Rousing the Envy Beast

While it is true that I’ve seen – and owned – a lot more rare Breyer models than the average person, and it does take considerable effort to pique my interest in Collectibility classes in general, I occasionally see things that make me go all grabby hands, at least mentally.

Was it a Marney Test, a Decorator, a Raffle Model, or even an Auction piece that roused the Envy Beast in my heart at BVG Live this year?

Nay, it was FAM: specifically, a Gray Appaloosa Family Arabian Mare with the B mold mark!

As I’ve discussed before, I consider the existence of non-Palomino Family Arabians with B mold marks (made roughly from 1979 through 1982/3) good evidence that the rumored Walmart Gray Appaloosa Family Arabians were not a rumor after all. 

It now looks like all – or a good portion! – of the Family Arabians sold via the Bentley Sales Company Discontinued Lists in the late 1970s and early 1980s may have been a part of a failed rerelease or Special Run program, and not just ancient warehouse overstock that Breyer pawned off on the Bentley Sales Company, who (being just a short drive away from the factory in Chicago) got all the good warehouse detritus Breyer had to offer.

That realization has made me look at this January, 1983 Bentley Sales Company Discontinued List flier in a completely different light:

(Click to embiggen)

Special Runs. Those Family Arabians were all Special Runs and we had no idea. *Mind blown.*

In case you’re curious, the prices on this list are more or less the same prices for the equivalent Regular Runs of the time – there wasn’t a “mark-up” for discontinued items, at least through Bentley Sales. Most of this stuff really was warehouse overstock, and Breyer really didn’t have a way of marketing items like this to collectors other than selling it off to mail-order companies.

There was a bit of a mark-up for some Special Run items that were made specifically for companies like Bentley Sales, but it wasn’t huge because most of their customers were younger and poorer: the market wouldn’t have supported it!

Anyway, now that I seem to have all – or most – of the Low-Relief Family Arabian Mares, the B-mold Mark ones are next up on my want list. 

(Actually, I’ll just settle for one. I’m not picky about color or condition.)

The Fuss

I spent a great deal of time this weekend – the parts where I wasn’t working or sleeping, that is – trying to write a post about the recent announcement that Reeves is getting of the BreyerFest Special Run ticket line, and replacing it with a prepaid voucher system. Trying to come up with a measured, thoughtful response that would give some of the angry voices a moment to take a deep breath and step back…

But then I realized that nothing I say or do will really make a difference, because this is being fueled by the social media environment. Social media thrives on engagement, and there’s no better engagement than enragement. 

But I’ll still give it a shot, in my little corner of the Internet universe. 

I’ll also reiterate that yes, I do occasionally do some work for Reeves International, though it’s certainly not enough to live on. But I also happen to be a Hobby Lifer and would be saying most of this stuff regardless. I don’t be getting anything extra out of this effort.

Anyway.

Just because you personally were able to make a system work for you doesn’t mean the system is not broken, or cannot be improved. The previous system of timed tickets was put into place to solve the problem of hobbyists lining up to acquire Special Runs for hours on a first-come, first-served basis. Which resulted in a lot of hurt feelings, heatstroke, sunburn and so on…

BreyerFest has grown to the point that distributing them via the timed ticket system was soon going to become logistically unfeasible. Throw in on top of that several hundred people crammed under a tent elbow-to-elbow, with misters blowing not-just-water around wasn’t a healthy environment pre-pandemic, much less now. 

And those with multiple tickets often ended up spending most – if not all! – of their time at the park just picking up models, and thus missing most of the festivities in the process.

I thought they’d take a hybrid approach – the prepaid VIP tickets would take out a chunk of line standers, and maybe they’d do something similar for Live Show Attendees and Volunteers, who also struggled to schedule their ticket times – but I guess they decided to save a step and go “all in”. 

I have no idea how the Will Call or Pickup Windows will be set up; I’m assuming – or at least hoping – that there will be multiple lines and windows involved. I’d like to see at least one Pickup window dedicated as an “Express” pickup for hobbyists with only a couple of tickets, or perhaps a window for people picking up multiple orders of tickets instead. 

Will this be a better system? I have no idea. I can see the logic behind it: instead of standing in line for multiple hours throughout the length of the event, you can pretty much just pick whenever it’s convenient for you and get it all done in one fell swoop.

Will there be problems? Of course there will: there are problems every year, even with seemingly minor changes of format, venue or scheduling. It kind of sucks a bit that we don’t get to review our potential choices the night before at the hotel, and it changes the entire experience of the Surprise now. 

And paying for everything up front is also a bummer, especially for people on tighter budgets. 

I haven’t given it much thought beyond that: my life is messy, complicated and weird right now, and I don’t need to add “worrying how BreyerFest will work this year” to it. 

I don’t know much about Event Planning in general, but I do know that I trust the people who have been running this event for years over folks on the Internet who have opinions. Especially since the hobby’s track record in running its own large, convention-type events hasn’t been universally awesome, either. 

