Bonus Post: 2025 Recap and Top 5

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a data nerd down to the marrow of my bones.  I’m lucky enough to have a job that pays me to play with data every day, and I’ve been keeping spreadsheets about my collection and various other aspects of the hobby in my free time for more than twenty years.

At the end of every year, I like to do a breakdown of my purchases according to various categories. This year I was smart enough to track everything in real time, so I didn’t have much data crunching to do to write this post. (Which is great, because I am SUPER behind with posts at the moment!)

Without further ado, I present Mel’s 2025 Acquisition Stats.

Total models acquired: 81
    •    Breyer - 72 (89%)
    •    Stone - 9 (11%)

 

Most expensive acquisition: technically, the paint job on my Denderah resin, but if we're talking a model, my Stone ISH "Ruffalo"

 

Least expensive acquisition: I was blessed to be gifted 8 models this year!

Scale
    •    Breyer Traditional - 33 (41%)
    •    Breyer Classic - 23 (28%)
    •    Breyer Stablemate - 16 (20%)
    •    Stone Traditional - 9 (11%)

Color
    •    Solid - 52 (64%)
    •    Pinto - 15 (19%)
    •    Appy - 14 (17%)

Finish
    •    Glossy - 19 (23%)
    •    Matte - 62 (77%)

Decade
    •    1950s - 2 (2%)
    •    1970s - 2 (2%)
    •    1980s - 4 (5%)
    •    1990s - 3 (4%)
    •    2000s - 20 (25%)
    •    2010s - 8 (10%)
    •    2020s - 42 (52%)

Month with the most acquisitions: July (23) - no surprise here, since that was BreyerFest

Month with the least acquisitions: May (0) - this was when Felice really started to have issues

Models purchased direct from the source: 33 (41%) (all were Breyers)

Models purchased on the secondary market: 48 (59%) (39 Breyers and all 9 Stones)

 

Show Statistics 

Shows hosted: 1

Shows attended as a shower: 5

Shows judged: 2

Breed NAN cards: 53

Collectibility/workmanship NAN cards: 41

Best moment: Uhhhh can I do a top 5 in no particular order?

(1) Raising $12,500 for Wayward Whiskers at our Are You Kitten Me Live benefit show
(2) Being gifted two sample models from the BreyerFest store from my friends when I was having a Really Bad Day

(3) Seeing American Pharoah again 

(4) Winning my first ribbons and NAN cards with my Denderah resin (whose full story I'll get to in February!)

(5) Receiving a miniature cat painted like Felice, complete with a miniature of her favorite toy, her Dude

And now for my Top 5 of 2025, in the order which I acquired them.

 

 

This is #B-CS-10280 Prague, a January web special from Breyer’s Exotic Destinations series. There were 600 made. Salinero is one of my favorite molds and I love glossy dapple grays, so I immediately wanted him, but my lottery luck is historically pretty terrible so I was trying to resign myself to pay secondary market prices for him. Fate was on my side this time, though, and I got picked in the first draw!

 

I only own five Artist Resins, and this guy is one of them - Denderah, by Karen Gerhardt. The blank resin was an “I spent way too much money whilst isolated during the pandemic” purchase in August 2020. As a collector and admirer of typey Arabs, I knew I had to have him as soon as I saw Karen’s pictures of a painted one.

He hung around nekkid for quite awhile as I figured out what color I wanted and who I wanted to paint him. The color was the most agonizing decision - I went back and forth many times between bay, dapple gray, mulberry, and flaxen chestnut. Bay was the eventual winner (shocking). Once I landed on that, picking the artist was simple - I’d seen Jennifer Danza’s bays both on her studio page and in person, and I knew right away that she was the right artist for him. She opened up commissions in December 2024; I submitted him for consideration; she chose him; I sent him off to her in January; and on April 3, this gorgeous thing showed up at my doorstep. I consider him a 2025 acquisition because that’s when he got his paint job and became a complete model. He is absolutely outstanding and one of the prettiest models in my entire collection, and his show success thus far reflects that.

I’ll talk more about him in February when I cover my Artist Resins in my Show Stoppers post.

 

 

This is a Stone ISH, Gleema My Star, a run of 30 models from 2010. They came in both matte and gloss. He was pretty high on my want list for awhile. My friend Ellen offered to sell hers to me in 2024, but I knew what this custom version was worth (versus the non-customized version, who was less limited in quantity) and I wasn’t in the position to pay for him at the time. 

Fast forward to the first weekend in June, when I went up to Hammondsport, NY, to visit family and attend the Finger Lakes Live and NY Breeders shows. I knew Ellen would be at the show (she’s my cousin’s neighbor!) so I’d messaged her a few days prior, letting her know I was still interested in Gleema if she hadn’t sold him. She still had him and put him aside for me. I picked him up the night before the first show and got to see her absolutely amazing collection for the first time when she hosted a small event for show attendees at her house. That weekend was one of the best of the entire year for me, capped off by bringing this lovely shiny bay thing home. 

