Do That Conga: Smarty Jones

I’m running right up against time for this one and had to see what photographs I already had, so I’m going to loosely interpret the word “conga” for today and talk about my Smarty Jones models, which only number four in quantity.

 

 

This is #711047 Rushmore, a 2007 BreyerFest special run of 1250 pieces. I bought him from my friend Kelly W in April 2011. He has been an outstanding show horse for me - of the seven times he’s been on the table, he’s picked up four NAN cards and only finished out of the ribbons once. His show name is Jefferson.

 

 

This is #1345 Secretariat, a regular run that was first released in 2009 and is still in the lineup today. I got mine back in April 2014 when Tuesday Morning was still a thing and regularly received overstock from Breyer. I’m not quite sure why, but I drove all the way up to the Quaker Village Shopping Center in Leetsdale to get him.

I feel like Smarty Jones makes a better Quarter Horse than a Thoroughbred, and I’m completely overrun with stock horses, so this guy has only done a couple of photo shows during the pandemic. His show name was Create A Stir, which is an anagram of Secretariat.

 

 

A couple months later, on my birthday in 2014 - the same day I found my chalky buckskin Mustang while antiquing - I visited my friend and local Breyer dealer, Bonnie, to buy myself a present or two. This guy, #1712 Frankel, a regular run from 2013-2015, was one of my purchases. I believe he’s a modern chalky, as he has a nice white halo around his face marking. I think this bay is one of the prettiest colors they've ever put on him.

 

Like Secretariat, he’s only ever shown in photo shows, and I did the same thing with his name as I did with Secretariat’s - used an anagram. His name was Fen Lark.

 

 

I’ve probably said this before - I am neither a fan of cream dilutes nor a fan of patterned models, but put them together, and something glitches in my brain. I liked this model as soon as I saw him. He’s #701741 Hakan, a Tractor Supply Company special run from 2019. Some of these guys had a more uniform color and some had incredible shading; I looked at quite a few online before this guy practically leaped out of the picture from a Facebook group and onto my shelves in June 2020. His shading is outstanding. 

Being a mostly solid-colored horse fan, I don’t have a ton of appaloosas, so he gets into the show ring fairly regularly. His show name is Caldeum, a reference to the city in the video game series Diablo, which was ruled by emperors Hakan I and Hakan II. I didn’t play Diablo myself, but had a friend in college who was absolutely obsessed with it, and I spent many hours watching him play it.

I like this mold a lot, so I’ve got a whole bunch of Smarty Jones models on my wish list: Phantasma, Santiago, both finishes of Smarty Jones himself, both finishes of the bay pinto and black Dark Horse Surprises, both finishes of Riley, glossy Secretariat, and Daytona. A couple of those are relatively easy and cheap to obtain, but I’ll probably never have most of them.