A Tale of Two Ruffian Variations

Might as well discuss these two before they get lost in the shuffle of everything else that’s been coming and going:

You know how you’ll sometimes look at a Regular Run model and tell yourself “If only I could find just the right one…”

This is the story of how I ended up with not one, but two Palomino Classics Ruffians.

The last time I was at Tuesday Morning, pondering those Semi-Gloss Stablemates and the Squishie Classic Haflinger, I also spent a little time looking over a couple of the Classic Palomino Ruffians – aka the #932 Thoroughbred Cross, just discontinued late last year.

I liked the concept of a Palomino Classic Ruffian, but none of the ones I had come across really appealed to me. The ones at Tuesday Morning were very nice; additionally, the packaging was slightly different than the standard Classics packaging, and the assortment consisted of recently discontinued items from very late in their production run – possibly the last pieces produced in their respective runs, making them another possible de facto Special Run.

But like the Haflinger and Stablemates, I left them behind.

Then I found that slightly pearly Palomino one on eBay a few weeks ago, with the unmasked mane and oversprayed tail, and no eyewhites. I was in love.

Because I happened to be in the area and I needed to buy some storage boxes for some of my ephemera anyway, I went back to that Tuesday Morning and bought one of those, too. Obviously they needed each other, and I felt I could justify it because unlike her Traditional-scale sister, the Classics Ruffian takes up hardly any room at all on the shelf.

This is where my lack of attention to the recent Classics releases has come to bite me in the behind. Is my pretty, pearly Ruffian a variation, an oddity, or something else? Her VIN number says she was produced in early 2014, but all the photos of her in the ephemera, and online show masking right from the start.

I have similar questions about the Tuesday Morning Ruffian (whose VIN number indicates a September 2017 production date). Is she different from the bulk of the run, or am I just imagining it?

I fear this may lead to me buying more Palomino Ruffians.

Sometimes oddballs and variations just happen, for no rhyme or reason. Fretting over their origins sometimes gets in the way of appreciating them in the first place.

Seeing Things

Here is Glacier, with his older and more conventionally handsome cousin:

There’s no VIN, and the detail put into the painting finishwork makes it pretty obvious that the Glaciers were U.S. made. I especially like the subtlety of the eyes: dark brown with a large iris and black eyeliner. They give him a dark and mysterious look, like he’s seen things.

I had been toying with the idea of using him as trade bait, but I think he’s staying. He’s got stories to tell me, man.

Some hobbyists were a little overly concerned about the sample in the promotional picture having what looked like a bent leg. I knew that wasn’t going to be the case with the actual production pieces because experience has been telling us, over and over, that you really can’t go by the photographs Reeves sends out to the world.

You wouldn’t think it would bear repeating at this point, but it does. I’ve noticed that even Reeves is starting to put "actual production may vary from prototype shown" in the fine print of some of their offers now. It’s something that should have been in the fine print since forever, but I’m accepting the improvement as an improvement, and moving on.

Though I think it would be awesome if they did do raffles/drawings for some of the actual prototypes, in addition to the semi-regular raffles/drawings for everything else. Aside from being really cool models to have, in general, they already come with a ready-made and easily acquired provenance you can use to trump the local live show competition. (The model in your documentation? That’s mine.)

It would reduce my chances of acquiring more prototypes in the future, but as I slowly go through another slight herd reduction, I have to accept the reality of not being able to have them all, anyway.

As for the echoing refrains of "Why can’t all Breyer models be of this quality level?" It’s not primarily a matter of old techniques vs. new, or U.S. manufacturing vs. China: it’s a scalability issue. Quality is much easier to control when you’re dealing with 40- or 50-piece runs, and not runs in the hundreds or thousands.

I think that’s the number one issue with the Premier Club. A Connoisseur-quality club with an unlimited membership cap sounds good at first, until you realize Reeves had a hard enough time with quality control with the original 350-piece runs on the Connoisseurs.

Quality control on the Vintage Club has been somewhat better, but the piece count is lower - 500 vs. 750+ for the Premier Club - and the paint jobs are less complex, and therefore harder to mess up. There are still some Vintage Club issues, particularly the lack of fidelity to the original paint jobs, caused partly (and ironically) by better quality control: the "imitation" overspray on Running Mare and Foal Salt and Pepper being the most amusing example of that.

There’s no way to completely eliminate flaws and errors in anything that’s mass-produced, even in relatively small runs. Things can get better - they can always get better - but perfection? Rarer than a Wedgewood Blue Antelope.