 

 

This is #B-CS-10492 Cosimo, a Murgese stallion, released through this year's Premier Club in late June. Members could choose a matte or glossy finish on him. I went with matte for mine, and my friend Donna wasn't interested in keeping hers, so she ordered gloss and I bought him from her. I like the matte slightly better (gloss is hit or miss on black models for me), so the matte guy made my Top 5, with the glossy guy as an Honorable Mention.

 

I haven’t been this excited about a Breyer sculpt since Weather Girl was released in 2011. I also don’t think I’ve been this excited about a Spanish sculpt, ever - I’m an Arab and Stock collector, through and through - and I definitely haven’t ever liked a Sarah Minkiewicz sculpt this much. She tends toward the more dynamic, funky ways horses can move their bodies, and most just don't appeal to me. This guy, though?

 

Yeah. Another of those instant conga, "I need him in every color" sculpts.

 

This is another Stone, an Andalusian named Woodson. He’s a one-of-a-kind created for the Stone Super Bowl Event in 2021. I bought him in September from a seller who lives the next town over from my cousins in New York; a town where my Aunt Marge lived until her passing in 2019. 

 

I never would have picked this model out for my collection based on his stock photos from Stone. They were using a bright white lightbox at the time with all the light coming from the top, which darkened the color of all the models and flattened them out so they looked almost monochrome.

 

Here's what he looked like in the stock photo vs. my photo above. I couldn’t believe the difference when I saw the seller’s photos! His color is so much richer in person. I show him under the name Cabernet Franc because he instantly reminded me of a ruby red wine.

 

In 2026, I hope to acquire a bit less, both from a quantity and spending standpoint. I've got a long way to go to financially recover from losing Felice, and even though I have an entire room in my house for my collection, I've got a rapidly worsening case of Floorses (Floor Horses), so my space for more is pretty nonexistent. 

 

As far as the more solid goals, I would like to get my Veronka resin painted. That's been a goal for the past four years, but the poor thing is still stuck in the "Oh my God she looks good in literally every color and I can't pick what to do with her" phase. (Who am I kidding, she'll probably end up bay.) I'd also like to knock off another grail from my Stone wish list, probably an ISH or Arab, and pick up a Niagara, the Sham from this year's Hoofbeats & Maple Treats event.

 

Thanks for tuning in so far, and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and successful 2026!

New Additions: December 2025

I would normally have left this post for December 31, but I really wanted to do a year-end recap and Top 5 in that one, so the December acquisitions are coming a couple days early.

 

 

Before I get to that, I need to add one from November that I forgot about! In fairness to me, I’m heavily relying on my spreadsheets for the entire blog, and I typically don’t add a model to my spreadsheets until I have it in hand. I bought this guy from Heather B and just nabbed him from her last week, so that’s how he slipped by without making it into the November post.

This is #9317 Get Rowdy, one of four models produced in gloss for the 2024 Collector Club Appreciation (CCA) sale in both May and October 2024. I didn’t participate in the sale myself, as none of the glossy models really caught my eye, and there wasn’t enough regular run product I wanted to justify the expense.

Then I saw a glossy Get Rowdy in person at a show and went, “Ooooo, yeah, that’s a must-have.”

Heather listed him for sale on November 29 and the rest is history.

 

 

This is B-SM-10355 Harbinger, the final (and optional) purchase from the 2025 Stablemates Club. I wasn’t thrilled with the promo pics so I debated not even buying him, but he went over extremely well within the hobby, and I knew that if I didn't like him in-hand, I wouldn’t have any trouble selling him. 

 

I don't like him any better in-hand, so I'll be selling him. He’s commanding $50 and up at the moment, but I’ll price mine at cost and make someone happy at BreyerFest next year.

 

In the past three years, I have disbanded most of my Stablemates congas, not having the space or desire to keep up with them. It was a breath of fresh air to take that pressure off myself and narrow down the list of molds for which I desire a complete conga to just the G1 Quarter Horse Stallion, the G2 Appaloosa, the G3 Standing Thoroughbred, and the G3 Standing Foal.

Then they shrunk the Proud Arabian Mare and made her a little more like the HR Zara (on which she was based), and she promptly hopped herself right onto that list.

This is B-CS-10354 Madonna, and I freaking love her. I will need this little sculpt in every color. Even loud appaloosa or pinto. Even double dilute. Even fuchsia with wings and a unicorn horn.

The mini-PAM is the Deluxe Collector’s Club model next year and will be a matte/glossy split. I always join the Deluxe CC, so one will be headed my way. Whatever finish I don’t get will be a future secondary market purchase for sure.

 

 

Well, he’s blue (though the lighting doesn't really capture it very well), and I love Lexington, so this model, #10307 Big Lex, was a guarantee to end up on my shelves. I picked him out at Kraynaks this year while on the annual trip with my family and my parents gave him to me for Christmas, fulfilling the “It’s not Christmas unless we give you a Breyer” requirement.

