Defining Things

Went back to the book sale on Monday for the "by the box" sale. I can now safely say that I my book stash is now fully stuffed.

It’s mostly dollar-table stuff, but I generally do pretty well with that. People might hesitate a bit on fifty dollar horses, but not on fifty cent Scholastic paperbacks. Fifty cents here, a dollar there - it all adds up. (Why yes, I do roll my pennies and deposit them in the bank. What, don’t you?)

I’ve been thinking about the term "Grail" a lot in the past couple of days. I don’t have any philosophical or etymological problems with it, the way I do with other hobbyist terms. (Nobody who owns more than a dozen models actually "congas" them, "Congo" is a country in Africa, and hobbiest is NOT A WORD AT ALL. And while I’m on a tear here, may I point out that definitely and defiantly are NOT different spellings of the same word?)

I am a little troubled by its overuse, however. Everything everyone has ever wanted for more than five minutes becomes a "Grail." If you can turn around and get a Grail within six months of it being released in the first place, or with a very large application of money, it’s not a Grail. It’s just something that was on your want list.

When I think of Grails, I think of quests that are years in the making. Models that may not necessarily be "rare," but always seem to elude your grasp, no matter what you do. (And some of the things they make you do are exceedingly stupid.) They taunt you, revealing themselves (casually) in the hands of your nemeses. They walk into your room at BreyerFest in the arms of someone who purchased it in the room next door. (The one you hadn’t had time to visit yet.)

They elude you so that you question whether you’ll ever own them. They make you question if you’re even worthy of owning them. They make you wonder whether the pursuit is even worth all the anguish it's caused you. They make you cry - and make you feel stupid for crying.

Those are Grails.

A Grail is not a singular thing: the heart can hold many different desires. I can rattle off at least a half dozen Grails of my own, each a unique little ache:

• Traditional Man o War with eyewhites, battleship gray hooves, and a sticker
• A Presentation Series piece (doesn’t matter which one)
• A Vintage Decorator (ditto)
• Woodgrain Polled Hereford Bull Lamp
• The Ford Pinto Family Foal
• The 1980s SR Black Blanket Appaloosa POA

The odds of me finding these models via another hobbyist - or at BreyerFest - are exceedingly remote. Oh, some of them will be "available" eventually, but not at a price I can afford (the spare change thing? I really do that.)

I have to depend on lucky strikes on eBay, or at the flea market, and occasionally on the hubris - or outright ignorance - of other hobbyists. This is where the research helps: it’s so much easier to find and acquire rare and wonderful things before everyone else realizes how rare and wonderful they are, too.

Or after everyone has moved on to the latest, trendiest things. I am so glad that I managed to get all the Traditional Man o’ Wars that I’ve got, for instance, before he became cool again. (Didn’t see that one coming, honestly, but glad to have y’all join the party.)

On a Grail

I must have been the only one standing in line for the book sale that didn’t have a scanner, but I did all right in spite of my "handicap"; even after I factor out the keepers, I should be able to at least double my money on what I found. Mission to replenish my book "sales stash" accomplished.

(It also made up for today’s trip to the flea market, which was a washout - literally. Eh, we needed the rain.)

It’s been a busy three days: cleaned out my closets, finished two mini quilts, read two books, reorganized my quilting binders ("Must Do", "Might Do", and "Good Ideas") and packed up some sales items. If I hadn’t slept in this morning, I probably would have baked a batch of cookies, just for kicks.

A couple of bad incidents have made me focus my attentions on anything but the horses. One appears to be a tirekicker with negligible reading skills; at least I have only one more day of waiting before it goes to the next person on the wait list. (Note to self: change tirekicking policy to a three day maximum, not seven.)

The second incident was me being exceptionally stupid: I hesitated on a Buy It Now on eBay, with fatal consequences. The price wasn’t bad, but after paying out all the money I’ve had to in the past couple of weeks, I made a now incomprehensible decision to bid, instead of buy outright.

The auction got canceled a couple hours later, then relisted.

I was momentarily relieved (ah, it wasn’t auction interference!) But then realized then and there that I had already "lost" the auction, well before it was over. Sniping software was irrelevant: what I could afford to pay pales in comparison to what others can, and surely others would see what I saw.

And they did.

And I was sniped, with three seconds to go, with nary a creeper bid in sight.

It was a Chicago employee lot. With one of my grails in it. An item that I had been sniped before on, about ten years ago. Gah! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of sharing my wisdom via this blog. Why create more (unnecessary?) competition for myself? Every time I give away another "secret," I know it means I’ll be paying for it in ways like this.

