Whatnots

Nothing makes you feel old like shopping for store brand Ben-gay at the grocery store.

On the other hand, with it I’ve been able to get a decent night’s sleep with it for the past two days, though the dreams are beyond weird. Like playing hide-and-seek in a multidimensional furniture store weird. 

I’ll take it, I guess. 

What I won’t be taking? A trip to Denver in March. Tickets for BreyerWest go on sale today (I double checked this time, LOL). Flights are expensive, the exclusive special – a Gloss Harkness – is nice but nothing I can’t live without, and my presence is not required, so I am giving it a pass. 

(It’s a little more complicated than that, but nothing else you need to know.)

I think too many hobbyists are overthinking the fact that the Swirls & Snowflakes Stablemates are still available. They probably made more due to historical demand – remember that some previous iterations of them sold out in hours – and I also think the hobby in general is experiencing blind bag fatigue. 

The general public likes blind bags just fine, but the Christmas ones are targeted toward active collectors, and I think most of us would like the option – if possible – of buying a complete set and being done with it. Designate a certain amount of them as sets, sell the rest as individuals, the end. 

For me, personally, it’s also because (in case you haven’t noticed!) I’ve been acquiring a crazy amount of rarities, Test Colors and Grails: things I have wanted for years, sometime decades. Things like that trump items that I found out about a week or two ago. My money is also not infinite: I have to draw the line somewhere.

And now there’s a Test Color/Oddity Lady Roxana on eBay that’s caught my eye. Like I need another Test Color, yikes… She’s not even a BreyerFest Auction piece or anything. I already have a Sample Roxana, on the Sahara release. And a Preproduction Test of Roxana on the Sham…

Yes, I have a lot of Tests, Samples, Oddities and Whatnots. Probably not quite as many as Reeves does, but I’m hesitant to get them out for a group shot and put that theory to the test. (No pun intended!)

Finally, I found this link on another (non-horsey) blog I frequent, and I thought I would be something of interest to at least a few of you; consider it an early Christmas present:

https://go.nasa.gov/MessageInABottle

Things I Cannot Worry About

My Tuxedo arrived, and he’s the Bald-faced version:

I was slightly bummed to find out that the split on the variations was not (more or less) equal: according to the recently arrived Just About Horses, there’s only 100 Solid Blacks, compared to 450 each of the Star-faced and Bald-faced.

I was all for the multiple variations; I was not expecting the uneven splits. And I am always amazed how preferences change when rarity is involved! 

I’m actually more annoyed to discover that there were even more of the Volunteer SR Chevaliere made than advertised, especially with me still be completely Chevaliere-free. 

I mean, I ended up coming out ahead at BreyerFest anyway, and the rest of the year – aside from the Appaloosa Performance Horse fiasco – has been unusually abundant, so I think I’ll live. 

Kind of surprised about the Black Friday Sale being today. I’m a second shift person (NOT by choice, BTW, but that’s another story) so whatever was there that I could have wanted (maybe Slyder?) wasn’t going to happen regardless. 

For all those people who are ticked off they didn’t get a Zugspitze, just how many did they think they actually had left over to sell? Couldn’t have been more than a few dozen. The only effect of pre-announcing the sale would have been people flooding the web site and having it crash, which would have ticked off even more people. 

I have more mixed feelings about Vail. I haven’t had the best luck getting the rarer blue variations in general, outside of the Studebaker, and I’ve gotten a lot of good stuff lately (and I was bad again, last weekend) and I really do not need more stuff. And he is a bit tippy....

Sure, there’s a 1000 of them, but I didn’t get picked for Tahoe from the first list – or any of the subsequent, mythical – waitlists, either. I will have to abide by the the Universe’s decision on this, too. 

I don’t know exactly what’s up with the delay with the Christmas Blind Bag Stablemates, but they are also not high on my list of concerns. I told myself that the only things I may need to get for the remainder of the year are (a) the Christmas Day Special, if it’s something I collect (Emma?) and/or (b) the Winter Web Animal, depending on what the mold is. (Dog, Elk or Deer Family? Hella yeah!)

I do think they are very neat, and reminiscent of the glitter-encrusted ornaments that adorned Grandma Jankowiak’s ginormous Christmas Tree every year. Along with 30 year old actual metal tinsel she saved and reused every year, and German Stars made out of waxed paper.

Old Timey Goodness

As someone who eats candy professionally (yes, really!), I may be legally obligated to buy Peanutine:

I had never heard of “peanutine” before, but I guess it is the peanut brittle variation of Saltine Toffee? Interesting. 

In reality, I’m not too crazy about peanut brittle per se – if you need to know, I am currently obsessed with the maple sugar candy I got for Christmas – and I am trying to behave myself this year, so I’ll take a wait and see approach on him. I mean, he’s cute, and I’m glad it’s not another bull, but I was hoping for something just a tiny bit more “outside the box” for a cart-pulling nonhorse, like a Goat or a Dog mold. 

The next Special Run – the Mare and Foal Set Surrey and Axle – might be my first must-buy of the ticket lineup, but not for the reason you might think:

If you could look at my notes for this year’s Sampler sitting on my desk right now, you’d see that the very first article I planned to write for it was (will be!) about the Standing Stock Horse Foal. 