Stay tuned for Wednesday’s 2025 recap and Top 5!

The Singles Bar: The Letter B

The Singles Bar series is where I feature molds of which I only own one. Today we’re looking at molds starting with “B.”

 

 

This cute little guy is #1702 Icicle, a Flagship Store special run of 3500 models from 2013. I picked him out at Kraynaks on Black Friday in 2014 for my parents to give me as a Christmas gift.

While I definitely think the Bouncer mold is cute, I’m really picky about color on him, so Icicle is the only Bouncer in my herd at the moment. That's likely to stay that way until they put out another release, as the only two Bouncers on my want list are both unobtainiums from 2007 - the glossy Cefnoakpark Bouncer prize model from the BreyerFest Live Show and Sand Dollar, the Connoisseur.

 

 

This sweet donkey is #1295 Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a regular run made in 2007 only. He came with a book of the same name, written by Marguerite Henry. He’ll always be special to me, as I got him as a birthday gift from my best friend, Paula, the person who introduced me to Breyers.

I don’t have any other Brightys on my wish list at the moment, though I wouldn’t be sad if I accidentally stumbled into a chalky or an Oliver for a good price down the road.

 

 

It kind of makes me twitch to list this gal as my only one on the mold. 

For this year’s Premier Club, they released two versions of the same sculpt, one with a bushy full mane and tail that Identify Your Breyer is calling the Highland Pony Stallion, and this version, a more refined mare with a braided mane and tail that Identify Your Breyer is calling the British Riding Pony Mare.

Whether Breyer is actually going to call these two distinct molds, with those exact names, remains to be seen. I miss the days where the molds were named after the first release on it. In this case, both would be named Rowan, which is why I'm twitching putting her here under the B molds.

Her issue number is B-CS-10598 (and the data nerd within me is also twitching at this new, confusing numbering system). I ordered the Highland Pony version on my own Premier Club subscription, and bought this braided gal from my friend Donna, who subscribed to the Premier Club only for the new mule sculpt, Winifred. In addition to the musculature and hair changes that set her apart from the other version, the braided is also a basecoat chalky, giving her paint a glow that the non-chalky, haired version doesn't have.

 

Breyer only released the number of Premier Club subscribers for the first year or two, so we won’t know how many were made of either version. Of the 595 distinct Premier Club memberships I accounted for, there was a slight preference for the haired version, but I'm guessing it's pretty close to a 50-50 split.

I do quite like this little sculpt and will probably acquire more down the road.

 

This model is a Stone, a Design-A-Horse on their Bunny/Heavy Draft Mare mold. She is an extremely popular sculpt and can do well as a number of breeds, depending on coloring and customization. I purchased her on May 18, 2021. She’s on a non-customized body, gray with black points, dapples, four low socks, a star, and a snip, in gloss. She is signed DAH 2021 AD on her belly, indicating she was painted by one of my favorite Stone artists, Audrey Dixon. I don't show her due to all her white markings, which make breed assignment a bit of a challenge. She was definitely more “I’m just going to make something I think is pretty” rather than “I’m going to make something realistic to show.”

I’ve got 18 Bunny models on my wish list on the Stone Horse Reference page, so she probably won’t be alone forever. The most attainable is probably Lincoln, a run of 30 from last year who is, of all things, a metallic blue and teal unicorn. (Blue, sure, but teal? And unicorn? Not usually my jam.) I would also love to find a Wicked, who is, of all things, a loud leopard appaloosa (who even am I anymore?) but there are only 10 of her and she tends to sell pretty high whenever one comes up.

Next month, the singles on “C” molds. I've got quite a few of those.

Fantastic Finds: A Throwback Liberation

When I planned my posting schedule for this month and saw that my Fabulous Finds post would land on Christmas Eve, I knew exactly which three models would be in the spotlight.

Today, a day before the 35th anniversary of acquiring my first 1990 JCPenney Traditional Horse Set to start off my Breyer collection, I’m going to talk about the liberation of the second set.

 

 

On August 24, 2023, my friend Heather B messaged me about a possible presentation Buffalo buried in the corner of this picture from an estate sale near me that upcoming weekend. We consulted Nancy Young’s book and concluded that the presentation Buffalo did exist, so it could very well be The Real Thing. Heather couldn’t go to the estate sale due to a funeral, but she looped Kelly W into our text thread, and since Kelly W and I have a history of great finds together, she and I agreed to meet for the sale.

We knew the sale was more popular than we’d anticipated when we both had to park several blocks away, even well before the start time of the sale. The line was long, making us worried that someone would get to the Buffalo before us, but at least we were entertained while we waited. One of the people in line recognized Kelly from when she’d appeared on WQED’s “A Flea Market Documentary” years ago. Kelly gracefully navigated that minefield and avoided any discussion of model horses so as not to tip off the people in line in front of us.

