New Additions: March 2026

My purchasing in March was a heck of a lot calmer than the weather. The latter included multiple shelf clouds, severe thunderstorms, tornado warnings, flood warnings, and in mid-March, an unexpected 4-5" of snow (they were calling for a dusting to an inch). It was 80 with blazing sun, storming and putting down enormous volumes of rain, windy enough to knock down trees and power lines, or 35 and snowing/sleeting. My house continued to develop new and exciting ways to leak water, so that's been a good time. After successfully sealing a crack in the outside concrete decking that was leading to soaked carpet in the sunroom, the latest casualty is the head jamb over the kitchen door. I have no idea where the water is coming from, as the door frame is embedded in the brick structure of the house and sits underneath an awning, but I sure as heck watched water run and drip out of it in a steady stream during the storms on Thursday, and my kitchen floor was wet. Guess I’ll be paying someone to figure it out, because I ain't risking the Brazilian Koa.

I only purchased four models in March, two of which aren’t in hand yet, and I also need to talk about a purchase I made in February that contained an unexpected ride-along. I’ll start with that one.

In my February 2026 New Additions post, I shared a photo from a hobby friend of mine who sold me her Stone ISH Ima Shifty Goodbar. He was purchased on February 26; she shipped him out a few days later and advised me to look out for “a little surprise extra” in the box with him. I was thinking oooo, maybe a sticker or something, since Stone has been producing a lot of those lately.

 

Turns out she sent me a whole extra horse, the mini-me version in the same satin matte finish as the big guy! He was not part of our negotiations nor the price - when I messaged her with a pic of them together and about a dozen exclamation points, she just said, “Well, mini me was lonely and I only collect mini mes to go with the big ones. I forgot I had the little one. There he was alone on the shelf. Enjoy!” 

He is lovely in satin matte. I love the people in this hobby and their generosity.

 

 

This little guy is one that isn’t here yet, so the seller's photo will have to suffice for now. He’s Potion, a OOAK Chips Mule from the 2024 Moonlight Madness sale. I’ve been in love with him since I saw his original photos during the event, and this in-hand photo from the seller cemented the deal. The seller offered a discounted price for in-person pickup at a show next month; I’m not able to make that show this year due to the finals of my bowling league, but my friend Sarah is going and offered to transport. I’ll grab him from her in May when I attend the live show she’s hosting. Yay for enabling hobby friends!

 

 

In my most recent Other Makes post, I talked about my WIA models, and noticed my WIA Vincenzo’s right leg was somewhere in the vicinity of his ear due to his weight distribution. So I headed over to Triple Mountain to buy him a stand, and oops, a couple other things fell into my cart. This guy, #MK10001 Erren the Criollo Stallion, a run of 5000 pieces produced in 2022 for WIA, was one of them. I judged one last year at a local 4H show and fell I love with how dynamic he is, so now one lives with me.

 

He's got teef!

 

 

One of the other things to oops itself into my cart was this palomino CollectA, #88984 Andalusian Stallion, released in 2023. I’ve got the bay and gray, so it was time for the third color to join the herd.

I had one more CollectA purchase from Triple Mountain in my order, but he was a pre-order and won’t be shipping til July, so I’ll get to him then.

Happily, all my purchases this month were tiny and fit on the shelves! Now if I could just do something about the floorses …

Bonus Post: When Inspiration Fails, Ask the Boyfriend

For a couple years now, whenever I’m going to a model horse show, I invite my boyfriend Chris into the horse room and ask him to choose a model for me to show. (I stole the idea from a friend who asks her husband to do the same.) Chris hasn’t always been enthusiastic about my collection - he gets nervous that they’ll break - but he plays along well enough for this part. If he picks one I already show, cool; if not, he gets to assign naming rights.