This sort of thing usually happens after I publish an article, not before. So either Reeves and I are on the same wavelength, or some strange time travel thing just took place that I am only now finding out about.

The poor little guy doesn’t get a lot of love, but from an historical standpoint, he’s way more interesting than most collectors realize. I just wasn’t expecting to see a BreyerFest SR of him like, ever: he’s not exactly the flashiest foal mold on the block. He’s kind of like a blank canvas of a mold: how interesting he is is entirely dependent on how interesting his paint job is. 

Which is this case, is quite.

I certainly won’t turn down a few-spot Lady Phase with the package, either. I’m definitely not understanding all the online Lady Phase hate, though. When did she become “one of the ugly ones”? Heretics!

While you could argue that she’s occasionally been overused, she is never not beautiful. 

The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that Iced Oatmeal Raisin is not, in fact, the best cookie in the world. 

Anyway, I am glad that my intuition about the turn towards “vintage” has been proven somewhat right. And has piqued my interest. Will the Old Timer be turning up soon? I’d definitely be on board with that…

And then they dropped the next Store Special, which was the Troubadour I was expecting, in a colorway I was also (more or less) expecting:

Lovely, but I’m a little reluctant about him for one simple reason: I don’t have a lot of space to spare right now, and he’s one hecking chonk of a model. And I am still holding out for an affordable Stretched Morgan Special Run, as unlikely as that now seems to be. 

Raffles and Sales Lists

I did not think it would take as long as it did, but I think I finally have the sales list sorted out. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had to seriously compose one, and I had no idea I was that out of practice. 

It also didn’t help that there were a few pieces from one of the small collections I bought a while back that needed some serious cleaning up. And there’s just something so relaxing about cleaning horses, you know…

(Are there YouTube videos of people cleaning model horses? If not, there should be…)

Other than a potential upgrade I bought yesterday (because the opportunity presented itself), I don’t think there will be any significant additions to it between now and then. The only question is going to be just how many of the boxed models I’ll be able to get in the car on top of the bins and miscellaneous stuff I have to bring (there are so many bodies!) 

I also feel like I may have made some wrong decisions on what to sell. I’ve never had to intentionally leave stuff home before, and it just feels wrong. But I’m not renting a truck, and I’m not shipping a darn thing, and that’s that. 

I was also unsure about pricing, but I decided to go with the same pricing scheme I’ve always gone with: cheap! I do have a few nice vintage items, variations, and I might bring a CCA Gloss or two if they fit, but most of my stuff is well below the 50 dollar threshold, and the majority is under 25. 

If people think they can resell my stuff at BreyerFest, they’re welcome to try. (I have seen… attempts, before.) I’ll take my cut and move along.

Anyway, today’s the first day I’ve had a chance to skim the program, and I finally got a good look at the Raffle Models:

Not crazy about the names for obvious reasons (ugh, such a cliché). I’m still a little cool to the new Zafirah mold – I’m sure I’ll like her better in person because that’s usually how things work with Breyer photos. But I also tend to be a bit old school when it comes to my Arabians, so her attenuated look is a little concerning. 

But her paint job looks lovely and I do like Dapple Gray Pintos in general, and I am definitely not turning her down if my number gets drawn. 

I like the Troubadour mold better, obviously, though the paint job is a little… goofy? Silver Dapple Morgans tend to be a little more conservatively marked than other breeds that carry the gene, which is kind of why it took a while for it to be identified in the first place. 

That one will hurt a little more when I will inevitably will not get drawn for it, though it would be fitting since the one time I was drawn for a raffle was for another goofily dappled Morgan: Showboat! 

I don’t think it will happen because I unintentionally manifested a Holographic Silver Uffington on this blog last year, and I am pretty sure the Universe is not going to be as accommodating this time around.   

By the way, I did make an attempt to watch a movie last night: I fell asleep about two-thirds of the way in. Maybe next weekend, if I’m not completely exhausted by all the BreyerFest prep by then... 

Brown Beauties

I made more progress on my project than I thought I would, but I’m still not going on that cross-state road trip. I just can’t spare the seven hours of driving (round trip) that it would take out of my weekend. That’s time better spend doing a lot of more important things, like thinning my overgrown bed of irises or cleaning the office. 

(Anyone need some free irises? Seems like a shame to throw all those rhizomes in the burn pile!)

It doesn’t sound like I would have gotten any bargains at the event anyway. Theoretically I could imagine scoring some undervalued or misidentified variations like I legendarily do at BreyerFest. Recent experience has taught me that my poker face isn’t as good as I think it is though, so I’ll just have to let the notion go. 

I have nothing else particularly interesting or important to say today: I have to save that energy for the paying gigs. I did recently unbox a few things – technically for the live show a couple weeks back, but I had been meaning to set them free eventually anyway: 

Ah, the joy of simple, solid colors! I really do think the Sable Island Pony release features the Croi Damsha’s best color to date, though her Sooty Palomino BreyerFest 2015 release Chanel is a very, very close second. 

And the color on the 2003 Walmart Man o’ War is just luscious: I believe he’s the only one of the three shown here that actually placed. It’s one of those rare colors that makes just about any mold look its best, you know? More of that, please!