Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: 60s Bay Fighting Stallion

In addition to all my awesome model horse hobby friends who have gifted me things, I have also been gifted models from non-model-horse collectors.

I’ll have known my boyfriend, Chris, for 25 years this April. (God, we’re not that old, are we?) In high school, he was friends with a guy named Steve, who married a gal named Carrie. Steve and Carrie been together as long as Chris and I, if not longer. They're Jeep people, like Chris, and they also have a floofy black kitty whom they rescued as a feral kitten, which automatically makes them Really Cool People. We’re all friends on Facebook.

Carrie has been a long-time collector of Barbies, and she and Steve frequently go out treasure hunting to flea markets and estate/yard/rummage sales. In August 2015, Carrie sent me a message that she had acquired eight Breyers at a rummage sale and wanted help identifying and pricing them. They were a mix of 60s-70s vintage models and some newer, mid-2000s regular runs. I couldn’t tell from the photos if any of the vintage ones were chalky (they were all correct for the era) so we agreed to meet up at my house so I could look at them. Carrie and Steve also wanted to meet Felice, who was only three months old at that time and already a Facebook star in her own right.

As soon as Carrie freed this guy from his bubble wrap, I knew I had to have him.

 

 

This guy is one of the prettiest bay Fighting Stallions I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. #35 King, The Fighting Stallion had a long, long run in Breyer’s lineup, from 1961-1987. There are a zillion copies of him out there. This particular model is from the 60s - he doesn’t have the USA stamp, he’s got factory eyewhites, and he has remnants of the foot and tail pads that Breyer added to some models throughout the 60s to prevent them from scuffing furniture. The 60s models also tend to have the best shading, and this guy's shading is outstanding on both sides, so that also points him to this time frame.

He’s awesome.

The rest of the models in the lot were in great shape, except for a chipped ear on the bay Running Mare. I cleaned up a few stray marks on them, and then helped Steve and Carrie write up the descriptions for their eBay store and set Buy-It-Now prices. Once we arrived at a price on the Fighter, I asked them for their PayPal address so I could pay them.

Steve and Carrie looked at each other, came to an agreement without saying a word, and then Carrie said, “Consider it payment for helping us with the rest of them.”

I double and triple checked that they were okay with that - he was by far the most valuable of the lot and would have gotten them a great return on their initial investment - but they insisted that I keep him for free.

His show name is their last name, which I won’t share here in the interest of their privacy.

I also wanted to share these pictures - Felice absolutely hated when I was in the horse room without her, and would wail and shove her piggies under the door until I gave in and went out to pet her. I was in the horse room one day trying to get a quick photo of this guy when Felice decided she’d had enough, and these awesome photobombs occurred.

 

"MOM! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE, MOM!"

Full Spectrum: Even More Winter Blues

Ever see the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone? Remember when Madam Mim is having that epic tantrum at the end about hating sunshine, which devolves into her screeching the word “HATE” over and over again?

That’s how I feel about Valentine’s Day.

So today, we ain’t talking about pink models, red models, models with hearts on them, none of that. We’re continuing on with our Winter Blues series. Today is the Stablemates.

 

 

#701705 Stablemates Mini Fanfare was released through the JAH magazine in 2004. There were 1500 total sets made. Each set had the G1 Saddlebred in the four original decorator colors - Gold Charm, Florentine, Wedgewood, and Copenhagen, along with a G1 Draft in one of four colors (who I talked about in last month’s Collectibility Spotlight post). I’ve considered parting with the set in the past, but every time I pull these guys down to pack them up, I just can’t do it.

 

 

#711158 Dungaree was one of the four Single-Day Stablemates produced for BreyerFest 2013. I bought the full set that year, but he’s the only one of the four who is still here. I parted with my Chrome at BreyerWest 2018, and my Rivet and Indigo sadly yellowed while briefly stored between moves. I think they reacted with the bubble wrap.

 

 

I love this little mold. He has the goofiest face, especially when they paint eyewhites on him. This blue guy is #711282 Big Lex, one of the four Single-Day Stablemates made for BreyerFest 2018, Off to the Races. They’ve done a few representations of Big Lex over the years, but I like this little Stablemate the best. I’m sure the gloss has something to do with that.

