Do That Conga: Giselle

For today’s Do That Conga post, we’re looking at my collection of Giselles.

Giselle was sculpted by Brigitte Eberl, one of my favorite Breyer sculptors, and was first released through the Connoisseur line in 2008. I absolutely love the rich chestnut color they put on her for that first release, but I’ll never own one - she’s a porcelain, and I break breakable things.

Giselle, like many of my other congas, was not intentional; she just kind of happened.

My first Giselle was - shocker - a Shiny Bay Thing, this glossy #1474 GG Valentine, a regular run produced from 2010-2019. They glossed one set out of six (one per case). 

 

On March 4, 2017, I went to the New Year’s Bash: Defrosted Edition show hosted by my friend Chesna. I have no show documents or photos of models with ribbons from that day, but the magic of old Facebook posts tells me I was shadowing my friend Kelly K as she judged Breyer/Other collectibility. (Awww, baby judge Mel was just learning!)

Chesna had a Breyer dealer at the show, Tack Shack and Livestock Supplies, who had some incredible discounts on some of their models. When I saw the glossy GG Valentine & Heartbreaker set priced at just $25, I snatched it right up!

She was the only Giselle on my shelf until 2020, when they used her for the BreyerFest special run #711371 Slainte Surprise. I bought three BreyerFest tickets that year because they had three molds I conga in the lineup - Sham, the Trakehner, and Wintersong. That was the first year of online BreyerFest (thanks but no thanks, Covid) and the first year of using online form submission to pick your special runs (a practice they still use today). I put the Sham, Trakehner, and Wintersong first on my master list, followed by three Surprise models, and I was lucky enough to get all my picks.

 

I was even luckier that they used a mold I like for the Surprise. 

Chris had paid for the Sham and one of the Slainte Surprise models as my birthday gift, so when the box arrived with all my special runs, I told him to pick one of the three Surprise bags and that one would be his official gift. I was thrilled to open this glossy red roan pinto! The glossies are always significantly fewer in quantity (325 of each color in 2020) and I'm typically not lucky enough to pull any. Perhaps I should drag Chris to BreyerFest with me and have him select my Surprise bags! (Just kidding, I would never subject him to the insanity that is BreyerFest.)

The next Slainte Surprise I opened was a matte red roan. Yay for two different ones! There were 800 made of each color in matte.

My third Slainte Surprise was another matte roan. I ended up trading with my friend Penny for this matte black silver. Penny had gotten duplicates of that color but was missing a roan, so our trade worked out great.

Right after New Year’s in 2021, a seller posted this matte palomino Slainte Surprise l on Model Horse Sales Pages for less than cost due to some factory flaws. I didn’t mind the flaws and just wanted her for a shelf-sitter, so I pounced.

 

Six months later, in June 2021, my friend Marci listed these two for sale, the glossy palomino and glossy black silver Slainte Surprises, with a discount if you bought both together. The black silver looks particularly awesome in gloss; I wish they’d use that color more often.

And thus, within the span of a year, my Giselles went from one model to seven.

 

In September 2022, my friend Heather B (who has already been mentioned in this blog A Lot) was ready to part with her #712192 Chesapeake, the event model from the 2016 Chasing the Chesapeake event, and I was more than happy to agree to buy her. Shiny Flaxen Chestnut Things are my second-biggest weakness behind Shiny Bay Things.

 

My last Giselle has a fun story. 

 

Every year since 1983, except for 2020, my family has gone to Kraynaks in Sharon, PA, sometime on or around Black Friday. We call it K-Day and we all look forward to it immensely. 

Last year, K-Day was delayed all the way until December 8th thanks to the ludicrous 60” of snow my parents got at their house in Erie between November 28th (Thanksgiving Day) and December 3rd. 

 

 

Those are my parents' cars - my mom's in the driveway and my dad’s on the street - on November 30, 2024. That was probably 18-24" of snow - and it continued to come down for three more days after that!

 

When we finally got to Kraynaks in December, I picked out this gal, #10007 Calista, for my parents to give me as a Christmas present, because my mom says it’s not Christmas unless they give me a Breyer.

As far as Giselles on my want list still to be acquired - there aren’t any! I had both the matte and glossy appaloosa Slainte Surprises on my want list at one time, but the masking on the appaloosa spots was notoriously bad on the entire run, and I haven’t yet found one in either finish that I can live with. I'm sure they'll put other colors on Giselle in the future that will catch my eye, but for now, the conga is holding steady at nine.

Sentimental Journey - Dream Weaver

There are special models, and then there are Special Models. 

Today’s Sentimental Journey post features just one model, but he’s got a great story. I wrote about him during one of the many end-of-year Facebook photo challenges that were popular at the end of the last decade, and much of the text that follows came straight from that post.

The setting: Eleven year-old me just got my first Breyers for Christmas (the subject of last month’s Sentimental Journey post). In one of the boxes was a 1990 Breyer manual, with a card on one end to subscribe to the Just About Horses magazine. I was frothing at the mouth because not only did I just realize that there were HUNDREDS of Breyers - not just the ones made for the JCPenney catalog - but there was an entire magazine about them, too.

 

 

My parents, being awesome, paid for a subscription for me. Back then, it was $7.50 for the year (six issues). A few weeks later, the first magazine arrived. (Picture above courtesy of Identify Your Breyer, and picture below courtesy of Breyer Horse Ref, because I don’t have access to my JAH magazines at the moment.)

 

Inside was this spread with the 1991 Limited Edition, Dream Weaver.

Little eleven year-old me was instantly in love.

I showed him to my parents, and I’m sure I went on and on about how much I wanted him, without much thought to how I’d actually get him. As a brand new collector, I didn’t know where Breyers were sold, and I hadn’t been to Toys “R” Us yet to discover that treasure trove. This was also early 1991, and the internet wasn’t a thing, so there was no whipping out a phone and tossing a few search words into Google to find the nearest dealer.

I don’t remember being distressed about finding him; I think I just trusted that someday, I would.

Fast forward to spring. I came home from school one day and I could immediately tell my mom was up to something. She had that suppressed, fizzy energy of someone just waiting to launch a surprise. I walked into the living room ... and there he was, new in his box, sitting on the small round table in front of the windows. 

He was mine.

He's got some war wounds on him from various adventures and from being a Tippy McTipperson (had to borrow one of my car air freshener plug-ins to help him stand for the photo), but I wouldn't have him any other way.  

 

For years, I assumed it was my mom who had managed to find him, since she was there when I first saw him and was clearly so excited to give him to me. But at some point along the way, she told me that the credit for finding him goes to my dad. I don’t know where he found him, and I’ll never ask, because I don’t want to know. The not-knowing is part of the magic.

My parents have given me a lot of models over the last 35 years, but this guy will always be my favorite. I will never forget how special and loved I felt that day.