A More Polished Secretariat

So tired today; work is in its busy season, and sleep has been in short supply. I’m grateful for the overtime, but what I wouldn’t give to be able to sleep in one day this week ...

(Sunday. Maybe.)

I did take a quick opportunity to do a little decompressing after a particularly rough day earlier in the week, at an undisclosed location on the way home that had some Breyers in it. I was mulling over the recently discontinued #1440 Let’s Go Racing Set – the one with the Black Secretariat. I collect the mold, and the notion of buying a Breyer play set appealed to my inner nine year old.

Then I noticed something: the Secretariat mold has been “polished”, just like the Traditional #54 Trakehner mold!

It actually looked good on him, though as a member of that mold’s slender fanbase, I’m a little wistful about alterations being made to Chris Hess’s last official Breyer mold.

I don’t know when the polishing occurred; I traded for an NPOD sample of one that still had that slightly rough-hewn look, and the promotional photos and video all show that version as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBgP2EPRfG0

I hadn’t noticed the change before because it wasn’t something I had been looking to get until recently, now that it’s been discontinued and some of the remaining warehouse stock has been shipped to Tuesday Mornings and the like.

Plus I had the Sample, and Burmese the solid Black Export Special Run of one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite horses. Black Secretariats are not in short supply here.

It’ll probably be a while before I actually pick up the polished mold version – it’s time, not money, that’s not on my side.

Mostly Black

Why yes, there are quite a few solid black Breyer releases on tap for 2016:

• Dag Dia (BreyerFest SR Brishen) 
• Carltonlima Emma (the new Fell Pony)
• Cortes C (Carrick)
• Cherry Creek Fonzie Merit (Adios)
• Rhapsody in Black (Weather Girl)

Add the following earlier Traditionals, still current:

• Magic (Miniature Horse from the Magic and Hamlet set)
• Classic Shire (from the set)
• Welsh Cob (Llanarth True Briton)
• Totilas

Throw in several more recently discontinued items like the AQHA Horse, and models in other scales, and it makes you think: wow, Reeves must have gotten some deal on black paint recently, eh?

I think it’s more coincidence than planning. Mostly.

Black horses had a strong pull on the imagination of horse lovers long before the publication of Black Beauty in 1877. Black in and of itself is visually striking: in a herd of Bays and Chestnuts, the Blacks will stand out. It doesn’t hurt that it also has the cachet of being a relatively rare color too, genetically speaking.

It is an easy and inexpensive color to paint, and very flattering on molds with strong and pleasing contours, like the Adios.

With all other factors being equal, Black will tend to get the nod over something slightly more common, like Chestnut or Bay. Throw in a few popular or trendy breeds that either specify or favor Black (like the Friesian, and the Fell) and there you go: a Mostly Black lineup for 2016.

Speaking of Adios: not counting Roans, Grays or Tests, the Cherry Creek Fonzie Merit release represents the first true unmodified Solid Matte Black Adios Production Run. The closest we came previously was the striking Dark Mahogany Bay #853 Mesa, released in 1991-1992.

The “Special Run” Black Adioses of the 1980s that get spoken of with some frequency in hobby circles were more a collection of similar Samples, Tests, and Gifts than a true or formal Special Run, and as far as I can remember were never advertised as such, either.

I certainly wouldn’t argue its technical or legal status if one was offered to me, though!

In A Gadda Dag Dia

I’ll admit I’ve been tempted to put my Novelisto D up for sale; the resale prices for that release have been impressive, to say the least. But now I know why I hesitated: I now have to complete a matching set with his Evil Twin, Dag Dia!

Think about it: Dag Dia is Listo’s opposite in every way -

• Solid Black, instead of Solid White
• Mane Down, instead of Mane Up
• Tail Down, instead of Tail Up
• Feathered Legs, instead of Clean

Did you know that there are 8 different possible mane-tail-leg combos for the Brishen-Laredo mold? I was curious one day and plotted it all out, labeling the parts that first appeared on Brishen as “A” and what appeared on Laredo as “B”. (Brishen is “A” because he came first, naturally.)

Most of the previous production releases on this mold have stuck to the same two combos: the upswept mane, tail and feathered legs of Brishen (“AAA”), or the braided mane, lowered tail, and clean legs of Laredo (“BBB”).

Using this system, that makes Novelisto an “AAB” and Dag Dia a “BBA”. Four down, four more combos to go! (Illustrating all eight combos might make for a fun Photoshop project for someone. Just saying.)

The other two known BreyerFest 2016 releases aren’t too shabby either – the Celebration Horse is a new sculpt by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig, and the Early Bird Special is a Smarty Jones Polo Pony in what I think is supposed to be a cornspotted Bay Roan.