I bought the full set of Stablemates that year as well, and none of them will ever leave me. My bestie and I have been in love with Silver Charm since his Triple Crown bid in 1998; Man O’ War is my favorite racehorse of all time; and Ruffian is on the G3 Standing Thoroughbred, whom I conga, and is also a Shiny Bay Thing.

I recently saw the set advertised for $550, which seemed like crazy town to me, but apparently that's what they're going for, because it sold.

 

 

This shrunken-down Albycorn (Alborozo unicorn - someone dubbed them that and man did it sure stick in my head) was the chase piece for the Horse Crazy Unicorn Surprise blind bag series, produced from 2018-2020. Even though he was the chase piece, and thus rarer than the others in the series, he wasn’t overly difficult to find, given how long the series was produced. I didn’t even have to go “feeling up the blind bags” to find mine - the seller from whom I bought Hakan in 2020 (featured earlier this month in my Do That Conga post) included the him as a free ride-along!

 

 

I’m not a huge unicorn person, but he’s blue, and he’s a G2 Warmblood, and I’ve congaed this mold since it was first released in 1998 and currently have 32 of them, so I had to have him. I bought him in April 2021 as a ride-along with my Stablemates Club release, Hendrik, so the latter would be double-boxed and less likely to get Seriously Mangled by the post office during shipping.

 

 

God, I hate this mold. (Again, picturing Madam Mim screaming, “Hate! Hate! Hate!”)

But of course they put blue on it, so I had to have it.

This is #712381 Dahlia, who was the gambler’s choice release for the Stablemates Club in 2021. I was in the club that year and received the glossy champagne with my own membership. It seems I completely fell off the map at the end of 2021 and didn’t write down where I got the blue one from (or anything else I bought in November and December that year), but I’m 99.99% sure Heather B was involved again, because I know I got this model at cost.

 

She's the only one of this bunch that I show. I had already named her glossy champagne sister Caledonia, so this blue gal became Caledonia Waterfalls.

 

 

This is #712413 Clydesdale Christmas, the annual holiday Stablemates blind bag release in 2021. Four colors were available, all glossed - blue, gold charm, silver, and red. Blue was obviously my first choice. I received both blue and gold charm; I sold the latter at BreyerFest 2024. Someday I’ll probably pick up a red one, since red is my favorite color.

I absolutely love that they shrunk down the Traditional-scale Clydesdale Stallion. He will someday be a large conga.

 

 

So this is a model I CM’d myself. When I write these posts, I always like to say when models joined my collection, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out when I’d done him. I’d have sworn to you that it was only two or three years ago, but his in-progress photos eluded me for quite awhile.

That’s because it has been a whopping SIX years since I did this guy, and I just didn’t go back far enough. He was a pandemic creation, borne of a Saturday in August 2020 when the only safe way to gather with people was outside. A few of my friends came over and we learned how to flock models on my back deck. I knew right away that I didn’t want something realistic, and my friend had brought a ton of colors with her, so I decided on a blue pinto. 

 

He has a bad hair day every day of his life, and his eyes are scary as hell and need redone, and I’m not sure I’d ever flock a model again by choice, but I’m overall pretty happy with the way he came out.

 

 

This guy arrived in late September 2025, quite a bit before I was expecting him. He’s part of the #B-CS-10464 set from the 2025 Deluxe Collector’s Club. One model in the set was a glossy bay appaloosa on the same mold, named Darius, while the other was one of the four original decorator colors. I’d have preferred the solid blue Wedgewood, but this Copenhagen was my second choice.

 

 

This is #B-CS-10353 Chickadee, the gambler’s choice from the 2025 Stablemates Club. This guy was my first choice of the four colors, even though I hate that pearly shit they put all over everything. The blue totally redeemed him in my eyes. My second choice would have been the glossy solid silver bay (shocking, I know).

He arrived in mid-October last year and was one bright spot amidst a whole bunch of awfulness between work and Felice.

