Show Stoppers: Stone Mini Light Breeds

I covered most of my Stone minis in last month’s Singles Bar post - all except the Chips Arabs and my four Pebbles. I’m not able to find pics of my two Pebbles Drafts at the moment and (as usual) I’m pressed for time, so today we’ll just cover Stone Mini Light, and I’ll get to the Drafts down the road.

 

 

This handsome chap is Mini Me Winter Wonderland, a run of 10 non-customized Chips Arabians painted by Audrey Dixon. (Apparently my love of Audrey Dixon paint jobs is not confined to just bays and chestnuts.) I got him from the Warehouse Sale in December 2018. He was something like 50% off, so how could I say no?

I had to name him something from the song, of course. I almost picked SNOWMAN! (in all caps like that, with the exclamation point) because Winter Wonderland always reminds me of my dear friend Aaron from undergrad. One night, near Christmas break in 1997 or 1998, we got shit-faced and started singing that song as we wandered through campus in the snow. One of us would sing, “In the meadow we can build a snowman,” and the other one would yell at the top of our lungs, “SNOWMAN!” For some reason, that stuck with us, and to this day, we still text SNOWMAN! to each other every so often. The most recent occurrence was a month ago.

I didn’t want judges to think I was yelling at them, though, so I went with Parson Brown for his name instead. He’s done pretty all right for himself, with four breed NAN cards and two collectibility NAN cards in his six times on the table.

 

 

This gal was from my early-2024 “Buy Stones from Australia” era. (Seriously, all of my January and February purchases that year were Stones from sellers in Australia.) She’s Mini Me Bernadette, a run of 25 Chips Arabians in gloss for one of the Eureka Live shows; Stone Horse Reference doesn’t specify the year, or the artist who painted her. There were also 25 made in matte. I fell in love with her color as soon as I saw her. Her show name is Aid and Abet. She took Light section champ her first time out.

 

 

This model was the first Stone mini to enter my collection. In 2010, I both rejoined the hobby after a hiatus for grad school and attended my first model horse show - the Chesapeake Regional All-Halter Bash (CRAB) show in Maryland over Halloween weekend. Chesapeake Bey II, a bay Pebbles Arabian, was made just for the show. In an email from the show holder, we were told there were only 20 made, but the Stone Horse Reference site says there were 30; it was so long ago that I don’t remember how many were actually on the sales table. We submitted our names for a drawing if we were interested, and my name was drawn in the first five or so, so I got to hand-pick a really nice one.

She’s been on the show table 48 times - more than any other model in my collection - and has amassed quite the collection of ribbons and NAN cards in both breed and collectibility. Her show name is A Cappella.

 

 

This is Applewood, a run of factory customized Pebbles Arabians for the Springamathing live show in 2012. Her run size is unknown. I bought her online direct from Stone after the event. She has also been on the show table quite a lot, 37 times, and does just as well in breed as her sister A Cappella, though she is not as competitive in collectibility due to her unknown (and therefore assumed to be larger) run size. Her show name is Worth the Wait because it took a loooooooooooong time for them to get her out of the factory and on her way to me. I ordered her on September 3, and she didn’t get shipped out until the very end of October!

Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Great Spirit sets

A bit of a shorter post today; I find myself with a dearth of mental energy due to how chaotic work has been. I’m a Clinical Data Analyst (aka Giant Data Nerd) and my organization started switching to a different instance of our Electronic Health Record in late September, which has made my job ... interesting. No mapping was done for some of the things that changed (like patient visit types and appointment scheduling modes), so the data between the systems doesn’t match, and figuring out how and why and then wrangling the new data around to match the old data has been nightmarish. I want to have enough brain left to keep up with these blog posts, but it’s a struggle at the moment.

For today’s Gift Horse post, I needed something both easy to write about and easy to photograph, so I’m visiting Christmas gifts from 2001 and 2003, when JCPenney produced several sets of models with “Great Spirit” in the name, symbolizing (according to the COAs) the “Great American West” and spirits of animals valued by Indigenous People of the Great Plains.

