Sales Rep Models

In the interest of completeness, I just want to say that I finally opened the box from the previous post, and not only were the models in better condition than advertised, they were also immaculately wrapped (with a ribbon tied in a bow!) and came with candy. A+: would buy from again.

Here is the second item I mentioned in that post from yesterday:

A Classic Andalusian Stallion in a really lovely shaded Matte Liver Chestnut, and what is possibly a “Sales Rep” model.

“Sales Rep” models are essentially Test Colors that are (were?) gifts given to Breyer Sales Representatives. Some are Traditional scale models, but most that I’ve seen have been Classic scale. 

In terms of quality, they generally tend to be better than the average BreyerFest Auction Test Colors from the 1990s, but not nearly as nice as more recent Auction pieces. (Many of those I basically consider “Factory Customs”, but that’s another discussion entirely.) 

Most of them aren’t particularly “fancy” either – they tend to be either solid colors, and if not, use pre-existing masks and templates.  

I reflexively bought him because (a) as I’ve mentioned before, Reeves hasn’t been getting much of my money lately and (b) I already have a vintage Test Color Classic Andalusian Stallion from the late 1970s/early 1980s, and I thought this guy would make a nice companion piece for him and (c) the price was right. 

I had a mildly anxious moment when I received the box – it was slightly crushed – but fortunately it was very well-packed, so he survived the ordeal unscathed. And he’s so much lovelier in person than I hoped!

I had been hoping to get a Sales Rep Model eventually, but most of the ones I’ve seen for sale in the past few years have tended to go well above my modest price range, partly (or mostly?) because they came with their original packaging and paperwork. 

I had no hesitation buying him sans paperwork; even if I can’t prove he is what I think he is, he is still beautiful piece, regardless.  

The Details

Going through my receipts yesterday (I hadn’t touched them at all this year – Bad Andrea!) I discovered why I was feeling so overwhelmed over the past two weeks:

I’ve bought over 100 models in the past month and a half! 

The majority of them came in four large box lots of 15 to 25 models apiece, but a fair share of them also came from Breyer’s recent sales promotions and club offerings. (I am counting the Anniversary Stablemates Displayer as one item for the moment, not 24, because I haven’t opened it yet. This is my logic, and I have spoken.) 

Recent developments have taken some of the financial pressure off me having to sell things online, but having models in every nook and cranny of my bedroom, my office, the bathroom, and even my car(!) is starting to wear on me, psychologically, so I’ll have to do something soon. 

One of the complications I’m running into is that a number of the pieces I’ve bought in the box lots are – or may be – possible upgrades, and that part of the process is going to be a massive time suck. 

I’ll dig things out, compare and contrast, make hard decisions, get lost admiring some treasure I had in storage that I now want to display and then have to choose who goes back into storage. 

One collection I bought is particularly challenging: most of the models are from ca. 1969 through ca. 1974, and some of them have details that lead me to believe that it might be a salesman’s sample lot. The paint jobs are exceptional, and there are some oddities that definitely give me pause – like a partially chalky Saddlebred Weanling, and a Buckskin Mustang with factory painted black hoof bottoms (all four, not just the front two!)

But it’s also entirely possible that this collector was simply very particular about handpicking; many stores were still displaying sales pieces in glass cabinets or behind sales counters during this time period. For those that didn’t (or couldn’t) the clear plastic Showcase Collection was also an option in the early 1970s.

As I’ve mentioned before, Breyer shifted away from gloss finishes and unrealistic colors in the early 1970s due to both consumer and hobbyist demand. They started experimenting with more naturalistic colors and spending more time adding subtle details wherever they could, like these individually painted tendrils in this Buckskin Indian Pony’s mane:

(In case you were wondering, yes, the Buckskin Indian Pony was in that lot and no, you can’t have her.)

Unfortunately, it’s the little details like these that tend to get dropped when (inevitably) production can’t meet demand. This holds true even for more recent releases: this is why I tell people to hesitate just a bit before they dive into customizing the newest/latest molds and models. You might end up doing something you’ll regret later!

Incidentally, if you are looking for something to customize, that’s one section of the sales list that’s (almost) sorted out, so it’ll probably be the first thing I list online sometime in the next week or so. Mostly older Hess molds, Love Classics and some Mestenos, if you’re curious. 

