 Releases!

First, let me say that I had no idea that Reeves put up a picture of a real live puppy wearing an actual Breyer horse blanket on their Facebook page a few days ago. My only contact with Facebook is checking out the Breyer page about once a week for news and clues. But the original points remain: easy-to-do and cute.

I was going to write about the Banff, because it's Banff. But he's not here yet, and I was in a mood to write now, not later.

Then I thought I’d follow up on Denise’s comment a couple posts back about the other B-marked Foals, because there's an interesting discussion to be had there.

But then Modell Pferde Versand had to post pictures of some of the new 2015 models, and I kinda lost my mind when I noticed who was among them:

My beloved PHB! Yes! And in a somewhat different pattern!

Other hobbyists are more excited about the Pinto Desatado, or the stunning Smarty Jones Polo Pony that was shown on the 2015 Calendar, or over various Classics molds, but you know had to be the Polled Hereford Bull for me.

I was promising myself that I wouldn’t be buying much new stuff the first half of the year. It’s not a lack of money or space, just a matter of wanting to focus on other priorities for a while. But dang it Reeves, there you go making things near and dear to my heart!

I sort of suspected/hoped he’d be back; while it was certainly possible to make the Marshall Special Run from warehoused bodies, they also could have been produced from "test shots" made in the process of prepping the mold for production.

But I sort of discounted that notion, because lately almost all the Nonhorse, non-Companion mold releases have been either Special Run items of significantly larger piece runs, or items made from warehoused bodies.

So yes, I am very, very, very excited that I will soon be able to buy a new Polled Hereford Bull off the shelf without having to resort to ninja moves or Vulcan nerve pinches. (Unless special ones happen to show up in the you-know-where.) It’s nice to see the Cow, Calf and Deer Family making comebacks, too. (Will my hoped for Piebald set finally become a reality?)

Although the mold itself isn’t wildly popular among hobbyists, the Polled Hereford Bull is a pretty good seller in the nonhobbyist market. I’ve never had a problem selling any duplicates for a decent price when I've had to. So I think he’ll be a good seller for Reeves, too.

The other model among this initial group that will be on my must buy list - after the Polo Pony, I hope - will be the Autism Awareness Model, on the Quarter Horse Yearling mold. It’s not the mold, or the color, but the cause: my older cousin Todd is autistic. He was one of the first autistic kids to be mainstreamed into the public school system in Michigan, graduating in 1980.

So yeah, that's something that I'm more than happy to support. (FYI: Todd's more of a cat person than a horse person.)

Edge Case

I used to fantasize about what the homeliest, least desirable Special Run in the world could be. At one point, I thought a Metallic Lime Green Khemosabi with Magenta points could be it.

What would most hobbyists do, presented with a model like that - something really rare, but also really homely? Especially if the quantity was very low, and the price was very high? What desire would win out?

You’d be able to find at least a handful of people to buy such a thing, because some people would buy anything, some people would buy it for sheer absurdity of it, and some people actually even like Khemo. (He does have a nice head and neck.) Even so, I couldn’t see more than a handful selling, because Metallic Lime Green Khemosabi, yo.

At least, that was what I thought until this week.

Naturally I thought I’d at least have a shot at the Marshall. It’s a Polled Hereford Bull: not many people collect those, beyond the standard one (and in very rare cases, the Woodgrain as two.) It’s Gloss Splash Spot Black Pintaloosa: again, not all that popular a color combo, especially on a Bull, for Heaven’s sake. And the price was a heady (though not completely unreasonable) $225, $75 more than the last super-scarce Bull SRs, last year’s Vault Sale Logan and Colton.

He’s as close as Reeves has ever gotten to actually issuing a Metallic Lime Green Khemosabi.

Alas, in spite of my best efforts - and those of several others entering for me - there will be no Marshall at my doorstep by Christmas. My little herd of Polled Hereford Bulls shall be leaderless. I’m not even going to entertain thoughts of wait lists.

I briefly considered buying one second hand, but the prices I’ve seen so far are far out of the range of what I’m willing to pay. The price I paid for my half dozen PHBs, combined, doesn’t add up to the minimum bid most Marshalls are starting at. And I certainly haven’t seen many willing to trade it for anything.

I’m trying to take solace in the whole affair by looking at it as a lab experiment of my hypothetical Lime Green Khemosabi in action. Actually, a better term for this is "edge case": as something pushed so far out to the edges of known or acceptable parameters of its particular case that it challenges what those parameters actually are.

Looking at the fact that there were over a dozen Marshalls up for sale less than 24 hours after the notifications went out, I think I now know the answer to the question of the Lime Green Khemo: Money beats weird and homely.

