Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: A Supportive Sham

Apologies for the incredibly short post today - I had a busy weekend with Are You Kitten Me Live and commitments both Monday and Tuesday after work, so writing time was slim pickings.

Everyone knows by now how much I love Sham. He didn’t start out as an intentional conga, but by the time I had four or five of them, standing on a shelf in my childhood bedroom looking all proud of themselves, I was in love, so then I intentionally started buying all the new releases when they came out. By the time I started to cut back on collecting in 2001 after graduating from undergrad, I had nine of them. When I jumped back into the hobby with both feet in 2010, I started grabbing the missing ones up like hotcakes (and a whooooooooole bunch of duplicates, because for awhile, my motto was, No Sham Left Behind). My collection of Shams stands at 49 right now; the only one I’m missing is Niagara.

In early 2015, I was struggling with all the ways my life had changed since the previous May. I was in an apartment, living totally by myself for the first time - up to that point in my life, I’d always had a family member or a roommate or a pet living with me. But Chloie’s heart got the best of her in May 2014, and Chris and I had broken up, so I was on my own and horribly lonely. I reached out to a few friends for support; Heather B (who features in every post, I swear!) was one of them. 

On March 24, 2015, I came home from work to a box on my doorstep. I knew I hadn’t ordered anything, so I wasn’t sure what it could be. Inside the box was a note of support and encouragement, and this:

 

 

This Sham is from the #3162 Arabian Stallion and Frisky Foal set, produced in the first half of 1994 only.

Heather’s note mentioned that this particular Sham had been from her childhood herd, and she knew that Sham was my favorite and wanted him to live with me, and hoped he’d put a smile on my face during a tough time.

He did.

He still does.

Other Makes: Halloluck Cats

Today’s post was supposed to be a Full Spectrum, but we’re gonna go out of order a little bit to talk about something near and dear to my heart - our Are You Kitten Me Live benefit show, which we’ve held every spring since 2022. Our 2026 edition occurred this past weekend.

In early February 2022, the five of us hostesses started tossing around the idea of having a swap meet in the spring to unload some sales models. One of us suggested we have both a show and a swap meet in order to get better attendance, and then someone else suggested we do a raffle or auction to benefit a local cat rescue, and then someone else suggested that we make the whole show a benefit for a local cat rescue … and Are You Kitten Me Live was born. 

 

We secured a hall, got NAN qualified, and started advertising everywhere. We agreed that all expenses including the hall rental, ribbons, and prizes would be paid for out-of-pocket by us, so we could donate every penny from the entry fees, raffles, and auction to the kitties and maximize the donation. All we had left to do was pick a rescue.

Between the five show hostesses, we currently have eighteen cats. At least seven of those (off the top of my head) came from the same rescue - Wayward Whiskers in Greensburg. Even before adopting cats from there, several of the hostesses knew of Wayward Whiskers from the Cattfeinated Cat Cafe, a cafe and coffee shop with a small thrift store that also has two playrooms full of Wayward’s adoptable cats. It was a no-brainer to choose them as our beneficiary.

Our 2022 show was our smallest to date with just 21 entrants. (That was really all the hall had space for.) The day of the show, we found out we couldn’t use about a quarter of the hall space due to a ceiling leak, so that last-minute rearrangement and squishing was kinda interesting. Despite the small size of the show, we raised $2600 for Wayward Whiskers. The hobby really showed up!

 

That's continued every year since.

 

In 2023, we found a hall that was a little bigger, and were able to take 31 entrants. We got some wonderful donations - including a Quarantini centerpiece from Breyer! - and lots of items for the raffle. That was the first year of the swag bags with the now-famous catnip pierogis. Our donation to the rescue nearly tripled from our 2022 total - we raised $7700!

2024 found us in a gigantic show hall at the Turkeytown VFD, which could hold nearly 70 entrants, and that’s where we’ve been ever since. We’ve been able to draw in attendees from all over the country (and even Canada!) We’ve been privileged to have an elite, rotating judging roster every year thanks to people who are willing to both travel and volunteer their time. The quality of the judging is one of the things that makes this show the success it is, and I know I can speak for all of the hostesses when I say how lucky we are to have such a qualified group of people. Every year, we’ve had more and more help from hobbyists and non-hobbyists alike to get the show hall set up the night before, tear it down afterward, and run the raffle and auction. The Cattfienated Cat Cafe has come to the show two years in a row to offer free drinks to attendees. Thanks to the generosity of fellow hobbyists, the raffle and silent auction have both grown in size and quality every year, allowing us to continue raising truly astounding amounts of money - $11,800 in 2024, $12,250 in 2025, and $13,200 this past Saturday. That puts us at $47,550 raised for the rescue over the past five years! That money has helped get cats adopted into forever homes, care for sick or injured cats that make their way to the rescue, open a spay/neuter clinic, and, most recently, purchase a new x-ray machine.