The Most Desirable Stablemate in the World…

...is now available as a “gift with purchase” in an auction on eBay right now. If you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, it’s the G1 25th Anniversary Saddlebred, as seen in this 1990 issue of Just About Horses:

Because I am not wealthy, not that lucky, and am rather fond of my internal organs, that picture is probably as close as I am going to get to owning one, outside of making one myself.

(I’ve thought of it. I really have. Making one, not selling my organs.)

There have been some questions online whether or not a model that was allegedly made in a piece run of about 1000 could or should be flirting with a four-figure price tag.

Oh yes, for at least two reasons.

The piece was made as a promotional giveaway item, presumably to both (a) celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Breyer Animal Creations line, and (b) help announce the arrival of the then-new Stablemates scale, of which the G1 Saddlebred was (I believe) the first mold actually cast.

As such, it was likely given to clients, potential clients, Sales Reps, and at industry PR events. The likelihood that some would end up in the hands of hobbyists at the time was very small.

In fact, I can’t recall even hearing about such a thing until 1990, when it appeared in Just About Horses, and one was auctioned off at the inaugural BreyerFest that year. They have occasionally trickled on to the market since then – though rarely quite as nice as the one up for auction at the moment (Mint in Box!)

A thousand pieces of anything can disappear quickly, especially when it’s distributed to the general/nonhobby public first. Special Runs and other oddities were not well or easily distributed to hobbyists back then, either: Just About Horses itself didn't even debut until late 1975, as a single-page folded brochure.

Though I do have evidence that Breyer did consider offering a Free Stablemate/Redemption program when the Stablemates line was introduced in 1975, it never launched and I have no evidence that the Saddlebred leftovers would have been a part of that even if it had.

But it wasn’t just the distribution method, but the composition of the item itself that makes it so hard to find: it’s silver-plated ABS plastic. (ABS is easier to “plate” than Tenite, which is why it was used then).

Silver tarnishes, and ABS plastic – the same stuff they use for (most) Stablemates now – breaks easily.

A free shiny plastic horse given to you as a gift, especially if you are not a collector yourself, most likely ends up as a gift to someone who would be enraptured by a small shiny plastic horse.

And being small, fragile, and quick to tarnish, it’s not hard to guess what happened to most of those Silver Saddlebreds.

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.

The Charger Award

The house is a wreck, my brain is melting, and I can't think of a single thing to talk about that doesn't involve more work than I'm willing to invest in right now. Gah!

Maybe I'll prattle on a bit about the Little Bits line. Specifically, about a Little Bit I'm sure a lot of you may not have heard about – or seen. It's the 1989 Charger Award:


It's basically a leftover Charger – a Special Run Dapple Gray Shire made in 1989 for Hobby Center Toys, in Toledo, Ohio – mounted on a wooden plaque with a brass plate engraved with the Breyer logo. Originally it also came with a small plaque on the front that would have said “Charger Award 1989,” but mine lost it somewhere along the way, which would partly explain why I got it for a song on eBay a while back.

These awards were made slightly before the time they started issuing test colors to Sales Reps instead, who in turn discovered they could get quite a substantial little bonus if they sold those (discreetly, through a third party) to the collectors' market. (Thus quickly ending that little experiment.)

The Charger Award isn't as well-known – or notorious – as those Sales Rep Tests; the fact that it's basically a repurposed Special Run of a model from a little-collected line also doesn't help his reputation. Kind of a shame, really. Relatively speaking, he's quite rare – far more rare than even the few other Little Bits that do command some collector attention, such as the Carousel Horses or the Flaxen Chestnut Saddlebred Toy Fair Promo.

As in any hobby, though, value and rarity don't necessarily go hand in hand: there are relatively common models that command crazy amounts of money, and then there are pieces of exceeding rarity that attract little or no attention at all.

Most of the disparity between price and rarity, however, is due to flawed knowledge, or a lack of knowledge: if you don't know something is rare or even exists, you're not likely to go out of your way to purchase it, unless you happen to be a particularly obsessive collector of a particular mold or series in the first place.

My friends are always amazed at the kind of stuff I pull out of the BreyerFest Sales Tent or in the HIN. Sometimes, though, I feel a little embarrassed when I do find something kinda awesome right under everyone else's noses, and often far cheaper than it oughta be. That's another reason why I do this blog: by adding to – and sometimes correcting – the Breyer History knowledge base out there, it makes the playing field a little more level and more fun for everyone.

Really, I don't mind having a little competition. Makes it sweeter, actually: instead of giving me a puzzled look when I show off my next awesome find, you'll actually know what I'm excited about. And then you can show me yours.