I think it is interesting that in recent cases when items similar to this have been offered on a "first-come, first-served" basis, the likelihood of immediate reselling appears to be less than when it is offered on a raffle basis. There were immediate resells of Logan, Colton, and Ghost but not half of their 40 piece runs. Most of the people who did buy them kept them, or sold them discreetly (i.e. not on eBay or MHSP), or at least not immediately.

And in the case of the Christmas Kitten "Angel", it actually took a few days to sell out at all.

I think this is because the primary (though not sole) motivation of buyers in online direct sale situations is its emotional value: a desire for the object in and of itself.

In the case of raffles - online and offline - many people look at them strictly in terms of financial value: whether they really want the item or not is irrelevant. All that matters is that it has value to other people. The cost to enter these raffles is nil, financially and emotionally.

There has always been a market for Bulls in general, and that may be skewing the numbers slightly. Yet I had heard no hue and cry for a PHB SR, and most everyone thinks it funny when I tell them that one of my "Design a Test Color" fantasy models is a Wedgewood Blue PHB. (The other being the FAS Yellow Man o’ War.)

Some Marshalls have resold, and will resell. But then, what of the rest? Will the prices die down to a more reasonable level?

I'm not so sure I could buy even if it did, but I will refrain from saying anything further. I’ve cried the few tears I allow myself for such things, and made some Christmas cookies. And even though I am not a particularly religious person, I will pray also that the next weird-ugly-rare SR is not a FAS Yellow Man o’ War.

Brick Pavers

Another quiet day at the flea market; it’s not that there wasn’t anything to buy, but that I’ve been in more of a selling mode than a buying mode, and I already have plenty to sell. I have a rather big expense coming up this week too, that helped stay my hand the few times.

I guess there was a big model horse auction down in Indiana on Saturday; I was momentarily tempted, only because a Raffle Model Fiero was involved. It’s a long story, about a debt I’m not obligated to pay, but weighs heavily on my mind nonetheless.

The interest it generated on Blab quashed that idea almost immediately. I think it ended up going in the neighborhood of $600 - "cheap" in a relative sense, though not sufficiently for me. Good for the seller/estate, though, which is all that matters.

I’ve spent most of the weekend so far taking care of other old business, some of it model horse related, but mostly not. (The garden looks…better. Not good, but not embarrassing.)

I did a quick survey of my Polled Hereford Bull situation, and I have six, not five: one I had thought I sold I apparently didn’t. He’s very similar to another variation that I have, as in both of them appear to be made of one of those bright white, almost-Chalky Tenites they were messing around with in the early 1970s. (I haven’t found a "true" Chalky of the PHB - yet.)

The one I’ll be keeping is a very bright cinnamon color with high airbrushed socks, and the one that I’ll be selling (eventually) has shorter socks and more of a brick-red tone. Even thought they’re easily distinguishable, and not one of those only-I-can-see-it variations, I’ve gotten to the point where more subtle variations aren’t that much of a big deal to me anymore.

And besides, the PHB mold is BIG. He’s like a brick paver with legs. He has an almost Othello-like quality for eating up shelf space. There's only so many I can keep around.

One of my Polled Herefords who is not going anywhere for quite some time is this oddball that I picked up from Bob Peterson a while back:

He wasn’t too expensive, actually, because there’s not a lot of competition for rare and/or weird Polled Hereford Bulls. I’m not too sure what he was supposed to be - a touched up cull, maybe? Someone goofing around with the airbrush on their lunch break? A straight up test color? Something associated with the Robbins Weathervane program?

I tend to think that last supposition is the most likely, because he has a "piggy bank" slot cut out of his back that was done prior to painting, not unlike the drill holes that were done on the Weathervane models. I find his slot incredibly appropriate: if any model had sufficient interior space to store spare change, it’s the Polled Hereford Bull.

Ephemera and Granular Data

Sorry about that; it’s been a rough week, personally. Nothing you need to know about, other than it involved lots of heavy lifting, both literal and metaphorical. My workload will be lighter next week, so I hope that helps.

One thing that did lighten my load a little was the arrival of this beefy fellow, who I hope is the last thing I "have to" buy from That Guy in Arizona:

Polled Hereford Bull, with gray hooves and tan, not pink naughty bits. (Looks pinkish in photo, but definitely not in person!) I bid on the first one he had listed, and lost, but then he listed another using the same photo. I won him at a significantly lower price - low enough that it didn’t matter if he was a perfectly ordinary Polled Hereford, which is what most auction watchers probably assumed he was going to be.

