Treasures

I did not take advantage of the Collectors Club Gold Valegro offer; aside from the budgeting issue (tight right now) I’m lucky enough to live in an area where access is not going to be an issue, should the money and space arise come December.

This offer was clearly for people who don’t have that same level of access.

I’d dearly love to buy the new Halloween Special Crane – basically a Mini-Me of last year’s Halloween Horse Ichabod on the Rearing Stallion mold – but again, I gotta watch that budget. I do like that they’re limiting orders to one per account, which was not the case last year. Wasn’t the quantity limit some absurd amount, like 12? Yeah, that was not cool, especially with Foal molds.

Tuesday Mornings, for those of you near them, just got a fresh Breyer shipment in, too – lots of Classics, Accessories, and the pinto Cantering Welsh Pony Smokin’ Doubledutch. If I happen to find a particularly nice CWP there during my work travels, she might be coming home with me. Maybe some of those Pony Pouches too, since I am a bit obsessed with the fabric they are made out of.

(Reeves, if you’re reading, I’d totally make you a quilt for next year’s silent auction if you’d give me a bolt of either fabric, or both. Seriously not kidding.)

The flea market has been really interesting over the past few weeks; I’ve bought a couple of small collections, lots of vintage craft supplies, and some ephemera – specifically, a photo album full of horse pictures, and a batch of photos from someone who (I think) performed and/or participated in rodeos just before WWII.

First, a few of the “rodeo” pictures; I have enough pictures of the pinto to probably have a portrait model done – and possible even the tack, too! Documentation on these photos is pretty light, alas, so I don’t know this blue-eyed boy’s name:

The Photo Album is from roughly the same time period – 1939 through 1946 – but features a greater variety of pictures. There are photos from a trip “out West”, including a visit to the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1946; several horseback riding photos, primarily of Saddlebreds; and a batch of photos from a day trip to the races – specifically, Lincoln Fields, that later became Balmoral Park:

The documentation on these photos is much better – in my rare bits of free time I’ve been able to do a little bit of research on them and the family. There was also a letter in the album discussing a horse the family purchased during his 1946 trip, with some mention of an article being published about him in the magazine The Bit and The Spur.

What was funny about this album was that, when I picked it up to look at it, the vendor touted the fact that it had a lot of World War II pictures in it – and it does! And one of those photos is interesting enough that I might have to send a scan to a baseball historian. (I’m generally pretty terrible at recognizing human faces, but maybe I might have picture of Yogi Berra during his time in the Navy?)

But it was the horse racing pictures that sealed the deal for me, of course. You just don’t find pictures of someone’s “day at the races” every day – especially in the northernmost Detroit suburbs. I do find harness racing memorabilia on occasion – there used to be a number of Standardbred farms active in the area in the 1950s and 1960s, and racing at the Imlay City Fairgrounds just up the road – but flat track stuff is a little scarcer to come by here.

I have no idea why I decided to pick up that album and go through it; there was no other horsey memorabilia on the table, and no indication that there would have been those kinds of pictures inside. I just opened it up, and there they were, and I knew I had to take that treasure home with me.

Exceptional and Ordinary

The most recent arrivals are not as dirty as the first, but also a bit on the boring side; these are among the nicest of the bunch:

Yep, a Bay Running Foal and a Palomino Rearing Stallion, neither one high on anyone’s want list. Both are standard issue models from the early 1970s: not Chalky, with no molding or painting anomalies.

They are, however, in excellent condition with positively superb shading and coloring. If you’re looking for a quality example of either piece, these are about as nice as they get.

They have that velvety matte finish typical of non-Chalky models from that era too, which is understandably hard to find in mint condition. I’m almost too afraid to touch them, less they pick up a stray burnish mark or two that would mar that appealing softness.

Models like this – simultaneously Exceptional and Ordinary – can be a tough sell, especially online. If hobbyists are going to spend extra for a “premium” example of a common model, they’re not going to go halfway: they’re going to go for the works. That means stickers, boxes, signatures, and unusual (Chalky, Pearly, Glossy) finishes.

