Oh, My Heart Again: The Sequel

Well, it looks like I have to completely rewrite this, again. 

Y’all probably didn’t want to hear me rant about my heart being slightly broken by the first BreyerFest Auction Previews. A Chestnut Splash Stretched Morgan AND a Glossy Pacer? Argh!

Or hear about me being slightly annoyed by BreyerFest going cashless. Mostly because that means I’ll have to add a trip to the bank to the already long list of things I need to do in the 24 hours I’ll be home before embarking on My Grand Wyoming Adventure. It is definitely a “First World” problem, I know…

(Also: I am still willing to bring along any stragglers with me! Me + Mustangs + Dinosaurs + The Actual Oregon Trail + Epic Scenery: what’s not to love?)

But apparently the treasure I owned in my heart for eight and a half hours has reappeared:

I am currently bogged down with personal and professional commitments for the next week or so, and consequently my Internet time is somewhat limited. This has also been posted somewhere I don’t go anyway (Facebook) so the whole discussion is inaccessible to me and probably moot by the time this gets posted.

Look, I would be willing to pay quite a bit of money to actually get him physically in my house: he needs to be home, with me, and you already know the reasons why. Just because I have the reputation for being thrifty does not mean I am not able to cough up the necessary money when I absolutely have to. 

One of the reasons why I am so cheap is so I can allow myself one big splurge a year, and I am more than willing to let this be it for the year. And maybe the next!

But I know it is unlikely: I also know how some other hobbyists are. This whole situation is all so awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved. I probably have a better shot at that Stretched Morgan, and that would easily blow my budget for several years if I did succeed in placing the winning bid. 

And I would end up dealing with a different kind of uncomfortable: anything that breaks my standard 500 dollar barrier freaks me out a little, even if I do not actually pay that much. (Getting my Raffle Showboat home in 2000 was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying!)

Part of my plans for today included a little evil customizing fun with a Family Arabian Mare and a canister of Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty. I should probably log off now and do just that. 

In fact, I think I need to.

Kaibab

I was not expecting the latest America the Beautiful release Kaibab to be the lightning rod that he is. Personally, I love mine:

The Stretched Morgan mold is one that’s experienced huge swings in popularity over the course of its 50+ production career. He’s been derided as being too typey, not typey enough, old-fashioned, awkwardly posed, obviously suffering from laminitis, and bombarded with the standard conformational nitpicking every Breyer mold ever has been subjected to.

Yet he still retains his fans – like me – and many Stretched Morgan releases and variations are among the most desirable and highly sought after Breyers of any kind. The Woodgrain? The BreyerFest 2000 Raffle Model Showboat? The multitudes of variations of the original #48 Black?

(Have you seen the prices on some of those Black variations lately? Yikes!)

Sure, the price for Kaibab was a bit high, but that I attribute to the popularity of the series and the complexity of the paint jobs they’ve been attempting on the Web Specials: in many cases they are approaching Connoisseur-level quality.

There are some real-horse world biases in play with Kaibab, too: in the past few years, especially, nonstandard colors on breed-specific molds have been getting a lot of pushback.

That is something I find rather weird. Part of Reeves marketing program is selling the notion of model horses as a fantasy wish-fulfillment of horse ownership. Even the most technically accurate horse figurine is still a fantasy construct.

Are some of them bad ideas, artistically? Maybe. But an Appaloosa or Tobiano Pinto Morgan sitting on your shelf isn’t likely to spawn any real-life horses. They have no “bad” genes to propagate.

Anyway, again: with retail or in-hobby purchases, it is always safest to buy what you love, not what you think you can sell later. Buying something at retail to resell later has rarely worked out well for me. (You would think I would have learned by now, but for some reason I keep trying...)

I was secretly hoping that there’d be a Morgan release for BreyerFest, since one of the most famous race horses of the early 19th century was Black Hawk, sired by Sherman Morgan himself, and memorialized in folk art ranging from quilts to weathervanes.

I think a Glossy Dappled Black on the Kennebec Count mold would be great, but I know most of the hobby would beg to differ.

Make It So!

The costume is just about done – a few minor details to finish – as is the paperwork and the packing. However, my attempted diorama is looking tragic, which is not the look I was going for. If it doesn’t start looking better by tomorrow, I’m going to toss it into my closet of diorama traumas past.

(Some individual parts of it are actually really cool, but those parts just aren’t fitting together. Bummer.)