Next month, I’ll finish up the Winter Blues series with the Breyer Traditionals.

Collectibility Spotlight: Test Sham

I am an admirer of rarities, though I am not a rarities collector. As soon as a comma is involved in the price tag, I balk, and since nowadays even many of the not-as-rare rarities easily command four figures, I’m priced out pretty quickly.

The exception to that - the exception to every collecting rule I’ve ever set for myself along the way - is Sham.

• I don't collect decos or unicorns: Lavinia (purchased 2001)
• I don't collect multiples of the same model: #410 (11), #411 (2), #812 (3), glossy Sears SR (2), #3162 (3), #3163 (2), Best Choice (2), The Black Stallion (3)
• I don't collect breakable things: Galaxias (purchased 2011)
• I don't collect unpainted models: Naked Shams x4 (purchased in 2014, 2016, and 2018)
• I don't collect autographed models: Rudish Sham #1 (purchased 2014) and Rudish Sham #2 (purchased 2015)
• I don't collect models on lamps: Sham-on-a-lamp (purchased at BreyerFest 2015)
• I don't collect models with boxes: #410 with 80s box (purchased 2015), #410 with Sears box (purchased 2018)
• I don't collect culls: #812 from ebay (purchased 2018)
• I don't spend a comma on models: Smurfy (purchased 2020) and this guy, purchased in 2023, the subject of today's post:

 

On July 6, 2023, a seller posted this test Sham for sale on the Rare Model Horse Sales page on Facebook. This is what she wrote about him:

“Ever since I bought this handsome guy from a fellow collector (who knew very little about him other than she had bought him from an estate sale a few years ago), I knew he was something special. I attempted to research who he is and where he came from, and this is what I managed to find out:

This vintage Sham is a semi-OOAK Marney Walerius test model, part of an extremely limited run of models that she had brought with her as gifts for the judges of a show that was held in Texas, back in the 1980's. It is my understanding that not one of these models were exactly alike, even if a few look very similar to each other; there were small differences between each one, as they were not all painted exactly the same. This particular guy is a rich, dark red chestnut, with what is called a "skunk tail" (flaxen at the base, and fading into red), with four white socks and very light pink/cream colored hooves. He also features the classic "wheat ear" marking on his chest that all vintage Shams originally had (before Breyer decided to stop releasing the Sham mold with this marking, as too many people were mistaking it as a flaw).”

The seller had quite a lengthy want list as possible trades, so I was optimistic we could work something out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything she wanted that was worth near the test Sham’s value. I reached out to her anyway, and over the course of the next few weeks, as we waited through her initial offer period and then some additional time as another interested party waffled back and forth on a final offer, we had some long and enjoyable conversations over Messenger about our mutual love of Sham and other Breyer Arabians.

Eventually, the other interested party withdrew, and the seller and I agreed on a trade - her test Sham for my Sanibel web special and quite a bit of cash to make up the difference in value.

I’d seen lots of pictures of the Sham at this point and was pretty convinced that he was what she said he was, but you never really know until you have the model in hand. In the time between when I paid for him and when he arrived, I half-convinced myself that he was just a cull of #410 and that I had grossly overspent.

As soon as I opened him, that worry disappeared.

 

 

He is so, so different in color from the regular #410 Shams. I put him next to my darkest and lightest #410s and it’s not even close. I have no doubt he’s original finish with a fully-executed paint job, and exactly what the seller was told he is - a Marney test from the mid-80s.

 

 

He’s got typical 80s seams, the wheat ear, and even some overspray on one fetlock, and his body color matches the chestnut Marney test on IDYB, though that one has a black nose and black hooves. The subtle difference supports the information the seller was told - that this might have been a small run, but each model was unique.

I knew right away that I was going to show him, so he needed a name. As a test, he obviously wasn't issued with a name, so I had nothing to work with. I wanted something that conveyed how momentous he is and also humorously reflected the sticker shock I had after buying him. Aftershock seemed a good fit - especially because he’s red, like the cinnamon liqueur.

If I have to limit myself to only one test model in my collection, I’m super happy it’s this one.