 

 

#410201 Great Spirit Mare & Foal set was produced in 2001. No piece count was ever released for this set. They were just called "Breyer Paint Mare & Foal" in the catalog, but came with a COA with the Breyer-issued name above. The bright flaxen chestnut Marabella has a bear shape on her flank; if you squint, you can see it on mine. The masking went a little askew, so the bear's eye is up underneath its ear, and it also looks like it has a camel hump. The bear is much easier to perceive on other copies I've seen. 

 

She was my second on the Marabella mold; the foal was my first on the Ashley mold. I got them for Christmas that year from my parents.

In 2002, JCPenney released the Great Spirit II set, called Legend of the Wolf. The molds were Buckshot and Phantom Wings, and the Buckshot had a wolf in the pattern on his side. I’m not a fan of those molds and don’t currently have any of either in my collection, so I didn’t ask for the set that year.

 

 

#410703 Great Spirit of the Mighty Eagle III was produced in 2003, again with no piece count released. I got them for Christmas that year from my parents. The set represented Mustangs with an eagle pattern on them. The eagle is easy to make out on the Running Stallion, though the foal's head is hiding a good bit of it here. 

 

The COA doesn’t name them individually, but the JCPenney catalog called the Running Stallion “Kwahu” and the Action Stock Horse Foal “Alo.” Both were the second of each mold in my collection, with the #810 Action Appaloosa Foal preceding “Alo” and Rumbling Thunder preceding “Kwahu.”

 

I ended up with a second set of these guys when I bought a small lot of random models from a local Pittsburgher selling her collection through Craigslist. The duplicate set found a new home during BreyerFest 2012.

Full Spectrum: Still More Winter Blues

Wrapping up the Winter Blues series today, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Meteorological spring started on March 1, with astronomical spring just around the corner next week. January and February were especially brutal this year. My gas bill was insane. March started better - we hit 78 degrees in Pittsburgh a week ago, ahead of a storm that I would swear dumped 2” of rain in fifteen minutes. It looked like we were under a waterfall. My poor sump pump couldn’t keep up and we got water in the basement and the garage (sigh). 

Anyone who knows me knows I’m as big of a weather nerd as I am a model horse nerd. Half my BreyerFest photo album every year is clouds. So of course I saw Saturday’s beast coming on radar and was out snapping pictures and panoramics as it approached. The shelf cloud at the front of the storm was pretty cool.

 

 

Anyway, back to the ponies. I saved the Breyer Traditionals for last on purpose. You’ll see why when we get to the last horse.

 

 

In 2006, Breyer did their first Treasure Hunt series, releasing the Lady Phase mold in four colors - palomino pinto, fleabit gray, chestnut, and black appaloosa. The lucky finders of all four colors could send in the UPC codes from the boxes to redeem a prize model, who was this lovely Wedgewood. The snippet on the back of her box listed her number as #1248, but I’ve also seen #1215 listed. The latter makes more sense, since the other four colors were released with the numbers 1211 - 1214.

All four of the original colors came in both short- and long-tail versions, as did the Wedgewoods. I have a complete set of both. I wasn’t collecting at the time these were released, being a poor, overworked grad student, so I’ve come by all of them secondhand. I bought the short-tail Wedgewood Lady Phase from Model Horse Sales Pages in June 2011, and the long-tail Wedgewood joined my collection from a room sales pickup at BreyerFest 2018. I’ve only shown the short-tail; her show name is Stonewashed.

 

 

This little cutie is #710301 Shadow of Blue, a 2001 BreyerFest special run of 1600 pieces. I picked her up in room sales during BreyerFest 2013. She could pass for a realistic model in this crappy lighting, but she's definitely too blue for that when you see her in person. Her show name is Sapphire.

 

 

As soon as this guy was announced - #711508 Franz, a 2022 BreyerFest special run of 2000 pieces - I knew I had to have him. Even though it was twenty-cough-cough years ago, I distinctly remember my first time seeing Franz Marc’s blue horse paintings during an undergrad class for my art minor. They struck a chord (obviously, look how obsessed I am with blue horse-shaped things) so I didn’t hesitate to put Franz onto my BreyerFest special run preference list that year.