I’m trying not to worry about it too much: my plate is already looking quite full this year. Aside from the Costume Contest, I’ll also be Volunteering, and participating in the wedding that will be happening at the Hall of Champions at the Horse Park Friday afternoon, just before the Auction. (Everybody is welcome! Come as you are!)

Speaking of the auction, my favorite piece this year has to be the Dappled Dun Stretched Morgan. I have no pretenses of actually owning him, especially since he seems to be going over pretty well all over, but a girl can dream for about a week, right?

I sure hope that’s a “True” Test Color for an honest-to-goodness production run in the very near future! It would look grand on almost anything.  I haven’t been the biggest fan of some of Reeves’s more recent attempts at Duns – the Lonesome Glory Tinseltown immediately comes to mind – but with this guy, maybe they’ve finally made the technical leaps necessary to pull it off.

I gave some brief thought of it being the Volunteer Special this year (and thus attainable) but last year’s Volunteer Special was Matte-Finished, Solid and Realistic, too. As I theorized earlier, this year’s will likely not be all three of those things.

They didn’t put the Volunteer Special in the auction last year, either.

But just when we think we’ve sussed out the rules, they change them up on us. Last year I thought it unlikely they’d use a model with a base, but they up and used the Show Jumping Warmblood. Go figure.

It is worth noting that Stretched Morgan releases have been in somewhat short supply lately. Other than the Vintage Club Halo in 2013, the only other Production Runs since 2000’s Raffle Model Showboat (26 pieces) have been the 2008 Exclusive Event A Night at the Oscars (4 pieces) and the 2012 Early Bird Prize Bennington (3 pieces).

Everything else has been Auction Tests.

In other words, we are due. 

The First Black Stretched Morgan Variation

First, there's another web exclusive - this time, a set of Classics Foals, with blankets, named Poncho and Champ. Smart move: these are exactly the kinds of models that younger hobbyists were looking for at BreyerFest this year; I could have sold the Classics Foals I did have many times over. It’s nice to see Reeves is doing its market research homework.

Anyway, time to finish up the series on Black Morgans, with this fellow:

If an average collector has any Variations of the Black Morgan, it’s the first: bald-faced, four stockings, and black hooves. They made him for a while this way - most of the 1960s, near as I can figure; the earliest ones had handpainted eyewhites. The black hooves eventually became gray hooves, then in 1970 the bald face was replaced with a star.

You wouldn’t have known that to look at the catalog photos, though: they used stock photos of the Bald-Faced Variations in Dealer Catalogs and Collector’s Manuals through 1975. They did use a correct Star-Faced photo on the white photo/picture boxes that debuted in 1973.

That disparity I attribute to a case of being cheap rather than inattentive, lazy, or incompetent.

There are no special stories or memories associated with the Stretched Morgan featured above. I’ve gone through a number of models in this Variation, never quite finding the "right" one; I had to purchase this better-than-average example at a local antique market - at an antique market price. (More than I usually pay, but still less than what most hobbyists pay retail). That’s it.

Because my collection is at a certain size and density, any model that doesn’t come with the perfect combination of beauty and backstory is potentially up for resale - as is the case with this model. I still have plenty of other Black Stretched Morgans to keep me company, in addition to all the others I've already mentioned here: my original (visually ordinary) one, a nice gray-hoof Baldy, and the Gray Plastic one.

As for variations I don’t have in the collection yet, I wouldn’t mind locating a Short Sock Variation - a later variant with socks that barely clear the pasterns - but I’m in no rush. I figure that one will make its way to me when it’s good and ready. They always have.

Almost Solid Black Morgan

This particularly handsome Black Morgan Variation - Solid Black with gray hooves, a star, and no socks - actually predates the previous two in my collection, by at least a year:

 

I found him at a local live show. This show had set up a "sales area" for showers who didn’t want to deal with the hassle of simultaneously showing and selling, or worry about grabby hands reaching for the wrong models. They’d drop off their sales items in the morning, and pick up whatever cash they made at the end of the day.

I hustled over to that area quickly because we had a local dealer in attendance that day with a reputation as a flipper - buying up quality pieces very low, and pricing/selling them fairly high. While I had a cordial relationship with this person, I was still in college at the time and on a super-tight budget. This dealer frequented the same flea markets I did, and I had lost out on enough goodies: it wasn't planning on letting anything good slip away that day.

This model has always been one of my favorites, but what amazes me is the reaction that others have had to him. Every time I’d take him to a show, or show off a picture of him, other hobbyists would gush over how beautiful he was.

