Off-Script: BreyerFest Recap, Part 1

This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but apparently I don’t know when to shut up and wrote almost 2,000 words, so here we are, a day late.

What a BreyerFest! I wasn’t sure I’d ever top BreyerFest in 2010 - every minute of that first weekend in hobby land was magical - but this one did it. 

My anxiety is usually significant at BreyerFest. I joke with my friends to be prepared for at least one panic attack per year. But I felt great all week. (I’m guessing the meds had something to do with it, even though I had to discontinue them right before I left due to intolerable side effects.) I can count on one hand the number of times I experienced a difficult emotion - Tuesday afternoon when I had to sign on to what ended up being a very irritating work meeting, Saturday night when I bumped and damaged someone else’s model whilst room shopping, Sunday when we almost got hit by lightning in the food tent outside the covered arena and my anxiety spiked. That’s it. I think I laughed and smiled more last week than I have in the entire past year and a half.

I’m extremely happy with the balance between activities (two farm tours, BFL mini, the kids’ show) and time spent watching horse entertainment and gabbing with friends. It was a rush from one end of the week to the other - it always is - but I didn’t feel at any point like I was doing too much or not enough. I room shopped more than I have in years. I had time to go around both Friday and Saturday night tallying surprise models. I talked to two room shoppers about Power BI after they noticed my nerdy shirt. One said, “Oh, I love Power BI!” and the other rolled her eyes and said, “Power BI is the bane of my existence.” Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

In the ultimate reversal of my generally abysmal luck, I won a glossy prize model at my first ever BreyerFest Live. I also won my first in-person raffle model, and enjoyed a $40 filet mignon and an Irish Red on nitro on Saturday night to celebrate. Both will be featured soon in their own posts. (The models, I mean - though I did take a picture of both the steak and the beer.)

I could not have had a better time.

This year tied for 6th most as far as number of models I brought home (30), and was the most expensive by a lot - double my previous two most expensive years put together, and more expensive than 2023, 2024, and 2025 combined. I would normally be horrified at dropping that much cash at once, but I did it on purpose, and here’s why:

(1) My BreyerFest budget for at least the last 8 years has been based strictly on the cash I brought home from room sales the year before. Except for gas (because it’s just easier to pay at the pump), that money accounts for everything - hotel, food, miscellaneous things like tours and tips and the Goddamn Amazing cupcakes, raffle money, and of course, models. I can’t remember the last time I pulled money out of my bank account to pay for anything other than gas for BreyerFest, so I figured I was due for a little treat.

(2) The past year has sucked. Like, SUCKED. Work has been super stressful, I lost Felice, and my brain decided to toss two serious bouts of depression at me since Christmas. Allowing myself a larger budget at BreyerFest was a form of self-care.

(3) Rumors abounded that this might be the last year at the CHIN, and the last year of room sales at all, so I was determined to make the most of it.

Thirty models is waaaaaaaaay too many to cover in a single post (especially with how much I'm yammering on), so I’m splitting them up over the remaining seven posts scheduled for this month. Today is the Stones.

 

 

This gal is 50 Shades of Gray, an OOAK model from January 2015. She’s on the popular FCM Boaz Arabian Mare body. Because her name starts with a number, she’s right at the top any time I pull up my Stone wish list on the reference site, so I’ve looked at her a lot. She was posted for sale on the Peter Stone Sales Page Facebook group a few months before BreyerFest, and almost contacted the seller, but she was Expensive and I just couldn’t follow through. Fast forward to BreyerFest, when the seller posted her amongst her CHIN room sale ponies. I figured I’d get to the seller’s room as soon as I could and if 50 Shades was still there, I’d buy her. She was, so I did.

 

 

Back in May, my friend Chesna messaged me and said, “Hey, we got Stones, want some?” She and her boyfriend Chunk (yes, the famous CHIN Jello Shot Fairy Chunk) are helping to disperse another hobbyist’s collection; many, many lovely Stones were amongst the models they initially received. Chesna kept sending me pictures, not only because I might be interested but also in the interest of helping with identification, and I kept saying, “Oooooooo I want that one!” I ended up with four, and picked them all up the Tuesday of BreyerFest.

This guy, #AR18183 Holt, was a run of 50 Arabians for the 2009 Michigan Horse Expo. His pictures on the reference site did absolutely nothing for me; he wasn’t on my radar. At all. Til Chesna took a picture of him in natural light, and well, of course he had to come home with me.

 

 

This is Janek, an Equilocity special run of 10 pieces in 2014. The Blue Angel body is my favorite, favorite, favorite FCM Arabian (with Boaz a close second) so I was toast for this guy as soon as Chesna sent me pictures of him.

