New Additions: November 2025

Wow, it's been a month of blogging! Thanks to everyone who has tuned in so far!

At the end of each month, I'll do a recap of new additions to the herd. I hadn't planned to buy much in November as I was still financially recovering from everything we did to try to save Felice, but somehow I ended up with six models anyway.

I fell in love with the silver filigree Fighters the second someone spotted them in this year's Just About Horses magazine and posted a picture of them online. They're #10497 Killington and Little Killington, this year's winter decorators. Even though I knew I wanted a set, I waffled on buying them at first because of the aforementioned sad bank account. Then I decided that I deserved something nice (and I hadn't bought anything since early October, right before Felice started to get really sick) so I ordered. I'm so glad I did. They're both perfect.

The guy with the horse patterns on his butt is #10320 Sport Horse, part of Breyer's 75th Anniversary celebration. He's been on my want list all year - I love his color and I think using the outlines of Breyer sculpts as his pattern is really neat. (I've already located the Sham outlines.) I bought this guy on November 15 when my friends invited me out to visit The Spindled Hare, a new Breyer dealer that opened about an hour away. The shop was super cute and they also had four live horses/ponies on the property, including a Chincoteague Pony, who we got to meet. We will definitely go back!

This lovely lady is this year's Premier Club model #10210 Winifred. I only have a handful of mules in my collection, but I loved her soft, shaded chestnut color as soon as I saw her. There's a gray version also, which is equally pretty, but it's a micro run of 75 pieces sent randomly, and the chances of getting one were pretty slim. I'm sure there were a ton of Premier Club subscribers this year because (a) the sculpts were freaking fantastic, (b) they allowed you to pick glossy/matte finish on Cosimo and mane/tail variation on Rowan, making each piece a split run and therefore more collectible by default, and (c) they threw in the 75-piece micro run on Winifred, which always makes collectors foam at the mouth and buy things in droves for a chance at it. For those reasons, I think the Premier Club numbers probably hit a record high this year. Many people purchased multiple subscriptions.

Data Nerd Mel accounted for 595 distinct Premier Club subscriptions, thanks in part to all the kind souls who posted polls in Facebook groups to see which variations of Cosimo and Rowan people ordered. If I take into account the usual percentage of data I find, plus the cost of the Premier Club, which might be limiting for some folks, I feel comfortable estimating that the number I found is 25-30% of actual subscriptions.

The little Stablemate, Isla, is a new sculpt for this year. I didn't particularly care for her when I saw her in-person at BreyerFest, and I don't like her any better in hand, though the hobby is losing its collective minds over her. I might have liked her better with a different paint job - they only painted half her mane (which seems to be common for the run, judging from others' pictures) and masked it very poorly. She'll stick around for now; my "I can't break up sets" rule is coming into play here. I have both finishes of Cosimo, both mane/tail combos of Rowan, and the chestnut Winifred; it just seems wrong to send Isla off somewhere else, at least for now.

I didn't figure on getting this guy until December - but he showed up unexpectedly, without a shipping notice, on Black Friday. This is #10472 Salud, who was given to volunteers at this year's BreyerWest, BreyerFest, and the online BOO photo show. He was produced in three colors - black tobiano pinto, gray tobiano pinto, and this color, salpicada pinto, which looks like roaning but isn't. I received a salpicada pinto for volunteering with the BreyerFest Children & Youth Show and another, the model pictured here, for stewarding the Breyer Regular Run division for the online BOO photo show this past September. I would have preferred one of the other two colors so as to not have duplicates, but them's the breaks. I've never parted with one of my volunteer models, so I'll probably end up keeping both the salpicadas instead of trading for another color.

Singles Bar: The Letter A

The Singles Bar series is where I'll be featuring molds of which I only own one. Sometimes that's deliberate; most times it's simply because I haven't found the other ones I want yet. I spent some time thinking of possible ways to group them, but the only way that really made sense to me was alphabetically by mold name. Here are my singles on the "A" molds.

Mold: Akhal-Teke 

This is #712532 Petra, a 600-piece Web Special from the Exotic Destinations series in 2024. I love red duns so I entered the drawing for him, but I wasn't picked. My friend Kelly K was, though, and decided to pass him on to me.

This mold isn't a love or hate for me, but Petra will probably be my only one, because he is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong boy and I don't have the shelf space. 