I’ll reserve judgment of the Celebration Horse until I see one in person. Breyer photos, as you all should well know by now, are a terrible indicator of what the production pieces will look like: the color is usually wrong, and sloppy Photoshop clipping paths (used to cut the model out of the background) end up distorting the model’s actual contours beyond the point of usefulness.
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It is interesting that the third release of the Smarty Jones Polo Pony Mold Variation is another very limited BreyerFest Special Run, with the previous being the 2012 Saturday Raffle model Carlisle. There are even fewer of Polomar (3) than Carlisle, so I’ll likely have to wait a little longer to add a Smarty-Pony to the herd.

(My standards may be more lax than most, but even I had a hard time finding a Santiago that didn’t make me sigh deeply and walk away.)

BTW, for you whippersnappers who don’t get the title reference, grab yourself a bag of chips and a cold beverage of your choice, and enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4

Getting Lucky

Regarding sales: I’ll be suspending sales for the next couple of weeks to deal with the usual beginning of the year stuff. All of my spare AQHA Horses will remain here for the time being.

Shopping, alas, got started a little early this year. The first haul, from Saturday:

A Hartland Our Lady of the Fatima, a Red Mill Unicorn, two yards of pink and white calico, and a fabulous pair of shoes. The Hartland will stay, the Red Mill will go, the fabric is a perfect match for a long-stalled quilt project, and the shoes are for what I’m now calling “The Carmen Project”.

A mixed bag, but it’s not like one can go thrift shopping with a specific list in mind; some imagination and improvisation does help. If I went to these places looking only for Breyers, or very specific Breyers, I’d walk away more disappointed than not. I prefer to approach every object I find as a maybe, rather than a nope.

You’d think that it would make list making and the obtaining of grails a rather frustrating effort, but I’ve long since adapted to that by adjusting my sense of scale: my grails and lesser wants tend to stay on my want list for years, not weeks or months.

It helps, too, that I sometimes get lucky – this year, quite literally! Two of the releases in the Vintage Club are molds that I actively and enthusiastically collect: the Traditional Man o’ War, and Western Prancing Horse, a Resist Dapple Gray named … Lucky!

(Is that dappling in his mane? Gosh, I hope so.)

The Western Prancing Horse was the second or third model in my collection, after the Man o’ War: I received both a Pacer and the Western Prancing Horse the following Christmas, but I don’t remember which box I opened first.

(Hey, it was a long time ago. How long? He is a Chalky Smoke.)

Aside from Test Colors – which are not too scarce on this mold, just expensive – the Western Prancing Horse is not a difficult mold to collect. It’s not without its challenges: the Black Pinto is a little rare, there are multiple variations of the Black Leopard Appaloosa that might drive you crazy, and Chalkies of both the Smoke and Palomino are very pricey.

The only one that could qualify as a true “Grail” piece would be the Chestnut, a model so scarce that I didn’t even bother putting it on my want list to begin with. And then he happened:

The best kinds of grails are the ones that never even make it to your want list.

Rare Ones

I managed to resist the Breyer web site’s valiant attempt to get me to spend more money, but then on the way home the next day I swung by the toy store, and voila –

Then I get home and this little one was waiting for me:

Let’s talk about some interesting particulars of both of these releases.

The absence of the Palomino AQHA Horse from the individual sales on the Breyer web site – along with the Black – have led many to speculate that the Palomino truly is, as some Breyer reps were telling us early in the year, “The Rare One”.

I am not so sure. I think the absence is partly due to the fact that it was exclusively “The Rare One” for eight months before any of the other colors showed up. Most the Palominos that were made have already been shipped out. And sold – not all, obviously, but most.

I do think the Black is likely the rarest. Either that, or bunches of undistributed ones will be showing up in the usual places otherwise undistributed things go. Along with any “unredeemed” Glosses from the Customer Appreciation Offers, unless they repurpose them somewhere.

(Cringes at the possibility of Gloss Blacks. Oh, dear.)

The colors on the Holly and Ivy are interesting: they’re not the conventional Bright Red and Kelly Green that most of us assumed they would be. They’re more like a Burgundy or Candy Apple Red and Evergreen.

Reeves had been working on perfecting the colors for a while – attendees of the previous Exclusive Event in New Jersey saw some early attempts. It was all pretty much guesswork on their part because there are no verifiable vintage Christmas Decorators to reference.

I momentarily considered trading my Holly for an Ivy, but then I realized (a) I don’t have time for that, and (b) I still want both. Or all: now that they seem to have two of the colors down, I’m hoping we will be seeing the Red Smoke and Green Smoke versions next year?

And what shall we call all of these “new” colors? Again, there’s no documentation to go by that would give us a clue.

I’d really rather not go with Green and Red Filigree. Aside from the fact that a significant portion of the hobby can’t spell “filigree”, I’d prefer we (or Reeves) give these colors names as unique as the original Decorator color names were.

