Cake, and Other Mixed Emotions

As expected, no Cardinal. I did get something really special earlier in the week that I’ll share with you all next time that mitigates the disappointment quite a bit, but until I am ready for that reveal, let’s get back to BreyerFest stuff, shall we?

On one hand, I’m all-in on cake-themed Decorators and have been brainstorming how to execute a “Bumpy Cake” custom for several months now. (Traditional, or Classics mold? Do I go classic Devil’s Food, or go with my favorite Caramel, for the contrast?) I love the Classic Shire mold, and Black Chestnut is one of my favorite real-world horse colors that Reeves doesn’t use nearly enough.

On the other hand, you know that I am more than over this bizarre and almost nonsensical fixation on food for this year’s BreyerFest. I am 100 percent convinced this BreyerFest was entirely conceived over dinner at a German restaurant. 

Part of my bafflement over this stems from the fact that I once attended a German-themed company luncheon that not only inspired a great deal of griping from the staff, it generated a lot of uneaten leftovers. (Some of which I took home, because we could repurpose them into something more... flavorful.)

Even the plush has a food-oriented name. Strudel? Seriously? You couldn’t go with a traditional German boy name like Gunter, Hans, or the blindingly obvious Horst?

(For the record: the Art History professor who introduced me to Franz Marc was named Horst Uhr.)

I wasn’t going to buy the plush anyway, because I wasn’t going to buy anything lederhosen-themed on principle. The little Drafter is on my maybe/probably list: I’d love to have it, but I don’t think it’s a priority. Not yet.

That Dapple Gray Shire

Lafayette is here, but I won’t be able to open him until Friday or Saturday, depending on how my schedule works out.  (It’s been a “Where am I? What day is it? Who bought this cheese?” kind of week.)

I just ordered a new computer yesterday, so there may be a little wonkiness with my posting schedule for the next week as I get everything switched over and reconfigured. 

To be honest, I had been needing a new computer since last year, but I put it off as long as possible because it’s always such a hassle to get everything just the way I want it. But with the ongoing video project and a couple of small but tidy sums coming in the mail that would amply cover the cost, it was time. 

We also got some new lighting installed in the basement that’s a huge improvement over the previous lighting. Here’s a plain, unretouched test shot of the Dapple Gray Shire from the “Dirty Pony Lot” that’s been slowly deyellowing in the window:

Because Winter Sun is weaker than Summer Sun, she’s still got a long way to go, but she is getting better. As you can see, she has some amazing dappling and shading; what is a little less obvious are some condition issues, first and foremost these two factory flaws:

The smudge in her dappling is underneath the clear topcoat, and was obviously something that happened during the actual dappling process. 

The weird bubbly mark on the middle of her barrel is a contact mark: either she was touching another model on the painting rack while she was drying, or she fell over or got knocked over before she was dry and her barrel made contact with another surface – table, wall or floor. 

Both of these flaws passed QC because (a) standards were a little bit looser then, and (b) they both kind of blend in with the paint job. Yellowing has definitely made the contact mark more visible, and will become less so as she whitens up again.

When I hear some collectors complain that “paint jobs were so much better THEN” (i.e. in Chicago) I have to take a deep breath before I respond to any of it. 

If you look at older pieces like this Shire objectively, it’s… simply not true. Either one of these marks on a newer model, and some hobbyists would be ready to fly to New Jersey just for the satisfaction of yelling at someone in person for this. 

But what many hobbyists are actually saying when they make comments like that is expressing a justifiable admiration of the skill and dexterity of the painters of the Chicago era, who were able to do so much with so little. 

Colored by nostalgia: the Breyers of your youth, alas, are not immune to the powers of the Suck Fairy.

I still haven’t decided whether she’s a keeper or not. I’ll stick her back in the window and see what she looks like, come late April or May. 

My Dirty Ponies

While everyone else was plotzing about the Space Bears or Star Wars spin-offs yesterday I was having a grand old time with a big box lot of dirty ponies:

Here’s a close up to give you an idea of what I’m dealing with:

I know I am not alone here, but cleaning dirty plastic ponies is my happy place. Buying a lot like this is not about adding to or upgrading in the collection, or even about making any money off the deal, though when all is said and done I will probably make a small profit. 

I just really enjoy taking something dirty and unattractive and making it presentable and/or pretty again. In some ways it’s much like a customizer’s impulse to make something beautiful out of what they presume is less so. 

The only difference here is that instead of rejecting the original color, shape or design, I’m restoring it.

Some are already done, some are still in process, and some (like the deeply yellowed Shire, and the Proud Arabian Stallion who I’ve nicknamed “The Trainwreck”) are definitely long-term projects. 

The only one I think I might be keeping (so far) is the Clydesdale Foal, who turned out to be a Pearly underneath all that muck. The Clydesdale Foal is one of the less common vintage Pearlies, and she has rather pretty shading too, so that’s cool.

The Shire might also stay, depending on how well the de-yellowing goes. While she has some condition issues above and beyond the yellowing, her shading and dappling are so superior to my already existing Dapple Shire that it’s definitely giving me something think about.

The Old Timer has “cornflake” dappling (sparse, giant dapples), which is also a thing. On the other hand, I definitely don’t need another Dapple Gray Old Timer variation. 

