Special Effects: Glossy Surprise Models

Let’s talk surprises.

Every year since 2011, Breyer has included a “Surprise” model in the BreyerFest Special Run lineup. No one knows anything about it – the mold, the colors, and how many are made of each color are all a mystery. The Surprise SR reveal is one of the biggest to-dos on Friday morning. People speculate and gawk and mill around outside the pickup tent until those first people come out and rip open the opaque bags to reveal the mold and colors. Then there’s a flurry of social media posting and texting as everyone spreads the news. Then the accounting begins – how many colors are there?  Which ones seem to be the most common and the most rare?  Which colors do people like the best?

It’s a whole thing, and it’s pretty fun.

With a few notable exceptions (the silver bay Rotating Draft in 2022 and the decos from 2023 and 2025), most of the surprise models are matte, with a smaller amount of each color in glossy. Statistically, your chances of pulling a glossy have fallen between 16% (2015 & 2016) and 38% (2022). Since 2021, when the run quantity surpassed 6000 models and they started tossing in random colors that were glossy only (like the aforementioned silver bay Rotating Draft), your chances have improved to around 30% on average.

However, my personal luck at pulling glossies is abysmal. Of the 23 surprise models I’ve gotten directly from the SR line since 2013,  only three have been glossy. That’s a success rate of 13%. I sold my glossy rose gray Hero’s Welcome Surprise a couple years ago at BreyerFest, but I still have the other two. I have purchased a few on the secondary market as well, which will also get their turn in the spotlight today.

 

 

I love this guy’s story.

For the 25th anniversary of BreyerFest in 2014, Nokota was the surprise mold as #711181 Pop the Cork, a total run of 2700 pieces. It was fairly easy for the first tent line folks to figure out the surprise mold was Nokota even before unwrapping him. He’s … uniquely shaped, shall we say, and the most un-Tetris-able model horse to ever exist. Limbs and hair all over the place. Mine live nose to tail on the shelf because that’s the only way they’ll all fit on there.

Back in those days, we were still lining up in the tent with our tickets and waiting for the hot Breyer staff guy to draw the number to start the line. My draws were great that year - I was only 65 people back on the first one, 35 people back on the second, and about 150 people back on the third.

I had two tickets on Friday and got a matte bay Pop the Cork with my first one. The second ticket was later in the day, so I grabbed my models and, without opening them, went back to the La Quinta with my friend Donna. Donna got into the shower to freshen up before we embarked on our evening journey to the CHIN, while I got to work unwrapping things. When I saw that my second bay surprise was glossy, I absolutely lost my shit and shrieked so loud that Donna heard me from the shower, thought I’d injured myself, and yelled out in a panic to make sure I was okay.

There were 120 made of him, and he was by far the most popular color in gloss, so he still commands a hefty price tag on the secondary market. I feel so fortunate to have lucked into mine for cost. Couldn’t have been more appropriate that my first glossy surprise model from the tent line was a Shiny Bay Thing! I show him on occasion under the name One-Fifty-One, which was my ticket number when I pulled him.

 

 

In 2020, the first virtual BreyerFest (by necessity), the surprise release was called #711371 Slainte Surprise, a run of 4500 total pieces. For the first time ever, no one found out first thing on Friday morning what the surprise was - none of us were in Kentucky to open one. We had to wait until people started getting their shipped orders (which took FOREVER due to impacts from the pandemic) to find out that the mold was Giselle. I’m one of those folks who looks for patterns and tries to predict the surprise mold every year; in 2020, I got down to seven possibilities, of which Giselle was one, so I was pleased with that.

The glossy roan is one I got myself from my tickets; I purchased the other two secondhand. You can read more about them in my December Do That Conga post, where I talked about all my Giselles.

 

 

#711220 Quelle Surprise was on the Lonesome Glory mold for BreyerFest 2015, Vive la France. I coveted the glossy sooty buckskin pinto from the second I saw one, but I had to wait a few years before one came my way. Heather B, once again, is responsible for my ownership of him. I picked him up from her at the Quarter Horse Congress show in October 2019. There were 120 of him made. His show name is L’Etonnement.

 

For BreyerFest 2021, Horse of a Different Color, Dundee was the surprise mold as #711400 Seven Arts Surprise. I wasn’t really wowed by any of the colors - til I saw this one in gloss. When we were finally able to have BreyerFest again in 2022, room sales were nuts. I sold more than I ever have. So I bought this guy with some of the proceeds. His show name is Bob Ross.

 

 

The Cleveland Bay was the surprise mold in 2022 as #711510 Rotating Draft Surprise. The BreyerFest theme that year was Prost, and it was the first year of one of the best things they’ve ever invented as part of BreyerFest - the beer tent. (And I don’t even drink beer. Especially during the day. Day Drinking Mel’s irritability is well-known.) The beer tent is an awesome place to chill out in the shade with friends, and it’s right next to all the food trucks. I highly recommend it.

1250 of the Rotating Draft Surprises - 17% of the total run - were this lovely glossy silver bay. Did I pull one? Of course not. I bought this one from my friend Nina.

 

There are 10 more glossy surprise models on my wish list: 2012 Stoneleigh Surprise in glossy silver bay; 2013 CC Shuffle Surprise in glossy chestnut appaloosa; 2017 Bollywood Surprise in glossy pintaloosa; 2018 Dark Horse Surprise in glossy black; 2023 Stagecoach Surprise in glossy chestnut and glossy gray; 2024 Girls Run the World Surprise in glossy wild bay; and 2025 Seize the Day Surprise in glossy sooty palomino, glossy silver bay, and glossy gray.