Mold: Alborozo 

Ah yes, the famous #711108 Alborozo. (Or Alboronzo, if you look at the typo on the box.) He was the 2008 BreyerFest Celebration horse and was a run of 6,000. I didn't start attending BreyerFest until 2010, so I had to get this guy on the secondary market. I bought him from my friend Beth in 2017. His show name is Artificial Inflation, a play on the fact that he commands a price tag comparable to models significantly rarer than he is.

Alborozo is one of the most conformationally accurate sculpts in the hobby and he has a beautiful head. I'm sad this will be the only one I ever own.

Mold: Andalusian Mare & Foal 

This set is #712430 Poppy & Ollie. They were from the 2022 Vintage Collectors Club. The total run was 750 pieces, split evenly between three colors. I wanted the bay set the most (shocking) but originally received the perlino set, which was my least favorite of the three colors. My friend Kelly W really wanted the perlinos but received the bay, her least favorite of the three colors. Made for an easy swap!

I'm not a huge fan of either of these sculpts, so the only ones I'd be looking to add in the future are the glossy palomino version of this same set.

Mold: G4 Andalusian Stallion

The Mystery Foal Surprise Family 12 was given two numbers during its production, #5442 and #5889. I forgot to look at the box when I got mine, so I'm not sure which it was. I conga the little G3 foal that came with this set, so I ordered them in March 2020 as a ride-along with one of my Vintage Club purchases. I've had others on this mold in the past, but they're all Tippy McTippersons who tend to break ears, so he's the only OF one left. 

Mold: Akilah

This is #10032 from the April Fool's Blind Bag series in 2024. She's a miniaturized version of the Traditional-scale sculpt Zafirah and was done in the same colorway as the 1996 Limited Edition, #939 Cinnamon. I've had a Cinnamon since my teens, so of course I had to pick up one of these gals. I bought her from my friend Heather B.

I might end up with others on this mold if they use her in sets, but it's not my favorite sculpt (what in the HECK happened to those shoulders during the conversion from resin to plastic!), so I won't actively be looking for any.

We're back to the beginning of the rotation of blog topics, so the next post will be a Sentimental Journey. It's one of my favorite stories to tell.

Other Makes: Stone Weanlings

These cute little shits.

The Stone Weanling is my second-favorite foal mold of all time (behind only the Classic Arabian Foal). She's just so stinking cute. I'm really, really big on faces and heads, and the Stone Weanling has a great one. I'm also really, really big on stock horses, so it makes sense that I'd love a stock foal.

Later in this series, we'll get to my Stone ISHs (Ideal Stock Horses), whose number has grown to truly horrifying proportions in the last three years, but today we'll look at the bebes.

 

My first Stone Weanling was this Design-A-Horse from April 2016. (Let the record state that I miss the days of being able to order a DAH for less than $100.) She's a palomino roan with a star, snip, and low sock on her left front, finished in gloss. Her show name is Georgia Peach.

 

This gal is OOAK (one-of-a-kind) Circus Peanut, produced for the Little Horse Show in 2019. She didn't sell there and was later available at the end-of-year Warehouse Sale. My friend Chunk enabled her purchase - he was a designated shopper that day for folks who couldn't attend the Warehouse Sale in person. I saw her in photos, messaged him, and the rest is history. Her show name is Penny Candy.

 

In November 2023, as part of our Greater Pittsburgh Model Horse Show series, we hosted an all-mini show called Size Doesn't Matter. A local hobbyist, Melissa D, had this Weanling on the sales part of her table. This is Chipper, a run of 100 pieces from 2010. I'm typically not drawn to pintos, but this model caught my eye right away (probably because, outside of the white areas, she is a Shiny Bay Thing). We chatted about her a little bit and I told Melissa I'd think about her.

Toward the end of the show, Melissa asked me if I'd like to do a trade. Her mom wanted a model I had for sale, and I wanted Chipper, so we easily came to an agreement. 

Melissa said she'd shown the her before, but couldn't remember her name, so I dubbed her Tasty Bean.

 

This Weanling, #WE21107 The Director, a run of unknown quantity from 2009, was enabled by Chunk's other half, Chesna. In August 2024, there was a swap meet in Ohio. I couldn't make it, but Chunk and Chesna went, and Chesna posted tons of pictures of what was for sale, offering to facilitate acquisitions for non-attendees. I zeroed in on this gal and messaged Chesna, who got me additional photos, negotiated with the seller on my behalf, and then hung onto the model until we could meet up. 