I have to guess that the fact that I have a ton of Variations, Test Colors and Rarities has made me a little bit blasé about him. He is wonderful, but he’s only the third or fourth most-fabulous Stretched Morgan in my herd. (Not going anywhere. Don't ask.)

Odd thing was, he didn't show well. I never did figure out the disparity. If everyone loved him, why wasn’t he placing? The only thing I could come up with was that when I was actively live showing, the Stretched Morgan - especially Black ones - just happened to be on the unfashionable list. The Black Stretched Morgan, at that point, had been in production for 20 some years. Except for the Solid Black variation that everyone was looking for, he was the definition of common and uncool.

It’s certainly not the case anymore, especially since the advent of Collectibility showing. The length of the production run on the Black release is no longer a liability, but an asset: more history means more potential variations. Even without that as a consideration, opinion of the Stretched Morgan mold as a Morgan has shifted back from "not very good" to "more typey than most." If I were to start live showing again, he’d definitely get shortlisted for my showstring.

I used to think of this variation as a "small v" variation - a random, unplanned one - as opposed to a "big V" variation - a deliberate and sustained change in the production paint job. Over the years, though, I’ve seen - and heard of - a few others identical to him, and there was one on eBay recently that went for a rather impressive amount of money.

So it might have been something deliberate after all. As I’ve written before, I’m a little hesitant to classify things as "big V" variations, because that’s where madness begins. Sometimes a variation is just a variation, and doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

Chalky Stretched Morgan

I got lucky and threw an order in for Mischief with my Vintage Club Isabelle; I figured it’d be my last little splurge on myself before the holidays. While I figured he’d sell out eventually, I had no idea he’d sell out early this week.

I can offer no special insights why - other than having a lower piece count compared to other recent Classics specials, and all of us underestimating the power of Halloween.

Back to the Black Morgan Parade. Here’s my Chalky one:

According to my records, he was another early flea market find - a few years after the Solid Black, and not long after I had started going to the flea markets on my own. (I had a car! And a job that paid me cash money!)

I can’t recall any other details of my first encounter with him, or who he came with. Not that he was all that mundane, but finding Chalkies - good quality ones, too - was not as big a deal back then. It was more "Hey!" than "OMG!!@!1!" kind of find.

Other than his condition - exceptional, for a Chalky - he didn’t stand out enough to imprint a special memory. But just because he didn’t bowl me over when I found him doesn’t mean I didn’t love or appreciate him any less: the fact that I’ve owned him for over two decades now should be testament to my affection.  

Chalkies used to be considered sort of an odd thing to collect. Prices reflected that: more often than not, they weren’t any more expensive than non-Chalkies. In fact, their delicate nature and associated paint flaws - runs, drips, hoof puddling, softened/filled in details - were seen as detriments, in some hobbyists’ eyes.

Two of my first three Traditional models - the Man o’ War and the Smoke Western Prancing Horse - were Chalkies. I thought they were beautiful: they were the models that made me fall in love with model horses. While I didn’t necessarily seek more Chalkies out at first - once I knew what they were - I bought the ones I did find.

And after so many years of doing that, I ended up with a pretty decent-sized collection. The last time I took an official tally, it was somewhere around 30 pieces.

Then they became popular, and I stopped seeking them out on eBay and at BreyerFest, because they stopped being affordable on my budget. Most of the ones I pick up now are local finds.

Even so, I still manage to add to the collection on a regular basis; you may recall the fabulously nice Palomino Family Foal I found earlier this year. And there was that cool Black Bear Mama from a couple years back.

The Morgan is sort of in the middle of the scale in terms of rarity  - not as common as the Appaloosa Performance Horse or Yellow Mount, but considerably more common than the Misty or Bucking Bronco. He also comes in an "unpainted" version where the gray of his plastic is allowed to show through the unpainted areas of his star and stockings, giving him an unusual (and not unappealing) two-tone effect.

I’ve found a couple of other standard basecoat Chalky Morgans over the years but my first, thankfully, was my best.

Solid Black Morgan

The brain is still not in writing mode, so here’s another picture - one of the many Black Stretched Morgan variations that seem to follow me home like lost puppies. Up first is one of my first big finds at the flea market, Stretched Morgan or otherwise:

Solid Black! Well, almost solid black - he does have a chipped ear, revealing pinkish-purple plastic underneath. Solid Black Morgans mostly - though not exclusively - date to the Chalky Era of the early 1970s. Why bother basecoating a model, when you can just paint it solid black, instead?

Allegedly some Solid Blacks were made as trophy models for the American Morgan Horse Association, around the same time. As far as I know, they’d be indistinguishable from the Regular Run Variations - unless they came with the documentation to prove otherwise.