But then I see hobbyists making very, very dumb decisions based on bad information, and my desire to correct it - to have them make a decision based on good data, not bad - overrides my own desire to succeed as a hobbyist. If you’re going to spend money foolishly, it might as well be for right reasons.

And I also feel a little bit guilty because I have such a huge informational advantage, and I’d hate to be seen as taking too much of an advantage (or profit) in that. I always forget that there are other hobbyists who do not have that compunction. (Indeed, as some of you have seen in the NPOD, some seem completely unburdened by it.)

I still do okay, in spite of myself.

Nevertheless, I’ll be beating myself up for months over that hesitation.

Paying For It

More bad news from the dentist; so much for me paying off the credit card from BreyerFest early. No new horses for me for a long while!

On the plus side, I’ll be getting a discount on my next visit. Provided I wear the Princess Beatrice costume to the office.

No, I’m not joking. Hey, I put a lot of effort into that outfit, I’m gonna make it pay!

I did have one new arrival this week (purchased pre-dentist); you’ve probably already seen it, but I just wanted to confirm your suspicions about who ended up with him:


The #114 "Bay" (Five-Gaiter Sorrel) Western Prancing Horse, with the Transitional Saddle. Isn’t he purty? He’s absolutely immaculate, as if someone pulled him straight out of his shipper box.

His near flawless condition leads me to believe he came from the factory that way, though it’s impossible to say. Sure, the saddle doesn’t really fit, but we’re talking a Breyer of mid-1960s vintage here: whether something was in scale or not was pretty low on their list of priorities back then.

(All four legs intact? Check. Ears not chipped? Check. Reins attached? Check. Saddle? Oops!)

Funny how the two Transitional Saddle models I’ve seen on eBay have both been on Western Prancing Horses, and not the Western Horse itself. It’s definitely something worth noting, though it’ll have to take a couple more examples before it rises about the level of mere coincidence.

You probably saw the price I had to pay for him, too. Not expensive, but also not as cheap as I had hoped, either. (Partly my own fault, but we'll talk about that some other day.) On the other hand, it is that time of the year when I buy myself one or two small horse-shaped luxuries on eBay, budget be darned. I was lucky enough to still have a little bit of money in the Paypal account to cover it, this time.

Not a bad little item to "end" the year on, I suppose. Outside of whatever I happen to find at the flea market, antique mall or thrift stores.

A Couple of Brahmas

Don’t mind the rumbling you hear in the background, that’s just the aftershocks of the massive tantrum I had after … well, we’ll talk about it another day, when I’m a little less ticked off at myself.

The rash is better. It still itches from time to time, but my appearance no longer frightens small children or dogs. Things still won’t be looking pretty for the next couple of weeks, but according to my schedule, I won’t be out and about much then, anyway. Not by choice, and mostly nothing personal - Labor Day just messes up the work schedule.

On the plus side, that means I’ll finally have the time to get those sales up and running on MHSP, like I’ve been meaning to. However, I have also been informed that there may be painting in the house by then, which might entail the dusting and rearranging of things. Swell.

A few middling things at the markets this weekend - a couple of Mastercrafter Clocks (overpriced) and a small pile of disreputable-looking vintage Hartlands (not worth the trouble.)

I did pick up a few bodies, and a few books. I was almost completely cleaned out of my sale books at BreyerFest, so it feels good to replenish the stash. Looking forward to the big local book sale this coming weekend; not looking forward to the jerks who will be standing in line in front of me with their ISBN Scanners.

(Man, those people completely take the fun out of used book sales. All business, no pleasure, y’know? Just like in this hobby, too.)

I had to move a few things around upstairs in the main collection, so I have a couple of my Brahma Bulls that are currently homeless (they’re not going anywhere - I just don’t know where to put them, yet.) Interesting contrast between the two. Here’s the more familiar variation that most of us either know, or own:


This guy’s pretty nice - very clean, no major marks, and he still has lots of pinking, which usually fades into nothingness over time. I was quite pleased with myself when I found him a few years back. He's easy to find, but not always in that good of a condition. Here’s the other:


Quite a difference, eh? The "Black Hump" version is the earliest, seen in most of the pre-1960 ephemera. It’s not just the hump that’s black - so are his horntips, hooves, leg patches, muzzle, etc. It’s worth noting that the black paint is a distinct color from the gray - one is not the diluted (or undiluted) version of the other.