 

This little Weanling, Keepsake, a run of 125 for The Hobby Horse News in 2002, was pretty high up on my Weanling want list for awhile. I attended the BVG Model Horse Show in Michigan in April this year and another shower had her for sale just a couple tables over from me. I bought her before I even finished unpacking my show string.

I'm a Stone Horse Reference site subscriber, and one of the nice things about it is that you can build your own ISO (In Search Of) list. I've currently got 27 Weanlings on there. Most are OOAKs that I'll never find (let alone afford) but I can dream. In a surprise twist, only 3 of those 27 are bay, and almost half of those 27 are patterned!

Fantastic Finds: More from Heart of Ohio

I've already talked about one of my best liberations ever - my chalky alabaster Fighting Stallion from the Heart of Ohio antique mall. He wasn't the only unexpectedly amazing find that weekend, so today's post is about the other, plus a not-amazing-by-hobby-standards-but-still-cool-to-me model, plus one tagalong who wasn't technically a liberation, but I'm cramming him in here anyway because he's related. Just go with it.

 

This is the 1982 Model Horse Congress Running Foal - and yes, he was right there in that same booth with the chalky Fighting Stallion. There were an estimated 315-344 made of this guy, as per Nancy Young's accounting from records she obtained from the company who ordered him, Bentley Sales Co. This little dude is hard to find and commands quite a price on the secondary market, so to find one hanging out in an antique mall with a ridiculously low price tag was insane luck. I have Kelly W to thank for this one, too, as she initially spotted him but then said I could have him. His show name is Springfield, after the town where the antique mall is located.

The entire weekend, we couldn't stop thinking about a few things we'd regretted leaving behind, so we decided to stop at the antique mall again on the way back. I grabbed this Cantering Welsh Pony from the 1992 Sears special run set, #496092 Horses Great & Small. There were 2250 sets made. I quite like this little mold and I already had the Clydesdale Stallion from the same set, so for $16, she came home with me.

 

And here's that Clydesdale Stallion, who is the technically-not-a-liberation model but obviously belongs in the same post with his sister above, since he's the reason I went back for her. This guy has the honor of being the first Breyer I ever bought secondhand. On July 17, 1993, there was a model horse event of some kind in Greenville, PA. I don't remember what it was or how I heard about it - if anyone reading this knows, please share! - but it wasn't too far from home and my parents agreed to take me. There were a lot of fellow hobbyists there and some had whole tables of sales models. My parents told me I could pick out one model to buy. I circled the tables several times, and though I'm not typically a draft horse collector, his beautiful color and shading kept drawing me back to him, so he came home with me that day.

I'm actively on the hunt for the last remaining member from that Sears set, the palomino Merrylegs. And while Breyer old-school red roan isn't my favorite vintage color, I wouldn't be sad if a Congress Running Mare came to join her baby someday. 

Show Stoppers: What's in a Name?

Whooooooooooo, let's lighten the mood a bit after that last one, shall we?

This series is where I'll feature models from my show string. I could have gone a lot of directions with this first post, but thought names would be a fun place to start. I tend to be somewhat pedestrian (read: super nerdy) when naming my show models, but every once in awhile, a goofy one sneaks in. Here are those, in no particular order.

 

This is #90167 Ashquar, a 2013 Premier Club model. Most of the Premier Club models are first issued with obscure colors or loud patterns, so solid-color-horse-collector me was thrilled with this guy's breed-correct, deliciously shaded and dappled solid chestnut coat. I found him for the right price in room sales at the Clarion during BreyerFest 2023.

The following spring, I showed him for the first time at Rainbow Rave Live. I knew the judge had an appreciation for uniquely-named models, so I went outside my usual naming conventions and dubbed him Neck for Dayz. Because seriously - that neck. It drives me crazy. 

The judge laughed out loud when she pinned him, so it was worth it.

 

Uhhhh . . . curtains?

My friend Beth and I were staying overnight at the Hampton Inn in New Stanton prior to the 2024 Are You Kitten Me Live show. Beth brought a bunch of models that she needed names for, so we started looking around the room for inspiration. She dubbed hers Richter Scale after these curtains, which resembled a seismograph. I believe he NAN'd with that name.