In either case, the Solid Black Morgan is quite the rarity: I haven’t found another Solid Black Morgan since then. The prices I see them bringing on the secondary market make it unlikely that I’d ever be able to upgrade my boy if I wanted to.

Fortunately for me, it’s a low priority. Aside from the fact that he was one of my first "scores", the story of that score is also a keeper.

Many, many years ago I went with my family to an indoor flea market, one best known in these parts for having a dealer who carried most of the then-current Hagen-Renaker line. And also for a taxidermied Cheetah, but that’s another story. (The flea market, I mean, not the dealer.)

One dealer near the entrance had a small selection of Traditional Breyers - maybe a half dozen pieces - all priced at ten dollars apiece. I picked up the Morgan and stared at it, entranced; the dealer noticed my interest and said "I can go eight on the horses."

"All I have is seven." I answered back, matter-of-factly.

The dealer paused, nodded, and said "Okay, seven." And wrapped him up for me.

A few aisles later, Dad nudged me and whispered "That was a pretty smooth move you pulled back there." He was so proud: my daughter, the canny horse-trader.

I had to break it to him that the truth was far more mundane. "Dad, seriously, all I had was seven dollars!"

APH: Back to the Source

Scheduling problems, again. Everything I need to get done this week (work and nonwork) is taking too darn long to do.

Instead of weighing in on the pros and cons of Halo, I will focus on the inspiration for him, the original Appaloosa Performance Horse:

The APH was born out of Breyer’s experimentation in the late 1960s and early 1970s with more realistic paint jobs, per collector request. This experimentation also gave rise to the "Resist" Dapple Grays, more precise masking techniques, and (believe it or not) the now-beloved "Freckle" Red Roans.

Unlike the rest, the Performance Horse’s paint job was uniquely his own: it wasn’t seen on an Regular Run or Special Run release until last year’s Vintage Club Stablemates Eagle - and now, on Halo.

There are a small number of Test Colors with this paint job, most famously the Proud Arabian Stallion that is the grail model of so many. A Classic Quarter Horse Mare showed up on eBay a few years ago, and I know of an Adios in private hands. There may be others, too: it was a complicated paint job for its time, and it undoubtedly took some time to perfect.

(In case you were wondering: I don’t have a photo of that Adios, but he’s just as beautiful as you can imagine. And no, it’s neither mine, nor is it for sale. He just is.)

I know I’ve seen in some parts a bit of eyebrow-raising over the use of the Stretched Morgan mold with this color, since it is obviously not a traditional (or even untraditional) Morgan Horse color.

I tend to look at it from an historical perspective: Breyer was never one to let breed standards get in the way of pairing up molds and colors. Palomino Arabians? Not a problem. Have a Standardbred stand in for a Paint Horse? Also, not a problem.

And any light skimming of the live horse classifieds (and live show documentation) will reveal plenty of seemingly inappropriate or bizarre real-life outcrosses, planned or otherwise. Mostly otherwise, but you know some breeders and their "designer" crosses. (Not saying that I approve, just that they, like the APH Adios, do exist.)

So a wild Appaloosa paint job on a Morgan mold is entirely consistent with the Vintage Club aesthetic, and not a huge hurdle for the live shower to overcome. Though I’d be fine with an APH-colored release on just about anything, really. Belgian, Pacer, Lady Roxana …

While it is often said that a good horse can come in any color, in the model horse world the truism is slightly different: a good color can sell on any horse. Well, almost any: I can’t imagine a huge market for an APH-colored Lady Roxana, other than me. (She’d look fabulous next to my imaginary FAS Yellow Man o' War! And my not-imaginary FAMs. Yes, I have more than one.)

Since work ran rather late today - and I’ll be heading out the door again here in a few minutes - I’ll finish up my thoughts on the Appaloosa Performance Horse mold, and color, next time.

Halo

I worked nearly 19 hours total on Friday, and nearly 40 over the course of three days. Tired does not even begin to describe how I feel right now. ("Gelatinous" might work.)

I wish they’d get this scheduling issue resolved once and for all. I appreciate the hours and the overtime, but cramming them all in at the end of the week is not cool, especially since it leads entire days off being slept away.

Other than briefly skimming the Internet for breaking news, I haven’t had a whole lot of computer time to myself over those three days. I think that was for the best, considering the lack of sleep put me in a rather, ah, combative state of mind. Didn’t want to start any fights that I’d have to walk away from. What’d be the fun in that?