So yay, tiny little victory for me. I sold a couple of my (duplicate) Polled Herefords recently, so I’m not 100 percent sure how many I have now. (Five, I think?)

I’m also warming up to the theory that my brother posited to me the other day, about these Arizona models: it could simply be the retirement stash of a Chicago-era Breyer employee.

This Arizona distraction aside, I’ve been trying to focus on the ephemera lately, anyway, due to my time and space issues. As you might have guessed from my earlier post about the 1973 Bentley Sales flier, I’ve come into a few more decent stashes. I won’t say my collection of Bentley Sales fliers is anywhere near complete, but it’s now big enough to merit a decent-sized binder of its own.

It’s neat and fascinating reading, especially when combined with the copies of the monthly sales tally sheets that Nancy Young sent me, years ago. It’s almost the very definition of granular data.

Yet, it’s not quite as helpful as you might think. Very few mail-order house Special Runs were truly "exclusive" back in the 1980s and early 1990s, so adding up the monthly sales figures for any given item for just one company isn’t going to give you a nice, neat number of items sold.

The numbers for special runs - especially pre-Reeves era - are also extremely fluid, more like estimates than hard numbers. They made what they could sell: if that meant making a few extra dozen - or cutting a run short that wasn’t moving - that’s what they did. 

Which ones that happened to, and to what degree, we will likely never know. No matter how finely grained our data on Breyer History get - and believe me, in places it’s positively silt-like - it will never be perfect.

It Is What It Is

That was one Epic Fail Weekend.

First, we discover that all the effort we put into making 150 ornaments for this year's XMAS tree was wasted, because the dog wants to eat them. And she nearly knocked over the tree several times over the course of the weekend. Lovely. (She also ate my favorite sweater.)

Then, I discovered I had a previously unknown food allergy. Swell. (Fortunately, it's something I can easily avoid.)

Third, I caught a rather nasty virus that put me out of commission for most of the rest of the weekend. Awesome. (The Nyquil is.)

Fourth, my computer caught something, too - totally lost my Internet connection for about 6 hours on Sunday. FTW!

The weekend wasn't a complete failure: I did manage to get all the rough data compiled in my Great Breyer Tack Project, all 30 single-spaced pages of it. I have nothing groundbreaking to report yet, other than my shock that the No. 7500 Wood Corral - the long, foldy one - has been in continuous production since 1983. I had no idea. I wonder how much footage that translates into?

It still has a ways to go before it becomes the longest running production item ever - the Palomino Western Horse and Polled Hereford Bull both have at least a decade on it - but it’s certainly the longest running item currently in production. If you’re looking for an excellent "gotcha" question for a Breyer trivia contest, there you go.

Other than the tack project, the only other things I’ve been able to manage in between the various crises are the last bits of my sales for the year. I didn’t quite get what I hoped for anything on eBay - except for a couple of items that bidders absolutely positively thought were Chalkies, despite my entreaties to the contrary.

What is up with that, anyway? Every time I post pictures of something just a shade whiter than average, I suddenly get barraged with requests for pictures of the bottoms of the hooves. The first couple of times I complied, until I realized what they were trying to suss out of those photos. Nowadays I just e-mail back "It’s not a Chalky."

That used to stop them in the past - but now they’re e-mailing me and telling me I’m wrong! What the heck?

Normally I’m not a big fan of the "Do you know who I am?" line of response, but if there ever was a situation that called for it, there it is.

Look, not everyone has the same level of knowledge in the hobby, but I whenever I’m dealing with any hobbyist - in person, on the phone, or electronically - I always assume that he or she is not an idiot. You didn’t just happen to accidentally bump into me on the Internet, at BreyerFest, or call me completely at random.

That’s how I try to write my posts here: I work with the assumption that your visits aren’t completely an accident. It took a little bit of knowledge for you to find me, or at the very least, an interest in Breyer History. I share what I know, and you share with me: we might not be equals in terms of quantity or quality of information, but we each know enough to have meaningful exchanges.

When Breyer met ERTL

My Tonka post reminded me of another strange Breyer toy truck connection – not with Corgi, but with ERTL.

While I do modestly well horsewise at my local flea markets, I haven't found much model horse ephemera there. I've found a few things – some old JAHs, a stack of vintage Western Horseman magazines from when Breyer was heavily advertising there, a few vintage Christmas catalogs. I did find an old Hartland flier in a NIB Hartland Polo Pony once (I almost fainted when it fell out of the box!)

