The Sorrel Family

Here’s the evidence that I am not totally crazy:

Behold! An entire family of Dark Sorrel Family Arabians!

And here’s the Five-Gaiter that came with the Foal, many moons ago. That was such a deal!

The Western Prancing Horse and Fighting Stallion that I have in this variation are on the lighter side, incidentally. 

The fact that there’s a lot of variation in all of these variations is an excellent argument for the idea that these were not a one-off Special Run items, but things with extended production runs. 

That’s obviously the case with the #114 Bay Western Prancer, who appears to have been made in this variation for most of his production run. 

It’s a little less clear with the Fighting Stallion. Based on the fact that early ephemera pictures depict the Sorrel variation, I think he was made in that variation at the beginning of his production run, but switched over to Breyer’s early version of “Bay” (reddish-brown body with black mane and tail and black hooves) pretty quickly. 

This obviously throws the chronology for Gloss Bay Fighters into question, but I do not want to get into that contentious issue today.

So where does that leave the Family Arabians? Good question! I tend to fall into the “it’s a production variation” camp, rather than “previously unknown/undocumented Special Run”, because two of the other Sorrel variations turned out to be just that: variations, not independent Special Runs. 

The questions then become: when, and for how long? Those, I am not so sure about.

Back to the paperwork!

Variations of Variations

I was super excited to do a Buy It Now about a week ago on what looked like a most excellent upgrade of my Five-Gaiter Sorrel Family Arabian Mare. Someone had drilled holes in the corners of my original Mare’s mouth to accommodate tack, and while she’s otherwise in pretty darn nice shape, one that was not holey was definitely high on my want list.

Not only was the one I just scored hole-free, she also had eyewhites. She was a little yellowed and dirty, but those are easy-peasy fixes.

There was only one problem with this attempt to upgrade. Can you spot it?

Variations, argh! 

The lighter mare is definitely the odd one: most Sorrel Family Arabians, including the Stallion and Foal that I have, more closely resemble the darker one. 

In fact, I don’t think I’ve even seen any other Sorrel Family Arabians that are as light as my first Mare. Then again, not a lot of these come up for sale, so that could simply be a sampling error on my part.  

So it appears I now own two Sorrel Family Arabian Mares. For the time being, anyway. 

Incidentally, my Foal is darn near perfect (she came with a drop dead gorgeous Five-Gaiter with eyewhites in similar condition), but my Stallion is a little bit rough, and slightly bloated. It goes without saying that I’d like to upgrade him, but like the new Mare, it’s going to have to be another chance encounter. 

The Naming of Colors

On one hand, I think I’ve finally found the colors on the Eberl Andalusian Mare and Foal that finally do it for me, with the Winter Web Special La Molina and Masella:

But on the other, it is highly unlikely that I’ll ever be able to complete the family with a Duende Benasque. 

Eh, I’ll enter anyway and see what happens. If I get them, great! 

If I don’t, I’ll just sit back and watch the trainwreck that the aftermarket sales will be. Since the piece count is 450 (as opposed to the usual 350) on this set, I’m hoping not very, but I’ve seen some frankly very scary prices on eBay lately so I am not that optimistic.

(In case you were wondering, I didn’t even try for that White Boxer.)

It’s interesting that they appear to have settled on the name “Blue Filigree” for Masella’s color: that seems awfully generic and mundane for a color that glossy, iridescent and color-shifting. 

Unless they come up with something better (Glossy Metallic Heliotrope? Dappled Iridescent Cyan? Purple Monkey Dishwasher? Or my personal favorite: Blue Raspberry Snowcone!) I’m going to keep calling it Benasque Blue. 

There is logic and precedent to this: the “Sorrel” color that originated on the #52 Five-Gaiter is often referred to as “Five-Gaiter Sorrel” when it appears on other Breyer releases. (Yeah, Breyer tried rebranding it in the 1970s as “Honey Sorrel” when they put it on the Bell-Bottomed Shire, but that did not stick.)