I did see that Reeves announced what I’m assuming will be the Vintage Club’s "Exclusive Offer" model: the Stretched Morgan in the Performance Horse colorway, named Halo. Yep, the same guy in last year’s group shot photo who was the source of much commentary and speculation.

Some hobbyists are claiming that it’s the second release in the 2013 Vintage Club series, but the wording of the e-mail - that he’s a "Club Exclusive", not a "Release"  - suggests otherwise, to me.

Besides, the two clues given for the second release - "Solid" and "Four on the floor" - don’t quite jibe: there’s nothing about Halo that could be described as "Solid", unless it is a retro/1970s reference to the level of his coolness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg92Y477XSI

I haven’t given much thought to those clues, by the way. They’re just too vague for me to work with. "Four on the floor" seems to be referencing a standing model (of which there are dozens) and "Solid" could be referring to a solid colorway (likewise).

The first thing that pops in my head is Adios, especially since when I hear "Four on the floor" I think of manual transmissions, street racing and horsepower. A subtle reference to race cars = a subtle reference to racehorses?

Interesting. There’s a Glossy Charcoal Adios, Dapple Gray Man o’ War, and a Gloss Alabaster Quarter Horse Gelding in that group shot: all solid colors, all racehorses. (Okay, the QHG is a bit of a stretch, considering his body type. Close enough.)

I wouldn’t object to any of those guys.

That’s really about the extent of my thinking on the subject, though. Of the three, I think the Charcoal Adios is probably the strongest candidate. A very popular mold, in a very popular vintage color.

Not unlike Halo.

Playing the Game

Lots of topics I want to cover this week, but I suppose y’all want to know what my take is on the third Vintage Club release is, right?

The first clue seems to be a pretty vague one: "Was a woodgrain."

But in reality, it isn’t: it narrows it down to a rather finite list of models. And with a little thinking through, the list can be winnowed to an even smaller list very quickly.

I’m going to assume that Reeves isn’t going to pay attention to any of the items – such as the Buffalo, Polled Hereford Bull, and possibly the Elephant – that were done as Woodgrain special runs for the Ranchcraft Lamps in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their status as Breyer releases is still slightly controversial for some reason, plus most of them were either rerelease or Nonequines, anyway.

Now we eliminate the molds that have been released so far: the Clydesdale and the Fighter. Because, duh.

Then we eliminate all the molds that were a part of the 2013 Members-Only Poll: presumably, that means all the molds in that poll won’t have had Vintage Club releases in 2012. So that eliminates the Five-Gaiter and the Quarter Horse Gelding, since the Man o’ War and Running Stallion never officially came in Woodgrain.

Then we eliminate the Nonequines: Longhorn Bull, Horned Hereford Bull, Brahma Bull, etc. I don’t think they would spring a Nonequine on us this early in the game, and the (very small, and very vocal group of) people who inhabit the Breyer web site forums have made it very clear that they shouldn’t happen, ever.

Certain molds either don’t exist anymore, or are no longer "available" for molding. So that eliminates the In-Between Mare, and Old Mold Mare and Foal.

The smaller scale molds also get the boot, such as the Western Pony and the Racehorse. They’re just not as popular as the larger scale molds, and it’s harder to justify a $100+ price tag for for what are essentially Classics-scale models. I suspect that most of the smaller molds, if Reeves does do them as Vintage Club SRs, will be of the Made-to-Order type like Gus.

The Foal molds are also out, for the same reason – and also because it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll release the Foal without the matching Mare. Yeah, they could release it as a separate Made-to-Order, but they already have one in process this year. So the Running Mare and Family Arabian Mare are out, too. (Though I think the Running Mare is a strong candidate for next year.)

So, when all is said and done, that leaves us with five possible candidates:

• Family Arabian Stallion
• Shetland Pony
• Belgian
• Morgan
• Mustang

The Family Arabian Stallion is a strong sentimental favorite. However, his fan base, while devoted, is not as numerically strong. He's already had an Anniversary release in a "vintagey" Gold Charm Pinto not all that long ago. Plus, the Family Arabians have come in just about every conceivable color already, so it could be difficult coming up with something original there.

The Shetland Pony has more potential, but size might be a problem. She’s not technically Classics-scale, but she is little. A dearth of available colors might be an issue here, too.

The only problem I can see with the Belgian is that I doubt they’d follow up the Clydesdale with another Draft mold so soon.