The Secondary Game

Oh look, another Special Run that sold out before I even knew it was up for sale!

You know, kind of like Fabio last year. That I still haven’t gotten yet because, aside from life in general, I don’t like doing the secondary market on brand new models. 

This is getting… tedious. 

You know, I wasn’t all that into the Frame Overo/Picture This vote thing for BreyerFest last year to begin with – heck, I can’t even remember who I actually voted for, out of the choices given – but it sure as heck is annoying to have another Collector’s Club Special come and go without even being given the opportunity to decide.

Something needs to be done about this. I mean, the secondary market for everything is so bad right now that if something’s not an open-ended regular run item, I now basically have only a matter of hours – if that – to decide if I even want it. And that’s if I’m lucky enough to find out about it in time. 

And you know I don’t play the secondary game, sorry. I don’t like to reward what I consider bad behavior. Anyone who has ever been owned by a terrier knows that all it leads to is more bad behavior.

It’s not that big a deal, again. But if this nonsense keeps up, eventually it will be. 

In a sense, it already has: I’m beginning to care somewhat less for more modern Special Run releases, especially on more modern molds. 

If this had been a Stud Spider, for instance, this would have been a much different conversation. 

A couple of months ago I was fantasizing about what kind of offbeat Test Color I’d “gift” myself if a “Design Your Own Test” opportunity ever actually came up and they told me that my Lemon Yellow Palomino Man o’ War and Wedgewood Blue Polled Hereford Bull (with pink hooves!) were definitely not possibilities. 

Okay, fine then, then give me a Blue Roan Frame Overo Stud Spider, but make sure the Blue Roan part is freckled like the vintage Red Roan. 

And while we’re at it, give him those goofy 1997 bi-eyes, because why not, right? I’ve seen some of the “creations” other people have come up with: bi-eyes and old-fashioned freckle roaning on a Stud Spider is pretty tame in comparison. 

I really don’t try to be the weird child in my play group. I just am. 

Anyway, peace out: I’ve got some edits to obsess over. 

Boring, But Competent

Another busy day of stuff and things. Some stuff I wanted to get done this week got done, some of it didn’t, so here’s another exciting Special Run from the 1980s to thrill and amaze you while I vegetate in a corner of my office:

Yeah, it’s no Glossy Appaloosa Halla: it’s the 1986 Bay Stud Spider, who was an early gift with purchase model. (Yup, we had them back then, too.) You had to buy $30 worth of stuff from the mail-order company Your Horse Source to get him.

(That translated back then to about three Traditional Adults, or four Traditional Foals or Classic Racehorses.)

He’s pretty standard for a 1980s Special Run: a flat Red Bay, airbrushed markings, a bit of shading on the nostrils, on a competently executed mold doing nothing in particular.

That really is the definition of boring, isn’t it?

To be honest, we weren’t all that excited back then about him either, but our choices were more limited then – fewer existing molds, fewer releases per year, etc. – and he was technically free.

While he’s no Stetson – or even a Smooth Copper – of all the models I’ve bought and subsequently sold over the years, he’s still here. So that’s saying something about the power of boring-but-competent.

(There’s also a story. Most of my models have stories to them, but this one is rather mortifying and probably best left off the Internet. For now.)

Even though they made about a 1000 pieces of him, he’s not all that common to find – partly because he is boring, and also because I suspect the full complement of 1000 pieces might not have been made/sold, either.

Larger piece runs like that were usually reserved for bigger mail-order operations like Sears and JC Penneys, for JAH Subscriber SRs, or as an item that was available to multiple mail-order companies simultaneously. A thousand pieces for a modest mail-order operation out of Wyoming? It might have been a challenge.

Alabaster Foundation Stallion

Although I did “win” a Rialto, I had to give him up for a multitude of reasons; seeing just how lovely he is from the in-hand pictures is making me wince even more than I usually do and I probably should just stop looking at those pictures, already.

(I’m hoping karma doesn’t bite me in the butt over that decision to pass, but I’m the kind of person who has to have contingency plans for my contingency plans, so… yeah, probably.)

I was tasked with dusting over the weekend (long story) and as I was finishing up very late last night, I paused to consider this pretty little SR from years past:

It’s the Special Run Alabaster Foundation Stallion, from 1985. About 700 pieces were made for the mail-order company Horses International in Arizona, though some were also sold elsewhere.

In terms of color, shading, quantities, distribution pattern et al, this model was typical of Special Runs sold in the 1980s. These were the kinds of Special Runs we got back then, and were happy to get them!

(Shakes fist at passing cloud.)

He pales in comparison to recent releases like Rialto – whose glossy, roany, elaborately masked paint job and hand-painted eyes would have blown our minds in 1985. Most customs didn’t have that level of detail back then!

Of course, the Rialto costs over a dozen times what the Alabaster Foundation Stallion cost – then, and now. (The original price for the Alabaster was $12.50, not including postage.)