The Diamond P Knockoffs are fun, but I have enough already and they will all be moving on eventually. The big standing one that seems to be an original design might stick around a little longer than the rest since I find him intriguing overall, even if his face is disturbingly serpentine. 

Bernadette’s Box

Bernadette arrived – in pretty Wedgewood Blue!

The graphically, her Touchability Box is pretty close to the original, but made of far better materials, which was basically the same corrugated cardboard the original shippers were made of – just reconfigured and with fancier (two-color!) printing!

The original Touchability Boxes only came with the Family Arabians, for a very brief period of time in the late 1960s. They were an experiment in more retail-friendly packaging that went… poorly.

Horses got scuffed, horses got stolen, and they were hard to stack and store on the shelf. It’d be another five years before they’d finally just go with the closed “white boxes” all of us who bought horses in the 1970s knew and loved.

They did an updated version of the Touchability Box in 2009/2010 for the My Favorite Horse Series, a line of older molds – like Buckshot, Sherman Morgan, Quarter Horse Yearling – designed with younger kids in mind.

They experimented with it again on the presumption that touching a Breyer horse will make a kid more likely to want it.

(Well, it certainly does in my case!)

That experiment didn’t last long either – same problems as before, duh – and they went right back to the standard clear plastic boxes shortly thereafter.

The original Touchability Boxes are extremely scarce, and I’m lucky to have the one that I have, that I purchased back in 1998 for the then kinda-scary price of $50.00 – and sight unseen, too!

Technically, Breyer originally referred to this type of packaging as a “Display Carton”; the word “touchability” only appears in the text of the original announcement flier, and in the intervening years that name has stuck.

I would say that in spite of the steep price tag I paid for my Gray Appaloosa FAS over twenty years ago, it was a good investment. I could probably sell it for at least ten times that in less time than it would take me to go to the fridge and grab a drink.

In case your rare packaging radar went off, this is not going to happen. Though when things like this happen, it makes me think twice:

Oh no, not again!

In spite of my shortage of fun money so close to BreyerFest, one does not let a scarce and pretty Old Timer slip by. I’ll just have to extra careful with my trip money this this year, I guess.

(Which I should be doing anyway, but we all know how that goes!)

Bernadette

I am so pleased with the reaction to the latest Vintage Club release, Bernadette:

I know a lot of people were wondering when she’d show up as a Vintage Club release, and when I found out, well… let’s just she was another tough secret to keep!

The Bell-bottomed Shire is one of the few Breyer molds that I might be able to complete my collection of; I bough the Riegesecker Shires when they came out, and managed to buy most of the rest at my leisure.

The only tough one will be the Chasing the Chesapeake Testudo, and that’s because I made an executive decision to go with the Chestnut Fell Pony Emma instead.

(The Chalky Sorrel and the Glossy Dapple Gray are sufficiently out of reach that I am not even going to consider them a part of my list. Sort of the way I ignore the Presentation Series Man o’ War, until/if/when it happens.)

Vintage Test Colors of the Shire are relatively uncommon, mostly because I don’t think they had a lot extras bodies floating around the factory in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Marney was painting most of them up. The mold was discontinued in the mid- to late 1970s in the first place because she was a bit of a resource hog: those tree-stump-thick legs take a lot of plastic to mold!

And she kept coming back because… of collectors like me, who kind of love her in a low-key way. It’s helpful that she’s a relatively easy mold to collect – though it’s probably a bit ironic that she’s being honored with a Vintage Club Gambler’s Choice release that makes her somewhat less so.

I really don’t care which one I get, though I think Golden Charm one is my favorite; Wedgewood Blue used to be my favorite of the original four Decorator colors, but lately Golden Charm’s been more my thing.

(Though I would be happy with finding any Decorator in any condition in the wild.)

Incidentally, it is “Golden Charm”, not Gold Charm, per the original price lists from 1964. Actually, it’s kind of interesting to examine the original Decorator price list to see that the hobby is basically using three of the four color terms incorrectly: it’s Florentine, not “Gold Florentine” and Copenhagen, not “Copenhagen Blue”:

 

This I attribute to the fact that the original Decorator price list didn’t get as much circulation as other Breyer ephemera from the same era, and when it finally did, the hobby usage of the terms had become so ingrained that the correct terminology doesn’t register.

(And even I slip up, a lot of the time.)

Such A Tease

Grr. Argh. 

I cannot believe that Reeves is now making me wince with every release this “heroes” theme. As BreyerFest History tells us, reliance on clichés and heavy-handed Disney references are (alas) the rule, rather than the exception - but even I did not expect it to be this bad.

I’m going to pretend I didn’t see Reeves’ latest attempt to kiss up to Disney with its fifth(!!!) Marvel-themed BreyerFest SR, and just focus my comic book fangirl energies on the Shazam! sneak preview screening I’m seeing this Saturday.

(How nerd will they go? Will Tawky Tawny actually be in it? Ibis the Invincible? Freddy’s long-lost brother?)

Back to slightly-less-stress-inducing topics. (And ones that I have at least some tiny measure of control over.)

Bits and pieces of information about the still-unrevealed Vintage Club releases have been revealed in the Vintage Club welcome packet…

...including the much-requested Bell-bottomed Shire! Yay! But being the teases that they are this year, they’ve chosen to keep the rest of you in the dark about what she will be wearing when she debuts in May or June.

Ah, well. Just gotta roll with it, I guess.