It's not just the esoteric nature of the materials that is the issue, but the market too: the ephemera collectors around here are a little more dedicated than most. Whenever I see an old guy in a flannel shirt hunched over a cardboard box, that usually means someone's brought a box of fresh old paper. (Or toy trains.)

By the time I get my turn, it's already been picked through quite thoroughly, but not always.

I got lucky one day, and found a 1983 ERTL Dealer's Catalog. I couldn't pass it up: not only did it feature some of ERTL's early attempts to break into the model horse market, it also featured a number of Breyer knockoffs scattered randomly throughout. Here's a detail of the accessories that came with “The Alamo Quarter Horse Farm Set”: mini FASes!


Knockoffs of the Breyer Cow and Calf are also very prominent – in fact, they seem to be a decorative element on just about every other page in the catalog. Here they are, inexplicably chillin' next to the Wrangler Helicopter Set:


(The catalog text helpfully notes “Accessories not included.” )

But the biggest surprise was found in the “Farm Animals – Plastic” section. A full page is dedicated to their new “Deluxe Animal Assortment.” One of these things is not like the other:


Why on Earth is the Polled Hereford Bull there?

The catalog text notes that a Hereford Bull is included in the assortment. The PHB itself was obviously NOT going to be included: the standard box size is listed as 4 7/8” long, 1 1/2” wide, 3 1/8” high, far too small to contain the PHB's massive bulk. Was he just meant as a stand-in for their own Hereford Bull? Was their own Hereford Bull not ready yet? Or was it a mix up at the printing plant, or by the photographer?

Breyer was still in Chicago at that point, and ERTL was in Iowa, so the mix up theory is a little more plausible than you might think. The style of photography is very similar, so it wouldn't surprise me if the same photographer or studio was involved.

Another thing that strikes me is how much nicer the contemporary Breyer Dealer Catalogs were, from a design standpoint. I don't have the motivation – or the time – to go through my argument on a point by point basis. The Breyer Catalogs are just slicker, cleaner, and more “professional” looking than ERTL's. That's probably just a function of Breyer being in Chicago, rather than Iowa, and thus having a deeper talent pool to draw on. It's not something I've given a lot of thought to, but I probably should. There might be some fruitful research there.

Tape Masking

Another painting technique worth watching for is something I call tape-masking. Instead getting all artsy-fartsy with an airbrush, Breyer just taped off the areas they wanted to keep white with masking tape. The technique is not too different from the one Reeves uses now for its markings and patterns, but lower-tech and cheesier. A lot of Marney tests, like this one, were tape-masked:


(Yeah, he does have a few freehand airbrushed spots on him, too.)

Stencils or masks are intricate and expensive to create; one tool-and-die guy I spoke to described it "jewelry work." That’s why the same pinto patterns show up on older test colors: they weren’t going to commit to making a new mask until the model was definitely moving towards production. If an existing mask wasn’t sufficient, and nobody had the artistic chops to freehand the pattern desired, they resorted to the masking tape.

99.9% of the time, if you run across a legitimate original finish model that has been tape-masked, it’s a test color or sales sample. Surprisingly, there may have been one regular run production model that was briefly released using this technique: the #74 Polled Hereford Bull.


I purchased this guy several years ago from the collection of a former Breyer Sales Rep. You can see that the edge of the markings is very "cut" looking and defined. Amusingly, you can also see that they tried to soften the edge a bit, possibly with a cotton swab or something:


He looked like a touchup job at first, but trust me, he’s 100% original finish. He’s passed all of the scratch, sniff and dunk tests. All the modifications in his finish are underneath his clear factory topcoat.

At first, I thought he might have been a preproduction piece (this guy’s collection was pretty awesome - a test or oddity wouldn’t have been out of place) until I found a few more on eBay. I even bought one more just to confirm what I was seeing: yup, more tape-masking.

Now, it’s possible that all of these guys that I’ve been finding were all preproduction, pre-mask pieces, but it seems unlikely. If only one or two random pieces showed up, the preproduction theory would be plausible. When you’ve seen four or five - on eBay - from different sellers in different parts of the country, it seems more likely that these fellas were legitimate production pieces.

These PHBs could have been from the first production batch, before the mask was ready, but after the model was available for ordering on the wholesale price list. And in order to get the order out, Breyer resorted to masking tape. A similar situation occurred not that long ago with the blue roan Appaloosa Performance Horse release Diamondot Buccaneer: the first batch of ‘em had handpainted spots, not masked ones.

Small changes occur in many models at the beginning of their production runs - enough so that I get a little uneasy whenever I see customizers descend upon new releases with such gusto. It their efforts to create something special and distinct, they may be destroying something just as special and distinct in the process.