That Foundation Stallion is not easy to find nowadays, but only because no one is looking for someone like him. I have known the feeling all too well, lately….

The Alabaster Foundation Stallion falls into that hole of undesirability a lot of Special Runs from the 1980s now do: a little too common to be considered rare, with a paint job considered too bland/boring to modern tastes, on an older mold that’s not all that popular at the moment.

He’s no Rialto, but I still love him.

The Mystery Mare

Still busy cleaning; late Saturday night I started a long-overdue purge of out-of-date reference books and books-I’ve-lost-interest-in from the bookshelves, and it felt so good I’ve since moved on to other parts of the home and office.

It’s been a constructive way to work off some personal and professional frustrations, too. (Nothing y’all need to know about, other than that’s my operational mode right now.)

Anyway, much speculation has abounded about the Proud Arabian Mare silhouette Reeves has been teasing us with on all fronts since yesterday:

There’s been only one official BreyerFest Special Run on the Proud Arabian Mare: the elusive, desirable Silver Filigree Volunteer Model from 1993.

There have been a three of the Stallion – the 2003 Silver Filigree Raffle Model Saturday Night Fever, the 2009 Volunteer Special After Party, and the 2015 Raffle Model Que Sera Sera – but only one of the Foal: the 2003 Silver Filigree Born to Run.

I suppose the Palomino Appaloosa Fun Foals that were made available in the Ninja Pit with all of the other leftover Fun Foals could count as a BreyerFest Special Run too, since that’s where the majority of them (all of them?) were distributed.

I have no special insight as to the nature of this Special Run – whether it’s going to be a Raffle Model, Prize Model, Store Special, or straight-up Tent Special. I figured they’d give us at least one Arabian model this year, but the Proud Arabian Mare never came up as a possibility to me.

Most of the speculation seems to be focusing on it as being a Raffle or Prize Model, or the Pop-Up Store Crystal release – in other words, something extremely limited – but I don’t think we can rule out a larger release.

We had the Vintage Club Farah in 2015, and several recent larger-scale releases of the Hagen-Renaker Classic Racehorses too: the Terrang Coeur de Lion, the Swaps Web Special Scotty, and the re-release of the Man o’ War.

If they do go the Tent/Store route, I think a PAM release will be on the smallish side (1000 or fewer) – but it won’t be out of contractual issues, mostly.

It’ll be because she’s a Vintage mold, featuring an old-fashioned/dated body type.

The younger/newer hobbyists who make up a fairly large chunk of the BreyerFest crowd will be both unfamiliar with and unsentimental about her. And wondering why Reeves couldn’t have gone with a newer mold like Weather Girl or the Make A Wish/Justadream instead, because obviously.

(Remember the response to the Appaloosa Bonne Fete in 2014? More experienced hobbyists were unimpressed, but Reeves knew what it was doing: the newer hobbyists helped sell it out.)

I’ll be fine, regardless. If it’s a smaller release, I’m not going to let myself worry about it, and if it’s a larger release, it shouldn’t be too difficult to attain – if I like it, well enough.

While I think she’d look fabulous in a Gloss Dappled Red Bay with a lot of white, there’s already a lot of Bays in the lineup. It also happens to be her 60th anniversary as a Breyer release, so a Decorator release isn’t out of the question either...

Clearing Off the Desk

Cleaning off the desk here today, so a few odds and ends follow…

You probably do not know this, but I am a huge fan of novelty socks, so I am very pleased to see Reeves kicking up their branded clothing and accessory program a notch and giving us Breyer ones!

http://www.breyerhorses.com/breyer-socks

My only issue with them, naturally, is that they did not appear on the web site until the day after I paid for my Vintage Club Clara and Mae.

If they’re still around when the next Stablemates Club purchase is available, a couple pair will hitch along for the ride. (One to wear, and another for the archives.)

My local Tractor Supply finally stocked the two TSC Specials earlier this week; I stopped by the Salvation Army next door for my weekly shopping run and decided to check in to coo at the chicks and ducklings.

I managed to walk away without buying anything feathered – horse or fowl. The Clydesdale Mare was tempting, but then I reminded myself that I’m saving up to splurge on museum-quality archival supplies for my recently reorganized hobby papers.

Since it appears that these Specials may be more limited than the standard TSC Specials, I may live to regret it. But considering my most recent attempts at speculating, maybe not.

Sigh. 

Not everything in my last box lot was a body when I bought it, but by the time it got here, they most certainly were. I’ll still break even with it – if it’s one thing I’m good at, it’s salvaging something out of nothing – but darn that luck of mine, again!

The box lot of unicorns I bought back in February was a little less derelict, mostly because I had a chance to repack it myself before driving it home from a local auction house. Among the treasures in it I didn’t mention before was this lovely pair: Hagen-Renaker releases of Freeman-McFarlin designs, I believe?

I’d love to keep them, but as I am clumsy and in possession of a small and highly destructive dog, they’ll be packed up for BreyerFest. (Sorry, guys: I don’t ship larger china figurines.)