My example is about average on the shading and detail scale - I’ve seen ones that have only had the black hump, and I’ve seen others that could almost pass for Charcoal.

He was a pretty popular mold right out the gate, so while the "Black Hump" variation may seem a little on the uncommon side, he really isn’t too difficult to find - as long as you’re on the lookout for him, of course. Like anything else, if you’re not looking for him, you’re not going to find him. Intentionally.

Peeling Away

Well, the stuff I had wasn’t working so great on the rash, so I had to take a trip to Urgent Care yesterday to get something stronger - a shot in the tuches and some nasty-tasting medication. I’m already feeling better; luckily for me, I have an extremely efficient metabolism when it comes to drugs.

(Almost too efficient, actually: I used to think it was because I was very fond of grapefruit juice, but cutting them out of my diet didn’t help one way or another. Fortunately, I have a couple of days off here to deal with any additional weirdness that may come up.)

Yes, purple horse is awesome. Normally I’d already have it stripped and evaluated by now, but I really am taken by the idea of incorporating him, as-is, into a Joseph Cornell-style assemblage. Here are a couple of links to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, if the name still doesn’t ring a bell:

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/

By collecting and carefully juxtaposing found objects in small, glass-front boxes, Cornell created visual poems in which surface, form, texture, and light play together. Using things we can see, Cornell made boxes about things we cannot see: ideas, memories, fantasies, and dreams.

And also (warning: the text here is a bit overripe - a common problem in art history writing):

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=48419

The Family Foal that needed to be stripped already is; the paint job underneath is rough enough that I’m considering stripping it to the bare plastic for research purposes. You can see so much more of the molding history of a model once the distraction of the paint job is eliminated, and as I’ve discussed before, the Family Foal has an fascinating and complex history of mold revisions.

The chance of finding a true factory original blank of this vintage is very, very slim, and the painted versions are just common enough to not bother me "destroying" one. Not in the same way I get squicked out by some hobbyists going to town on limited release models that haven’t been released as regular runs yet.

Someone wanted to see the "Neiman Marcus" Longhorn, and here he is:


Just a #384 Texan Longhorn Bull with his brand marks removed, and a Neiman Marcus logo handpainted on (in black enamel). It’s not real obvious in the picture, but it’s very obvious in person. It’s another excellent example of why you shouldn’t base you buying decisions solely on photographs. As someone who was once considered an expert-level user of Photoshop, take it from me: you should be very wary of trusting any online photographs, period.

(Note: I try to keep my digital manipulation to a minimum here - basically to compensate for my complete and somewhat ironic lack of actual photography skills. I'll lighten for detail or contrast, color correct to compensate for inadequate lighting, or add a little extra sharpening for my shaky hands.)

And which is also why I’m rolling my eyes at the kerfuffle on Blab over the photographs of the Fall Release of the Rocky Mountain Horse on El Pastor. How many times do we have to go over this? Fact: we have known for years that we can’t trust the photographs Reeves puts out ahead of their releases. If it’s not quality of the photo, it’s the quality of the editing.

I saw the actual, three-dimensional sample of the Rocky Mountain Horse at BreyerFest, and I thought he was beautiful. In fact, I think he was the only item on the table on Thursday that made me make "grabby hands" motions. Looked just like that Collector’s Choice Chocolate Ethereal, except for the absence of gloss. If they look like that, and I find a nice one at the same semi-local farm store where I found those Zenyattas, it’s coming home with me. This is coming from someone who’s not really "in the market" for current regular runs.

Time to lotion myself up and hit the sack.

Everybody's an Expert

Something insubstantial today, because I made the mistake, over the weekend, to clean out the corner of the property where the groundhog lives. The groundhog evidently knew what I was up to and decided to engage in some chemical warfare, which has led to a most peculiar, and painful, allergic reaction over a good portion of the right side of my body.

In reality: I’m now suffering a very nasty case of allergic contact dermatitis, probably caused by the perennial helianthus I was yanking out with wild abandon. (Knew that stuff was evil the day I picked it up at the perennial exchange. Knew it!) I got something for it, no worries …yet.

On the plus side, it’s just horrible looking enough to keep some of my more annoying coworkers at a distance. ("Hey, can I borrow some of your …gah! Never mind!")