 

 

In a similar vein, this gal, #711635 Chevalier, my volunteer model from BreyerFest 2023, got named Earthquake Curtains. She has also NAN'd with that name.

(I'm just waiting for the right model to name CHIN Carpet. If you know, you know.)

My luck with BreyerFest surprise models typically isn't all that great, but in 2013, I pulled the rarest of the four colors in the #711161 CC Shuffle Surprise set, this blue roan pinto. There are only 168 of her. She came out to play in collectibility for a couple shows. She looks stoned off her gourd and I show her as a Paint, so I picked a stock-horse-sounding name and dubbed her Sheza Lil Loopy.

 

This little gal is from one of two sets - #413550, a run of 408 models produced for Black Horse Ranch and other retailers for Signing Parties in 1988, or #403755, Foal's First Day, produced for Enchanted Doll House in 1988. It's virtually impossible to tell them apart unless a set comes with the metal pail decorated with Sam Savitt paintings; the pails were only produced with the Foal's First Day sets. I found my set in room sales during BreyerFest 2014, without the pail.

Despite being small, she has a name that barely fits on her show tag - Nutmeg Armageddon. Around a decade ago, a creative soul with a wonderful sense of humor made a website called the Horse Name Generator. With the click of a button, you could get all kinds of random names for your models. It sadly went defunct shortly after it was created, but man was it a good time. That's where Nutmeg Armageddon got her name. She is one of my most successful models in breed and has a nice stack of NAN cards.

I acquired this guy, from the #2007 Tyler & Hillary regular run set produced in 1997 only, from a seller on Model Horse Sales Pages in 2011. He's one of the early models that year; for the first three months in 1997, models were produced with bi-colored eyes (brown with a black pupil). The concept got a bit lost in translation, because instead of a horse's usual horizontal, oval-shaped pupils, all models got these distinctly creepy, reptilian pupils. Thus, this guy's show name is Lizard Eyes.

I also made a judge laugh with that one. 

 

For awhile, I actively congaed more than a dozen Stablemate-scale molds. The G3 Rearing Andalusian was one of them. This model is #712190 Ricochet from the inaugural 2016 Stablemates Club. I saw him and even though I conga the mold, my immediate reaction was, "Ew." I said it perfectly on a Facebook post: "If you could describe a model horse I would never desire to add to my herd, 'pink pearly' would be it."

 

And on that Facebook post, in this glorious exchange, my sister named him Fantasy Marble Pepto Pants.

If you'd like to play along, feel free to drop your favorite model show names in the comments. 

Don't Look a Gift Horse - er, Cat - in the Mouth: Felice and Patches

I have some pretty great friends.

They are seriously amazing people.

[Full disclosure - this post is about animal loss and might be a difficult read. Take care of yourselves.]

It's been a hard year for me. My cat Felice began her downward journey in January when she started taking the stairs with a slight limp. We thought she'd just fallen off one of the cat trees, which was not uncommon for her. She was an absolute klutz her entire life, not an ounce of feline grace anywhere in her body. As evidence, I present a photo of the day I set up a cat tree in the first apartment we lived in together. This was October 4, 2015. She was five months old.

 

A few years later, she fell off a cat tree as I was on the phone with someone from Collectibles Insurance, trying to get an estimate on a policy for my models. You know the saying, "Hit every branch on the way down?" That cat tree had five levels and Felice crash-landed on every single one. It was so spectacular that the guy on the phone stopped mid-sentence and asked, "Are you all right?" I didn't even have the call on speakerphone; her fall was just that loud.

So in January, when I took her to the vet, nothing seemed terribly amiss, and given her history, we thought it was just muscular. Not fifteen minutes after we got home from that appointment, the little turd fell off one of the cat trees again, which seemed proof of our theory.

It wasn't.

In the intervening ten months, we went to regular vet appointments and specialist vet appointments, did all kinds of tests, tried over a dozen meds, and had her hospitalized twice, once for a blood transfusion. We went from "It's muscular" to "It's neurological" to "It's either disc disease or cancer because we've ruled out everything else" to "It might be just a bad ulcer plus a flare of her autoimmune disorder" to "It's probably lymphoma."

On October 25, we had to say goodbye.

 

Here's where the "amazing friends" part comes in.

The amount of support we've gotten has been incredible.