The Morgan is a very strong candidate: not only was there the Appaloosa one in the photograph they sent in the Vintage Club newsletter (front and center!) we also have, inexplicably, a Morgan as an Early Bird Special Run for this year’s BreyerFest. (Representing "New" England, I’m supposing.) So there have definitely been some Morgan bodies floating around the Reeves offices recently.

The Mustang, however, seems like the strongest candidate. It’s an earlier mold than the Morgan – 1961, instead of 1964 – and I can see that working in his favor. (The Clydesdale came out ca. 1958, and the Fighter ca. late 1960-1961; maybe they’re trying for a chronological approach?) He’s come in a bajillion colors, but there are lots of vintage colors he hasn’t been seen in yet – including, in that aforementioned newsletter photo, a yummy Gloss Honey Palomino. (A clue, or a tease?)

If not the Gloss Palomino, I’m thinking something in the Bay or Black range, and/or something spotted – dappled, Appaloosa, or Pinto. Could be either Gloss or Matte, though I’m thinking there’s a slight preference for Gloss, based on the reaction to King.

So there, that’s my reasoning for the as-yet-unnamed Third Vintage Club release. Subject to change, pending further "clues".

British Flavoured

Spent some time yesterday poking the underbelly of the Breyer web site - the legal way, via the links, tabs and buttons.

I’d consider myself a fairly adept user - I even took some classes, back in the day, when I had delusions of being a webmaster. Even though I haven’t done much in that department since then, I still find myself obsessing over the structure of every web site I visit. If I get annoyed enough, I’ll even start sketching out - on paper, or even just in my head - how I’d reconfigure it.

I wasn’t super-impressed with the Breyer web site before, but now that I’ve spent some time wandering around the place, I think it annoys me more than almost any other site I visit on a regular basis. There’s too much "fluff" getting in the way of the "stuff". Fooey!

Rather than discuss how I’d completely restructure it, let’s discuss the BreyerFest material, which was my original reason for visiting the site.

I am not as upset as many are about the lack of true "Britishness" regarding the Celebration Horse "Mariah’s Boon", and the Store Special "Taskin". They are, if not true British breeds, at least British-flavoured.

I am as mystified as everyone else over the Early Bird Special: a Stretched Morgan mold, in Liver Chestnut? That’s one peculiar choice for a British-themed BreyerFest. Aren’t Morgans like the quintessential American breed? Kind of wondering how they’ll spin that one. (As a product of "New" England? Maybe? Whatever.)

"Bennington" seems a little blah from the picture, but that’s probably more the photographer’s fault than the horse. I certainly wouldn’t complain if I won one.

The dapply-dun-silver-whatever that is the SR Cigar "Aintree" is beautiful, but my preference between the two now public Tent SRs is the British White Bull "Bowland", on the Charolais Bull mold. I’ve wanted a British White for years, so that one’s a no-brainer for me. There’s at least one other Tent SR that’s on my must-have list, but since the photos haven’t officially been made public yet, I’ll have to continue refraining comment. (HINT: I kinda-sorta gave you a clue the last time I talked about them.)

I’m running way short of time today (work + driveway shoveling) so I’ll finish up the BreyerFest 2012 discussion tomorrow.

Solid!

Back in the day, #49 Bay Stretched Morgans were da bomb. They were relatively pricey and hard to come by, in those crazy, pre-Internet days. A primo example could easily set you back a good 30 or 40 dollars!

(No, really. Stop giggling!)

I was happy beyond words when I found my first (of many) Bay Stretched Morgans at a local flea market. He was the standard bald-faced version with two front socks, in near mint condition. He’d hardly turn heads today, but back then - oh, what a treasure he was! I was such a proud Model Horse Mama when one of my fellow hobbyists came over to my table at a live show once just to admire him.

(I’ll never forget it. "Can I touch him?" she asked. "Sure," I said. And she held him up to her face and snuggled him like a kitten. Such a weird and lovely moment.)

Nowadays vintage Bay Stretched Morgans are not that exciting or cuddle-worthy. Ebay, and several recent releases in other shades of Bay have diluted the demand. Serious collectors still seek him out, but it’s only the more obscure variations - like the star-faced or four-socked ones - that command serious cash.

The one Bay Morgan who really brings out the big spenders, however, isn’t a variation at all: it’s the Special Run from the early 1970s in solid bay.


There are a number reasons why that is. The first are his good looks: aside from his total absence of markings, his color is both subtly and pleasingly different from other vintage Bay Morgans. The body shading, particularly on the shoulders, is softer and less dramatic than a regular run bay, and he has darker gray shading on his muzzle and his nether regions. His paint job looks quite modern, especially when compared to contemporary Regular Runs.