The house was tiny and cramped, like many old Pittsburgh houses, and we couldn’t tell from the photo which room the models were in, so it was an agonizing wait for people to move out of the way enough for us to get there.

Luck was on our side, because all the Breyers from the photo were still there! We grabbed them all and continued looking around, but there weren’t any others. We picked up a clinky cat that Heather had spotted in another picture, waited in line to check out, and traded looks as the estate sale workers banged the models together as they were packing them up. Luckily, no one was damaged (the models or the estate sale workers).

Kelly purchased the Buffalo, bulls, and G1 Thoroughbred Mare, while I picked up the pinto Stock Horse Family and the JCPenney set. We couldn’t wait to examine the Buffalo, so we found a bench on the street a few doors down from the house and unpacked our liberations. There was obvious glue residue on the Buffalo’s wooden base where the plaque had been attached, so we knew right away he was The Real Thing! We ended up putting him in the silent auction for our 2024 Are You Kitten Me Live show, where every penny of his final bid price was donated to help the cats at Wayward Whiskers Animal Rescue.

 

And here they are, a second set of three of the models that started it all. 

 

 

My originals are on the left in each photo above, with the model from the newly-liberated set on the right. All the new additions are in better condition than my originals - neither the new Lady Phase nor the new Quarter Horse Gelding are shrinkies, and the new Rugged Lark has considerably fewer battle scars and was likely never played with (unlike mine). My originals will never leave me, but I was nonetheless pleased to have the upgrades.

The Stock Horse Family from that liberation has a happy ending, too. I had always intended to pass them on to another collector, but the Stock Horse Stallion was an obvious shrinky. He was faded, his finish looked cloudy, and his legs were warping inward so much that he wouldn’t stand. I’m one of those people who can’t bear to break up family sets and really wanted them to all go together - and they’d presumably all been together since the early 90s - but I despaired of anyone agreeing to buy the set with the Stallion being in such poor condition. I put a cheap price on them, $25 for all three (a $20 loss on what I’d paid for them), took them to BreyerFest with me in 2024 and 2025, and hoped for the best.

This year, a man came in during room sales and picked up all three models. He told me he was buying them for his daughter. Not knowing how knowledgeable he or his daughter might be on the finer points of collecting, and in the interest of full disclosure, I let him know that the Stallion was a shrinky, that he was likely to get worse, and that he didn’t stand. The man said, “Actually, my daughter collects shrinkies, so this is exactly what she’s looking for. She'll be happy to have the set.”

Perfect.

 

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Other Makes: Copperfox

Copperfox entered the scene in 2014 with a kickstarter campaign, aiming to bring more British breed sculpts into the world of OF plastic models. They were successful for a few years, but then the models started having paint issues. The base plastic was a PC/ABS combo, which was extremely durable, able to hold the level of detail they wanted, and cheaper than Cellulose Acetate, the plastic used to make most Breyers and Stones. The paint didn’t adhere well to this type of plastic, though, and eventually started crazing (cracking) and falling off in chunks. The company also had difficulty finding a factory that would produce the models at the quality demanded by collectors while also keeping the models affordable. That led to the shuttering of the original Copperfox in August 2018.

I think the sculpts are pretty fantastic, personally, and I’m sad that the original iteration of the company folded. I had high hopes for the big guys to be resurrected when new owners purchased the company and moved it to the U.S. in 2019, but it’s been six years, and I think that would have happened by now if it was going to happen at all. There is a market for the mini-scale clearware and resin pieces they've produced since then, but as a mostly-Traditional-scale, mostly-OF-plastic, and mostly-realistic-color collector, I am definitely not their target audience.

 

This guy was my first OF Copperfox - and what a shock, it’s a glossy bay. He’s CF623G Cadbury, a regular run of 150 pieces in 2017 on Copperfox’s Irish Sport Horse mold. I got him from my friend Bonnie, who had been a Breyer dealer from 1991-2015 and started carrying Copperfox models shortly after Breyer unfairly revoked her dealership over a 99-cent pricing error on her website. I was enraged with Breyer and obviously still wanted to support my friend and her business, so I boycotted Breyer for over a year and did all my direct purchasing from their competitors instead. Cadbury was part of that.

I do show him, and his name has an interesting story. If a model was issued with a name, I often first try to assign something related that name. My immediate thought for this guy was Cadbury creme eggs, which made me think of this commercial from the mid-90s where other animals were auditioning for the role of the Easter Bunny. My sister and I found the commercial hilarious, and we’d often imitate the lion and the llama, both in person and in texts (and still do, to this day). We translated the lion’s loud yelling phonetically into BRAWK!  So that’s Cadbury’s show name.

 

 

This fat, adorable, roly-poly pony is CF608 Trifle, a regular run of 250 pieces on the Exmoor Pony mold. I bought mine from Bonnie out of her room sales at BreyerFest 2018. 