Thus far, his choices have been:

• A bay roan CollectA Mustang Mare, who looked like his horse in Red Dead Redemption II. Though the model is a Mustang, he named her Queen Aliquippa after a Thoroughbred of whom his parents were part-owners at one time; that’s also what he named his RDR2 horse.
• My volunteer Lipizzaner Mare Zeitgeist, who he named Lady Granrick. He dubbed our house Castle Granrick (a merger of our last names) when we bought it, and he wanted to keep with the royal theme from the first model, so Lady Granrick she became. She’s got several NAN cards with that name.
• A solid black DAH windswept Arabian. Chris has always been drawn to the Stones first, but often can’t pick them because I tend to judge the Stone division a lot. He initially had a little trouble coming up with the name, but it was football season, so he wanted to name it Raider after his favorite football team. I instigated him a little bit by assigning the final name of Viking Raider, a combination of both our favorite teams. He muttered something about cross-branding and triggering the apocalypse that I chose to ignore. For being a plain black Arab in a sea of heavily FCM’d models, Viking Raider actually holds his own in the show ring.
• A decorator metallic silver ISH, White Luna; he named her Fall Moon.

When I realized there would be an extra blog post in March, I wracked my brain for ideas of what I could do with it, but never settled on something I liked. A few days ago, in desperation, I said to Chris, “Go into the horse room and pick a model for me to talk about in my blog.”

He's a good sport, so he actually did it. He pointed to every silver-colored horse in the room - with zero doubt in my mind that he picked it because it's one of the Raiders colors - so that's what I'm talking about today.

I covered #B-CS-10497 Killington & Little Killington in my November New Additions post, and my #701705 Stablemates Mini Fanfare silver G1 Draft in my January Collectibility Spotlight post, so you can find them over there. Here are the rest.

 

 

Hamilton (also known as the Racking Saddlebred Stallion) isn’t one of my favorite molds, but I felt compelled to conga him when I won the BreyerFest Raffle model, Order of the Thistle, in 2020. I had the rare one, so might as well get the rest, right? I dutifully collected Hamiltons for awhile, but then they used him as the BreyerFest surprise mold in 2023 and I only liked one of the colors (the solid chestnut), so I gave myself permission to not conga them anymore.

#712445 Tahoe, a run of 1000 pieces in silver filigree, was the annual winter-themed web special in 2022. I didn’t get drawn in the first round, but did get picked from the wait list.

 

 

This is #710200, just called Stablemate Keychain, who was a 2000 BreyerFest special run of 2000 pieces. I have a somewhat large conga of the G2 Arabian and this guy was on my wish list for quite awhile. I finally tracked one down for only $10 in room sales at the CHIN during BreyerFest 2023.

 

 

This ISH will make another appearance when I get to my FCM ISHs in May’s Do That Conga post, but she can have her turn here as well. This is White Luna, a run of 7 models produced in 2017. I looked at this model every day she was available on the site. I loved her metallic shine. She had a counterpart named Black Luna who was also very metallic, but a darker silver. I considered her, too, but was more in love with the lighter one. She was available for a good long while - probably at least a week or two, which is forever when you think about how fast Stones fly off the website these days - but I never pulled the trigger, and always regretted it.

In June 2023, one Thursday night when I was at my bowling league, my friend Kelly W sent a sales list from a local person who was offloading the majority of her collection at steeply discounted prices. In the sales list was a White Luna! Kelly contacted the seller for me, I sent a PayPal payment, and a couple days later, I picked White Luna up in-person. It is crazy to me that this model I’d wanted for so long lived with a collector I’d never met, less than a 20-minute drive away from me, and that waiting to get her meant I paid below what she would have cost me to order directly from Stone. I don’t typically believe in fate, but this is one of those times where I think I was meant to own this particular horse.

It looks like I’ll have the opportunity for bonus posts again in April and May; stay tuned to see what else Chris comes up with!

Singles Bar: The Letter D

I’ve only got two singletons on molds beginning with D, but today’s post will be a little bit longer than that. In pulling my list of D molds, I realized I have completely neglected my CollectAs, so this post will include a “catch up” for my singletons on CollectA molds starting with A through C, so they can get their turn in the spotlight.

Starting with the D molds first:

 

 

This is mini Nazruddin from the #711354 30th Anniversary Stablemates Commemorative Set, a BreyerFest special run of 2000 pieces in 2019. Each of the ten models represented one of the Celebration horses from BreyerFests 2010-2019. This set was issued in a similar vein to the first Commemorative Set in 2009, which contained Stablemate versions of the first 20 celebration horses (1990-2009). The first Commemorative Set was limited to a quantity of only 500 and sells for big bucks; individually, the models are often $50 or more apiece. This second Commemorative Set was four times as big on the piece count and sells for much less; sold sets are averaging $100-120, or $10-12 per model.