The second is historical significance: he was among the earliest true Special Runs of the modern/hobby era, made for the "Wonderful World of Horses" touring show sometime in the early- to mid-1970s. Other Special Runs do predate it - notably the Ranchcraft Woodgrains, and the Grooming Kits - but we’ve only recently reclassified them as Special Runs. Back then, everything we couldn’t classify was either an "oddity" or a "test run." (The hobby’s vocabulary was much smaller then.)

The third is rarity: you just don’t see them very often. There were at least 1000 pieces made (a substantial run, even today) but the distribution method created the rarity. Instead of being sold directly to collectors, they were sold as souvenirs, to people who were not usually hobbyists. Some of them did make it into hobbyist hands - via leftovers sold via Marney or the Bentley Sales Company - but not enough to satisfy demand.

The model who graces this blog post, believe it or not, was an upgrade. I considered myself very lucky to get the Solid Bay Morgan that I upgraded from, in the first place. He was restored, and not badly, but when the opportunity came on eBay to upgrade to a true mint one, I had to go for it.

He wasn’t the typical bargain basement deal I normally go for; I felt a little bad plunking down a whole Benjamin for him, until I saw a lesser example go for three times the price a few months later.

A good investment, if I thought of these things in that way.

Insert Sheets, Pt. II

If I come across as a bit of a cranky-puss today, I apologize. My work schedule was completely, utterly messed up this week; I ended up driving about twice as far as anyone else, for about half the hours. Listening to other people complain about all the overtime they’re getting gets very old, very quickly.

I am still Esprit-free. This is not really a surprise - I know how the hobbyists are around here - but it did irritate me more than I thought it would.

I think there’s just something fundamentally flawed about the way this mold’s been marketed. Restricting availability to a new item does drive up demand; overdo it, and it becomes a deterrent. I’ll have at least one in my collection eventually - the BreyerFest Pecos - but that may well and truly be it.

In other words, there’s no need for anyone to go out of their way to get me one. If I find one eventually, at a price I can afford, awesome. If not, no big whoop.

Back to the Insert Sheets discussion. First, here are some scans of the little seen 1964 Inserts:




I really like the way these pages are designed; if I had the money-time-inclination, I’d have them blown up to one-sheet poster size and frame them for my office. (Note to the folks at Reeves, if you’re reading: you might want to look into this idea. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’d be into that sort of thing.)

You’ll note that unlike the 1963 Dealer’s Catalog, these sheets are not full-color. The 1963 Catalog was a bit of an outlier; most of Breyer’s marketing materials prior to the late 1960s were not printed in full-color. It wasn’t purely an aesthetic choice: full-color printing was expensive. If they could get away with printing something in a duotone, or with a spot color or two, they would.

A restricted color palette isn’t that big a deal, as long as the materials themselves are designed and rendered well. And for the most part, they were, but that’s another topic I haven’t even begun to research yet. (I met Richard Lewis once, in passing, about 10-12 years ago. Another one of those "wish I had a time machine for a do-over" moments.)

As far as I know, the 1962 Insert Sheets haven’t shown up - yet. Now there’s something I’d pay an almost-crazy amount of money for. It’s possible they may not even exist, but we didn’t know the 1961 Sheets existed, until they resurfaced.

We’ve got a good idea of which molds those sheets might feature - the Running Mare and Foal, the Western Prancing Horse, and maybe the Texas Longhorn Bull - but having those sheets would prove it, definitively. I’d be fine with finding that information via other routes, but the sheets themselves would be sweet.

A Third Company?

According to my work schedule, it looks like I might be taking another trip to happy fun researchland in another week or so. I won’t have the same amount of time to plow the stacks, but I’ll be able to make a little bit more progress, at least. Every little bit helps.

One thing I found rather distracting in my previous research excursion was the non-Breyer horse stuff. It wasn’t just the Hartland material, it was all of the other model horsey things I was running across, like this ad for Lido:


Lido wasn’t exclusively a model horse manufacturer; model horses were just something they added to their toy line in the 1950s. Most of the secondary manufacturers from the 1950s and 1960s were like that: Westerns were "hot," and it made good business sense to add a few horse and/or cowboy pieces to their toy lines.

What made Lido a little bit different from the others is that the other companies were, by and large, copying Breyer and Hartland. Lido was one of the few who was forging ahead with original molds and concepts.

Most of these secondary lines of horses died out by the end of the 1960s, and so did Hartland, before it was revived a short time later (and later, and later again.) Breyer almost gave up the ghost itself around that time too, but fortunately for us they did not.