We as the hostesses have a ton to coordinate, and we definitely do our part, but this show wouldn’t be what it is without our judges, donors, supporting cast, and the showers who bring their best models and dig deep into their pocketbooks to help animals in need. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever been a part of.

Today’s Other Makes post is directly related to the Are You Kitten Me Live show, and is a pretty funny story.

We’ve always had fun classes at our show, judged by the entrants using a bingo chip voting system. Whichever entry gets the most bingo chips is the winner. We started off with twelve classes, six based on cat colors (not limited to just cats as entries, though) and six miscellaneous classes - Breyer Cats, Other Make Cats, Cats With Horses, Rescued Things, Grumpy Things, and Destroyed Toys. In 2023, we cut back a few of those and added some Performance/Scene classes - Cat Performance, It’s Raining Cats and Dogs, Herding Cats, Cat Naps, and The Cat’s Pajamas. We kept ten classes through last year; this year, we cut that back to five in favor of allowing entrants (and me, as the person in charge of the fun classes) to relax and enjoy their lunch. The five classes this year were Collectible Cats, Cats With Horses, Cat Performance, Cat Scene, and one just called, “Are You Kitten Me?” We’ve seen some pretty fantastic and hilarious things come through the show in those classes.

The fun classes have always been my responsibility (both in choosing/naming them and in running them) so at our first show in 2022, I was searching for a fun little prize for the winners.

 

 

I found these cute little cat figurines by Halloluck on Amazon and thought, wow, those would work great! They came 9 to a pack, so I purchased two packs, and that was that.

Fast forward to lunch time on show day. I’ve got entrants walking around and depositing their bingo chips for their favorite entry, and I’m in the back where we'd stashed all the show stuff, grabbing the two packages of cat figurines to start handing them out as prizes. In addition to the outer bag, each cat was wrapped in its own plastic bag, so I’m standing there freeing all the little cat figures from their wrappings.

Enter one of my fellow show hostesses, who takes one look at the cat figurines and exclaims, loudly, “Oh my God, they have balls!”

 

 

Indeed.

So there I am, at a show that benefits a cat rescue that has to deal every day with the result of unchecked breeding, and I’m holding a handful of cat figurines with EXTREMELY PROMINENT TESTICLES.

Horrified is not a strong enough word.

I didn’t have any other handy options for the fun class prizes, though, so I had to gather my wits, stand in front of the entire show hall, and say, “Well, I got these cute little figurines as prizes, but um, they have balls, like, really noticeable balls, so um, sorry? And please don’t think this is reflective of any of our views and please please please spay and neuter your pets!”

Pretty much everyone found it hilarious, and the cats with balls became a permanent show fixture. They remained as fun class prizes for a few years, and eventually made their way into the swag bags. Every entrant now goes home with their very own cat with balls. The five pictured above were leftovers from previous years and now take up a bit of space on one of my Stablemates shelves.

Collectibility Spotlight: Vintage Club Gambler's Choices

While we’re on the subject of Gambler’s Choices - let’s talk Vintage Club ones for today’s Collectibility Spotlight.

Of the three clubs Breyer regularly offers - Vintage, Premier, and Stablemates - Vintage is the one I’ve done the most. I was a member for eight of the fifteen years since its launch - 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. The years 2016 and 2017 would have been included in there, but in late 2015, Breyer shut down my local dealer, who had been retailing Breyers for more than 30 years, over a 99-cent pricing error on the online portion of her dealership. I didn’t understand - and still don’t - how they could terminate such a lucrative, successful partnership over an error that is so easy to make. The nine and zero keys are right next to each other and anyone who doesn’t use the side number pad (or anyone who doesn’t have one; I don’t have one on the laptop I’m using to type this blog post) could make the same mistake. As a result of their decision, I boycotted buying anything directly from Breyer for all of 2016, which meant no Club memberships. And since you always have to sign up for clubs the year before, that meant I was out for the Vintage Club in 2017 as well.

I rejoined for 2018 and hung around for awhile, but when I started selling more than I kept and had a hard time getting even half of my investment back on the ones I sold, I was out.

The Vintage Club Gambler’s Choice was introduced for the first time in 2015 with Sailor, the Running Stallion in one of the four original decorator colors. I was a member that year and received a “Copenhagen.” I put that in quotes because, like Smurfy in 1991, something didn’t go quite right when they tried to reproduce the color from the 60s. Unlike Smurfy, though, the “Copenhagen” Sailors didn’t turn vivid Smurf blue - they were teal. Some clever hobbyist coined the color “Tealhagen,” which made me laugh out loud. I stole it and have delightfully used it ever since.