Looking over my saleslist, I have to say I’m pretty pleased at my assortment so far. Since my vacation spending money is drawn from my sales, it looks like in this one regard I am already ahead of the game. I won’t have to put too much pressure on myself to “stock up” once flea market season gets underway in another month.

I’m considering taking a similar approach to all of BreyerFest this year: ditch all the self-imposed pressure of trying to win something, and just chill.

My Contest attempts are memorable and (so I’ve been told) inspirational, but they are bigger emotional and financial drains on me than you might realize. And there’s not a lot in my trophy case to show for it.

To put it in business-speak, my ROI has been terrible.

I do have some ideas, but as I am also on a bit of an efficiency kick, I am beginning to think my time and resources might be better invested in something else.

At Last, an Elk

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I have been campaigning for a Special Run Elk forever. At last, my wish has been granted, with Inari!

As for his name, “Inari” refers to the largest municipality in Finland, located within the heart of Finnish Lapland. It is also where they also hold the Reindeer Championship Race.

Yes, an Elk is not a Reindeer, but close enough is good enough for me.

And points for Reeves for making the BreyerFest Nonhorse Special Run actually kind of on point to the “racing” theme, in contrast to the two previous announcements – the Saturday Raffle Horse Woodford (on the Shannondell) and the Mare and Foal Set Julep and Pim (on the new Traditional Lipizzan Mare and Foal).

Mind you, I think both of those releases are quite beautiful – and if I somehow win a Woodford you’ll have to pry him from my pasty white hands – but it’s painfully obvious that they’ve gone out of their way to make these new molds fit a theme they are not designed for.

When you have a more nebulous concept with few obvious mold choices – like last year’s “India” theme – you can pull that sort of thing off better. But trying to sell a Draft Horse, a couple of Lipizzaners and an Andalusian as part of a racing theme?

Seriously, guys? I know you’ve got a business to run and hot new molds to promote, but you could try to be a bit more subtle about it?

Off the soapbox, and back to the Elk. (Who is now penciled in on top of my buy list for BreyerFest, if you haven’t already figured that one out.)

The Elk mold has had only two previous releases: the original #77 that ran from 1968 through 1997, and the #396 Rocky Mountain Elk that ran from 1998 through 2005.

Until now, Fans of the Elk mold have had to content themselves with variations of the original #77, and his 29(!) year run provided a few. Although the color didn’t vary a lot, it did vary: earlier examples are definitely lighter and browner, while later examples are redder and more chestnutty. Early Elks sometimes came with Blue Ribbon Stickers, and lack the USA mold mark. Pieces made near the end of its run (in early 1997) came with those mildly creepy, experimental bi-eyes.

Inari gives me hope that the Silver Charm Elk of my Christmas dreams might just come true. Then again, a lot of us are still waiting for a Holiday release of the Zebra mold after the BreyerFest release of the Caves of Lascaux back in 2015.

So I am not getting my hopes up, yet.

Alba

A few weeks ago when I was looking at the last of the Christmas Breyer leftovers at the local Tractor Supply, one of the employees made a comment in passing about how they “needed” to sell them soon.

I didn’t think much of the comment at first – I just assumed it was about needing to make room for the Seasonal Spring merchandise – but it did nag at me a little bit. Did that mean they’d be getting more Breyers sooner, rather than later?

Apparently, yep. One of them, in fact, is very similar Clydesdale Mare similar to the #856 Shire who – oddly enough – was something I was looking at on eBay over the weekend.

(I had one once, and sold it a while ago. I can’t remember why.)

This new piece – named Alba – commemorates Tractor Supply’s 80th anniversary. The name “Alba” is Latin for White, an odd choice for a dark bay-black horse. Maybe it’s because she has a lot of white on her?

The Clydesdale Mare has had so many genuinely pretty releases – Opry, Del Mar, Lanark’s Rosebud, Palisades, the Picture Perfect Pinto, Shannon, the Vintage Club Blossom, that Glossy Appaloosa Test Piece I’m still kinda-sorta mad about not winning – that I’ve been wondering if I should go ahead and make the commitment to actively collect that mold.

Except for Palisades and Betsy Ross, I already have most of the harder ones to get. If I ever decide to go on that quest it’ll be a achievable, lower-stress one.

To make a long story short, though, I won’t be getting Alba any time soon. The primary reason is space: since I just finished an extensive collection cleanout, I am a bit reluctant to make any impulse purchases beyond the box lots I’ve been buying for resale. (Kaibab was a happy exception.)

I do not want to deal with the drama right now, either. Like the regular Holiday TSC specials, I have a feeling that hobbyists are going to lose their minds, buy out store stocks, then the stores will restock, the prices will start fluctuating wildly….

No thank you. If I need to, I can wait until either the market levels off, or until the next “gotta have it” Special Run drops somewhere. Though at the rate they’ve been going with releases this year (another release in the America the Beautiful Series, already?) that probably won’t be too long.