 

 

My ISH love runs as deep as my love for Arabs, so it’s no surprise that I also picked up an ISH from Chesna and Chunk. This is Carney, a run of 5 models in 2012. He’s an interesting shade of buckskin roan that looks absolutely awesome in some lights (including my dining room where this pic was taken) and absolutely weird in others (including the CHIN lobby by the 500s, where I took his original picture).

 

 

This is my first Stone Tennessee Walking Horse, and what an epic first TWH he is. 

For awhile now, I’ve been on the hunt for a #TW27011C Schnookered, a run of 250 pieces by D’Arry Jone Frank for the 2005 Signature Series. I recognized this guy as Schnookered as soon as I saw the pictures - but at the same time, he wasn’t QUITE Schnookered. His tail was different, and he was glossed. I looked him up on the ref site to see if there were variations of him (like there were for Boaz) and about fell out of my seat when I recognized him as the OOAK prototype, which was declined for the run due to the tail being “too expensive” to execute for the entire 250-piece run. The prototype was auctioned off instead at Equilocity 2005.

I asked Chesna if there was a signature on his belly, and sure enough, there it was, though it’s worn off quite a bit over the years due to handling.

I had no clue how to price something like this, so I made an offer on the other three and then deferred to Chesna and the original collection owner to dictate a price for the Schnookered prototype. We easily came to an agreement. He’s got a forever home here.

That’s the end of my “Chunk and Chesna made me do it” purchases; now on to the remaining two, which are also awesome.

 

 

So there I was on the Thursday of BreyerFest, minding my own business, watching our room sales while my roomie shopped, when my friend Beth texted me “BLUE ANGEL ALERT” and sent me a Facebook ad. A seller over at the Embassy Suites had a glossy bay Blue Angel DAH. He was lovely - but then I saw that the same seller also had a glossy non-FCM Boaz for a price I absolutely could not refuse. Boaz immediately derailed all thoughts of the Blue Angel Arab. [Though I won’t rule out messaging the seller in a few months, after I recover from BreyerFest, to see if he sold, and will buy him if he didn’t.]

The original Boaz has been my longest Stone grail. He came in four versions - matte and glossy non-FCM, and matte and glossy FCM. In late 2023, I finally obtained a glossy FCM, and have continued low-key looking for the other three versions, as someday I’d like to have one of each. The glossy non-FCM is the most plentiful of the 200-piece run at 65 made, but he’s still kinda hard to find, and tends to sell for a lot when he does come up.

I fully expected the seller to tell me he was already gone, but luck was with me, because no one had snatched him up yet. The seller accepted a small deposit to hold him for me until we could meet up. A couple hours later, after some slight confusion about where to meet and a bit of driving around on my end, we completed the sale in the lobby of the Marriott. He came with probably a dozen NAN cards and no COA, but he’s numbered #89/200 on the bottom of one hoof.

I now have both glossy versions of Boaz!

 

 

This guy has a story too, of course.

On Friday night, I went out shopping for a bit while my roomie minded our sales. I didn’t get very far down the 500s hall when I spied this guy - an OOAK from the 2020 Super Bowl sale named Stone Blitz, painted by Audrey Dixon. I talked about him back in March in my Do That Conga series as a model I seriously wanted.

Despite the very real possibility that walking away from him would lead me to miss out on him for the second BreyerFest in a row (and probably never find him again, as an OOAK), I didn’t have enough cash on me (or between cash and my PayPal) to buy him on the spot. I communicated my interest to the seller, returned to our room so my roommate could go bid on an item she wanted in the Horse You Want suite - and I didn’t stop thinking about Stone Blitz the entire time. Right before my roommate returned, I sold one of my Stone Andalusians for enough money to fully cover his purchase, and ran down the hall (not literally, someone would have ended up injured) and bought him. I walked back to our room hugging him.

Next up on Saturday - the Breyer room sales purchases!

Full Spectrum: Pharaoh Sham

BreyerFest 2026 has concluded, and of the 17 I've attended (including the virtual ones in 2020 and 2021), this was the best one by a lot. I already had today's post written and scheduled before I left for BreyerFest, so I'm going to let it hit the airwaves, but the rest of the month will be spent recapping what an amazing time I had at BreyerFest and the (cough cough, holy crap, just how much did I buy?!) models I brought home with me.

 

I was initially going to use this post to show you the decorator Special Run models I’ve purchased at previous BreyerFests. However, four of the five I already had are either blue or rainbow, and I’ve already talked about those. Wanderer from this year is still buried in a bin in my dining room. Hence, the Pharaoh Sham gets the blog all to himself today. [And I’m gonna have to correct my spelling of his name every single time, because after 11 years of typing American Pharoah’s misspelled name, it’s just become a habit to spell it wrong.]