Models that are just happen to be really nice…are sort of the silver medalists of the model horse world. You’re going to take it if you can get it, of course, but forever second to the real winner who might be just over the horizon.

So I’ll reserve these guys for either BreyerFest or a live show/swap meet situation, where hobbyists can see just how nice they are in person – and who may not be so willing to cough up the sometimes-insane prices the “Superpremium” models can bring.

(Same thing happens in comic books: the price cliff between “Mint” and “Fine” is a steep one, even if the aesthetic or technical differences are minimal.)

Keeping these two for myself doesn’t seem likely: I have a nice Rearing Stallion in Palomino already, and as far as the Running Foal goes, I’d really rather find one that’s a better match for my semi-gloss Mare with eyewhites.

Secondary Passions

Two things got me through this week: anticipation about the new Mad Max movie (the cathartic beauty of post-apocalyptic car chases!) and a trip to the toy store to ogle some of the latest and greatest.

It wasn’t the horses that got me the most excited - though I found myself unexpectedly tempted by the lacey masking on the Chestnut Pinto Cantering Welsh Pony Smokin Doubledutch - it was this product that almost gave me palpitations:

http://www.breyerhorses.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=6877

Yes, it was the model pony pouches. It wasn't the product itself: I am reasonably proficient with a sewing machine and could whip up a half dozen on own in a lazy afternoon, if I had one. Though I do think it’s great that Reeves is bringing this hobbyist-derived innovation to the general public.

It was the fabric: the Blue ones have Gem Twist silhouettes printed on it, and the pink have Gem Twist, the Show Jumping Warmblood, and Newsworthy (and maybe Cigar? - I’m not, and wasn’t about to be, one of those people who opens up sealed packages at the store).

As someone whose secondary passion is quilting, I am stoked about the existence - as part of an official product - of Breyer-themed fabric. If they were ever to release the fabric as a separate and independent item, I would buy a bolt of each, no question.

I had a notion last year to make a quilt adapted from last year’s 25th Anniversary BreyerFest graphic. It would have been a fairly easy and straightforward applique-style quilt: they were solid silhouettes against solid backgrounds. The enemy of that idea, again, was time; like most of my other horse-themed quilt concepts, it’ll have to simmer in the "future projects" binder for now.

I have made a couple of model horse quilts in the past; one featured Hartland Tinymites that I used to teach myself applique, and another featuring the Rearing Stallion, made for a coworker. That quilt is long gone, but I made a mini quilt out of the test block for it:

I was just thinking about that Rearing Stallion quilt, actually, because I was leafing through my copy of the most current (May/June 2015) issue of Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting, and spotted this intriguing photo:

You might not see it from my quick and dirty scan, but the Gloss Palomino Fighter residing on the shelf is in near-mint condition, with good pinking.

Normally I go through my quilt magazines every few months and tear out the interesting articles and ideas, but this one is going straight into the model horse ephemera stash, intact.

Selective Memories

My mood is unimproved, even though I made myself some truffles today. There are, apparently, some things chocolate cannot fix. (They did come out, mind you. In fact, they’re pretty dang amazing. They just didn’t make my problem go away.)

The only good thing being stuck in a dark place (figuratively) is that it seems to kick my creativity into high gear. So I’m just going to drown myself in my BreyerFest prep, and hope for the best there.

I finally got around to cleaning up a couple of recent flea market finds, too. (How sad is it that it takes me nearly a week to find the time to clean and rinse something? Sigh.) It’s not something that’s usually noteworthy, but I thought they were an excellent study in contrasts - and also a good illustration of why I get really annoyed when hobbyists start carping about how much better models were in "The Good Old Days".

First up is a Bay Fighting Stallion. He’s strictly body box material: he’s pretty rough, and has a broken ear. At one point he did have footpads, too, so he’s fairly old, and his shading is pretty nice. He does, however, have a few problems that would have kept him out of the show ring in spite of these better qualities. Like this very oddly oversprayed mane:

And what I call "mold stick" - a roughly textured surface caused by the model sticking to the mold itself:

I’m not sure what the actual technical term for the problem is, that’s just what I happen to call it when I see it. (BTW, I worked in the offices of a plastics injection molding plant for several years. Very useful in terms of my research, but I didn’t get out into the plant much, though.) Molds are usually sprayed or otherwise coated with a mold release agent to prevent molded pieces from sticking to the mold, but it does need to be reapplied from time to time, and especially after one has been cleaned and/or repaired.