For the time being, I’ll just retreat to my office and continue with my Spring Cleaning and paperwork. (It’s been an interesting and productive day: I just found a few “lost” horses in my office supply closet! Nothing rare, but a nice surprise nevertheless.)

Bearable

In case you were wondering if the evaluation of my finds earlier this week was correct (i.e. as a preemptive consolation prize for not getting Cornelius), it was.

I know I am in the minority here, but I still think doing purchase raffles for Micro Runs is a bad idea. Partly because I’m pretty sure it means I will never win one ever again, and partly because I do not enjoy watching the parade of ransom notes masquerading as sales ads that follows.

Rather than make myself angry, I’ve spent most of the past couple of days off the Internet, enjoying the last genuinely nice weekend of the year and working on some particularly vexing sewing projects. And unboxing some of the recent arrivals:

It’s funny that I passed up the Bear models when the surplus was shipped off to Tuesday Morning a while back, but I had a much harder time resisting the Reissue – even though, technically, the Reissue has even less detail than the original release!

(No painted horseshoes, chestnuts, or belly stamps, in case you missed them.)

Some of it, obviously, is a response to its relative rarity: there are going to be fewer of the Reissue than of the original release.

I don’t think they’ve ever officially released quantity numbers for any of these Warehouse Finds, but it’s generally been assumed to be fewer than 1000 pieces each – and sometimes significantly less. (This, in part, is based on an early hobbyist hack of the ordering system than Reeves has since fixed.)

Second, and in spite of the winking web site conceit, most of the Warehouse Finds aren’t really old stock, newly rediscovered: they’re older bodies, newly painted to look like the older releases. They are Special Runs in all but name. Special Runs, even relatively common ones (anything over 500 pieces, in this day and age) still carry a certain cachet.

And third, well, have you seen the prices Bluegrass Bandits have been going for lately? It’s hard getting a body quality one for under $30.00! Buying the Reissue seemed a safe bet, financially.

Incidentally, the flea market was great this weekend, too, but I’ll get around to those goodies later in the week.

Tractor Supply 2017

This year’s Tractor Supply Specials offer an interesting contrast. We’ve got something old – the Traditional Running Black Beauty in Palomino, named Lakota:

Tractor Supply Link for Lakota

And something new – the Geronimo in an Aged Gray, named Jacy:

Tractor Supply Link for Jacy

(FYI: Neither one is technically available, yet. They are just on the TSC web site to get us all stirred up, obviously.)

Hobbyists tend to forget that the model-horse-buying public consists of more than just active hobbyists, and what the rest of the world likes and what we like rarely align.

Lakota is clearly designed with the rest of the model-horse-buying public in mind.

I see two big markets for Lakota. The first: someone who might feel nostalgic for the less sophisticated Breyers of their youth – he might not be popular now, but the original #89 Black Beauty had a pretty respectable ten-year run through most of the 1980s. The second: someone (young or old) who just wants a pretty palomino horse to gallop on their shelves, and for whom strict realism or accuracy is not that big a thing.

Jacy is a little more tailored to the active hobbyist market: a new mold fresh off a moderately well-received BreyerFest release, in a modest and realistic color. (The other widely available Geronimo is the Patinated Copper Decorator Bandera – an acquired taste, no disagreement there.)

If I were to buy one – this Fall is looking to be a bit of an expensive one for me, so the TSC SRs are a definitely not a priority here – the Lakota would get the nod. It’s not that I’m necessarily a huge fan of the mold (who is the very definition of a shelf hog) but the color looks lovely on him.

Like one of the 2010 Tractor Supply Specials – Templeton Thompson’s Jane, a solid Chestnut on the Stock Horse Mare mold – I fear I may be smitten once I see him. Darn it, Tractor Supply, why do you have to be right next door to the local Salvation Army store....

Another Old Favorite, Reconsidered

After a week of hard travelling for work, it’s nice to have a weekend off. Except for my usual trip to the flea market, I don’t plan on leaving the “pajama perimeter” until Monday.

Yes, I am actually looking forward to a weekend filled with paperwork and BreyerFest prep!

(“Pajama Perimeter” is a term we use in this house to describe all the places we consider acceptable to wear pajamas outdoors. Basically: the yard, up to the mailbox, and up and down the road to walk the dog.)

Speaking of the flea market, the pickings continue to be slim, though I think I’ve figured out why. If the weather cooperates, I’ll be taking some measures to correct the problem. Not that I need to plump up the sales list any further; I’ve been getting my fix from other sources, so I’m doing all right. But more is always better.

Since I am not particularly talkative today, and preoccupied with other horsey business, here’s a picture of an old favorite of mine who has been on my mind a lot lately:

He’s the Dark Palomino Special run from the 1980s, with a white mane and tail. There were a lot of Special Run Belgians at that time, and the Dark Palomino – along with the “Yellow” Palomino – was among the harder ones to acquire.

