The 1994 BreyerFest Benefit Auction

Well, I thought I had a fabulous weekend, but Monday made me pay for it. We’re talking sitcom-level, head-in-my-hands insanity, here. 

And to top it all off, I didn’t get selected for “Pronghorn” Yellowstone: I’m trying to understand how I managed to get not one, but two BreyerFest Variant Runs and a Live Show Prize model, but I still can’t get selected for Web Specials that are now up to (checks e-mail) 750 pieces?

Madness.

Since I’m in no mood to write today, here’s one of the posts I drafted over the weekend when life was not a snarling mass of chaos, and which I also thought I would not need to deploy until next weekend. So much for best laid plans! 

So here’s a few photos from the 1994 BreyerFest Auction, for your amusement and edification; they were a gift from a friend:

I remember being particularly enamored of both the Brindle Bay Proud Arabian Stallion and the Gloss Black Sham. 

I think the Dark Bay Indian Pony turned up on eBay a couple of years ago at an insanely low Buy It Now price, presumably because the seller probably thought it was the later Saddle Club Belle release. I didn’t save the pictures from that auction so I can’t confirm it, now that I kinda have a picture of the real deal…

I stuck around for some of the auctioneering, but I left part of the way through because I didn’t have the spare money to even buy the Lady Roxana. The only other thing I specifically remember from this auction is the fuss made by someone over the fact that they were auctioning off a Strawberry Roan Pluto that was almost identical to one sold the year before.  

Well, fuss wasn’t quite the word. This person was pissed. It was removed from the auction with the promise of it being destroyed, but I’m not sure that was a sufficiently satisfactory answer. 

Real Test Colors – ones made to test out things for actual production – are rarely unique. Most of the models that appeared at these early Benefit Auctions were actual Tests that were just hanging around the office at the time, and not stuff that was tailored to bidder preferences. 

It swung in the opposite direction for a while, but there seems to be more of a balance today, with some items clearly designed to generate bids, and others that were clearly more experimental. 

Anyway, I now need to take a deep breath and see what the rest of Tuesday has in store for me.

More Exceptions To The Rule

Pretty excited about this little bag of mostly Hartland Tinymites!

I’m hoping there are at least some upgrades in here somewhere. (I see no Barkies, alas. I really need more Barkies!) If not, I’ll still have fun cleaning them up and sorting them out for the sales list.

Yes, I am a dork. Is that even a question? 

Here’s the other item that came with it, a lovely early Alabaster Proud Arabian Stallion with extra shading. He’s not perfect-perfect, but he’s pretty close, and I couldn’t argue with his price one bit:

That now means I have examples of the Proud Arabian Stallion in all three of his original release colors in acceptable – or more than acceptable – condition. 

That is not the case with the Proud Arabian Mare, and I doubt it ever will be. I find that bothersome, but not enough to spend the extra money to change that. I’ll find them at a price I’m comfortable with, and not a moment sooner.

(I have a lovely Dapple Gray, an adequate Mahogany Bay, and nicely shaded but battered Alabaster. And let’s not even discuss the Chalky variations…)

As I’ve mentioned several times before, vintage Alabasters are notoriously difficult to find in good condition, and the Proud Arabians are no exception. Considering the popularity of those molds in the 1970s, maybe even moreso!

I can’t count how many Alabaster Proud Arabian Stallions I’ve had in my collecting lifetime, but it’s been a lot, and they’ve come with the full gamut of problems: heavily yellowed, rubs, chipped ears, weird paint flaws, or (most commonly) scuffs galore. 

I also wanted an earlier example, rather than a later one: ones manufactured near the end of his production run in 1981 only had a bit of shading on the mane, tail, head and hooves. Very early examples – like the new guy – obviously have significantly more. 

The new guy isn’t quite as heavily shaded as some I’ve seen, but other than that (and a few stray marks) I have nothing to complain about. And he’s so white, he nearly glows! I am very happy to have made an exception for him. 

I also bought some Stablemates and a few random accessories (socks and blankets) from Breyer’s Black Friday sale: combined with a new mini Shop Vac I purchased in a store on actual Black Friday (half price!), that will probably comprise my Christmas Gift to myself this year.

Another Oddball

Here’s a little something to tide you over while I go off on another ill-advised weekend excursion. (I’m telling myself that it’s a dry run for next year’s Upper Wyoming Grand Adventure, but it’s really more of a “I need to get away from my life for a couple of days, please and thank you” thing.)

Apparently I have moved on from weirdo Shams to weirdo Proud Arabian Stallions! As you might have noticed – at least, I hope you did! – this beautiful fellow has no black points on his front legs. This is an unusual variation of the Bay that Breyer employed on some of releases in the mid-1970s, most notably on early examples of the G1 Stablemates Citation and Arabian Stallion.