Considering how mild-mannered and unassuming the mold is, the Bell-bottomed Shire has a number of scarce or downright rare releases over the years: the Gloss Chalky Dapple Grays, the 1985 Riegsecker releases, and most recently, the Chasing the Chesapeake Special Run Testudo.

Because of her heavily feathered legs, she takes a lot of raw materials to produce, which is why we haven’t seen much of her recently. Aside from the Warehouse Reissues of the Bay (made from stockpiled warehouse bodies) the only other production run of her that we’ve had in the past 15 years was the adorable BreyerFest Special Run Cheerio.

And I adore that release so much she actually gets to be one of my office companions (along with several of her sisters).

So yeah, you could say I’m pretty excited about this release. The whole lineup is great, but you’ll just have to wait and see.

High Anxiety

Got the Silver Filigree Callahan I wanted, yay!

The detailing on the tail ribbon is amazing, and other than a few tiny bits of roughness in the gloss that can be felt, but not seen, I have no complaints about the Callahan itself.

But seriously, Reeves, we need to talk about the box.

I had heard that a higher percentage of boxes for the Callahans were arriving in less-than-optimal condition. While I have had my share of bumped and bruised boxes over the years, I haven’t had all that much to complain about.

But alas, not today. Fortunately my Callahan was fine; nevertheless, the only anxiety I should have felt today in opening the box should have been about what color I was getting, not how many pieces the model might have been broken into.

Do better, guys. 

Anyway…

This is what happens when I skip a day at the flea market:

I stop at the Salvation Army on the way home from work the next day and buy a ton of G3 My Little Ponies. And I don’t even collect them!

The cashier who rang me up gave me some serious side-eye, so I told her “they’ll make great party favors!”

In reality, I bought them for the BreyerFest stash – not that I need any more stuff, necessarily, but I do need the right kind of stuff, and I had a pretty good response the last time I brought some.

I did feel a little bit guilty about buying them, not really knowing that market or collecting that item per se. The tiny bit of research I did today didn’t indicate anything particularly rare in the lot of 19, but I’m not aiming to make a big profit, regardless.

I tend to see stuff like this as a way to bank some trip money ahead of time. Other people start a vacation savings account for their trip: I buy models to sell, even if it’s only a slight profit. Those slight profits tend to give me a better return on my investment than a bank savings account, too.

And it was kind of relaxing to clean them up and sort them out in between doing less pleasant things yesterday; I haven’t had much “grooming time” with the Breyers lately, other that the Memorial Day Weekend Dusting Project that for reasons I will not go into was not relaxing in the least.

Callahan, and Waiting It Out

I didn’t buy Fletcher, or Griffin, or Starlet, and I managed to bypass Koh-i-Noor the second time he was offered, too. But the Callahan? He finally broke me:

Bought one so fast I forgot to pull down the web site images and data! Oops!

My excuses, this time: I had some money in the PayPal account, and I still didn’t have a Classic Head Down Shire B here yet. All the versions of that mold that I do like I can’t afford at the moment, and since I like all three of the colors they were offering, it seemed like the logical thing to do.

However, I sold my Pamplemousse a while ago, and I was never drawn for a Silverado; since I do still have my Silver Snow, that’s the Mini Me I’m hoping for.

I’m with a lot of people here: I do kind of wish Reeves would slow down the pace of all these offers. 2018 is beginning to feel a bit like 1984/5 – another time period where we were being barraged with one Special Run after another.

It was both harder, and easier back then. It was harder, because we had neither social media nor the Internet to keep us informed. You had to rely on your own hobby network – and monthly hobbyist newsletters – to find out about the Special Runs in the first place.

There were not quite as many mail-order retailers as you might think, so there’d be a good chance you might already be on the mailing list of a company who had, or was going to get, a Special Run soon. News and the mail traveled more slowly then: whether you got the sales list on time, or even found out about these Special Runs in time was the bigger worry.

It was easier back then because even though the piece runs were smaller – sometimes significantly so – it’d still take a few weeks or months for most things to sell out. You had the luxury of time – not a lot, but enough to take a deep breath.

The hobby was smaller back then, too. Less competition!

We had our profit-takers and flippers, too, but the problem wasn’t as widespread. There were some examples of quick sellouts, demand that vastly exceeded supply, and a couple of instances of people buying multiples for resale that profoundly warped the market.

Prices for some of the in-demand SRs remained high for while, but the Internet quickly cured that. There are still some – like the Buckskin Adios, or the 1984 G1 Stablemate Draft Horses – that command the big bucks, but most SRs of years past aren’t all that expensive or difficult to find anymore.

And that’s going to be the case with these newer ones, too, no matter how popular a mold may be now. Some go up and stay up, but most go down eventually. Or at least become less hotly contested.

If you couldn’t get one, and can’t afford the aftermarket now, just wait it out a bit. Something new will come along, and people will sell something old to buy something new.

Post-1966 Glosses

Around 1967, Breyer began to phase out Gloss Finishes. Some releases, such as the Family Arabians, were transitioned over to a Matte Finish. Others, like the Alabaster Five-Gaiter and the Gray Appaloosa Fighting Stallion, were discontinued altogether.

A few - well, more than a few, when you think about it - Gloss-Finished models continued to be produced through the late 1960s and well into the 1970s.