In the midst of the crises of the last two weeks of Felice's life, I went to a model horse show, Steel City Live, badly needing the distraction from all my anxiety. As soon as I got there, more than half the people at the show hall stopped by to ask me how Felice was. Those same folks checked in with me all day. Those same folks cheered when I announced she was stable enough to go home. Those same folks secured one of my show models that I'd accidentally left in one of the rings in my haste to go pick Felice up.

After we lost her, my fellow Are You Kitten Me Live Show crew members plus a couple other close hobby friends went in together to get us a shadowbox, making sure it was big enough to fit Felice's favorite toy, her Dude. They also did two orders from Shutterfly: a blanket made from pictures of her and a narrated picture book about her life. Another local hobby friend 3D-printed a cool little box which, when lit with fairy lights from the inside, also shows pictures of Felice. Dozens more hobby friends reached out on Facebook to offer condolences, support, and kind words about Felice and our care of her. Others PM'd or texted. Some are still checking in, almost a month later.

The model horse hobby has placed so many wonderful people in my life, and I appreciate them every single day.

 

I gave you all that backstory because I knew I wanted to start the "Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth" series with Felice.

I've been gifted a number of Breyers over the years by my friend Heather B, but none are more special to me right now than this one. This is #710400 Patches, a BreyerFest special run of 750 pieces from the year 2000.

Heather gave her to me for free several years ago because she looks like Felice. 🧡

Full Spectrum: Mel's First Foray into Decorators

A few posts ago, I mentioned a love-hate relationship with decorator and fantasy models.

Until probably the mid-2010s, I was well known amongst my friends as being a decorator hater. As a kid, and even well into adulthood, I often said, "If it doesn't look like a real horse, I don't want it." Real horses didn't come in blue or gold or green or rainbow or the old-school paint jobs that Breyer called roan, and real horses didn't have wings or horns, so I wasn't interested in collecting models that did.

Well, that was mostly true. There are a few decorator and fantasy models that managed to sneak their way in early in my collecting years.

Before we get to them, can we please observe an honorary moment of silence for my #750010 Flicka in the Wild G2 Rearing Arabian, who decided to take a four-foot swan dive as I was returning one of today's featured models to the shelf, and snapped his right rear leg clean off?

 

Can we also observe an honorary moment of silence for my sanity, because I still can't find that damned leg after 20 minutes of searching? Some idiot (it's me, I'm the idiot) bought black shelving units, and trying to find a half-inch long solid black Stablemate leg amongst models crammed onto solid black shelves has been an exercise in stupidity.

Okay, thanks. Now onto the models. 

 

The first model to break the "realistic horse color ranks" was this guy - #832 Hyksos. I can tell you what drew me to him - he's an Arab, he's got an Egyptian name (and I've always been fascinated with ancient Egypt), and he was the 1991 Commemorative Edition, limited to 7,500 pieces. Mine is numbered #736/7,500 on the belly. As I said in my last post, Young Collector Me was very interested in anything that was proclaimed to be limited in quantity, even though 7,500 pieces is a pretty substantial run size. I'm not sure how or when I acquired him, but he was in my first set of collection photos from September 1992, so it was before that.

I showed him exactly once at Hoosier Pony Live, an all-collectibility show in 2016. He took first place in the 1990s Unrealistic Regular Runs class. There were only two models in the class; Breyer didn't make many regular run decorators in the 90s. His show name is Effigy.

I don't know what it is about Sherman Morgan, but put a decorator color on him and my brain glitches and goes, I MUST HAVE THAT. This is #1105 Carpe Diem, released in the year 2000 only. He was designed to represent sunrise on the first day of a new millennium. I'm almost certain this guy was a Christmas present for me that year, but I don't know for sure. I showed him a couple times in the mid-2010s at the Greater Pittsburgh Model Horse Show (GPMHS) which was all-collectibility and had over 130 classes just for Breyers. His show name is Sun Pillar after the nifty atmospheric phenomenon that occurs most often at sunrise or sunset.

 

This is #1102 Durango, who was the 2000 Commemorative Edition, with 10,000 pieces made. Mine is numbered #8188/10,000 on the belly. Throughout high school and college, I tried to get both the Limited and Commemorative Editions every year. That's how he came to join the collection, even though he's one of my least favorite sculpts and the only Smoky I own.