While I have occasionally spotted this variation on other releases – l have a matching Bay Grazing Mare and Foal set, for instance – this is the first time I’ve seen in on the Proud Arabian Stallion. When I eyed him on eBay, I found him so striking that I realized he had to come home with me. 

Even though I already have a couple of pretty nice Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions, and didn’t think I needed more. (The *Witez II that you’ve seen here a few times before because he’s unbelievably gorgeous, and a Chalky who I keep forgetting that I own, for some strange reason, who is also extremely nice. But I digress.)

The Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallion went through several different markings variations – beginning with two neatly airbrushed short hind socks on the earliest *Witez II models, and ending with four stockings that were sometimes rather… undefined. 

That was nothing unique to the Proud Arabian Stallion, though. Most leg markings in the 1970s were pretty darn fuzzy. And variable. Oh, so variable.

I’m assuming the new guy is from the ca. 1974/1975 era, because he still has the neatly airbrushed hind socks typical of the *Witez II. Some Mahogany Bay Proud Arabian Stallions still rocked those socks even after they started adding front stockings to the paint job later on in the 1970s. 

I am assuming that all they did at the factory was instruct the painters to add some front stockings to the original paint job. Since it is likely they didn’t specify what they had to look like, they just went with the standard fuzzy markings of the era. 

He is in excellent shape, but he does need a little bit of cleanup before I decide what to do with him. (Have I mentioned before that I own too much stuff?)

Affording to Wait

It makes perfect sense that now that I have a little money to play with, everything I had hoped on buying when that situation happened is also now unaffordable. Even the weird stuff I didn’t think anyone else particularly cared for/about.

(Even Morganglanzes? Yeesh.)

I can also afford to wait, so I will wait. 

Since this is where my head is at, let’s take a look into the box I am currently inventorying. Oh, this one is perfect, an oldie but a goodie:

The Dapple Gray Proud Arabian Stallion was one of the more popular releases of my Breyer childhood in the 1970s – all my friends who had Breyer horses seemed to have one – but it took me a while to find the right one for me. 

With the introduction of more refined, but not necessarily more correct, Arabian molds like Sham and Huckleberry Bey, the Proud Arabian Stallion gradually fell out of favor. But the mold has seen a recent revival of popularity, fueled partly by nostalgia, and partly by releases in some pretty spectacular colors, including the 2009 BreyerFest Volunteer Model After Party and the 2014 Exclusive Event Special Run Beignet. 

As with most Breyer releases from the 1970s, the Dapple Gray Proud Arabian Stallion came in a multitude of variations. My Dapple Gray example is from early in the releases run, which lasted from 1972 through 1988. Unlike later examples, he features two clearly defined hind socks, evenly distributed dappling, and a plethora of darker gray shading. 

He doesn’t have the extravagant pinking of an example that went for an even more extravagant price on eBay recently, but just look at him: I am perfectly okay with that minor omission. 

I think the price of that one was fueled more by the possibility that he was also a Chalky, which seemed unlikely to me. Buying Chalkies on the Internet is always a dicey proposition, even at a fraction of the price that example brought. And I’ve never been much of a gambler.  

A Reintroduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Telephone Game

I’m busy as heck right now and can’t come to the phone right now. Please accept this random assortment of Test Colors and Oddities I do not own while I try to catch up on my sleep.

I do have to say that out of this whole bunch, I’d probably pick the Trakehner because, you know, I’m a big vintage Trakehner fan. But I must confess, that’s one sweet Proud Arabian Stallion! 

I’m so glad that mold has gotten a recent reevaluation; he really was a teenaged girl’s Dream Arabian Stallion back in the 1970s. Now if I could only find myself a nice shaded Alabaster in decent condition...

Actually I could have owned one of these, but there’s a story there that I don’t have time to tell and it’s kind of boring anyway. Feel free to speculate which one it is while you wait to fill out your BreyerFest Special Run preference list!

Incidentally, since I’ve gotten a second complimentary ticket in addition to my VIP, my choices are (a) Seurat, because Seurat is one of my favorite painters and the mold looks great in that color, and (b) either Pollock or the Surprise, because the Pollock is probably going to look crazy awesome in person and I will then regret not getting him, and the Surprise because what the heck, I’m feeling adventurous. 

I would also not be unhappy with the Pinto Marwari Tassili, because I love these Chestnuts with the coppery undertones they’ve been doing recently. 

I don’t know if I really need another Esprit in my life, but I am also definitely warming up to the Apollo del Solis. Otherwise I think the only other shopping I’ll be doing that weekend is picking up the One-Day Stablemate and maybe hoping for an NPOD Grab Bag. 

I had no luck last time, but that was because I was so focused on getting everything else that it ended up giving up after a while.  

Apparently the Midyear releases dropped yesterday? I’ll talk about them more next time, when I actually have time to process them.