A few examples? The Palomino Five-Gaiter continued in Gloss through 1971, the Running Mare and Foal was produced in Gloss Dark Dapple Gray through 1973, and the Horned Hereford Bull was released in Gloss throughout almost the entirety of the 1970s. The Dapple Gray Old Timer and the Brahma Bull didn’t transition to a Matte Finish until much later in their runs.

What didn’t happen as often after 1966 were entirely new releases in Gloss Finishes.

The first, obviously, was the Charcoal Running Stallion in 1968. All of his other original release colors - Alabaster/White, Red Roan, and Black Appaloosa - were Matte-Finished, and at least nominally realistic. I don’t know why they went with Gloss Charcoal for him, other than he looked awesome in it. (A perfectly valid reason, by the way.)

Some of the Family Foals were apparently rereleased in Gloss in the late 1960s, though the reasons why are unknown. Perhaps by customer order or request, as I’ve speculated with other Post Production SRs/Reissues?

In the mid-1970s, some of the newly-released Stablemates came in Gloss Finish variations. The rumor heard way back when was that in the mid-1970s, Breyer was trying to use up the last buckets of the old Gloss varnish lying around, and as a consequence some of that may have been applied to random batches of early (1975/76) Stablemates.

The same theory also apparently explained that coveted handful of Gloss Chalky Dapple Gray Shires, who appeared around the same time, per a ca. 1975 sales flier:

That wouldn’t explain the continued existence of the Gloss Dapple Gray Old Timer and the Bulls, unless they were pulling them from warehoused backstock until their supply ran out. Which is possible.

What’s always baffled me are the Gloss Misties. What was the reason for releasing her that way initially in 1972, especially after obviously committing to a more realistic - and more Matte-Finished - aesthetic five years earlier? Other than she, too, looked awesome in it?

My hand-airbrushed, possible Salesman's Sample or just super-early Gloss Misty. Beautiful little girl, isn't she? I never tire of looking at her.

Dapple Grays, Real and Imaginary

First up, I’d be remiss to not mention that Frosty, brother of Flurry is now available - the Classics Shire in his Head Down mold variation, aka Shire Mold B. In other words, pretty much exactly what I was asking for last year when they released Flurry!

Alas, he’ll have to wait until I sell a few more horses and pay off a few more bills. With the sheer number of Special Offers and Special Runs we’ve been dealt over the past month, I suspect a lot of my fellow hobbyists are in the same boat.

There’s another set of recent Special Runs that, to my surprise, haven’t turned up yet in any great quantity online are the 2014 WEG Specials. Seen here:

http://www.normandy2014.com/news/630/the-breyer-company-becomes-an-official-licensee

There are 500 pieces each of the four Classics:

• Alabaster Ruffian
• Red Chestnut Johar
• Black Warmblood Mare
• Bay QH/Frolic Stallion

And (allegedly) 750 pieces each of the four Stablemates:

• Flaxen Chestnut G2 Morgan
• Black G3 Warmblood
• Bay G4 Driving Horse
• Alabaster G2 Warmblood

And an unspecified number of Commemorative Blankets.

Aside from the Special Run overload, the overseas location (France), the selection of molds (Classics and Stablemates) and the palette of colors (conservative, non-spotted colors) may be tempering enthusiasm in the U.S. as well.

Supposedly they are only going to be available at WEG 2014, but the WEG 2010 leftovers were eventually made available to nonattendees primarily via Grab Bags. I'm not counting on a repeat of that scenario, though: there are still several days to go before the event ends, and Grab Bags have evolved into something else entirely since then.

If leftovers do become available to us at some point, I’d like to get one Classics piece and one Stablemates, primarily for the (very attractive!) packaging. I have no particular preferences on the molds, though if I had a choice I’d definitely pick the Classics Ruffian - the closest I’ll probably ever get to the near-mythical Dapple Gray Ruffian.

I say near-mythical because there was at least one sold via Marney in the early 1980s, on that legendary sales list that also featured the Appaloosa Proud Arabian Stallion:

The other 199 that supposedly exist probably don’t; there may be a handful more, only because Tests then (and now) were rarely unique. What I suspect was going on there was a miscommunication between Marney and Peter Stone, or Marney and someone else at the factory she might have talked to about it.

If 200 pieces had been created, some would have shown up by now. There were a lot of 200-piece or fewer Specials released back then: it was almost the standard piece run for SRs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While many of them are difficult to come by now, they are not impossible as long as you have either the time or money to spare.

I've been looking for that Dapple Gray Ruffian for a very, very long time.

I think it’d be awesome, by the way, if Reeves offered a Dapple Gray Traditional Ruffian at some point in the Vintage Club program, a la Mr. Chips. It would be a nice nod to the Dapple Gray Ruffian rumors, plus I think the Traditional Ruffian mold would look fabulous in it. Either Gloss or Matte would be fine, I don’t care, as long as it's in the same style as the Dapple Grays of the late 1970s and early 1980s: wild and crazy!

Just not for the next few months, though. Everyone's bank accounts would appreciate it!

Chilling Out

The schedule for February looks better - so far. Not the weather, though; I think we ran out of places to put the snow on Saturday. With no temperatures above freezing for at least another week, and more snow coming in a few days, I am sorely tempted to build a luge run in the yard.

We live on nearly an acre, on the side of a hill, so it's not as far-fetched as you might think. But, you know, the time thing.