I think we’re looking at Duende, Shannondell, True North, or Vermeer this year as the surprise mold.

If it’s Weather Girl, send thoughts and prayers for my bank account.

2026 BreyerFest Bonus Post #1

Surprise! It's the week of BreyerFest!

 

I had a great first day and felt like posting, so here we are. I'll share a few pics of my journey, and then the models I bought in room sales this evening.

 

BreyerFest wouldn't be BreyerFest without this nerd taking cloud photos. This was a small thunderstorm that went up over Columbus, OH, on my drive. I caught the bottom edge of it; it only rained for a few minutes.

 

 

Mandatory annual pictures of the Hell is Real sign between Columbus and Cincinnati, and the Florence Y'all tower. This is my fifteenth in-person BreyerFest, but I still take those pictures on every single drive.

 

 

As soon as I snapped the Florence Y'all pic and rounded the curve, this nasty-looking sky was staring me straight in the face. I had always intended to stop at the rest stop just past the water tower, and I stayed an extra few minutes to let the storm pass. Luckily, it looked worse than it was.

 

 

Annual mandatory pic of the Big Bone Lick State Park sign.

 

The moment of arrival ... and the infamous CHIN carpet.

 

We decided not to set up or open our room for sales tonight, and walked around shopping and checking out the renovations-in-progress instead. I took photos of some of the random things we found, like the phone from room 432 sitting on a bucket in a stairwell, and box of shower curtains in the hallway in the 400s.

 

[I can neither confirm nor deny the occurrence of a discussion with my roommate about snagging one of those new curtains from the hallway after we discovered that ours is barely long enough to reach the bathtub, let alone provide adequate coverage against spraying water. I anticipate at least one flooded bathroom floor in our future this week.]

 

This is a blog about my collection, so I guess I should get around to sharing my two purchases this evening.

 

 

This Merrylegs is from the 1992 Sears special run set #496092 Horses Great and Small set. I bought the grullo Clydesdale in my childhood collecting days, and found the black Cantering Welsh Pony a few years ago at an antique store. I was just missing the Merrylegs, and set out to find one this year at the CHIN. My friend Jackie had two of them in her room, and sold me one.

 

 

This handsome guy is a OOAK Stone Arab named 50 Shades of Gray. He was released in 2015. The seller posted him a few months ago on the Peter Stone Sales Page on Facebook, and I started a message to her about buying him probably a dozen times, but could never hit send. She had him with her in her room sales, and I couldn't walk away after seeing him in person. My parents gave me birthday money and some BreyerFest spending money, and he's what I chose to spend that on. I'm thrilled to have him!

 

Not sure how much time I'll have for other blog posts this week, but my regularly scheduled ones will still go up on Wednesday and Saturday. In the meantime, happy BreyerFest!

On a Regular Basis: 2025 CHIN Shopping

By the time this posts, I should be in Kentucky!!!

In honor of BreyerFest, and in honor of what may the last year of room sales at the CHIN and might be the last year of room sales ever (sob), today’s post will be about the regular runs that I bought at the CHIN last year.

 

 

This is #1359 Tommy Turvey’s Pokerjoe, a regular run from 2008-2010. I love the Adios mold, though I don’t have many of them, and I’ve always loved Pokerjoe’s red bay color and minimal tobiano pattern. He’s been on my want list for quite a long time, but I never managed to pick one up until last year, when my friend Sara had him for sale in her room for a mere $20. Sold!

 

 

Next up on the 2025 room sales acquisitions was this lovely chestnut Marabella, #1409 Let’s Go Riding English, a regular run from 2010-2013. Like Pokerjoe, I was in love with her color and shading and she was on my want list for a long time; I just never managed to acquire one. She was also only $20.

 

 

FINALLY.

I can’t tell you how many #410 Shams I’ve looked at over the years at the CHIN, trying to find one without a wheat ear. A common misconception in the hobby is that the Shams with the wheat ear on the chest are harder to find than the ones without a wheat ear. Fourteen years of shopping at the CHIN and dozens and dozens of Shams later, I’m here to tell you - the wheat ear is the common variation, and non-wheat-ears are really tough to find. Nancy Young speculated that the wheat ear marking wasn’t removed until sometime in 1988, the last year of production of #410, because some of the #411 fleabit gray Shams (introduced in 1988) also have the wheat-ear marking. (I have both versions.) I think that’s pretty solid reasoning, and explains why #410s without the wheat ear are so hard to find.

My search finally came to an end last year during my Thursday night CHIN shopping. He was reasonably priced at $25. Hooray! He happily joined his (cough cough ten) wheat ear #410 Sham brothers on the shelf.

I’m heading into this year’s room sales without any expectations, other than to hit all the open rooms at least once throughout the week. There have been years where I’ve skipped entire wings or floors; not this year. Not if it’s truly the last time I’ll ever be able to do it, and I think it might be. I can’t imagine another hotel will allow the level of shenanigans that the CHIN has put up with over the years. Since this might be it, I’ve allowed myself a significantly larger budget than usual and I’m planning to make the most of it.

Happy BreyerFest!