 

 

BreyerFest 2025 was one of those years where I didn’t really need any of the special runs heading into the event - except this guy, #B-EV-10441 To the Ties That Bind Us. Silver mold? Yes! Blue? Yes! Outlines of other Breyers, including Sham, on his butt? Yes!

Could have done with a shorter, less awkward name, but whatever.

The first few people through the tent line quickly discovered that there was a gold variation on this guy. Rumors flew that the gold was a micro-run, and the prices went absolutely nuts for the gold guys on eBay for a few days. As more people obtained and opened them, it became pretty clear that the blue and gold were evenly distributed and that the silver Silver (ha, silver Silver) was the micro-run. A silver Silver would have been cool (I’d have given it to my friend Nina for her conga) but I was happy to open the blue that I’d had my heart set on.

The high resale values on both the blue and gold have persisted well past BreyerFest, likely due to Silver's popularity in general and how well this particular release was received. They’re still selling regularly on eBay for $250-350.

And now … drumroll please … the paramount blue horse in my collection, the grail of all grails, the horse I never in a million years thought I’d ever get to own:

 

 

The one, the only, Smurfy Sham.

BreyerFest in 1991 was divided into four parts across the country - Redmond/Bend, OR; York, PA; Lexington, KY; and Pomona, CA. Each location had its own raffle model of 21 pieces. Oregon had a Copenhagen San Domingo, Kentucky had a Gold Charm Man O' War, and California had a Florentine Legionario. #414091 Sham was the York, PA raffle model in the fourth original decorator color, Wedgewood.

His issue name wasn’t Smurfy, though it should have been - their attempts to replicate the Wedgewood of the 60s decorators went a *smidge* sideways. I don’t know who coined the term Smurfy for him, but it’s dead-on.

Being a Sham nut, I always wanted to have a Smurfy, but never expected to actually get one for several reasons. (1) There have been a ton of fakes of this guy over the years, so I had to have one with provenance - one that came from an original winner (or at least had a definitive chain of ownership leading back to an original winner). (2) My pocketbook for rarities is fairly pitiful compared to the heavy-hitters in the hobby, so even if I could find a real one, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to compete. (3) Even if I could technically afford it, I typically have trouble pulling the trigger on large plastic pony purchases. The odds were not in my favor.

In 2020, of all the years, nothing was in anyone’s favor. Everything was cancelled. Work and school occurred from home. Social events happened on Zoom or not at all. The Seattle event (for which I'd been lucky enough to get picked) was cancelled and BreyerFest was moved entirely online. It was a time of isolation, depression, and fear for a lot of folks. 

 

Some hobbyists coped with that by putting out ISOs for their grails. And they started finding them.
 

On May 11, 2020, after seeing yet another person get their hands on something crazy rare they’d always wanted, I said, “What the hell,” and I made an ISO post for Smurfy on the Rare Model Horse Sales Facebook group.

Later that same day, I got a message on Messenger from my friend Nina. I knew she had a Smurfy (even before she messaged me), but I also knew that he was incredibly sentimental to her - her mother had won him at the York, PA BreyerFest, and her mother had since passed, so he was extra special to her. I didn’t think she’d ever part with him for that reason, so I was really surprised when she responded to my ISO post. She said she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to let him go, but she’d think about it, since she knew how special he'd be to me and that he'd have a forever home here. I told her to take her time and if she decided she wasn’t ready, that was totally fine.

Within a couple weeks, she messaged me that she was ready and named her price.

I have never transferred money between my bank accounts that fast in my LIFE.

Smurfy at FAMulous 2022, winning all the things.

 

He’s come to every single show with me (as long as I’m not judging the Breyer division) since things started up again post-pandemic in late 2021. He’s been on the table sixteen times, hasn’t ever been shut out of the ribbons, and has completed the ribbon rainbow - nine firsts, three seconds, and one each of third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. He’s also been section champ twice, section reserve champ twice, and an overall collectibility champ once. His show name is Once in a Blue Moon.

He is one of the most special models in my collection, and I will be forever thankful to my friend Nina for allowing a piece that was so special to her to find a new home on my shelves. He is greatly treasured here.