Surprisingly, I decided against pre-ordering the Rajah. Not that I didn’t like him and/or want him, but I made a commitment to downsize the first half of the year, and I’m sticking to it. It’s already taking me days - or weeks - to open the handful of items I’ve already bought. Doesn't seem quite right to commit to another, even if it wouldn't arrive for another five months.

With my schedule the way it was, I completely got out of the habit of eBay surfing, so I also (almost) completely missed the hubbub of crazy Decorator bidding wars. All I will say on the matter are the same things I usually say in such matters:

1. High prices on high-end items are in no way a reflection of a recovering economy - anymore than the prices of Van Goghs or Rembrandts are;
   
2. Collectibles still aren’t that good an investment.

You can make money on collectibles, but it requires far more work than taking a picture and putting it on eBay. Do your research. Cultivate your sources. Buy for the long term as well as the short term. Don’t get too sentimental to things you intend to sell, but don’t buy strictly to flip, either.

If you don’t like what you are selling, on some level, buyers are going to pick up on that.

I did open some other boxes of horses recently, besides the Levi. I’ve decided to set free most of the BreyerFest Reissues. I’ll keep one boxed - the Huck Bey, most likely - just because I like to have representative samples of different box styles. The first one I’ve opened up is the Bay Shire:

Aside from the VIN number, there are a number of differences between the Reissue and the original 1998-1999 Regular Run release. The shading is different - the reissues have darker faces, are more red bay than buckskin, and the hoof paint is less noticeable/prominent than the original.

All of those differences do fall within the normal range of variation for the original release, though - I know, because I’ve shopped for her in the past. But they do seem consistent enough within the Reissue run itself to least merit noting.

The most obvious difference, though, is that the finish is more satiny and less matte, bordering on the semi-gloss. The surface of the mold also appears to have been either buffed/retooled slightly, as I suspect the Trakehner was.

It has already been established, however, that the Reissues are largely (if not entirely) painted on older molded stock. This means either the retooling took place earlier than I noticed before (this would not be surprising) or there was a little extra effort put into cleaning and buffing of the older stock. 

My Smoke ‘n Mirrors and Monarch - 2003 releases and the last Bell-bottomed Shires prior to the BreyerFest Cheerio, in 2012 - are currently in storage, so I cannot check either way. A quick online photo survey has been inconclusive.

Argh! This is going to bug me. I need to find some dorky thing to watch on the TV to chill out now.

Worth Its Weight

In response to the question of whether the Family Stallion and Foal also come in masked-bald variations, all I can say is: I’m not sure. I did some preliminary research last night after finishing another big project, and I didn’t see any obvious cases anywhere. So either they’re much scarcer than the Mares (I saw lots of her!) or they didn’t make them at all. Or I was really, really tired and missed them entirely.

It is worth noting that the Mare is the least popular of the three molds, so they might not have felt the need to update them. Or had enough to cover orders.

Second, for those of you who still want to buy a Wintry-themed Glossy Draft Horse, but are not all that into the price, color, or very existence of Aspen (the Silver Filigree Brishen Web Special), there’s a smaller scale, cheaper, more plentiful and more easily acquired one now up on the Breyer web site. His name is Flurry:

(Photo slightly adapted from the web site. Copyright and all that Reeves International.)

They’re not explicitly saying so, but it sounds like that’s exactly what he’s intended to be: a more affordable alternative to Aspen. Piece count, as far as we can tell, appears to be in the range of 1000 - about the same as an average BreyerFest Ticket Special.

I don’t know if I’m getting one yet. If he were a Mold B Shire there’d already be one winging his way to me, because I don’t have one of those yet and can’t afford any of the others on the market. (The free shipping offer this weekend IS NOT HELPING, though.) I was bad and bought a bunch of other stuff this week already, including this glorious thing:

Yes, a trenchcoat made out of silver faux snakeskin and lined with gray and black cheetah-print fake fur. At this point I don’t care if I come up with a BreyerFest costume idea to incorporate it into, I am just going to wear it around the hotel and the Horse Park and looking fabulous, in spite of the heat.

(Via the local Salvation Army, of course. As you can see, Vita is considerably less impressed.)

There was another recent arrival, one that didn’t cost me a thing - Jackson!

Real splash spots, the right shade of gray, and hooves darker than his legs? Yes! Now that’s more like it! I think he might be Tenite, too, but I haven’t fondled him enough to know for sure. I know, let’s weigh the evidence scientifically, using the postal scale! I just happen to have a newer Stablemates Jumper sitting on my desk, too:

Yep, Tenite!

Hot, or Not?

I did not think it possible to work 40 hours in the space of two and a half days. It sort of felt like BreyerFest, but with more air conditioning and fewer horses.

(Still haven't decided if this was a good thing, or a bad thing.)

So, there’s also this guy:

The box says "#430018 Arabian - bay" but he looks like a Huckleberry Bey. Sort of.

The color and finish is a little off from most Regular Run Huck Beys that we’ve seen. Those tend to have more contrast between their lighter and darker areas, way more black on their bodies in general, and are a little more brown than red, too.

While any one of these Ninja Pit Hucks wouldn’t look out of place in a random assortment of Huckleberry Beys produced over the years, collectively the Hucks in the sales tent all sort of looked…different, but in the same way. And they weren’t called Hucks.