 

My Trifle was sold for a cheaper price as a Second, a shelf-quality model with minor flaws in the paintwork that Copperfox prohibited from being sold at full price, and is marked on her belly as such. I honestly don’t see anything wrong with her that isn’t typical of a mass-produced model - I have Breyers that have looked much worse straight out of the box - so I haven’t hesitated to show her. Her show name is Flibbertigibbet.

 

 

My love for shiny bay things is well-established by now, so when this model popped up for sale in February 2022, I didn’t hesitate to message the seller. This is CF606G Cadno, a run of only 9 glossy models (the regular run was matte) produced in 2016 on their Connemara mold as the Reserve Champion Live Show Prize at Copperfox Events throughout that year. According to his hand-written COA, this model was won at the Copperfox Scotland Tour event on May 2, 2016. I purchased him from his original owner - and for additional nifty reading and history behind this particular model, here is her blog post about winning him!

 

 

Unfortunately, in the time since I bought him, Cadno has fallen victim to the paint deterioration problems common to Traditional PC/ABS Copperfox models. He’s already missing a couple chunks. I started showing him in Other Plastic Collectibility right after I got him, under the show name Loch Lomond, but I’m afraid to touch him at this point, so he’s been retired and just sits on my shelf looking pretty (at an angle where I can’t see the missing paint!)

 

 

This little necklace charm is based on Copperfox’s immensely popular Welsh Cob mold. I initially couldn’t remember how I came by him, except I know he was a gift from a friend, so I reached out to my friend Beth, who still actively collects Copperfoxes, and asked if she remembered what it was from. 

Happily, she did, because it’s a great story.

In 2021, in-person BreyerFest was cancelled for the second year in a row due to Covid. By that time, my friends and I had all been vaccinated, so we decided to have a small gathering at my house during BreyerFest since we couldn’t be together in Kentucky. 

We did our usual auction game, where we try to guess how much each auction model will sell for, and I printed out sheets for the 2001 and 2011 auction models as well for an extra level of competition. We also had a “just for fun” live show with a class list I made (with a few suggestions from my friends!) The classes were largely color-based, with an added element of BBQ because that’s what we had been planning to eat. (I’m pretty sure we ended up with pizza instead.) The class names were:

1. Spotted bastards
2. Pinto jagoffs
3. Mel used to not collect decorators but she does now and this is where they go
4. Glossy bay things because Mel loves them
5. This color is not seen in nature
6. Colors Breyer thought were “realistic” in the 1990s
7. Rainbow things
8. Fluorescent things
9. Things with stripes or polka dots
10. Your favorite horse color
11. Your least favorite horse color
12. Things you colored yourself
13. Horses the color of BBQ sauce
14. Burnt ends (tiny dark things)
15. Animals that make tasty BBQ

We all judged each class using pieces of candy. The two models with the most candy in each class went on to the overall champ/reserve class at the end. Based on the photos, I’m 99% sure I showed exclusively out of my Sham conga, since there is a Sham in almost every photo. The classes were also up for interpretation, so they weren't all horses! The rainbow class had a rosette, there was a stuffed animal in the stripes/polka dots class, and a scary-looking monkfish swam through the BBQ animals class - and yes, monkfish BBQ is a thing!

At the end of the show, we awarded overall champ and reserve as follows:

Champ - Heather’s glossy silver bay Esprit, winner of class 10
Reserve - my Smurfy Sham, winner of class 3

[Guess that’s what happens when you stick a bunch of collectibility nerds in a room together.]

Our prizes were the Copperfox charms, graciously donated by Beth, so that’s how I got him.

And here I thought this was going to be a short post! This is why I'm writing the blog, though - to relive these fun moments and share why I love my collection so much.

Show Stoppers: Traditional & Classic Sport Breed

Today’s Show Stoppers post will include models that are in my show string for breed in the Sport section. I have other models I show in Sport, but those are mainly for collectibility, so they’ll get their turn in the spotlight another day.

 

 

My most successful breed horse in the Sport section is this guy, #711048 Riesling, a run of 1250 pieces for BreyerFest 2008. I bought Riesling from a seller at the very first live show I attended, CRAB, in 2010. I had seen him for sale at the show, decided not to buy him, and then immediately regretted it, so I contacted the seller through her ad on MH$P. In my opinion, Riesling is one of the nicest chestnuts they’ve ever produced. I show him under the name Appassionato.  He’s got 10 breed NAN cards and many other ribbons, and I’m happy with every one. Breyer has a number of really excellent warmblood molds and the classes are often overwhelmingly large. I consider any breed ribbon a win.

 

 

The year 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Man O’ War, my favorite racehorse of all time. Breyer released this guy, #9149, in celebration, and kept him in the lineup through 2018. I purchased him from the Kentucky Horse Park gift shop during BreyerFest 2017. 