Speaking of, I’ll close today’s brief post with a picture of my semi-gloss Sorrel Five-Gaiter with eyewhites who also did nothing at the BreyerFest Photo Show this year. I bought him years ago in a box lot on eBay with a mint Sorrel Family Arabian Foal; this is one of the reasons why I presume that the Sorrel Family Arabian Variations are from the early 1960s, and not the later. 

That’s all for today, folks!

Bay, Bay and Bay

If Monday was any indication of what’s to come, it looks like this week is shaping up to be a sequel to last week.

However, I decided to take some of that this-only-seems-to-happen-to-me stress out on one of my hapless customizing projects (that Mesteno’s Mother mold I blathered about a while back) so it’s nothing but pretty ponies for the rest of the post, yay!

Specifically, three Bay Western Prancing Horses:

The older “Sorrel” variation of the #114 Bay Western Prancer, the later “Bay” variation of the same release, and the Tractor Supply release of Annie Oakley’s Prince.

The Sorrel was one of my very first in-hobby purchases, and I was positively giddy when I got him: he was my first model with eyewhites, and one of the first models I purchased that was older than me!

The Bay Bay was a CHIN purchase. I was looking around the hotel hoping to upgrade my Buckskin WPH; I thought I had a potential candidate, but didn’t pass closer inspection. Then I found the Bay Bay variation, so I bought him and called it a day.

The Prince was an NPOD find. He’s not a true Sample or anything interesting like that, just a bubble-wrapped warehouse leftover I found when I was wandering about the NPOD sometime over the weekend. I had been half-heartedly looking for on eBay, but the prices were scaring me off.

Unlike other Sorrel variations of the 1960s Bays (like the Fighting Stallion, and the Family Arabians) it appears that the Sorrel Western Prancing Horse is actually rather plentiful and common.

The Bay Bay – distinguished from the Sorrel by the reddish cast to his body, and a Black mane and tail – was made for at least a year or two before he was discontinued at the end of 1971, as my example doesn’t have the USA mold mark.

As far as I know, the #114 Bay release – either the Sorrel Bay or the Bay Bay – never had any kind of black paint on the hooves or legs. Saddles for the Bay, unlike some of the other vintage Western Prancer releases, could be either Tan or Gray.

I think I’m all Bayed out now. Unless something shows up with a sticker or box. Not likely, but you never know with me.

Catching Up Is Hard To Do

The overnight project will be wrapping up this week, thank goodness; it’s not the hours, but being out of sync with the rest of the world that’s been starting to get to me a little. Am I a half-day ahead, or a half-day behind? I have a hard time telling.

I’m tempted by the latest Grab Bag offer, but unless a must-have turns up in one of the boxes, I’ll probably give it a pass. I have too much stuff in my sales box already anyway, and I’ve hardly made a dent in the latest culling effort.

Like everyone else, I am also intrigued by the color mix of the AQHA 75th Anniversary Quarter Horses. Roan and Dun have been mentioned in the PR materials but only Bay, Chestnut and Palomino have shown up so far. Allegedly the color mix is going to be closely tied to the proportion of each color in the registry, which means … we’re going to be seeing a lot of Chestnuts (about 33 percent of QHs registered) and Bays (20 percent).

In fact, that’s what the majority of AQHA mold releases have been so far to date, outside of a smattering of Roans and the Aged Gray #1242 Joe Bailey’s King. The selection of colors in its past - and the selection and percentage of colors they are planning with this new release - tell me that Reeves knows who their target audience for this mold is: real-world live Quarter Horse owners and breeders. Not hobbyists.

The AQHA Horse is not exactly beloved by the hobby community anyway, for a variety of reasons mostly related to its rather plain and homely nature. There’s also some controversy about the mold’s origins, but I’d rather not dive into that thicket today.

He’s not my favorite mold, either; all I have of him is the QVC version in the "wrong" shade of Chestnut, and a Pretty Buck who may or may not be a Sample. He was a little something I picked up in the NPOD in its early days, when most Samples were not distinguished, or all that distinguishable.  I bought him because I liked his paintjob - supposedly Buckskin, but very reminiscent of "Five-Gaiter Sorrel", a favorite color of mine.