 

 

#711058 Pharaoh was a run of 1050 pieces for BreyerFest 2008. I didn’t start attending BreyerFest til 2010, so I wasn’t able to buy him myself from the tent line, but he was on my list of models to look for at the CHIN during room sales. I needed him for my Sham conga, and I’ve always been slightly obsessed with ancient Egypt, so I thought he was really neat.

At that first BreyerFest in 2010, I didn’t find one on Thursday night at the CHIN, but that ended up being fine, because there in the Breyer store on Friday was a bin of new-in-bag Pharaohs, priced at $40. He must not have been real popular, because that was $10 less than his issue price at BreyerFest 2008. I happily snagged one. I’m even happier now, sixteen years later, because his price has gone up a lot, and the last couple on eBay have sold for over $300 each!

 

He's been shown once or twice; his show name is Glyph. 

 

I cannot WAIT to show yinz what happened at BreyerFest this year. Stay tuned! 

Collectibility Spotlight: Volunteer Models, Part 2

It’s kind of cool that part 2 of my volunteer models is scheduled to post only a couple hours after I finish my volunteer shift at the BreyerFest Children and Youth Show. Before I get to the models, I’d like to share (in italics below) some of what I wrote about the show in 2020 during my Missing BreyerFest series of posts.

I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to be the Results Guru for the BreyerFest Children & Youth Show since 2016, and let me tell you. I love everything about this show. It is one of my favorite parts of the whole weekend.  

Every year on Saturday morning, we volunteers get up before dawn and trek over to the Alltech Arena at KHP. It’s the only time I make my favorite drive in the semi-dark; the sun is beginning to come up, but it’s not there yet. Once I arrive, my job is pretty easy to set up – plug in laptop, turn on, queue up the spreadsheet, run some last minute tests to make sure it’s working the way I need it to, and done. I then go help with the setup wherever I’m needed. After a quick breakfast, we start letting the kids in, and the fun begins.  

The kids are so great to watch throughout the day. They're learning, they’re gabbing together, they're jumping up and down with excitement over any color ribbon, they're living in the moment as only kids truly can, and having a great time. We all gather around at the end to watch the overall champions and reserves get awarded; those kiddos get a glossy prize model, just like the adults at the show the day before, and it is really cute to see how excited they are.  

In addition to having fun watching the kids, I get to nerd out with my awesome Excel spreadsheet all day. There’s room for over a thousand individual placings between the Children’s show and the Youth show, not to mention some extra Honorable Mention ribbons that the judges can hand out at their discretion. That’s over a thousand entrant numbers, entrant names, and horse names to put in, plus the section and overall champs/reserves – a ton of data! But it’s Excel, and I love it, and I’ve programmed my spreadsheet over the years to work for me, and I’m generally able to get it done by the time we’re all packed up.  

Because I’m the results lady, I also get to see all of the awesome, creative, hilarious names these kids give their models. Every single year there are names that make me say “Oh that’s awesome!” or laugh out loud.  Food-related names like Cheese Puff, Sweet Potato, Fish Stick, and Holy Fruit Salad.  Great pop-culture references like Boba Fett, At-At, Castamere, and The Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors. Straight up funny names like Achoo, Big Fat Honkin Brownie, I’m Especially Teed, Lil Ugly Fella, Mooey Booey (it was a cow), The Floor Is Lava, and my personal all-time favorite, Grandma’s Wallpaper, which was a Prince of Chintz model.

I can’t wait to see what the kids come up with this year.

 

#711298 Churchill was the 2018 volunteer model, a wonderful sooty buckskin on one of my favorite molds, Wintersong. There were around 180-185 of him made. To say I was thrilled when he was announced as that year's volunteer model is a giant understatement.

 

 

#711359 Man of the Hour was the volunteer model for BreyerFest 2019. He’s a nice dark bay roan - who isn't purple or pink! There were around 200 of him made.

 

 

BreyerFest was online in 2021, and they hosted a photo show for the kids on the PonyBytes site. The site automatically calculated results, so my usual job was rendered useless, but they found another role for me - Head Steward. It was an interesting experience, especially because I conducted a good bit of my responsibilities from a beach house in the Outer Banks, where my sister, brother-in-law, nephews, and my boyfriend Chris and I had all escaped for a much-needed vacation after more than a year of not being able to do much at all.

Our volunteer model that year was #711488 Thornycroft, a chestnut rabicano on the Desatado (Criollo) mold. [I will never stop referring to Premier Club models by their issue name, not ever.] There were also around 200 made of him.

 

 

Of all the volunteer models they’ve done, this has got to be one of my favorites. I’m not huge on the mold itself - she’s the only one I have on the Lipizzaner Mare - but that color! And she’s glossy! This is #711526 Zeitgeist from BreyerFest 2022. There were 250 of her made.

In August, I’ll share my volunteer models from 2023-2026. Still keeping my fingers crossed for a not-double-dilute Vegvisir!