Maureen Love was an excellent sculptor and her Classic Thoroughbreds remain some of the most conformationally correct molds to this day. I show this guy frequently because I believe he’s the most technically correct TB Breyer has, even though he gets overlooked a lot by judges in favor of Traditional molds. His show name is Fortunate Son. As the second Classic Man O’ War in my show string, I wanted him to have a name similar to the next horse, who I’ve had and shown for much longer.

 

 

I bought this guy, a member of the #710601 Racehorses special run set from BreyerFest 2001, in room sales at the Clarion during BreyerFest 2012. He was the last one I needed from the set; I’d purchased the palomino Kelso and the peachy dun Silky Sullivan during BreyerFest 2010. Due to his coloring, I show him as an Akhal-Teke, with modest success. His show name is Fortunato.

 

 

This guy’s got a story.

#90188 Bristol was instantly popular upon his release in the 2018 Premier Club and still sells well beyond his original issue price today. I got mine on 11/20/2020 from Breyer’s early Black Friday sale. I generally don’t participate in those sales, not appreciating the way Breyer ups the price on everything by $5-10 over original issue price, but I knew that even with Breyer’s markup, I’d never be able to get a Bristol that cheap on the secondary market, so I hurriedly threw one in my cart and checked out. 

I didn’t get a shipping notice … and didn’t get a shipping notice … and didn’t get a shipping notice. Then someone posted on MA that they hadn’t received their Bristol either, and others joined in saying the same, and then someone said that customer service told them there was “an issue” with them. I called customer service myself on 12/3/20 and was told they might have oversold their inventory. People started getting refunds. I was prepared to be disappointed.

It was an early version of this year’s Shindig-gate and Tuxedo-gate.

I did eventually get a shipping notice for him on 12/9/20 (that mysteriously had an order date of 12/8/20, a full 18 days after I actually ordered him) and received him a few days later. I had joked with a friend about potential show names for him - Website Disaster, Inventory Mismanagement, Warehouse Issues, or I Was Nearly 2020’d. We liked Inventory Mismanagement best, but there’s no way, even with my relatively decent handwriting, that I’d have fit that on a show tag.

So I went with WH Snafu instead, with the WH standing in as a tag-friendly substitute for Warehouse.

 

 

In March 2012, the great Thoroughbred racehorse Zenyatta gave birth to her first foal, a dark bay colt sired by Bernardini. Breyer issued a regular run later that year, #1490 Zenyatta’s First Colt. (Thoroughbred babies often remain officially unnamed until they’re a year or two old, hence why Breyer didn’t isue him with his official moniker, Cozmic One.) In October 2012, the Zenyatta website offered a limited run of 500 glossed #1490 models, which came with the usual pedigree certificate and a special letter. I don’t remember how I heard about the release, but I was able to get to the site in time to buy one on 10/6/2012. I show him under the name Houdini and he has had modest success in both breed and collectibility.

 

 

Idocus isn’t the best warmblood mold Breyer has made, but I chuck this guy into the show ring anyway. He’s #711517 Chablis, a store special from BreyerFest 2022, designed and named after one of the guest horses, a Wurttemburg gelding. 

 

It was our first BreyerFest back in Kentucky after a two-year span of online-only thanks (no thanks) to Covid. I always, always prefer to hand-pick my models, but I was still pretty anxious about Covid and my friend Kelly and I were 100% not interested in standing in a crowded line or wading through the inevitable crush of people in the Breyer store. We headed to the beer tent instead, where we frantically refreshed and refreshed our phones until the store specials popped up online. I got my order through, and then gave Kelly my phone to do her order, since the site wasn’t working on her phone. We then sat back, drank our beer, chomped on our pretzel necklaces, and reveled in the fact that we were finally back at BreyerFest. Of all the Friday mornings I've had in Kentucky, that was one of the best.

As I perused social media during and after BreyerFest, I started to see some less-than-stellar reviews of the Chablis model. Many looked to have a boring, flat paint job. I started to regret not hand-picking one out myself in the Breyer store and resigning myself to whatever the warehouse picker grabbed from the case … but then this guy showed up, and he was freaking amazing. His show name is Yonne. I’m pretty sure he's only earned a fifth place ribbon so far, but that’s okay. I’ll keep plunking him down on the table. Someday, a judge might love him as much as I do.

I don’t see my Sport breed show string growing considerably in the future. I’m an Arab and Stock Horse collector through and through, and since most shows I attend are double-judged, I tend to choose my show string based on collectibility, not breed.

Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: That's What Friends Are For

Ok, so some housekeeping first. 

 

The right side pane now lists the blogs I follow (which I highly recommend checking out!) and I have a follow button of my own. A friend (thanks Macie!) also pointed out that my blog posts weren't listed on the side for easy catch-up. That meant scrolling ... and scrolling ... and scrolling. Which, nope, so I fixed that, too. 

 

A thousand thank yous to those who have faithfully tuned in despite my technical ineptitude. I'm apparently That Person who builds complex Power BI data models and dashboards for a living and plays with Excel formulas for fun, but has to read Reddit threads and watch YouTube videos to lay out a simple blog. Sigh.