I kind of like a sort of variation of Peppermint/Spearmint. (But not Spearmint as a flavor, personally. Long story.) I think Holly Red and Ivy Green can work too, in the same way we refer to the colorways of the original Buckshot as “Buckshot Blue” and the Appaloosa Performance Horse as some variation of “APH”.

These guys really have to be the last models I buy on a whim for a while, outside of possible thrift store finds, box/collection lots for resale, and any obligated club/trip purchases; I have too many other things committed to my time and money for the front end of next year.

I could probably stand to sell some more stuff, too.

Coin Flips

Shall I remind you again how awesome my Salvation Army is? I found this dress on sale there a couple weeks ago:

Next year’s theme is a Rio-style Carnaval, and my local Salvation Army delivers to me – on sale, even! – a blue and yellow satin dress that looks like it fell out of Carmen Miranda’s closet. Seriously, what were the odds of that happening?

It’s not a completely random thing, finding this dress: this particular store has a reputation for unexpected treasures, and I try to make it a habit to visit once a week or so. But finds like these (see also: Excalibur and Shannon) have made me think a great deal about the difference between chance and luck.

Chance is the outcome of the coin flip: absent any external or interfering factors (like the wind, or a weighted coin) it is completely random.

Luck is what you can make of those coin flips.

Luck can be changed: time or perspective can later reveal a bad flip good, a good flip bad, or inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But sometimes chance deals us blows – one big one, or series of small ones – that are devastating in ways a little positive thinking can’t completely overcome.

Chance is far more difficult to change. While coin flips do even out over the long run, in the short run you’re going to have runs of very fortunate flips, and runs of very bad ones. Unless you’re a Jedi (unlikely) you can’t change those coin flips, regardless of how or what you think about them.

I spent way too much time over the weekend persuading myself not to participate in this week’s “Collector Appreciation Weekend”. The text of the e-mail suggested that a different set of freebies will be available, and the Roan AQHA Horses appear to be sold out on the web site, hence my indecision.

In the end I didn’t do it, mostly because I hated having completely random chance trying to dictate my happiness. I’ll buy the models I want to buy now because I like them and want them, and not worry about the “friends” they might bring with them.

If I can get a few other things worked out on Tuesday, I might take Reeves up on that discount-plus-free-shipping thing. I’ve been lingering over the new Deer Family release every time I’ve seen one in my travels…

As far as the dress goes, I don’t know if I am going to participate in the costume contest, but at some point during the festivities, I am going to wear it.

(When I showed it to Mom, her first reaction was “You’re wearing that to BreyerFest next year, aren’t you?” Sometimes it’s like she knows me!)

It’ll make me happy, it might make other people happy. I have to keep reminding myself that that should be the end of the discussion.

Holly and Ivy

Sorry for my extended absence; earlier in the week I called an insurance company about what I thought was a minor billing issue. Six hours of multiple phone calls over the period of two days and… it’s still not resolved.

I won’t go into the particulars, except to say that the problem we discovered was so unusual that it was possibly unique. And as far as it can be determined, it was nothing I did, either. There was a tiny crack in the system, and lucky me managed to fall into it.

Sigh. All I can do is hope that they somehow sort it all out by the end of the month. And hope nothing bad happens to me in the meantime.

After dealing with all that, I opened my second surprise box, hoping the Universe would recompense me with an extra special gratuity: no, just a Sorrel. He is very nice (all the AQHA Anniversary Horse colors were), but I am undecided on his eventual fate; I’d rather wait until I am in a better state of mind to make that decision.

On a happier note, Reeves did provide us a Christmas Day Special:

Christmas Deco Flashes Holly and Ivy! Not the mold I was expecting, but a happy little surprise, nonetheless: our first true Christmas Decorators. While I’m hoping for the Green one, because the notion of an intentionally green horse delights me, they are both lovely.

As I expected, they ran it a little different this time: it was a first-come, first-serve Gambler’s Choice of two different colors, 350 pieces of each color, 95 dollars and Postage Paid, even internationally.

There was a little bit of grumbling in some quarters about pretty much every aspect of the offer (wrong colors, wrong molds, wrong timing, not being “rare” enough) with the inevitable prediction that it might not sell out at all, which of course was not the case: I think it took about four hours for it to do that, which was by 3 p.m. Eastern.

Aided by the free shipping to everywhere and people with multiple accounts (I swear, some days I feel like the only person in the hobby who has just one.)

Because there was such an initial rush to purchase, and the information page went away right after, there’s already a lot of misinformation going on about Holly and Ivy that will, as history has taught us, persist for years.

Namely, the quantity: there are 350 of each color, not total. I don’t think this will affect the prices on the secondary market too much, long-term or short-term, but I’d like to get it nipped in the bud. Bad data tends to generate more bad data.

As for another shoe/Special Run dropping in the next several days? Maybe.

Personally, I’d rather it not, since next week is full of work, and appointments, and that insurance issue that still needs to be resolved. But the Universe runs according to its own whims, and not my own.