So I bought one just to be safe, because I sold off my Huck Bey a few years ago, and have sort of been regretting that decision of late.

There were four other models of this type in the tent, as well:

430002 Old Timer - palomino
430008 Draft Horse - bay (Bell-bottomed Shire)
430009 Clydesdale - bay (Clydesdale Mare)
430013 Belgian - bay roan (aka "Trait du Nord")

(Rough reference only: I didn’t see any examples of the Belgian/Trait du Nord personally, and only saw the Shire in passing, so the labels/descriptors are likely off on those two.)

Anyway, they all looked like recent - or not so recent, in the case of the Shire - Regular Run items in new packaging, with Special Run style numbers. So the initial assumption was that that’s what they were: repackaged Regular Run leftovers, knocking around the warehouse.

But what were they, really? A new type of Store Special? A cancelled Special for an event or store? A part of the WEG reissue program/idea that wasn’t fully implemented?

The one that’s been getting the most currency is that they were repurposed leftover (whiteware) bodies from previous recent Regular and Special Runs, and not intended to be true "Special Runs". There was some second or third-hand information being passed around on Blab that this is more or less what a Reeves employee told them.

While I am not generally inclined to believe anything a Reeves employee says at face value, especially second hand, this makes some sense. The Old Timers = leftover Gus bodies. The Shires = leftovers from last year’s Cheerio Special Run. Huck Bey = leftovers from the Color Crazy Redemption Horse and/or upcoming Collectors Club SR Enchanted.

Belgian and Clydesdale Mare = I just happen to think they have a metric ton of those bodies lying around, for some weird reason, as they’ve been showing up for sale as "whiteware" in the Sales Pit for a few years now. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

I’ve heard one report that a VIN number was found on at least one of these models, though I haven’t had the chance to open up mine to see if this is true. If that’s the case, it bolsters the argument that they were very recently made, and not (just) leftovers.

The quantities are unknown: there were definitely more of the Clydesdale Mare and Huck Bey, and fewer of the Belgian and Shire. Although some were seen in the first wave of Ninja Pit action, they did replenish the stock in the store from time to time, and I was able to pick up my Huck late Sunday morning.

The only one of the others I really regret missing is the Old Timer, who was without hat or blinkers. As I’ve got a small collection of blinkerless Old Timer culls going now, it feels incomplete without its Palomino "kid brother".

If Reeves’ intent was to simply pass them off as Regular Runs, they need to study the minds of us collectors a little more closely: new number + new box + new paint job (even if it’s an "old" one) = new release.

Or maybe they do know, and it’s some sort of reverse psychology/Jedi Mind Trick/11th Dimensional Chess they’re all playing on us.  If so, mission accomplished.

Oh, The Things I See

Something short and rambly today, since I haven’t gotten any appreciable sleep since, oh, Sunday? (Scheduling issues, again. Not just me, but everybody.)

The special project/secret mission/road trip is kinda on hold for a week. Don’t worry, it’s still a go, and you’ll get all the details about it, in good time. A few weeks ago telling myself that I was ready for a new adventure. Silly me, not expecting the Universe to actually honor one of my wishes, for once…

I am aware of the Chalky Dapple Gray Shire on eBay, and I might have some interesting news to share about that particular topic in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, I’ve seen those prototypes on eBay, too. The sound you hear in the background is my check book laughing at me. Not enough money + slow computer + even slower Internet connection = no prototypes for you!

I have also seen those New Jersey cull lots. Culls, I have plenty of, so those I am not muttering to myself about.

I am a bit shocked at some of the prices they’re bringing, since I can remember being able to buy ‘em for 5-6 bucks back in the good old days, when they were little more than remaking fodder. We laughed - really, we did - at the thought that people would pay a lot for them in the future.

Not because we thought they were worthless, but because they were so plentiful at the time, and cheap. We did assume that they were going to go up. Mostly because we had been told that Reeves would put a tighter cap on factory escapees. Fewer culls = increased rarity, and all that jazz.

So funny, I know. I’ve heard the stories, too - about the New Jersey dumpsters being trashpicked, and truckloads of bodies being "rerouted" to the flea market, and not the landfill. The only thing that truly stopped that from happening was moving production overseas. And not having too many crazy hobbyists living within a reasonable driving distance of China.

In spite of that, I do think there’s probably an upper limit to the pricing on culls: there still are a lot of them out there - in and out of collector hands. They’re not everybody’s cup of tea, either. They were discarded for a reason: otherwise unpainted horses with some paint spritzed or splashed on it are not always very attractive.

Most hobbyists like their horses "finished" in some way - even if it’s just a pure, solid color or a faux "stone" or "fantasy" finish.

With that thought in mind, here is a picture that gives you a hint of what I’ll be talking about next time. It’s a topic I touched briefly on Blab, but I’ll elaborate on it here in greater detail, after a night or two of more restful sleep:

Working the Portfolio

No Arosa for me. Only entered once, so it wasn’t like I was heavily invested in it. What I did invest in was a small collection (12 pieces) that I bought Monday night for less than the cost of an Arosa.

It’s mostly modern stuff, but it’s all quality; with a little luck, I should be able to recoup most of my investment on it by the end of the year, and clear a "profit" on them sometime early next. I might keep one or two out of the lot, but what I’ll do is just put the ones I’m eyeing at the end of the sales queue and see how the culling is going by then.

