Another Science Experiment

I decided the first big project of the week off: the herd culling I’ve been griping about. It’s going well so far; I’d say I’m about halfway through the boxes I wanted to get through. It’s not going to result in a lot of "Big Money" sales, but I'll do okay. Some oddballs, variations, some items with better than average shading, things like that.

There will be some good stuff from this year’s NPOD sales also - nothing that I’ve already featured here, just a few rarities and Samples I had been wavering on. Nothing wrong with them, per se, just not enough room in the stables.

One of the non-NPOD oddballs I’ve decided to surrender is this old Classics Sagr:

Yes, he’s a Shrinky AND a color variation. The variation is not his neon-bright red chestnut coat - that’s a consequence of the shrinking process - but the white mane and tail. Later releases of the original Sagr had a mane and tail that were almost pale enough to pass for white, but this Sagr’s mane and tail were genuinely unpainted white, back when the Sagrs still had distinctly flaxen ones.

I picked him up at one of Marney’s Model Horse Congress garage sales in the 1980s: I can’t recall which year, though I’ll look that up when I finally get around to listing him. (Possibly as early as this week, depending on how the rest of the week, and the culling, go.) He is a Variation, and he has an excellent Provenance, so I won't be giving him away. But he leaks and he reeks: he oozed rather profusely when I took him out of his bag to inspect him, as you can probably see from the preternatural shine to his head.

I’m not expecting a lot out of him, monetarily, unless there happens to be a run on leaky Sagrs that I am not aware of. As to the reasons why he is leaving my collection, I already have one creepy/weird Science Experiment - aka "The Toad" - on premises, and I don’t need another to tend to.

(Note: everything is going on MH$P first, before it hits eBay. All those nonpaying bidder stories I’ve been reading have been making me nervous.)

Model Horse Metadata

I’m still sore and exhausted from shoveling the consequences of Snowpocalypse II. Ten inches! It took three of us an hour to shovel, scrape and snowblow the driveway yesterday.

And today, despite the snow coming up to her chest, Vita decided to take off after some deer in the yard. (Apparently she now thinks she’s the world’s smallest Deerhound.) Thankfully, the people who finally managed to catch her called the vet’s number on her microchip tag, and the little sociopath is now back home. (The people who caught her thought she was "just the sweetest thing." Ha!)

I’m also sulking about my work situation: basically I’m getting fewer hours (and less money) because I’m doing such a good job at what I’m doing. It’s not manager double-talk - the way the assignments get set up, it’s in the company’s best interest to put the better-skilled people on the shorter assignments, and the less-skilled people on the longer ones. What that means is that in exceptionally busy weeks, less-skilled people get way more hours. Making more per hour doesn’t mean much, when you’re working 10-15 fewer of those hours.

So yeah, not a whole lot of happy in my corner of the world at the moment.

One thing that is making me happy: a big heaping pile of vintage photos I purchased recently. Test colors, live show photos, old photo show pics - all sorts of awesome here, including these:




Yes, those are photographs of the original clay sculpts for the Classic Sagr, Shetan and Johar. Just, wow. I almost feel like I’m touching history!

The bulk of photographs in this archive aren’t quite as impressive. Most of them are reference photos of what we considered the pinnacle of rare and desirable things in the pre-Reeves era: Decorators, Glosses, Horse and Rider sets, early Special Runs, that sort of thing. (Many of these things are still rare, of course, but considerably less desirable in this era of micro runs.)

Back then, information on older models was much, much harder to come by. We didn’t have any books to go by, and early Collector’s Manuals and Dealer Catalogs were almost impossible to find. It was not unusual for those of us with older or more rarely seen pieces to buy, sell and trade photographs of these models to each other for reference.

Even though many of these photographs are no longer technically useful, they’re still valuable - as a document of our efforts of documentation.

Behold, I have finally crossed that final threshold: I’m now collecting research materials about research materials. It’s not just research, it’s metadata!

(Is it time for me to go to bed now? Yes, yes it is.)