Do That Conga: Smarty Jones

I’m running right up against time for this one and had to see what photographs I already had, so I’m going to loosely interpret the word “conga” for today and talk about my Smarty Jones models, which only number four in quantity.

 

 

This is #711047 Rushmore, a 2007 BreyerFest special run of 1250 pieces. I bought him from my friend Kelly W in April 2011. He has been an outstanding show horse for me - of the seven times he’s been on the table, he’s picked up four NAN cards and only finished out of the ribbons once. His show name is Jefferson.

 

 

This is #1345 Secretariat, a regular run that was first released in 2009 and is still in the lineup today. I got mine back in April 2014 when Tuesday Morning was still a thing and regularly received overstock from Breyer. I’m not quite sure why, but I drove all the way up to the Quaker Village Shopping Center in Leetsdale to get him.

I feel like Smarty Jones makes a better Quarter Horse than a Thoroughbred, and I’m completely overrun with stock horses, so this guy has only done a couple of photo shows during the pandemic. His show name was Create A Stir, which is an anagram of Secretariat.

 

 

A couple months later, on my birthday in 2014 - the same day I found my chalky buckskin Mustang while antiquing - I visited my friend and local Breyer dealer, Bonnie, to buy myself a present or two. This guy, #1712 Frankel, a regular run from 2013-2015, was one of my purchases. I believe he’s a modern chalky, as he has a nice white halo around his face marking. I think this bay is one of the prettiest colors they've ever put on him.

 

Like Secretariat, he’s only ever shown in photo shows, and I did the same thing with his name as I did with Secretariat’s - used an anagram. His name was Fen Lark.

 

 

I’ve probably said this before - I am neither a fan of cream dilutes nor a fan of patterned models, but put them together, and something glitches in my brain. I liked this model as soon as I saw him. He’s #701741 Hakan, a Tractor Supply Company special run from 2019. Some of these guys had a more uniform color and some had incredible shading; I looked at quite a few online before this guy practically leaped out of the picture from a Facebook group and onto my shelves in June 2020. His shading is outstanding. 

Being a mostly solid-colored horse fan, I don’t have a ton of appaloosas, so he gets into the show ring fairly regularly. His show name is Caldeum, a reference to the city in the video game series Diablo, which was ruled by emperors Hakan I and Hakan II. I didn’t play Diablo myself, but had a friend in college who was absolutely obsessed with it, and I spent many hours watching him play it.

I like this mold a lot, so I’ve got a whole bunch of Smarty Jones models on my wish list: Phantasma, Santiago, both finishes of Smarty Jones himself, both finishes of the bay pinto and black Dark Horse Surprises, both finishes of Riley, glossy Secretariat, and Daytona. A couple of those are relatively easy and cheap to obtain, but I’ll probably never have most of them.

Sentimental Journey: Muir Woods

Sometimes things in life have a really interesting way of coming together.

 

In early February 2019, Chris and I took a trip to San Francisco. The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team was playing nearby in San Jose and I’d never been to California, so I went with him. Our flight out was first thing in the morning on January 31, putting us in San Fran around 11:00 a.m. We'd spend the rest of that day and the next sightseeing, hit up both the soccer game and the Sharks home game down in San Jose on February 2, and then fly home February 3.

 

Predictably, that’s not how things happened. There was a significant delay with our flight and we didn’t get out of Pittsburgh until 4:00 p.m. They ended up putting us on a direct flight rather than one with connections like we’d originally had, but it was already dark when we landed in San Francisco. We lost an entire day of sightseeing.

 

We had to eliminate some of the things each of us wanted to see (for me, sadly, that meant Alcatraz) and cram the rest into a full day on February 1. We had a rental car, so we went to Lombard Street, the Palace of Fine Arts, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Painted Ladies. Chris wanted to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, so we did that. When we got to the other side, he mentioned a park he’d last visited as a kid, an old-growth coastal redwood forest, and asked if I minded giving it a try even though it was rainy. I’ve always felt a strong spiritual connection to trees and there’s sense of peace I get when I’m in the woods that I don’t get anywhere else, so I immediately said yes, rain be damned.

 

The park was Muir Woods, and it was easily my favorite part of the trip. 

 

 
The next morning, as we were getting ready to head to San Jose for the soccer game, I happened to check my email on my phone and saw the announcement for the web special #712292 Muir Woods, a run of 350 pieces from the America the Beautiful Series, honoring National Parks across the U.S. He was released on February 1 - the same day I was in the real place.

That made him an instant must-have.

 

 

Given that I was already sentimentally attached, I was nervous that I wouldn’t get drawn for him. My luck with web special lotteries is abysmal. But the alignment of the universe that caused me to be in Muir Woods the day he was released must have still been at play, because I got picked for him from the first draw. He’s as gorgeous in person as he was in the promo photos. Every time I look at him, I think about the real place and how awesome it was to be there.

 

I also don't think it's a coincidence that my Sentimental Journey post was on tap for today, exactly seven years later.

 

Whenever the time comes to disperse my collection, he'll be one of the last to go. 

New Additions: January 2026

One of my 2026 goals was to buy fewer models and spend less money. I’ve long been out of space in the horse room, the Floorses are multiplying at an alarming rate, and I dropped a ton of money last year trying in vain to save my cat, so finding some discipline in both quantity and expenditure was in order.

That lasted exactly 18 hours and 31 minutes into 2026.

 

 

On the evening of January 1, a seller posted this delicious thing, a liver chestnut Pebbles Arabian Mare, on the Peter Stone Sales Page on Facebook. The seller wasn’t sure if she’s a OOAK You-Color-It or a You-Call-It model (the former is your choice of color, pattern, and markings on a pre-selected body, while the latter is pretty much anything goes, including some super extreme customizations), but what she is doesn’t really matter to me. I just said, “Yes, please,” and bought her.

Four days later, my washing machine entered the end of its life cycle. It’s still here, but multiple pieces (that are no longer made) are broken within the drum and it sounds like the bastard offspring of a velociraptor and a bad fan belt when it spins. We’ll have to get a new one sooner rather than later. Luckily that was covered by our home warranty, who sent us a Lowe’s gift card to go pick out a new one.

Two days after that, my water heater crapped out, which was NOT covered by the home warranty, and there went my “fun money” budget for the foreseeable future.

 

However ...

 

 

Then this happened.

 

I shouldn’t have even bought this guy, but come on - he is the definition of what I most enjoy collecting. Arabian? Check. Bay? Check. Glossy? Check. Painted by Audrey Dixon? Check.

Obliteration of Mel’s willpower? Check.

His issue name is Wisenheimer and he was a run of 3 models released in November 2018. I’ve looked at this guy’s picture on the Stone Horse Reference site dozens of times in the past few years. With a quantity of 3, I never thought I’d find one. I messaged the seller as soon as I saw him and said, “I’ll take him.” Didn’t even want more pics. Didn’t negotiate the price or ask for time pays, even though the seller probably would have accommodated the latter since I’ve bought other models from her in the past. I had grabby hands the second I saw him.

He snuck in just ahead of the snow storm we got last weekend, which dumped a foot of snow on us overnight Saturday and into Sunday evening and was followed by an entire week of highs in the single digits/teens and lows as frigid as -14 (this morning). I'm glad the seller shipped him out as fast as she did!