As for your little bit of genuine Breyer History, here it is:

At first glance, it appears to be a 1975 Mid-Year flier, but the only "new" items on it are the Stablemates Racehorses - Swaps, Silky Sullivan, Native Dancer and Seabiscuit. What I think it actually is is a sale flier - as in, the items in the flier are on sale at a reduced price, compared to the 1975 Wholesale Price List. The net cost of the Traditional Man o’ War, for instance, is quoted at 2.73 each on the Price List, but at 2.41 on this flier.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, if only…)

The "G1" Stablemates were released in three successive waves throughout 1975, with the four racehorse molds being a part of the scheduled "May 1st Releases", hence the dating.

The other part of those releases were the "Morgan Horse Foal" and "Arabian Horse Foal" sets that, for whatever reason, never came to fruition. They appeared on the 1975 price list, and nowhere else - and not on this flier, either. So they were obviously dropped from the release schedule very, very early on - probably not long after the price list was printed and/or distributed in December 1974/January 1975.

The most interesting thing about the flier isn’t the Stablemates, or the sale prices. Take a closer look at the Dapple Gray Shire:

Holy macaroni, she’s glossy! What the heck?

There are a handful of Gloss Dapple Gray Shires floating around; the story goes that about a half dozen of them were found during the Chicago factory cleanout in the mid-1980s. Why they were made was/is a mystery. I vaguely remember Marney saying something about the last bit of leftover gloss being used up, but that might have been her theory, based on the supposition that they were made much later - after the gloss finish was completely discontinued in the early 1980s.

If they were made ca. 1975, that changes things. My crazy, cockamamie theory is that they were made for THIS particular flier. They might not have had any loose/unpackaged Dapple Shires floating around the plant at the time, so they might have had someone in the painting department paint up a few for the shoot. The person painting them might have assumed that they wanted them painted just like the Old Timer. You know, in gloss.

It’s kinda crazy, and I have no direct proof that that’s the case, but it does make a tiny bit of sense, doesn’t it? More plausible than a bucket of unused gloss just lying about the factory for a few years.

The Tinkerbell Effect

Another lightweight topic day - work was absolutely brutal, so I’m not in much mind for heavy thinking.

I made some comments about the complicated history of the Modernistic Buck and Doe on Blab over the past couple of days, but it’ll probably be another week or so before I get the article I wrote for my Sampler last year rewritten and repurposed for the blog.

I also want to spend a little quality time with it because, judging from the frequency with which the topic seems to come up - both online, and directly towards me, personally - I have a feeling that it’ll be one of my more linked to pages.

Since I’m feeling a little numb from the neck up (and the knees down!), I’ll just spotlight another one of my BreyerFest treasures - the Tent SR Shire "Cheerio":

I was really surprised when I finally opened her up a couple of days ago - she’s drop dead gorgeous. I was already predisposed to like her - hello, she’s a Bell-bottomed Shire, and she’s glossy - but dang, Reeves really stepped up their game with her. Clean mapping, tri-colored eyes, fabulous shading, and the super-thick gloss that squeaks to the touch - pretty much everything you’d want in an exclusive Limited-Edition-Exclusive-Special-Run type model.

What struck me was the hint of sparkle that Reeves is now putting into the gloss - not quite enough to make it iridescent, but just enough (I’m guessing) to make it difficult for scammers to duplicate. I had seen some comments that the Gloss Mariah’s Boon models also had this bit of "Tinkerbell" sparkle, but hadn’t really given it much thought (because, you know, that model being a delicate subject in these parts).

The Prince of Chintz also has it, but my Glossy Silver Bay Stoneleigh Surprise does not. (Different factories, different production times? Hard to say why.)

It’s an interesting solution to the "fake glossy" problem, one that certainly didn’t come immediately to my mind. I’d still want to see decals or notations underneath the gloss as a failsafe measure, especially if some enterprising con artist manages to duplicate the "Tinkerbell Effect". Because you know they’ll try.

I was kind of surprised that Cheerio didn’t get a little more love in the Special Run line - I think it was because everyone was so fixated on the Stoneleigh Surprises (and, to a slight degree, on the Cantering Welsh Pony, the mold that got the Half Gloss/Half Matte treatment this year) that everything else just sort of fell by the wayside.

There were quite a few Prince of Chintzes, Aintrees and Tunbridge Wells’ left over for Sunday, too. The Prince of Chintzes because they were a little too outre for most people’s tastes (then again, so were the original Decorators), the Aintrees were actually quite pretty, but they made a ton of them (1400 pieces!) and the Tunbridge Wells wasn’t that impressive in person. (The roany paint job obliterated a lot of his finer details, and the crest of his neck had virtually no definition.)

Cheerio’s price was a wee bit on the high side, for a modestly popular older mold - $65 - probably a reflection of the time and effort they put into her paint job. Personally, I think she’s well worth the price. If they happen to offer her on the web site as a Collector’s Club Special Offer, you really ought to give her some serious consideration.

Page Clicks

The most exciting thing about the WEG Chestnut Esprit giveaway for me was that they finally gave us an official name and item number for it: it’s the WEG 2010 Media and Athlete Gift Esprit (item#9142). Yes! And thank you! Another tiny hole in the data patched.