Nevertheless, he’s rarely that expensive when he shows up for sale now. Some of that is due to the fact that there are a lot of SR Belgians to choose from of the same time period, and visually he’s close enough to other Regular Runs and Special Runs that he doesn’t stand out.

The rest of it is that he’s a Vintage mold, with a relatively small fan base, who takes up a large amount of shelf space. In spite of his sheer rarity (a mere 200-piece run) he’s just not cool or fashionable as a Strapless or an S Justadream.

The Belgian mold, lately and in general, has been a bit of a bargain on the secondary market. (The Five-Gaiter, too, oddly enough.) I don’t know how many times I’ve been tempted in recent months by the rather cheap Dapple Grays that have been all over eBay.

(Except for the Black Dapple variations. Those are considered so distinctive – if not iconic – that I doubt they’ll ever be cheap.)

If I had a bit more money to spend, I would have given in and bought one, or two. The original Gloss Dapple Gray Belgian is one of those pieces that always seems to hover just a little bit out of my reach.

I guess I’m still holding out hope that a pretty and even cheaper one turns up locally, someday.

More Breyers at Meijers

Head’s up to anyone in the Midwest: Meijer recently got a shipment of the Stablemates American Pharoahs. I heard a rumor and decided to follow up on it on the way home from work today. And there they were, hanging out next to the Schleich display!

I didn’t buy one because I already have a couple – purchased as a part of that “Get a Free Horse!” promotion back in December. But it’s nice to know that Meijer continues to have some sort of business relationship with Reeves.

They’ve had an on-and-off relationship with them since at least the late 1980s, but as far as I know, no official Special Runs or Exclusive items. If you’re really into obscure packaging variations, some of the items sold at Meijer in the early 1990s had their own unique issue numbers assigned to them, like some of the Regular Runs sold through QVC.

Like most of the QVC items, once they are out of the box they are indistinguishable from any other Regular Run. I did find one boxed item in the Ninja Pit years ago – Double Take, I think? – that still had the Meijer labeling on it, which I thought was an obscure-but-kinda-cool thing.

(Not cool enough for me to keep New in Box, though. I saved the label, somewhere …)

Meijer was also among a select group of retailers to carry items that were essentially “Big Box Store” Exclusives, which were not otherwise available online or via smaller chains or independently-owned stores.

The two that come to mine came out in 2008: the #625 Foal Set with the Red Roan Frolicking Foal and Black Pinto Morgan Foal, and the #626 Frolicking QH Stallion in Bay Blanket Appaloosa.

Neither set is super-duper rare, but it’s been a few years so they are a little harder to find than your average Classics releases (the Foals, especially).

I’ll confess that I have a family member who works for Meijer, so I have a somewhat vested interest (Discounts!) in seeing an exclusive item there in the future.

The IMHJ

Looks like the next several weeks are going to be a little crazy for me; what it means here is that you’ll be seeing a lot of short and sweet posts here in the interim. (Nothing traumatic or life-threatening, just work-related and time-sensitive.)

First up is this Bentley Sales Company ad from early 1978, scanned from the pages of the short-lived but influential hobby magazine The International Model Horse Journal.

As I’ve elaborated on before, the Black Angus Calf was one of the earliest of the direct-to-collectors Special Runs, debuting at the 1977 Model Horse Congress. The hobby was much smaller then, so even though the subscription base for the IMHJ was only around 200 people, that still represented a significant chunk of the hobby community.

It’s kind of mindblowing to think that a low piece run Special Run Calf could still be available nearly a half year after it was offered. Yep, things were definitely different back then! (Not always better...)

The International Model Horse Journal was an early attempt at creating an offset-printed (i.e. “professional-looking”) hobby periodical. Almost all hobby publications prior – and for several years after – were printed via ditto or mimeograph machine. The results weren’t always pretty, but those printing methods were cheap and accessible. They got the job done.

The IMHJ had already been cancelled before I made my formal entrée into the hobby in the latter half of 1978, so its influence on me was largely indirect. I think I have an almost complete archive of them now, but the numbering system was a little off, so it’s hard to tell.

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.

In the Family

Today needs a picture of a puppy. Here’s Vita, being rudely awakened from her beauty sleep yesterday:

I had a coworker that I had affectionately nicknamed "my little puppy", because she reminded me a little of Vita: small in stature, with short tousled hair, a sly and subtle sense of humor, and always first among us to greet and comfort others.

Sharon passed away earlier this week, suddenly and unexpectedly. We’re all taking it very, very hard at work. She was loved by everyone who knew her: I can think of no better epitaph for anyone.

(BTW, Vita has been a most effective grief counselor this week. When she's bad, she's Bad, but when she's good she's Wonderful.)

On a lighter note and slightly more cheerful note, here’s what I was going to write about this week - the Breyer Bolo Tie.

This is an example of one of the original releases that I found (of course) at the local flea market. One of the horn tips on the skull is broken, but since you don’t see them " in the wild" very often, I was happy just to rescue it.