 

Raise your hand if you're surprised that the first unicorn in my collection was a Sham.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

#410301 Lavinia was a JCPenney special run in 2001. I got him for Christmas that year from my parents. The ad text in the catalog was amusing - "Her golden horn and hooves shimmer as she appears to canter away."

Not only is Sham not a mare, but whatever he's doing, it sure as heck ain't cantering.

He's also been shown a few times. His show name is I'm So Vain. He's the one who caused me to send poor Flicka flying, so maybe I should rename him SM Killer.

Unsurprisingly, there aren't any vintage (pre-2000s) decorators on my want list. Not that I would turn one down if it found its way to me on the cheap at an antique store or flea market, but I don't see myself ever actively hunting them.

Modern decorators, on the other hand - well, let's just say that while I haven't fully embraced them, I'm a lot more open to them now than I used to be. 

Collectibility Spotlight: Vintage Chalkies, Part 2

More vintage chalkies today! I did all the setup for chalkies in the last post, so let's just hop right to it today.

I've already described my love affair with both Arabians in general and the Classic Arabian Family in specific, so it's probably not a surprise that I have a chalky CAM & CAF from the #3055 Classic Arabian Family set. While not in the best condition, I found these two for the right price in room sales at BreyerFest 2022. I'm still on the hunt for a chalky CAS.

This guy is a fun story. On the Friday of BreyerFest 2022, I was sitting in our room at the Clarion, minding our room sales. My friend Kelly W walked in and handed this guy to me and said, "Do you want a chalky Belgian for $50? I found him for that price in a room and I already have one."

His show name is You Say Yes, because when your friend hands you a practically mint chalky #94 Belgian and asks if you want it for $50, you say yes.

 

My most recent chalky acquisition has just as memorable of a story as the first. 

In 2022, shows were resuming after a long break due to the pandemic. I and my friend Kelly W (the same one who handed me the chalky Belgian at BreyerFest) went to an all-collectibility show in Muncie, IN, in August. We antiqued at multiple places on the way there and back.

We hit the jackpot about 40 minutes west of Columbus, OH, at the Heart of Ohio Antique Center in Springfield. As a Columbus resident from 2002-2005, I'd been there multiple times and was already familiar with it. As you can see from the Google Maps photo, it's massive - over 1400 booths and 122,000 square feet of anything and everything you can imagine. Due to its size, Kelly and I adopted a "divide and conquer" strategy where she would go up the left side of a wing and I'd go up the right. (Because of how good our find that day was, we still adopt this strategy whenever we're antiquing together.)

In the furthest wing to the right, almost all the way in the back corner, Kelly shouted, "MEL, I FOUND THINGS!" I went running over. The booth was overflowing with Breyers. I picked up this alabaster Fighting Stallion, #30 King, and my jaw about hit the floor. I said, "KELLY, HE'S CHALKY." She smiled and said, "Uh-huh!" 

He was priced at $15. 

I thought sure she'd want him for her own incredible (and complete!) Fighting Stallion conga, but she said I could have him. She then took the below picture of me.

 

My face was ridiculous, so I named him Happy Face.

I spent about an hour in the hotel bathroom that evening, scrubbing the marks off him with a fingernail and hotel soap so I could show him the next day. I kept telling him how lovely he was as he got cleaned up, and Kelly laughed at me out in the main part of the room for murmuring sweet nothings to him.

Those are my chalkies so far. I wouldn't turn down any chalky if the price was right, but the only two I'm avidly hunting at the moment are the aforementioned #3055 CAS and a bay #141 Buttons Grazing Mare.

 

Collectibility Spotlight: Vintage Chalkies, Part 1

Before I dive into today's post - thank you so much for all your wonderful comments so far! 💕 I didn't expect this much engagement for something that's essentially just me blathering on about my own stuff, but I'm glad that many of you are having fun walking down memory lane right along with me. I have posts written for all of November and will be sticking as closely as possible to my established posting schedule - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays around 5:00 p.m.

In the Collectibility Spotlight series, I'll be talking about models in my collection that command extra value because they're more collectible - old, rare, different from the norm, highly desirable, or some combination of all those. Most often, the models featured here will be limited-quantity releases, but some hard-to-find regular runs, pieces of significance to the hobby, and oddities will sneak in from time to time.