I’m putting my daily clicks in, but I haven’t cleared a space on the shelf for him quite yet; I still think I have a better shot at getting one via other means. Even after all this time, they still have to have more than just one knocking around the office.

If they are cognizant enough of the demand to estimate the value of the prize at $500, though, I’m becoming increasingly doubtful that they’ll dump them in the NPOD, but one never knows. They haven’t been averse to unloading high-end merch in there in the past.

I don’t take any pleasure in reading the commentary everywhere about how so confusing the Breyer web site is. (Other than pointing out that maybe now more people get my point about the confusing graphics.) Instead of trying to navigate around the site manually, I just visit via the link in the e-mail they send. They get sent to the e-mail address I have to check in on every day anyway.

It would be helpful, though, if the Powers That Be had most of the bugs worked out and the typos corrected before they send the e-mails out.

(And if you’re not getting your e-mails from them, could y’all just call them up and take care of it, instead of complaining about it Every Darn Time it happens?)

Reeves is just trying to generate page clicks, which is all well and good. I’ll start actually clicking around the site when, you know, they start putting up a little more content worth clicking on.

They did post a couple more Bfest specials today - a Store Special Irish Draft "Killarney" in a lightly dappled reddish bay, and Line/Ticket SR "Cheerio", a Glossy Dun Tobiano Pinto Bell-bottomed Shire. Just a couple of days ago I was thinking it was about that time for a few more photos to come out. Yay!

The Shire is the one I was (very) tangentially referring to in my last post about the Web Site Photo Fiasco. The first photo I saw was from a different angle, I think, but I like her even more from this one.

On my want list? Yep, so far. I love the Bell-bottomed Shire; a lot of others do, too. Gloss + Pinto + Vintage Draft mold = Winner! (Not if you listen to the younger set, who seems to think any mold released prior to Silver is "icky" and "unpopular", but I’ve been working on that for Lent, too.)

Don’t know if I’ll go for the Killarney yet. The Ballyduff mold looks wonderful in that color, but the Porcelains make me nervous. It is interesting that they’re putting him in the store instead of as a Line/Ticket Special. Does that mean that the resins from last year were a dry run towards putting the Nonplastic SRs in the store itself, or will they continue to do both?

I suppose we’ll find out in a few more weeks, as other SR pictures get (officially) released.

Oasis and the Multi-Molds

No convenient excuses today: I was just being lazy. I had a longer-than-expected work assignment the other day, and I didn't feel like typing. Then I found a couple of movies in the discount bin at the local Big Lots that just exacerbated the problem. (Me and my fascination with cheesy vampire flicks. Sigh.) But I was actually doing some model horsey research at the Big Lots, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I sent in my entry for the latest Connoisseur drawing Oasis today. My JAH took a little longer than average to arrive at the Ranch, so I witnessed most of fuss and bother from a slightly distant perspective. Was I missing something from the scans? Or was it just the usual carping and moaning? (Too plain! I hated the first tail less! Looks too much like the Bay Missouri Fox Trotter!)

Sure, she’s a little pricey, and she doesn’t have a flashy, ornate paint job that might visually justify the price. But we’re talking about a mold with multiple molding variations: two necks, two tails, two manes (so far.) All three of the known or upcoming releases of this mold differ in both color and shape: it may well be that this particular combination of mold elements may be unique, or rare. So the price justification may come not from the quality of the paint job, but in the mold itself.

Interesting new development, I think.

We’ve had significant changes to molds in the past, but for the most part these were permanent alterations: being able to switch back and forth is something new. (It’s already giving me fits in the documentation department: do I label them by their parts, or give each part combo a label? Grr. Argh.)

Stone paved the way with the ISH and his various mane and tail combos. Emboldened by the success of the ISH, they began to experiment with more drastic and dramatic changes, essentially creating a whole new subcategory of OF models now dubbed "Factory Customs." They’ve improved their processes considerably from their first awkward attempts - leaden lumps of hair being blown in three different directions - but they’re not mass-produced pieces on the same level as an average, regular run Breyer release. Most of the alterations they’ve done have been done post-molding, on a small-scale basis, and are mostly cosmetic.

One of Breyer's earliest experiments with the multiple molding variations was the Classic Shire: we had the head up "Shire A" and the head down "Shire B." We haven’t seen much of the "Shire B" variation, though. All three of his plastic releases have had rather limited distribution: the Bay in the pricey 2405 Delivery Wagon in 2002, the 2007 BreyerFest Contest model Yankee Doodle, and this year’s (now discontinued?) 620 Spotted Shire.

The Spotted Shire’s quick disappearance is being blamed on molding problems. Normally I’m not a big fan of that theory - anytime a mold is taken out of production, even briefly, hobbyists start screaming about molding problems - but there may be some justification in this case. As Reeves’s first serious "multi-mold," he might have some issues that later, more technologically sophisticated ones don’t.

The newer molds have their problems, too: the original, head-down Make A Wish has a funky double shoulder that’s somewhat covered up by her big hairdo. Mane and tail options don’t always "fit" to the body correctly, either technically or aesthetically. I’m sure these mold probably cost more than the average mold, with higher than average maintenance costs.

So far most of the newer "multi-molds" have limited themselves to insertable mane and tail changes; whether we get more molds with more extensive changes will depend on how well the Make A Wish mold performs - both in the factory, and on the shelf.