Fantastic Finds: Friend-Assisted Liberations

For today’s Fantastic Finds post, I’m going to show a couple really cool models that friends have found in the wild and then passed along to me.

 

 

In October 2017, my friend Beth (yes, the same Beth who has enabled many of the models I’ve talked about so far) got a text from a friend about some Breyers at an antique store. She went the next day on her lunch break and stumbled upon the mother lode of boxed models from the 70s and 80s. She bought the entire bunch and then offered the ones she didn’t want to keep to our friend group at cost. Man O’ War is my favorite race horse of all time, so as soon as I saw this guy, #47 Man O’ War, with his pristine box, I had to have him.

 

 

Man O’ War had a tremendously long run, from 1967-1995. I knew this guy was from the early 80s due to his box, and this was confirmed when I saw his B stamp, which was put on molds from 1979-ish to 1983-ish to distinguish the plastic blend from their regular cellulose acetate. Like many B stamp models, he is a hair taller and larger overall than my other Man O’ Wars.

 

 

By far the coolest thing about this guy is his ephemera. In addition to his box, he came with a 1980 catalog, his original purchase receipt (how awesome is that!) from June 14, 1983, a plastic bag with a price tag that says K&K Toys, and a Horse of Course magazine subscription insert. 

A quick Google search tells me that K&K Toys was a chain that grew to 136 stores before being acquired by KB Toys in 1991. A fellow hobbyist shared some pictures of her Horse of Course magazines with me and told me it was produced in the 70s and 80s by a veterinarian in New Hampshire.

I’m generally not an ephemera collector, but having this original stuff with him is really freaking neat.

 

 

Another friend of mine, Heather M, also goes antiquing on the regular. She found this lovely palomino #4 Faith, Family Stallion with a mostly-intact sticker and messaged me to see if I wanted him. The answer was definitely yes! The palomino FAS was produced in matte from 1967-1987, but the large blue ribbon sticker dates this one to 1969-1970. My guy doesn’t have the USA stamp, either, which was added sometime in 1970, so he's from earlier in the run.

I only had two stickered models in my collection when Heather messaged me; both were the small blue ribbon and only partial stickers. Having this almost-complete large sticker was something unique for my collection. I show him occasionally at all-collectibility shows. His show name is Stick ‘Em Up.

 

 

In August 2019, Heather M went to a consignment sale, where this guy - #300306 John Wayne’s Dollor, a Tractor Supply Company run of 3000 models in 2006 - was not only marked super cheap, but he was also 25% off. She messaged me about him and I congratulated her on her find - but then I found out she’d snagged him for me! She knew I’d been looking for one for awhile and that I had had some recent near-misses. He was $50 total after the discount. I picked him up from her a couple months later at the QH Congress show.

He’s marked #233/3000 on his belly and his show name is A Fistful of Dollors.