Today we'll start looking at my vintage chalky models - those produced during the oil crisis years of the 70s. (Side note 1 - I'll cover my modern chalkies another day.) (Side note 2 - For more info on what makes a model chalky, check out this post by a fellow hobbyist, Kirsten Wellman. Her blog is full of fantastic information about not only Breyer collectibility, but other makes as well. It's worth the follow if you haven't already!) 

Vintage chalkies aren't limited to a finite quantity, but they rank higher for collectibility because they're harder to find than their non-chalky counterparts, particularly in good condition. Their paint jobs were notoriously fragile. They're also quite popular within the hobby so they tend to command more value than their non-chalky counterparts, again depending on condition.

I wasn't born til 1979 and didn't start collecting until 1990, so I missed the opportunity to acquire chalkies firsthand, but I've managed to pick up a few here and there. As usual, I'll talk about them in the order I got them. 

I love telling the story of how I got my first chalky.

It was my birthday in June 2014. I was less than a month removed from breaking up with my boyfriend, moving out of my home of 5 years, and having to put my first cat, Chloie, to sleep. My mental health was rough. I was sitting at work the day before my birthday, contemplating what I could do the next day to have some fun and enjoy myself, and decided antiquing was the way to go.

I stopped at the usual antique places along Route 19 and then ventured to my favorite Breyer dealer, Breyers By Mail, where I bought a couple regular runs. Crown Antiques in Washington, PA, was the furthest away and thus the last stop. It was one of the few stores remaining open in a rapidly dying mall (and it's gone now, too). I'd seen a Breyer in there from time to time but hadn't had any good finds yet.

That day, a booth on the left side had more Breyers than usual. I started looking through them and zeroed in on this Mustang, #87 Diablo, who I instantly recognized as a chalky. He was priced at $15 and said "As Is" on the tag. I looked over every inch of him like five times to see what the "As Is" was for - had his tail or one or more of his legs been broken and repaired? Was he missing an ear? Did he have a seam split?

Nope. He had a few paint rubs, but was otherwise awesome. He had the USA stamp so I knew he wasn't a painted-over decorator or woodgrain, but I was ecstatic nonetheless.

A store employee came up and asked me if I wanted her to set him aside up front while I continued shopping. I'm pretty sure my gut reaction was to clutch him protectively to my chest. I did eventually allow her to take him, not wanting to seem like a weirdo and definitely not wanting to clue her in that he was worth way more than the $15 on his tag.

When I got up to the register, I was informed the booth had a 25% off sale going on - so I got a chalky buckskin Mustang, on my birthday, for a whopping $11.25. His show name is Beyond Gold and he has a nice stack of NAN cards.

 

Next up is this chalky palomino Grazing Mare, #143 Buttons, which I acquired at BreyerFest 2017. That was the year I spent almost my entire BreyerFest budget on presales before I set one foot in Kentucky (oops). My friend Stacy was selling this gal and a Belgian together for a set price; my friend Kelly K wanted the Belgian, and I love the Grazing Mare, so we split the cost and were both happy. This gal's show name is Falala.

Man O' War is and always will be my favorite racehorse of all time. There will be a future Sentimental Journey post about him, but for now, here's my chalky version of #47 Man O' War. His glamour shots were taken in the sun room right after I got him; they do him much more justice than the crappy dining room lights.

It was August 2020 and we were neck-deep in the pandemic. Most things were still hardcore shut down. One of my only sources of joy during that time was model horses, and I was hunting down ISOs like no one's business. This guy appeared on eBay and I thought for sure I'd be outbid, given how spectacular he is, but I was the lucky winner. He is in insanely good condition for his age and has some of the nicest shading I've ever seen on a chalky. His show name is Distant Early Warning, after a Rush song I particularly like.

I'm happy to say that while chalkies aren't a focus of my collection, I have enough to require a Part 2 for this post, so that will be forthcoming shortly.

Special Effects: Toys "R" Us Special Runs

I've mentioned Toys "R" Us in some capacity in the past two posts, so I figured for the first post in the special run series, why not visit models in my collection that were produced only for Toys "R" Us and couldn't be found anywhere else?

Throughout high school, I saved everything I earned from babysitting and birthday money (and eventually a little from jobs, too) and put it toward Breyer models. Dealers were more prolific in those days. We had two in Erie - Toys "R" Us near the Millcreek Mall, and Hidden Treasures out on West 26th St. Hidden Treasures was probably closer from a mileage standpoint, but we were at the mall much more often, so Toys "R" Us is where I got many of my models in the days before the internet.