Other known manufacturers from that time period included Pressman, Ohio Plastics, and Kroll. They turn up from time to time, usually as unidentified knockoffs. Like this odd, but not bad Pressman version of the Stretched Morgan, in Alabaster:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=160481717242&Category=35999&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26its%3DI%26otn%3D2

That one’s managed to fool me more than once, at the flea market! He has probably played a part in those "Alabaster Stretched Morgan" rumors that crop up from time to time. The actual existence of a few true Alabaster Stretched Morgans does, too:


(Marney’s album, again.)

Among my favorites are the "textured tack" horses by an otherwise unidentified maker, an example of which is seen here on, of all things, a knockoff of the original Breyer Western Horse Clock!


They’re referred to as "textured tack" models because the Western Horse and Pony copies that they made have an odd, wire mesh texture to their tack. They’re otherwise remarkably good reproductions. They even "feel" right: they’re either made of some type of Cellulose Acetate, or a similarly sturdy plastic.

Oddly enough, the clock case and the base seem to be made of a different type of plastic; it feels like ABS (Styrene) to me. (BTW, the plumber’s chain reins are original, but the saddle probably isn’t.)

The fact that the entire Breyer Clock was knocked off - not just the horse, but all the "trimmings" - fascinates me. Was the original Breyer Clock itself so popular that it inspired its own knockoff? Who was this third company that made these horses - and what happened to them? Why did they decide to go with Cellulose Acetate, when many of the other secondary manufacturers didn’t? Did they have bigger plans?

What a different landscape we could be living in, if only we had a third serious contender in the model horse market back then!

Paint vs. Plastic

Mostly bodies and craft supplies at the flea market yesterday, with a few odds and ends thrown in the mix. I left a few good models behind - I’ve done well enough over the past two weeks that I could engage in a little "catch and release." (If that Alabaster Old Timer is there next time, he might be coming home with me - he still had his hat!)

One of the things I did find was a not-bad Chalky Palomino Rearing Stallion. Two Chalkies in the space of a month - excellent! I was just going to toss him into my sales stash, but when I gave him his standard dunk-and-scrub job, I noticed that he was a "White Plastic" Chalky, not a "Basecoat" Chalky. White Plastic Chalkies are considerably scarcer than their Basecoat cousins; out of the twenty plus Chalkies I have in my collection, I only have two White Plastics. I wouldn’t mind have a few more.

At first glance, White Plastics and Basecoats look virtually identical. Both have that slightly glossy, opaque "dipped in white housepaint" look. Basecoat Chalkies were actually painted with a rather thick coat of white paint, probably the same stuff they used to overpaint the white markings on Woodgrains. It was used to cover the less-than-white nature of the molded plastic, which was either colored, or extensively contaminated with nonwhite regrind. White Plastic Chalkies, on the other hand, were models that were molded out of opaque white plastic instead of the standard, slightly translucent stuff.

There are several subtle visual clues that help distinguish the two. The simplest and most obvious method: look at the bottom of the hooves. A Basecoat Chalky usually has a rough finish and puddling, as seen here on my othewise spiffy Black Morgan:


A White Plastic Chalky, on the other hand, has neat, clean hoof bottoms, as observed on the flea market-fresh Rearing Stallion:


The problem with this technique is that it’s not 100% foolproof. I’ve seen examples Basecoat Chalkies where the hoof bottoms were either very clean, or were apparently so rough and puddled that they cleaned or ground down at the factory before the final detailing.

Another clue: checking the transitional areas of the paint job, at the edges of airbrushed bald faces and stockings. On White Plastic Chalkies, the paint comes off in tiny flakes, and gives the paint job a scrubbed or patchy look. If the paint flakes off of a Basecoat Chalky, it’ll flake off anywhere, will come off in bigger flakes or chunks, and often reveals the funky color of the plastic beneath.

Mold detail is another: the thick white paint on Basecoat Chalkies fills in some of the finer details of the mold. On White Plastic Chalkies, those finer details are retained. The best, quickest test for mold detail is to flip and check the copyright horseshoe: the crisper and sharper the detail there, the more likely it’s a White Plastic version. If the lettering is blurry or infilled, it’s probably a Basecoat.

For some models, it’s hard to tell one way or another. The Clydesdale Foal I found a couple of weeks ago is a mystery: she has virtually no condition issues that would clue me in to her true nature. Her hooves are really clean and her mold detail is pretty sharp, so I’m leaning towards White Plastic. For most hobbyists, however, it’s a moot point: they’re all good!