I’m not a fan of this mold at all (like, at all) so he will likely be my only one, unless they release it as part of a Best of BreyerFest Set or another BreyerFest Commemorative Set.

 

 

I’ve never really been into the more rubberized plastic models like Schleich or Safari, so it was kind of surprising to me when I fell in love with CollectAs. The sculpts seem a bit more realistic to me and the paint jobs tend to be nicer and less cheap-looking. I currently have 25 of the horses and 4 animals (three cows and the calico cat, for obvious reasons).

This little Dartmoor is the one who made me go, “Oh God, I forgot about the CollectAs!” He’s #88604 Bay Dartmoor Pony on the Dartmoor Pony III mold, produced from 2013-2020. I got him as a Christmas gift from my parents in 2016.

He’s been on the show table a couple times under the names Mortimer and Sploof. I used to be kinda terrible at tracking names for models that don’t show very often, and didn’t realize he’d already had a name, so now he has two.

There’s one other color on him, solid black, but it doesn’t really wow me, so he’s likely to remain my only one on this mold.

 

Now for the catch-up on CollectA singletons on molds starting with A through C.

 

 

This is #88846 American Cream Draft Stallion, produced from 2019-2021. He was a “ride along” with one of my 2019 Vintage Club purchases so it would get double-boxed. I’m pretty sure I’ve never shown him, but his name is Banana Frappe in my spreadsheet, so maybe I intended to show him at some point?

He’s the only one they’ve released on this mold, so he’ll remain by himself unless they release another.

 

 

This is #88769 Black Forest Horse, first issued in 2016 and still in production today. I’ve got conflicting records on how I got this one - one spreadsheet says I got him direct from Breyer in an order from 12/18/17, and the other says I got him as a Christmas gift from my parents a week later. My collection documentation was awful in 2017 and 2018, so it might remain forever a mystery.

He’s also the only release on this mold so far.

 

 

This is #88701 Red Dun Campolina Stallion, produced from 2014-2020. I got him as a Christmas gift from my parents in 2016. This is the only color they released him in, so like the others, he’ll stay by himself until something new comes out.

I’ve only got one singleton on E molds, a lone Esprit, but I think I have enough to say about him (and other Esprits on my wish list) that I can get a decent-length post there and keep the F molds as-scheduled for May.

Other Makes: WIA

In 2021, a friend of mine posted a link in our group chat to the modellpferdeversand website in Denmark, where they had WIA models for sale. WIA is a German company producing models in a hard, rubbery plastic similar to CollectA and Schleich, but more rigid. They were pretty cool, but I wasn’t keen enough on them initially to pay the cost of international shipping. Then, in 2022, they put out a Vincenzo, and all of us in the group chat went in on a large order and split the shipping cost. Win-win!

 

 

This is #WIA BE10006, Lancelot, a run of 2500 pieces released in 2021. They had me at “dramatically-shaded dappled bay sporty thing.” He’s got a pretty bad scuff on one side so I haven’t ever shown him.

 

 

This is #WIA BE10003, Sharif, also a run of 2500 pieces released in 2021. The dapples are quite stark, but all the ones I’ve seen have been like that.

 

 

This is #WIA BE10010 Vincenzo, a run of 2500 pieces released in 2022.

I’ve been madly in love with the Vincenzo sculpt since I saw this lovely bone China sooty dapple buckskin for sale on a website sometime around 2006 or 2007:

 

The above guy belongs to a friend and I get to drool over him occasionally when she brings him out to shows. She even offered to sell him to me, but I Break All Breakable Things, so that’s a nope for sure. I will just admire him from afar.

When the relatively unbreakable mini version of Vincenzo came out in 2022 through WIA, I of course had to have one. I need to buy a stand for him - that front leg is really taking a beating from his weight distribution and should definitely not be at that angle. I've straightened it a couple times, but mean old Mr. Gravity ends up flattening it back out again. Triple Mountain sells stands; perhaps it’s time I wander over to that site to buy one ... and see if there are any other WIA models they can tempt me with.

Fantastic Finds: Honey Bay PAM & PAF

Well, it’s 3:48 p.m. as I’m sitting down to write this, and my posts always go up at 5:00, so time management issues are still A Thing right now. Work didn’t get any better as the week went on and I ended up having to put in some extra time in the evenings. 