The Bolo Tie was Breyer’s first retail "wearable" item, being released in 1972 and lingering in the line through 1976. Although it wasn’t hugely popular, it is also not a real difficult item to find in hobbyist circles: I think a lot of hobbyists bought them just for their sheer oddness, thus keeping most of them "in the family".

It was released with either black or brown woven plastic strings under the same number, #501. It was sculpted by Bob Scriver, who over a decade later gave us the Traditional Buckshot mold.

The Bolo Tie was reissued at Breyerfest as a "surprise" Special Run, in the arena sales area before it earned its "NPOD" sobriquet. First in 1998 in a similar colorway - charcoal gray with either brown or black woven leather strings - and then in 2000 in metallic gold and silver.

The SRs sell for about the same price the originals do, when they come up for sale: most of the people who bought them in the store have also kept them. Although rare, in a technical sense, they’re one of those specialty items that appeals mostly to nerdier among us. 

Pancho

Has to be something short today; another last minute schedule change, plus I need to get some long overdue non-horsey paperwork done and out the door by Monday.

As for the not remembering that there was another Woodgrain Stablemate keychain, I blame that on the schedule. I’ve had to write a lot on the run, without my source materials at hand, and often without my minimum daily requirement of sleep. (Barring any last minute changes, the next two weeks look significantly better. Whew.)

Plus, keeping track of Stablemates is hard. I used to be so on top of them, until the G2s arrived.

In compensation for my error, here is a picture of my Pancho, one of the few truly rare Stablemates that graces my collection:

Prior to its "discovery" in the 1990s, I had heard rumors of a Black Quarter Horse Stallion, but chalked it up to either cases of mistaken identity, or small batch painting errors. Sometimes small batches of Stablemates were painted the wrong color, but since they were otherwise fine and saleable, they’d be packaged and distributed anyway.

(The two I remember hearing about were Silky Sullivan in Black, and Swaps in Bay.)

Hobbyists were justifiably a little skeptical of the Panchos: a previously unknown early Special Run Stablemate, in Black? When I came into possession of one, though, there really wasn’t any doubt about the authenticity. The little details - mold flow lines, flashing, and the quality of the overspray - told the tale.

As always, and in person inspection beats photographs, every time. The only saving grace of the initial controversy, for me, was that it allowed me to secure one for a not unreasonable price.

Black Calf

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to over the weekend, but I did enough to keep me from losing my mind as I ramp up prep for BreyerFest. As usual, I am nowhere near ready. Just because I’m not doing the costume contest this year doesn’t mean I don’t have a million other things to do.

Now to finish up a post I wrote during my last epic road trip; it’s been stuck on a thumb drive in my work bag, the one that rarely leaves the car. (What else is on the drive? My resume, a couple NaNoWriMo novels, and the accumulated knowledge of the Krell. Duh.)

During my discussion of the Black Family Arabians, I called them "one of the earliest" Special Runs aimed directly at hobbyists. One of the earliest, yes, but not THE earliest. The first verifiable, probably-not-a-repurposed-Test-Color, sold-direct-to-hobbyists Special Run was…

The Black Angus Calf. I don’t have one, so just imagine a Holstein Calf, except all black, and sort of satiny, like the Family Arabians. They were sold at Model Horse Congress in 1977, several months before the "National Hobby Month" debut of the Family Arabians. Approximately 100-150 pieces were made.

(Were there Special Runs that were sold prior to the Black Angus Calf? Well obviously - I’ve discussed some of them here - but I speak of items specifically targeted and made for the hobby, and hobbyists. Whole ‘nother animal, so to speak.)

Why … that, of all things? Good question. I don’t know the answer. It could have been a situation similar to the Family Arabians: maybe they were repurposing Calves leftover from the early 1970s – ones that were also a victim of the 1973 Implosion. Maybe they were test, in a way, for the Family Arabians. Maybe Marney said something to Peter about hobbyists wanting more Calves for performance setups. Perhaps it was a promo piece for the soon-to-be-released #365 Black Angus Bull mold.

I have no idea. In the absence of other evidence, all these theories seem equally valid.

They were not a huge hit, at least initially. The Bentley Sales Company had them on their Discontinued sales lists for a while, even with the relatively low piece count. The Livestock molds were not that big a thing in the hobbyist set at the time – it wouldn’t be until the mid-1980s that the Nonhorse molds really started taking off with collectors.

The Black Angus Calf is a pretty tough little cookie to track down nowadays, if only for the passage of time. There was one on eBay a few years ago, went for a price I definitely couldn’t afford.

Ephemera and Granular Data

Sorry about that; it’s been a rough week, personally. Nothing you need to know about, other than it involved lots of heavy lifting, both literal and metaphorical. My workload will be lighter next week, so I hope that helps.