I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a Golden Buckskin or some variety of Black; the only Buckskin we’ve had so far on the mold has been the Pretty Buck, and the closest we’ve gotten to Black has been the Blue Roan - the original #1160 in 2002 and the recent Reissue. It hasn’t appeared in any flavor of Decorator or even Glossy, outside of a few oddities. I get the feeling we probably won’t be seeing too many of either in the Anniversary release, even if they do decide to get wild and crazy on us.

There’s an interesting question: if they make a Silver Filigree AQHA Horse, will anyone buy it? I would, but you know I’m weird.

Old School Tests

Here he is - one of my favorite Test Colors:

He was purchased in a box lot with a No Muscle Woodgrain Clydesdale, and the Suckling Foal from the 1982/3 Sears Wishbook Special Run Bay Pinto Mare and Foal set.

As I mentioned before, the Clydesdale appears to be a standard #980 Clydesdale, but the Foal - also still trapped in storage limbo - has socks on the wrong ("opposite" of the standard) legs. It's an uncommon, but not unknown variation for that release.

The lot was purchased from a lady living in a suburb of Chicago that at one point was also the mailing address for Just About Horses, so I am assuming that this model - and possibly the group - may have come directly from the factory, and not purchased elsewhere.

This Classic Andalusian Stallion is not in the best shape (though better than the condition I received him in) and that also argues in favor of a gift/compensation/employee theory. Stuff you get for free from work is going to be treated a little less gently than something you had to pay cash money for.

He’s fairly typical of the kind and quality of Test Colors I have in my collection, which are mostly odd bits of flotsam and jetsam I’ve accumulated over the years. Some from eBay, some from friends, some from the body boxes at BreyerFest…

(Yes, really. Take a closer look inside those boxes next time, ladies and gents.)

Most of these things would get laughed out of the showring today. Too many hobbyists, I think, now associate Test Colors almost exclusively with items in the BreyerFest Benefit Auction. In reality, most Tests were/are more like the odd cast of characters I’ve assembled. They are not always pretty, or show quality, or even of significant financial value.

I mean, I could get a fairly decent price for this guy because he’s a bit fancy for an "Old School" Test Color, but it’d be nothing like the prices garnered for many of the de facto Factory Customs they sell at auction nowadays.

It is worth noting that many - if not most - of the models in the auctions are Test Colors. But they are also gussied up and given a higher degree of finishing than an average Test Color from the Days of Yore.

He is, as I just noticed, one of five Test Colors I have in some shade of Chocolate Milk Sorrel. This was not intentional, I assure you. When it comes to Tests, I can't afford to be picky - literally! I buy what I find, and what I can afford.

As for how many Test Colors I have in the collection, I genuinely don’t know. I suppose it depends on how you define the term.

Loose Ends

With more sadness than I anticipated, I must report the passing of Sherman, my 2002 Teal Blue Saturn LW300 Station Wagon. We had over 100,000 miles together, including innumerable trips to the flea market, a half dozen visits to BreyerFest, and one semi-harebrained emergency excursion to Chicago.

I pulled the plug today after the estimate of repairs from the latest escapade came in, and the cost to repair … was no longer justifiable. I had to let the Big Blue Drama Queen go. After I hung up the phone, I spent a few minutes in the office alone, crying like I lost a friend.

I will miss your awesome sound system, your generously-sized interior, your heated leather seats, and your smooth ride. Goodbye, Sherman Aloysius Gurdon, Rust in Peace.

Until his replacement can be located, I’ll be driving the family truck to work. I don’t think this will be long-term, as I’ve already located a couple of good prospects I’ll be looking at over the weekend. Another station wagon, I’m hoping; it’s fun to drive the truck, but a lower center of gravity and large enclosed cargo space are more suited to my needs.

Okay, now for some eye candy, to lighten the mood. And to tie up another loose end.

As I was going through my picture archive the other day, I discovered - to my amazement - that even though I’ve chatted about him repeatedly, I’ve never actually shown you my beautiful Sorrel Fighting Stallion here. So, here he is:

I picked mine up for almost nothing - for the cost of a better-than-average vintage Bay, basically - at BreyerFest several years ago, back when the Sorrel Variation was still a relative lightweight in the Vintage Breyer scene.

