Speaking Conditionally

That Quarter Horse Gelding cleaned up pretty nice, actually:

He has chipped ears, and rubs on his near side, so he’s still technically body box material. But his color and shading are so pretty, I won’t argue with anyone if they think he’s worth keeping as-is.

(I’ll actually have quite a few “shelf quality” pieces like that for sale at BreyerFest this year: another reason to come dig in my ginormous body box!)

I have tons of models in questionable condition, myself, that I still consider valued members of my herd. Like this little fellow:

Yep, a Test Color. As you can see, this Classic Quarter Horse Foal is especially… special: as in, he has so many rubs he’s very definition of a body. He was one of those things that the Bentleys found while cleaning out Chicago factory ca. 1985. Then he was bagged, tossed into one of several large cardboard boxes, and brought out to sell at Model Horse Congress, where I was the lucky person who found him.

I don’t normally like to go around quoting the prices I get stuff for – lest I find myself in the awkward position of having to sell it – but he’s one of those pieces that isn’t going anywhere, so I guess I’m safe here.

I found him in the “One Dollar” box.

I can’t confirm it one way or another, but I suspect that he – and the two very similar Classic Quarter Horse Mares I also found in those fabled boxes (for a little bit more) – weren’t simply Test Colors, but Preproduction pieces.

Everything about them felt cobbled together: the paintjobs are uneven, the seams are mismatched and unfinished, everything about them feels slapdash and rough.

And although I haven’t done a point-for-point inspection with actual production pieces to be sure, I think they might even have been made from mold test shots, before the molds were finalized and okayed for production.

In a sense, they may be the most Test Color of Test Colors. (Beat that, Benefit Auction Test Color Brindle Pinto Man o’ War with the fancy tail!)

It doesn’t matter if they are or not, though. They’ll always have a home here.

Barry and Wally

Nope. Not that one either. Third strike in a row on the Web Specials. What was the last one I got? Pace Yourself? This sort of thing keeps up, I'm going to just not bother even applying anymore. I get nauseous enough hoping for potential employers to call; no need to add to that agony.

It wasn’t a completely wasted day: at least I finally got an old restoration project done while waiting. I needed to get that anxious energy out of my body somehow, and I wasn’t in the mood to do any sewing. The sewing project I’m in the middle of - an obscure vintage quilt pattern called "Gardner’s Prize" - would have probably contributed to my stress:


All curves and inset pieces! (Before you question my taste in fabric, I just want to point out that I’m reconstructing it from pieces found in a box of scraps I bought at the flea market last year. Because I want to, that’s why.)

Actually, it’s not all that bad a project for someone at my skill level, but it was definitely not the right project for my anxiety level today. Swabbing, scrubbing, and rinsing was more my speed.

Since I’m still not quite calm enough to write anything that’s both long and/or reasonably coherent, here are some pictures of a couple more NPOD finds, instead. Notice anything different about these "Fun with Model Horses" Gray Flash Gift Sets?



The halters are red - just like they were in the PR photos! The sets that officially hit the market came with blue, pink or lavender halters, not red ones. Not sure why they changed the color on the official releases; my guess would be that they just went with the ribbon stock - and halters - they already had on hand from previous releases, to save some cash.

I don’t know if either of these pieces was the photography sample; I know there were at least two other red halter Flashes in addition to the two that I have. I haven’t unboxed either one to determine if they’re preproduction or sample pieces, though it’s not an unreasonable assumption.

And why, pray tell, haven’t I unboxed them yet?

They’re also packaging samples! Here’s a side shot of the second box above: it’s a mock-up made out of color laser print outs pasted over another Breyer box - with a sheet of plastic over the front to display the prototype sticker! You can even see the red dashed score marks on the box edges.


They’ve been throwing packaging samples in the NPOD for years, too, but most of them are of the fairly subtle sort - different stickers, different UPCs, generic backer boards with handpunched holes, etc. I’ve seen a few with stickers and handwritten notations on them, but this is the first time that I’ve even found true, honest-to-goodness mock-up.

Basically, it's a "packaging test color"!

From experience I’ve learned that it’s a wise thing to linger in the Pit for a little while after the initial rush. Once the majority of the more obvious loot’s been carried away, it sometimes reveals more subtle treasures hiding underneath. So it wasn’t a total shock when I found the Flashes tucked away in a relatively unpillaged corner.

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.

Brandy, Instead of Whine

Let’s see, the online discussions have moved on from griping about the Western Elegance set, to griping about the BreyerFest Specials. I guess "having a more positive attitude" wasn’t on anybody’s New Year’s Resolutions list.

Interesting that they’ve chosen the Saint Bernard as one of the Tent models; we haven’t seen much of that mold like, ever. We’ve only seen him twice before - in his original release #328 from 1972 through 1980, and as #321 Brandy in 1995-96, alongside a number of other Traditional Breyer Dog molds.

I have the original version; picked him up ages ago, at a toy store that carried discontinued merchandise exclusively. (Man, I loved that store - imagine a toy store where the only new stock was old stock - and every week was a surprise! Sadly, it has long since ceased to be.)

I never got around to getting the newer Saint Bernard, mostly because his paint job was so unappealing: what was up with that greasy-looking yellow-brown color, anyway? And aside from the color, it didn’t look all that different from the original release. If I wanted another Saint Bernard, I’d go looking for that neat cast iron knockoff, instead.

I did eventually add another (plastic) Saint Bernard to my collection:


I think he’s a preproduction piece for Brandy: the colors are right, and he’s hand-airbrushed. (The regular run piece is masked.) I can’t know for sure what he is, because he was one of those models that came to me via the mysterious eBay seller "newtoymens."

Remember him? He of the cartloads of mysterious models, some of which seemed to be test colors, culls and oddities? I got outbid on the "flashier" stuff, but I did manage to get this guy, among others.

I wasn’t able to get any more information out of him than anyone else was. Most hobbyists thought he was a Breyer insider, but if he was, he wasn’t a recent one: none of the models - the regular run pieces we could date, anyhow - dated past 2000. It’s more likely he was a middleman of some sort - either a jobber, or a guy who knew jobbers and sold their "merchandise" for them.

I have a couple other interesting "newtoymens" pieces I should probably put in this month’s blog post rotation…

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.

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.