 

Side note: the 2026 Vintage Club release El Dorado (which queues up the Death Cab for Cutie song in my head every time I read the name) looked decidedly teal in his promo photo, enough for me to dub him "Tealhagen 2.0." Happily, he looks much less teal in the in-hand pics I've seen.

I did a three-way trade with a couple friends at BreyerFest that year to end up with a Wedgewood Sailor, who I later sold to my friend Nikki in 2022. She was after the full set of Sailors and he was the last one she needed, and he was going to be much more appreciated there than he was here.

I also received a Wedgewood Bernadette on the Shire mold in 2019, but she arrived pretty damaged from the loose COA in the box. (The resurrection of the “touchability” boxes was a terrible idea.) Breyer offered a replacement, but couldn’t guarantee a Wedgewood, so I declined. I sold the Bernadette at a steep discount in 2022.

 

Now let's get to the ones I still have.

 

 

In 2018, the Gambler’s Choice was #711242 Grace. The Vintage Club often uses at least one new mold in vintage colorways in order to keep memberships up, and that’s what they did here with Grace - the Weather Girl mold from 2011 in the three vintage colors from the Proud Arabian Mare: bay, alabaster, and dapple gray with black points. Since there were 500 memberships that year, that equates to approximately 167 per color. I was happy to receive the alabaster. Her show name is State of Grace.

 

 

Count me as one of those who engaged in chaotic, excited flailing when I saw they were putting out an In-Between Mare for the Vintage Club Gambler’s Choice in 2020 - and that one of them was a Shiny Bay Thing! [For additional reading on the original In-Between Mare and why she’s one of the rarest, most expensive, most collectible vintage Breyers ever, check out this article Breyer wrote about the mold earlier this year.]

I received the sooty palomino with my membership. My friend Beth was also a member that year, but didn’t want her Zahra, so she sold her to me. It was the Shiny Bay Thing, whose show name is Brillante. That just left the glossy rose gray pinto to pick up on the secondary market.

In 2021, the Gambler’s Choice was Nugget on the Brighty mold, offered in one of the four original decorator colors. Brighty fans everywhere started frothing at the mouth. I wasn’t really a fan, but then I saw an ad on Facebook for someone wanting to trade their glossy rose gray Zahra for a gold charm Nugget - and a gold charm Nugget is exactly what I’d received from Breyer. Easiest trade ever! Her show name is Bahira. Of the three, she does the best in the show ring.

 

 

2022 was my last year in the Vintage Club. The Gambler’s Choice, #712430 Poppy & Ollie, was another one like Grace - vintage-ish colors on a newer mold - but instead of using true vintage colors, they branded the colors as a “modern take” on some of the famous colorways from the Family Arabian sets of the 60s. Instead of matte bay, they did a glossy wild bay; instead of alabaster, they did a glossy perlino; and instead of matte chalky palomino, they did a glossy, much more nicely shaded version. There were 250 sets produced in each color.

While I like the original definition of the Vintage Club the best - vintage molds produced in vintage colors that they never wore originally - I’ve understood the necessity of keeping the collector base interested. If the club were to continue, they needed to vary on that theme a bit with modern molds in vintage colors and vintage molds in more modern colors. Every release prior to this one fit into one of those categories, and while I didn’t always like them, I could at least acknowledge that they fit the theme. Poppy and Ollie, though? While overall superbly done, they’re modern molds in a very modern take on vintage colors, and don’t really fit with the theme of the club at all. That was another nail in the coffin for my memberships.

 

 

As I mentioned above, I wasn’t a Vintage Club member in 2016, but I did like the Gambler’s Choice that year - #712619 My Girl, a Cantering Welsh pony released in glossy honey bay, glossy alabaster, or glossy honey palomino (think “that lovely, soft 60s FAM & FAS” honey palomino). Like Zahra, I immediately wanted one in all three colors, but at just 167-ish pieces per color, they’re hard to find and expensive.

At a show last year, I ran across this one for sale for only $50. That’s a third of what she cost to get direct from Breyer and about an eighth of what she usually sells for on the secondary market. Because I am an ethical person, I asked the seller if she knew it was one of the rarer Vintage Club models and if she wanted to change her mind on the price, but she said no - she just needed the shelf space. She even shipped me the COA after the show because she didn’t have it with her at the show hall. I don’t have the original box, but for $50, I’m definitely not complaining!

In addition to the other two colors of My Girl and a bay Grace, the only other Vintage Club Gambler’s Choice models I’d like to have someday are an undamaged Wedgewood and glossy gold charm Bernadette.