They were not unknown, but not as big a deal as they are today. A couple months back I was doing some random bits of research via Google and eBay, and the prices I saw they were bringing made my eyes blink a little erratically. I’m glad that he’s getting the attention he deserves, because I love that color on him, but I’m also really glad I manage to snag him back before he was cool.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Five-Gaiter Sorrel is a color that absolutely NEEDS to be revived - preferably as a Vintage Club-related release. Newer mold or vintage, I don’t care, thought I think it’d be both fitting and dashing on the Clock Saddlebred.

Two Lovely Ladies

Pretty quiet day at the flea market today. Plenty of things worth buying, including a ten-foot-tall unicycle(!) But all I left with was a bag of bagels and a good reading copy (with dustjacket) of Mistress Masham’s Repose, an odd little obscurity by T.H. White, whom most of you may know as the author of The Once and Future King.

I’ve now reached the point in my BreyerFest prep where everything is either going wrong, or falling apart. My scanner died, the dog ate (yes, ATE) my new umbrella, the humidity is like 3000 percent and wreaking absolute havoc on all my assorted projects, and I just paid way more than I wanted to on some new glasses that probably won’t be ready in time for the trip.

Oh, and one of our lovely neighbors has been setting off fireworks - loud, prolonged, and probably illegally obtained - for the past week. Vita doesn’t like them. Really, really doesn’t like them. Kind of hard to get any work done when the dog’s barking her fool head off every night for a week.

(She’s normally not the much of a barker either. It really is just that bad.)

So yeah, I’m a little cranky tonight.

There was a brief discussion about the "Sorrel" Classic Quarter Horse Mares over on Blab, so I thought I’d share mine here. I found these two lovely ladies in the Bentley Sales Dump Bins during my first trip to Model Horse Congress back in 1985:


I found a matching Foal the following year:


My mares did not come out of the six-piece special run batch the other known Sorrel QH Mares came out of. First, they’re not Chalky; second, their markings are quite a bit different from the Chalky ones, and from each other; and third, the rough quality of their seams seems to indicate that my girls were, more than likely, not SRs but actual preproduction Test Colors.

The mares were my first true Test Colors, if I’m remembering correctly. Test Colors weren’t super-hard to get back then, but funding (then, as now) was a bit of a problem. These two mares were mixed in with all the other bodies that Bentley Sales was allowed to take out of the factory to sell, following the sale to Reeves, and were priced like bodies.

As you can see from the photos, they really are body quality, so you’ll never see them competing for anything except shelf space.

If they went through the bother of testing both the Mare and the Foal, the Stallion has to be out there somewhere, right? I was kind of hoping that I’d find the matching Stallion at my third Model Horse Congress, but that didn’t happen. Either he wasn’t in the boxes, or someone else got to him before I did.

Shades of Gray

I was going to write about the BreyerFest stuff today, but I haven’t had the time to do much more with the JAH Supplement beyond looking at the pictures. I’ll get to it next week, when I’m a little more lucid - and better read. Since I’m short on time and feeling a little cranky from my jacked-up schedule, let’s discuss another lovely piece from my "newtoymens" collection:


It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but this little Donkey is a test color. He’s the same color as the #376 Brighty, the 1991 re-release in that quirky gray-brown dun color with the white belly and muzzle, and shoulder striping. Being that it is an undatable "newtoymens" piece with no real provenance, I don’t know if he was a test color for Brighty, a rejected test for the 1992 Election Donkey with the Brighty paint job, or even a test for another release entirely.

Some molds have lots of test colors floating around, and some have almost none, and the old Donkey mold is one of the latter. I’ve seen more test pieces on the Brighty mold - and even the Kitten - than the old Donkey. Part of the reason is that there haven’t been that many Donkey bodies lying around to experiment with: aside from his brief return in 1992, he’s basically been out of production since the mid-1970s.

Why the Donkey mold has been missing for so long is a matter of debate. I think a lot of collectors just assume that, like the Fury or the old Racehorse, he’s an old, dated mold that has been superseded by newer, more popular donkeys. We have the Brighty, the Companion Series Miniature Donkey, and now the cutie-pie Stablemates Donkey to fill in the gaps of the donkey-loving collector’s heart.

