Other Makes: WIA

In 2021, a friend of mine posted a link in our group chat to the modellpferdeversand website in Denmark, where they had WIA models for sale. WIA is a German company producing models in a hard, rubbery plastic similar to CollectA and Schleich, but more rigid. They were pretty cool, but I wasn’t keen enough on them initially to pay the cost of international shipping. Then, in 2022, they put out a Vincenzo, and all of us in the group chat went in on a large order and split the shipping cost. Win-win!

 

 

This is #WIA BE10006, Lancelot, a run of 2500 pieces released in 2021. They had me at “dramatically-shaded dappled bay sporty thing.” He’s got a pretty bad scuff on one side so I haven’t ever shown him.

 

 

This is #WIA BE10003, Sharif, also a run of 2500 pieces released in 2021. The dapples are quite stark, but all the ones I’ve seen have been like that.

 

 

This is #WIA BE10010 Vincenzo, a run of 2500 pieces released in 2022.

I’ve been madly in love with the Vincenzo sculpt since I saw this lovely bone China sooty dapple buckskin for sale on a website sometime around 2006 or 2007:

 

The above guy belongs to a friend and I get to drool over him occasionally when she brings him out to shows. She even offered to sell him to me, but I Break All Breakable Things, so that’s a nope for sure. I will just admire him from afar.

When the relatively unbreakable mini version of Vincenzo came out in 2022 through WIA, I of course had to have one. I need to buy a stand for him - that front leg is really taking a beating from his weight distribution and should definitely not be at that angle. I've straightened it a couple times, but mean old Mr. Gravity ends up flattening it back out again. Triple Mountain sells stands; perhaps it’s time I wander over to that site to buy one ... and see if there are any other WIA models they can tempt me with.

Fantastic Finds: Honey Bay PAM & PAF

Well, it’s 3:48 p.m. as I’m sitting down to write this, and my posts always go up at 5:00, so time management issues are still A Thing right now. Work didn’t get any better as the week went on and I ended up having to put in some extra time in the evenings. 

On the funnier side, my Dad sent me a picture this morning of an asteroid with our new EHR’s name on it and said it was a close-up of the one that streaked almost directly over my sister’s house in Ohio on Tuesday and was visible from Pittsburgh. That inspired me to put the new EHR’s name on the Miley Cyrus wrecking ball meme, because it has made everything about my job 200% harder. 

I’ll take the laughs where I can get them.

I’ve already covered most of the knock-your-socks-off liberations in my collection, so now I’m moving on to the not-earth-shattering-but-still-cool liberations.

 

 

I picked up these two almost a year ago from an antique mall in Ohio as my friend Kelly W and I were driving up to Michigan for the BVG Live show. The Proud Arabian Mare is #14 Sheba and the Proud Arabian Foal is #15 Shah, both produced from 1958-1959. The production run on the early PAMs and PAFs was extremely short due to the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Hagen Renaker, as Breyer directly copied HR's Zara and Zilla molds for the PAM and PAF (respectively), so the late-50s PAM and PAF releases are a little harder to find and tend to be more expensive. The 50s honey bays and alabasters are significantly more common than the gray appaloosas; the latter tend to fetch thousands at auction.

Both of these honey bays are pretty scuffed up and need restored, but Kelly thought the price was reasonable for their condition and talked me into getting them. At the same store, Kelly nabbed a Cybis Donkey Foal and a Hagen Renaker DW English Bulldog, pictured below with my PAM and PAF. A successful liberation for both of us!

 

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!