Photos for today were taken in my less-than-ideally lit dining room so they're not as pretty as usual. The light fixture has three bulbs which make shadows super weird. That'll have to be my photography space for much of the winter, though, so I'll need to grab some portable lights and see what I can do.

 

This set is #700693, Drinkers of the Wind. A gold sticker on the box proclaimed it a Special Collector Edition (Limited Production). The collectibility bug bit me early, so I didn't hesitate to snatch these up. Turns out they made 18,000 sets, so not quite as "limited" as the box led me to believe, but they're still desirable today. I don't have an exact acquisition date on these, but it was definitely sometime in 1993. My collection was still pretty small then. I remember using one of my shelves for a racing setup with all my running models. My black JCP CAS (featured a few days ago) was always in front as my favorite, with the gray CAS from this set in second, just off his shoulder.

Like the Drinkers of the Wind set, this model, #700993, Bay Fighting Stallion, also had the gold box sticker declaring it a Special Collector Edition. No official production total was ever released to my knowledge, but Nancy Young estimates there were around 6,000 models made. I was obsessed with rearing horses as a kid and picked this guy out right away. He had a few photo shoots in the back yard in his early years, battling with Chaparral, a pinto Hartland Rearing Mustang, and the Fighting Stallion and Semi-Rearing Mustang from the 1993 JCPenney set.

I was not successful in locating said photos, but I'll try to unearth them for a future post. If nothing else, they'll be entertaining.

This model is #700294 from the Spanish Normal Family, a Special Collector Edition from 1994. There were 6,300 sets made. I got this guy in April of this year for free from my dear friend Donna S, after I had commented somewhere that I was looking to fill in a few holes in my Classics congas. At our Are You Kitten Me Live show, Donna handed me a box of four Classics and told me, "Just take them." I offered payment but she refused. She is one of the nicest, most generous hobbyists I know.

From 1995-1999, Toys "R" Us released 11 models or sets of models in the Medallion Series, each of which came with a gold-toned metal medallion on a blue or red ribbon. The only Medallion series model I have is this gal, #700795, from the 1995 Buckaroo and Skeeter set. There were 4,200 sets made. I am not her original owner - I found her (without Skeeter or the medallion) in room sales at the Clarion during BreyerFest 2012.

 

In 1998, Toys "R" Us began releasing models called Showcase Editions. This is #711898, Sundance, a run of 10,000. Mine is numbered 4,299/10,000 on the belly. I've always liked her soft dun color.

This is another Showcase Edition model from the year 2000, #730500, Riley, a run of 10,000. mine is numbered 1,750/10,000 on the belly.

This model was only the third decorator in my collection when it was released in 2001. (We'll get to my love/hate relationship with decos in a future post.) He's #730901, Horse of a Different Color. They never released a quantity on him and he's not numbered. I've always thought he was one of the prettiest Pacers.

Oh look, a Shiny Bay Thing! I love all Shiny Bay Things and this guy was on my want list for an absurdly long time. I finally acquired him in room sales at the Clarion during BreyerFest 2016. He's #730801, Valiant, another Showcase Edition of 10,000 pieces. Mine is numbered 706/10,000 on the belly. Let me tell you how fun it was to try to (a) get a decent photo of the writing with all that dark shading on his belly and (b) also not include a gratuitous shot of his bits.

Fittingly, the latest-issued Toys "R" Us special run in my collection is also the one I acquired most recently. This little dude was part of a set called #740701, Reflections Gift Set. I avidly congaed the G2 Thoroughbred for years and years - but they will fall over if you so much as blink in their direction, so after they dominoed themselves one too many times, I started dispersing the conga. I always thought the color on this guy was lovely, though, so he stayed on my wish list even as I parceled out some of the others. My dear friend Heather B found it for sale back in 2022 and bought it, knowing I was looking for it, and then sold it to me. Then this year, she forgot that she'd already found me one, and bought a second one. She ended up gifting that one to our friend Macie (who writes a lovely blog called Macie's Model Horse Musings here on blogger that you should absolutely follow).

That's it for my Toys "R" Us models. In addition to Cappuccino, who I mentioned in my PAS conga post, the other Toys "R" Us exclusives I'd like to add to the collection someday are the Geronimo & Cochise set from the Medallion Series and the dark dapple gray Cigar to complete the Reflections set.