Sunday was another very strange day at the flea market. I found a nice little box lot of horsey-type stuff, super-cheap - seriously, I could sell the wooden box everything was thrown into for the price I paid for the lot, and then some. Nothing spectacular, just some older FAFs, a Hartland Chubby Walker knock-off and some toyish things:


Yes, some of them have been painted over; I totally love the shade of purple on the Hartland knockoff (the Red Ryder one?); I think I see another crazy, Joseph Cornell-inspired art project in my near future.

The strange part was the dealer getting into an argument with me after I paid for it. I’m used to dealers - especially ones that don’t know me - throwing all kinds of BS at me to get me to buy something. But she was trying to impress me after the fact, with other Breyers she had sold in the past.

Everything she mentioned, though, pointed towards them being Hartlands: The Lone Ranger, Tonto, Roy Rogers, etc. And I told her so - either that, or she was confusing them with newer pieces. Nothing rude or anything, just a simple "Oh, those sound more like Hartlands" type of statement.

She got indignant, told me they were OLD, and were marked BREYER, and implied I didn’t have any clue what I was talking about. I started citing chapter and verse about the horses in the box (that the curly eartips on the Family Foals date them to 1961 or 1962 at the latest, that the purple horse was a repainted Hartland copy, etc.) but she wasn’t having any of it.

So I walked away from it. Poor, dumb little me wiIl make money on the deal without even breaking a sweat.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten used to the "regulars" there giving me some props for knowing my stuff. I don’t know everything - nobody does - but I’d like to think that I’m at least the local, "resident" expert. I was just trying to be helpful. Ask around!

I get some of the same from fellow hobbyists, from time to time. Everyone who buys a reference book or two suddenly thinks they’re an expert. Which may well be the case if you’re at a yard sale or auction house, but not at BreyerFest or on MHSP, dearies.

It unnerves me when I see auctions go way higher than they need to, based on bad photography, wishful thinking, or wrong impressions. There have been times when I’ve gone out of my way to dissuade hobbyists from thinking something is more rare than it is, even if it meant me getting less for it in the end.

I tend to err on the side of most hobbyists knowing what they have, generally. There may be some gaps in their knowledge, or finer details they may miss, sure, but unless they’re hard up for cash, or been out of the market for a while, you’ll have to find your crazy-spectacular deals elsewhere.

Spun Gold

Remember the speculation about the Spun Gold Surprise? Some folks thought that meant straight-up Decorators, while others thought they’d be realistic colors with a "golden" theme, like Chestnuts, Palominos and such.

They split it down the middle: we got "golden" themed colors, with semi-metallic finishes: Champagne, Flaxen Chestnut Overo, and Buckskin Blanket Appaloosa. (Hey, I got that part right! Yay, me!)

So, just like last time, I got a Pinto and an Appaloosa:


There was some carping about the solid "Champagne" version not being a "true" Champagne, but that seemed like nitpicking to me. Heck, a few years ago most hobbyists didn’t even know what the color "Champagne" was. And we’re talking semi-decorator colors on the semi-realistic "Ethereal" mold here; I’m sort of surprised they came as close as they did.

I’ve been wanting to add a few more Ethereals to the herd for some time now, so I was more than happy with his appearance as this year’s Surprise model. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the Surprise within the Surprise - a Gloss Dark Palomino Appaloosa, in the same pattern as the "Fire" - but the execution this time around went off without a hitch, at least. (And not all dumped into roughly the same time slot, like last time.)

At 28-30 pieces distributed, that came out to two Surprises per time slot; roughly calculated, your odds of getting one were about 40 to 1. Still not great, but probably a better bet than the raffle - and you still get a horse out of the deal, if you don’t "win"!

A model with a fairly limited piece count - 390 pieces each of the standard three - on a mold that hasn’t seen a lot of action lately. So hey, not a bad deal, all around.

What’s really nice about the Surprise Tent SR is that it’s really hard to game the system, the way you can (to a degree) with some of the other super-limited models at BreyerFest. Sure, you could buy more tickets to improve your odds, but at 70-85 for the ticket, plus 50-60 dollars a pop per model (or more) and all that time spent standing in line? Most hobbyists aren’t going to invest that kind of effort. Or have that kind of money to play with.

In other words, it’s about as fair a system as we’ll ever have for distributing a rarity as we’ll ever have. You know me, I’m big on the fairness thing. Neither life, nor the hobby are fair, but anything to make it a little more so, I’m all for.

Now that they seem to have worked the kinks out of the Surprise Horses, I sure hope they become a regular feature of BreyerFests to come.