 

On to the ponies!

 

Remember the last one of these, where I talked about my awesome friends? Today’s Gift Horse post is actually about horses this time – all the models I received as gifts from friends this year.

 

 

This awesomely maroon (ha!) dude is #10118, Beowulf, the 2024 Halloween horse. I love the Semi-Rearing Mustang – I have a dozen of the things – but I was a little leery of buying this guy because of some controversy surrounding his design. Turns out I didn’t need to worry about buying one, because my friend Heather B gifted me one in March when she found herself with an extra.

 

 

These three lovely creatures are the other Classics I got for free in April from my friend Donna S (the fourth being the Spanish Norman Toys “R” Us special run from last month’s Special Effects post).

 

 

The lighter bay is Jet Run from the #3035 U.S. Equestrian Team Gift Set, a long-standing regular run from 1980-1993. This particular Jet Run has a B stamp, indicating he was made with cellulose propionate instead of cellulose acetate, which puts his production between 1980 and 1982. (Cellulose propionate can't be reground and mixed with cellulose acetate, so they had to have a way to distinguish the former from the latter.) I have been known to seek out B stamp models in the past, so having this guy end up being one is pretty neat.

 

 

The chestnut is from the #3055 Classic Arabian Family, an even longer regular run from 1973-1991. Some had tan feet and some had gray; I’m not sure which is more common. Of my four #3055 CAMs, three have tan feet and one has gray.

 

 

The dark bay is #601, Kelso, who was a regular run from 1975-1990. He doesn’t have a Breyer stamp, indicating he’s one of the earliest releases, which is also really cool.

 

And now for a longer story.
 
The Friday of this year’s BreyerFest, I woke up with a debilitating tension headache. I’ve been getting them with increasing frequency over the past year and they’re right on par with my migraines as far as intensity, pain, and general disruption to my life. 

I was surprised by this particular headache, but looking back, I shouldn’t have been. BreyerFest is a week of sheer craziness from one end to the other, with intense heat, a lot of activity, little sleep, poor hydration, and a few missed meals, plus I was really stressed from worrying about Felice. A bad headache was practically gift-wrapped for me.
 
I couldn’t stand the thought of missing a whole day of BreyerFest, though, so I dragged myself out of bed, showered, forced myself to eat something, took a lot of ibuprofen and Tylenol, downed some Liquid IV (which is seriously amazing stuff), and went to Kentucky Horse Park with my roomies. 

Due to a severe underestimation of the number of people wanting to enter KHP on Friday morning, the line was still horrifically long at 11:30 when we arrived. My roomies braved the long line and blazing sun, and wouldn’t hear of it when I said I’d wait with them. They installed me under a tree by the gate and settled everything with the staff manning the entry so I could just hop in line when they reached the front. We picked up our special runs first, and then I held everyone’s bags and spent a good ninety minutes up in the air-conditioned section of the covered arena where the Breyer staff eat their lunches, sitting on the floor in a corner with my sunglasses on and trying not to throw up, while my roomies were waited in line and shopped at the Breyer store. A couple of the staff checked in to make sure I was okay, which I also appreciated, and said I wasn’t bothering them at all being up there. My friend Cory kindly snagged a set of the Best of BreyerFest stablemates for me while she was there, and we settled up later. My roomies took really good care of me all day.
 
Before heading back to the hotel, everyone wanted to eat, so we went to the café near the front entrance. I ordered a plain chicken sandwich, still not trusting my stomach. As I was setting my food down, my friends Beth E and Sara R came into the café. Beth said, “We got you something,” and handed me two models.
 

Beth knew I hardcore conga the G2 Appaloosa - it’s tied with the G2 Warmblood for my largest Stablemate conga, at 32 pieces - so she grabbed this guy for me from one of the sample bins in the BreyerFest store. This colorway was used in a couple sets over the years: the regular run #59197 Little Red Stable and the Target special run #720597 Red Stable Set. 

 

 

I took a picture of my sample guy (on the left) with my matching #59197 Little Red Stable model (on the right). The sample guy is darker and oranger in coloring, while the regular run is lighter and softer. I love that they’re different and easy to tell apart!

 

 

Sara was aware of how much I love the colorway on the Classic-sized American Quarter Horse Stallion from the Playful Pony Family set (first issued through Tractor Supply, now a regular run). We had even split one of the sets earlier in the year, as I only wanted the Stallion and she only wanted the Mare & Foal. As soon as she saw this sample guy in the Breyer store, she knew I had to have him. The regular run set came with some fences, which were included in the bag with him.
 
I thanked Beth and Sara both profusely and told them I’d pay them for the models, but they both said, “Nope, you’re having a hard day. We got them for you to cheer you up.”
 
I am not a crying-in-public sort of person, nor am I an “I’m going to hug you when I’m sweaty and gross” kind of person, but I sure did both that day.
 