You don’t see the problem much anymore because Reeves is either taking better care of the molds, or they’re doing a better job of cleaning up the molded pieces before they end up in the painting booth.

The second model is the Blue Roan Appaloosa Rearing Stallion, a fairly recent release (ca. 2005):

He’s a fairly typical piece from the run - there’s nothing to really distinguish him from any other. This one’s in pretty good shape, too, and if I didn’t have some serious space issues right now, I’d probably be keeping him.

What blows my mind about him is, as "ordinary" as he is today, a paint job of that complexity would not have been possible thirty years ago. Most customizers back then wouldn’t have been able to reproduce it, either. 

Yet this quantum leap in the quality and complexity of today’s paint jobs - even on ordinary, run-of-the-mill Regular Runs - goes by almost unacknowledged.

I love my vintage pieces, but what we have available to us today - right in front of our faces - deserves a little more respect.

Paint vs. Plastic

Mostly bodies and craft supplies at the flea market yesterday, with a few odds and ends thrown in the mix. I left a few good models behind - I’ve done well enough over the past two weeks that I could engage in a little "catch and release." (If that Alabaster Old Timer is there next time, he might be coming home with me - he still had his hat!)

One of the things I did find was a not-bad Chalky Palomino Rearing Stallion. Two Chalkies in the space of a month - excellent! I was just going to toss him into my sales stash, but when I gave him his standard dunk-and-scrub job, I noticed that he was a "White Plastic" Chalky, not a "Basecoat" Chalky. White Plastic Chalkies are considerably scarcer than their Basecoat cousins; out of the twenty plus Chalkies I have in my collection, I only have two White Plastics. I wouldn’t mind have a few more.

At first glance, White Plastics and Basecoats look virtually identical. Both have that slightly glossy, opaque "dipped in white housepaint" look. Basecoat Chalkies were actually painted with a rather thick coat of white paint, probably the same stuff they used to overpaint the white markings on Woodgrains. It was used to cover the less-than-white nature of the molded plastic, which was either colored, or extensively contaminated with nonwhite regrind. White Plastic Chalkies, on the other hand, were models that were molded out of opaque white plastic instead of the standard, slightly translucent stuff.

There are several subtle visual clues that help distinguish the two. The simplest and most obvious method: look at the bottom of the hooves. A Basecoat Chalky usually has a rough finish and puddling, as seen here on my othewise spiffy Black Morgan:


A White Plastic Chalky, on the other hand, has neat, clean hoof bottoms, as observed on the flea market-fresh Rearing Stallion:


The problem with this technique is that it’s not 100% foolproof. I’ve seen examples Basecoat Chalkies where the hoof bottoms were either very clean, or were apparently so rough and puddled that they cleaned or ground down at the factory before the final detailing.

Another clue: checking the transitional areas of the paint job, at the edges of airbrushed bald faces and stockings. On White Plastic Chalkies, the paint comes off in tiny flakes, and gives the paint job a scrubbed or patchy look. If the paint flakes off of a Basecoat Chalky, it’ll flake off anywhere, will come off in bigger flakes or chunks, and often reveals the funky color of the plastic beneath.

Mold detail is another: the thick white paint on Basecoat Chalkies fills in some of the finer details of the mold. On White Plastic Chalkies, those finer details are retained. The best, quickest test for mold detail is to flip and check the copyright horseshoe: the crisper and sharper the detail there, the more likely it’s a White Plastic version. If the lettering is blurry or infilled, it’s probably a Basecoat.

For some models, it’s hard to tell one way or another. The Clydesdale Foal I found a couple of weeks ago is a mystery: she has virtually no condition issues that would clue me in to her true nature. Her hooves are really clean and her mold detail is pretty sharp, so I’m leaning towards White Plastic. For most hobbyists, however, it’s a moot point: they’re all good!