One thing that did lighten my load a little was the arrival of this beefy fellow, who I hope is the last thing I "have to" buy from That Guy in Arizona:

Polled Hereford Bull, with gray hooves and tan, not pink naughty bits. (Looks pinkish in photo, but definitely not in person!) I bid on the first one he had listed, and lost, but then he listed another using the same photo. I won him at a significantly lower price - low enough that it didn’t matter if he was a perfectly ordinary Polled Hereford, which is what most auction watchers probably assumed he was going to be.

So yay, tiny little victory for me. I sold a couple of my (duplicate) Polled Herefords recently, so I’m not 100 percent sure how many I have now. (Five, I think?)

I’m also warming up to the theory that my brother posited to me the other day, about these Arizona models: it could simply be the retirement stash of a Chicago-era Breyer employee.

This Arizona distraction aside, I’ve been trying to focus on the ephemera lately, anyway, due to my time and space issues. As you might have guessed from my earlier post about the 1973 Bentley Sales flier, I’ve come into a few more decent stashes. I won’t say my collection of Bentley Sales fliers is anywhere near complete, but it’s now big enough to merit a decent-sized binder of its own.

It’s neat and fascinating reading, especially when combined with the copies of the monthly sales tally sheets that Nancy Young sent me, years ago. It’s almost the very definition of granular data.

Yet, it’s not quite as helpful as you might think. Very few mail-order house Special Runs were truly "exclusive" back in the 1980s and early 1990s, so adding up the monthly sales figures for any given item for just one company isn’t going to give you a nice, neat number of items sold.

The numbers for special runs - especially pre-Reeves era - are also extremely fluid, more like estimates than hard numbers. They made what they could sell: if that meant making a few extra dozen - or cutting a run short that wasn’t moving - that’s what they did. 

Which ones that happened to, and to what degree, we will likely never know. No matter how finely grained our data on Breyer History get - and believe me, in places it’s positively silt-like - it will never be perfect.

Road Trip, Part Two

If I were sensible, I’d be in bed right now. But sensible is not a word that really applies to anything I’ve done in the past three days. Road trip to a location I’ve never been to before, on a week’s notice, to help someone I haven’t seen in a couple of decades, driving an ancient, high-mileage station wagon?

Sensible? No. Was it worth it? Yes, but we’ll have a bigger discussion of that some other day. All I can say today is that I think the experience will be very useful for dealing with future auctions of this type, which - not to get too morbid or maudlin about it - may be a not-too-distant inevitability for many of us.

First, I’d like to thank: my boss, who allowed me the time off on such short notice, and in spite of a heavy schedule; the weather, for cooperating; my Russian mechanic, who keeps my ancient car (aka "Sherman") in good enough shape to drive to Illinois and back; and to the people at Munda Auctions, who allowed us to do the work we requested to do, and were actually quite nice to work with.

We didn’t quite get to do quite as much work as we wanted, due to the sheer volume of stuff and the limited amount of time we had at our disposal, but we got the most of it and the worst of it done.

That included sorting, boxing, tagging and reassembling families and gift sets, and recovering a few small items that were mistakenly sent there in the first place. (Mostly sentimental pieces of nominal value.) Nothing could be done to match up sets that had already been broken up and listed, and I only had a limited amount of time to evaluate each model for condition, quality, variations and all that.

There were a number of really fine pieces - many of them Live Show Quality, or darn close. (A couple of Lady Phases and an Adios come to mine.) Lots of Special Runs from the 1980s and early 1990s: Belgians, Bucking Broncos, Hanoverians, Balking Mules. Lamps and Clocks. Boxed Christmas Run items, boxed Just About Horses Specials, and an entire carton  - 15 to 20 pieces, give or take - of factory unpainted models, including some of molds that have since been altered. (Don't worry, they'll be listed separately!)

I’m guessing that there will be at least two more sets of auctions that will be majority-Breyer, and that’s not including the other plastics (mostly Hartland) and the chinas, which we didn’t even bother opening or evaluating. I didn’t bring my Hartland or china reference materials, anyway.

I don’t know which items will be listed when.

I did get a chance to get a quick look-see at the auction set up for this Friday: seeing all 300 lots set out in the main auction room was oddly thrilling, even if the bulk of them were relatively common items. Felt like a mini-BreyerFest! There were definitely a few that caught my eye, but I’ve been rather carelessly bidding on those crazy eBay lots from that Arizona seller, so my "fun money" well is currently dry.

(Wish I could be there on Friday anyway, but even my boss is not quite that understanding.)

We talked briefly to the proprietor Doug Munda, and as I mentioned before, everyone there was very nice and very accommodating. (The lady who packs the items to ship? Has relatives in my hometown!) They were quite pleased with the response and progress of the auctions so far, and we also informed him of the kinds of things hobbyists of our sort look for, and might be asking about. They've already had some experience dealing with our type in previous auctions, and with other serious collectors of serious collectibles, toys and figurines, so I don't think anything we said was particularly out of the ordinary. 

That’s all for now, folks. I actually wrote a couple of posts at the hotel about other topics, so you’ll be seeing more actual history stuff in short order.