I hope everyone is lucky enough to have friends in their life as great as the ones I have in mine.

Full Spectrum: Winter Blues, Part 1

Meteorological winter lasts from December 1 through February 28 each year, while astronomical winter lasts from the winter solstice around December 21 through the spring equinox around March 20.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, that’s a lot of cold, dark, and snow, and it’s just gotten started.

To combat that, the next three months of Full Spectrum posts will put a happier spin on the Winter Blues and feature all the models in my collection that are literally the color blue. Of all the decorator options out there, blue models are what I am most drawn to, so I have quite a few of them. Today’s post will feature the blue filigree winter decorators.

This is #712256 Benasque, the blue filigree winter decorator from 2018. There were 350 made. I was lucky enough to be drawn to purchase him from the first round and couldn't pay for him fast enough. I show him on occasion; his show name is Andorra, after the country located in the Pyrenees mountains, which is just over a hundred miles from the town of Benasque. (See what I mean about nerdy naming conventions?)

  

Five years after the smashing success of Benasque, Breyer released this guy, #712504 Vail, as their winter decorator. Despite the significantly higher piece count (1000 models), I wasn’t lucky enough to get drawn for him. My friend Kelly K was, though, and she offered to let me buy him at cost. He and Benasque lived right next to each other on the shelf until my count of Totilas models more than doubled in July when they used him as this year’s BreyerFest surprise model, and I had to do some serious rearranging.

I wouldn’t mind if one of the blue filigree Prince Charming chase piece Stablemates or the blue filigree Andalusian Foal from the La Molina and Masella set made its way into my collection someday, though I’m not actively looking for either one at the moment.

In January’s Full Spectrum, I’ll talk about my other blue Traditional & Classic scale models, and in February, I’ll show the blue Stablemates.

Collectibility Spotlight: Modern Chalkies

In November's Collectibility Spotlight, I featured the vintage chalky models in my collection. Today, I'll show some of my modern chalkies.
 
Unlike most vintage chalkies, which were basecoated out of necessity due to the different colors of plastic used for molding during the oil crisis years, modern chalkies are often a choice. Sometimes that’s a deliberate design for the entire run, like the regular run Sshameless or the BreyerFest 2020 special run Ash.

Other times, it can be a way for the company to save money by repurposing stock that didn't sell. Instead of regrinding that plastic down, reinjecting it into a new mold, and going through all the steps of cleaning and prepping prior to paint, they just toss a white basecoat over the existing paint job and paint over it. Voila! New model that skips all the expensive injection molding steps. It’s been a pretty common practice with Breyer over the years.

It’s extra fun when only part of a run ends up being chalky. Many of the TSC special runs over the past few years have had a subset of chalky models - Jesse, Hwin, and Gibson, to name a few. Partial-run modern chalkies tend to play out in the secondary market just like vintage chalkies do: they’re harder to find, more desirable, and command higher prices.

 

 

Oh look, we’re starting with a Sham again! This glossy bay is from the 1990 Sears Wishbook #497510 Race Horse Set. The color on this guy varied from a nice, deep red bay all the way to a garish Halloween orange - the latter occurring in particular on any models made from the bad batches of plastic that cause shrinkies and oozies. None of the Halloween orange ones I’ve seen from this run have been chalky; all of the darker red, non-shrinky ones have been. I’ve got both; you’ll see shrinky Halloween Sears Sham in a future post.

The paint on this guy is super thick, which is the first indication that he's got a chalky basecoat. The dead giveaway, though, is in the small rubs on his left ear. They have a white halo around them.

 

 

 

In 2019, Breyer used the Moody Andalusian mold for that year’s BreyerFest as #711343 Hero’s Welcome Surprise. It was issued in six colors: dark dapple gray, pearl, chestnut pinto, rose gray, clearware green decorator, and an ultra-rare black leopard appaloosa. Once I got back from Kentucky and caught up on social media, I found out that a portion of two of the colors were modern chalkies - the dark dapple gray and the pearl. Their colors tended to be lighter and had a glow to them; their facial details were much sharper; and their dapples were more pronounced. As soon as I saw pictures of them, I had to have them, and the search began.

I didn’t have to hunt for long. I found the chalky pearl on MH$P just four days after I got home from BreyerFest.

 

I purchased the chalky dark dapple gray from a seller on eBay only five days after I found the chalky pearl. I made a Buy It Now offer slightly higher than the starting bid and was thrilled when the seller accepted.  

 

 

 

Unlike most of the other dark dapple gray chalky models, which have non-basecoated, pearly plastic tails, my guy has a fully basecoated tail. I’ve only seen two others with full chalky tails in the years since.

Based on the data collection I did immediately after that year’s BreyerFest, looking at sales on eBay, Facebook, and MH$P, I estimate that around 10% of each of the two colors came in chalky.

Both colors were also issued with a gloss finish, but I haven’t heard of any chalkies that were glossed. God help me if I do!