There may have been some damage to the mold that prevented or limited his return, too. According to former Breyer employee Steve Ryan, the Donkey mold was allegedly damaged in the aborted attempt to move production to Mexico in the 1970s. I don’t know how much truth there is to it; my interactions with Mr. Ryan did not inspire confidence in his grasp of Breyer History.

While real-life donkeys don’t come in quite the same color range as their cousins do, they certainly come in more colors than the old Breyer Donkey has: gray, gray, gray … and gray. There’s a lot of variation in that boring gray paint job, though, and one could amass a nice-sized collection of its many variations, from pale gray to near-black.

There are a few bay and Five-Gaiter Sorrel Donkeys from the 1960s floating around, too, but their color is sometimes so dark and muted that they are sometimes mistaken for just another shade of gray. And they may well be, as we have no documentation of it being a separate release or special run item.

There have also been rumors of Woodgrain Donkeys. I’m willing to entertain the notion of their existence, possibly as another Special Run item for the Ranchcraft Lamp line, but so far I haven’t seen one that passes historical muster. Red Mill - a company that manufactured figurines out of a crushed pecan-shell composite material - did make a fairly good copy of the Breyer Donkey, and that might be fueling the rumor.

Sorrel Fighting Stallion, Redux

I spent my Black Friday finishing up my 2008 paperwork (got the new toner cartridge on Wednesday.) Now I remember why I put off printing and sorting it all out – I spent way more than I should have on the“nonessential” things. The paperwork for this year should look a lot better; I've cut out most of my retail horse shopping (except for the Target and TSC specials) and I've studiously avoided the temptations of eBay.

There's no moral or philosophical underpinnings to those shopping decisions, beyond a lack of space and a lack of money. From now until I get the herd under control, the only hobby-oriented things I'll be buying are actual necessities: reference materials and office supplies. (One can never have enough binders or index cards!)

I was doing a little research on a topic I had been planning on writing about today, but I found something else instead: more on the possible origins of the Five-Gaiter Sorrel Fighting Stallion. (This sort of thing happens all the time, which is why my list of future topics never gets any shorter.) I was cross-checking some data in my early Breyer pricelists, and something caught my eye:

Look familiar? It's the same photograph of the “Bay” Fighting Stallion we saw in the 1968 Collector's Manual that I concluded was the Sorrel Fighter:

The “new” data isn't really new: I've had it for several years now. It comes from a copy of the Frederick C. Wolf & Son Inc. pricelist, dated May 7-8, 1963. (One page is dated May 7, the rest are dated May 8.) They were wholesale jobbers and distributors based in Tacoma Washington.

Most of the data duplicates what we already know from the official 1963 price list; the importance of this list was that it was the first documentation that showed that the matte and gloss Alabaster Fighting Stallions really were two distinct, separate releases. The 1962/3 Red Bird Sales Pages documents that fact in better detail, but those were found a few years later.

(We're not sure what to make of the “Dancer” nickname given to the No. 31 Fighting Stallion: we don't have any other reference to this name anywhere else. We don't know if Breyer or the jobber made it up. Separate topic anyway.)

What this “discovery” means is that we can push back the possible manufacture date of the Sorrel Fighting Stallion back to 1963. Since this was the same year that the Bay colorway was formally introduced on the Fighting Stallion, that means that the Sorrels may predate the standard “Breyer Bay” version we all know and love.

The only question then becomes: where do the Gloss Bays fit in the chronology? We don't have any references at all for the Gloss Bay Fighting Stallions: no pictures, and no notations on any pricelists, mail order sheets or catalogs of a finish change.

Then, as now, some of Breyer's upcoming releases may have been made available early for holiday orders. My guess – and it's purely a guess – is that these first batches of Fighting Stallions were produced in Gloss, possibly as a part of the 1962 holiday shipments. Once regular production began, they switched over to the Matte.

That wouldn't explain why the photograph shows the Five-Gaiter Sorrel version of the Fighting Stallion, though. If the glosses came first, and they intended the Sorrel color all along, then there shouldn't be any Gloss Bays at all: just Gloss Sorrels. But that's not the case at all. (I also happen to think that more than a few of the “Gloss Bay” Fighters out there aren't 100% authentic, but again, that's a separate topic.)

There was a lot of color confusion in Breyer's early days: the same colors on different models had the same name. The “Bay” Western Prancing Horse was actually the same color as the “Sorrel” Five-Gaiter, and the “Chestnut” Running Mare and Foal were the same color as the “Bay” Quarter Horse Gelding (except for the finish.) And the #36 Racehorse was called “Bay,” but was actually Chestnut.

Maybe somebody – or a lot of somebodies – just got their shades of Bay mixed up. “We didn't mean the Prancing Horse Bay, we meant the Running Mare and Foal Bay!”

Speaking of the Running Mare and Foal, there's another theory about the color switch that I've been entertaining: Breyer may have been engaging in a little “matchmaking.” Customers liked buying matching family sets: since the Matte Bay Running Mare and Foal also came out around that time, maybe Breyer thought that by making the Fighter in the same color and finish, customers would assume that they were all members of the same family, and buy accordingly.

The Sorrel Fighting Stallion - FOUND!

This is a post about the importance of using original source materials, not copies.

There are a number of models from the 1960s that came in the Five-Gaiter’s unique "Sorrel" color palette: the Family Arabians, the Western Prancing Horse, the "Bay" version of the original Donkey, and most notoriously, the Fighting Stallion. Some hobbyists assumed that these models were a rare and/or unknown special run or special order of some type.

I speculated, in an article I wrote several years ago for one of my Samplers, that these models were just a color variation of the Bay: in fact, the majority of "Bay" Western Prancing Horses are in this peculiar shade (one that I sometimes refer to as "Chocolate Milk Sorrel.") It’s only at the very end of the Bay WPH’s run where they actually start looking more Bay-like (but he never becomes true "Breyer Bay": he keeps his gray hooves!)

(Oh, the irony: the "Bay" version of the Bay Western Prancing Horse is actually the variation!)

While scanning the picture for the previous post from the 1968 Collector’s Manual, I took a closer look at the Fighting Stallion’s picture. Even though the picture is small, and in printed in sepiatones, the photo is obviously of the Sorrel version. He has the gray hooves typical of the Five-Gaiter’s Sorrel paint job!


For comparison, here’s a photo of the Bay Rearing Stallion from the same catalog. His hooves are quite obviously black.


The hooves are the main characteristic used to distinguish the Bay from the Sorrel. The body and mane/tail color may vary greatly and can be almost indistinguishable from Bay, but the Sorrel always has light gray hooves. Always.

The photographs used in the 1968 catalog are the same ones used in the 1966 through 1968 price lists; I don’t know if they were used anywhere else. The various incarnations of the Dealer’s Catalogs from 1966 through 1969 depict the Alabaster, not the Bay. The 1965 Dealer’s Catalog does use a sepiatone version of what appears to be a Bay Fighting Stallion to depict the Rearing Stallion (who was new for that year.) Unfortunately, I don't have a very good copy, so I really can’t make any judgments from it one way or another.

And that’s what the issue was here. I didn’t notice the gray hooves in the 1966-1968 pricelist pictures because they weren’t originals: they were multi-generational copies. I couldn’t tell that the hooves weren’t black - they were too small, and too blurred, for me to tell. My 1968 Collector’s Manual is an original, with the original contrasts and tones preserved.

It doesn’t just happen in black and white copies, either: color shifts occur in color copies and photographs, too. It’s particularly a problem with digital pictures on the Internet; most people don’t change the settings on their cameras, which are often set to make automatic color corrections. Whites get whiter, darks get darker, and colors shift from warmer tones to cooler ones, depending on the light source.

This is why I am loathe to make judgments about things such as color variations, Chalkies and Pearlies based on photographs on the Internet. Photographs can lie - or at least, not tell the whole truth. There’s enough bad data out there to overcome - we shouldn’t generate more based on poor quality copies and hastily-taken photographs!