On the funnier side, my Dad sent me a picture this morning of an asteroid with our new EHR’s name on it and said it was a close-up of the one that streaked almost directly over my sister’s house in Ohio on Tuesday and was visible from Pittsburgh. That inspired me to put the new EHR’s name on the Miley Cyrus wrecking ball meme, because it has made everything about my job 200% harder. 

I’ll take the laughs where I can get them.

I’ve already covered most of the knock-your-socks-off liberations in my collection, so now I’m moving on to the not-earth-shattering-but-still-cool liberations.

 

 

I picked up these two almost a year ago from an antique mall in Ohio as my friend Kelly W and I were driving up to Michigan for the BVG Live show. The Proud Arabian Mare is #14 Sheba and the Proud Arabian Foal is #15 Shah, both produced from 1958-1959. The production run on the early PAMs and PAFs was extremely short due to the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Hagen Renaker, as Breyer directly copied HR's Zara and Zilla molds for the PAM and PAF (respectively), so the late-50s PAM and PAF releases are a little harder to find and tend to be more expensive. The 50s honey bays and alabasters are significantly more common than the gray appaloosas; the latter tend to fetch thousands at auction.

Both of these honey bays are pretty scuffed up and need restored, but Kelly thought the price was reasonable for their condition and talked me into getting them. At the same store, Kelly nabbed a Cybis Donkey Foal and a Hagen Renaker DW English Bulldog, pictured below with my PAM and PAF. A successful liberation for both of us!

 

Show Stoppers: Stone Mini Light Breeds

I covered most of my Stone minis in last month’s Singles Bar post - all except the Chips Arabs and my four Pebbles. I’m not able to find pics of my two Pebbles Drafts at the moment and (as usual) I’m pressed for time, so today we’ll just cover Stone Mini Light, and I’ll get to the Drafts down the road.

 

 

This handsome chap is Mini Me Winter Wonderland, a run of 10 non-customized Chips Arabians painted by Audrey Dixon. (Apparently my love of Audrey Dixon paint jobs is not confined to just bays and chestnuts.) I got him from the Warehouse Sale in December 2018. He was something like 50% off, so how could I say no?

I had to name him something from the song, of course. I almost picked SNOWMAN! (in all caps like that, with the exclamation point) because Winter Wonderland always reminds me of my dear friend Aaron from undergrad. One night, near Christmas break in 1997 or 1998, we got shit-faced and started singing that song as we wandered through campus in the snow. One of us would sing, “In the meadow we can build a snowman,” and the other one would yell at the top of our lungs, “SNOWMAN!” For some reason, that stuck with us, and to this day, we still text SNOWMAN! to each other every so often. The most recent occurrence was a month ago.

I didn’t want judges to think I was yelling at them, though, so I went with Parson Brown for his name instead. He’s done pretty all right for himself, with four breed NAN cards and two collectibility NAN cards in his six times on the table.

 

 

This gal was from my early-2024 “Buy Stones from Australia” era. (Seriously, all of my January and February purchases that year were Stones from sellers in Australia.) She’s Mini Me Bernadette, a run of 25 Chips Arabians in gloss for one of the Eureka Live shows; Stone Horse Reference doesn’t specify the year, or the artist who painted her. There were also 25 made in matte. I fell in love with her color as soon as I saw her. Her show name is Aid and Abet. She took Light section champ her first time out.

 

 

This model was the first Stone mini to enter my collection. In 2010, I both rejoined the hobby after a hiatus for grad school and attended my first model horse show - the Chesapeake Regional All-Halter Bash (CRAB) show in Maryland over Halloween weekend. Chesapeake Bey II, a bay Pebbles Arabian, was made just for the show. In an email from the show holder, we were told there were only 20 made, but the Stone Horse Reference site says there were 30; it was so long ago that I don’t remember how many were actually on the sales table. We submitted our names for a drawing if we were interested, and my name was drawn in the first five or so, so I got to hand-pick a really nice one.

She’s been on the show table 48 times - more than any other model in my collection - and has amassed quite the collection of ribbons and NAN cards in both breed and collectibility. Her show name is A Cappella.

 

 

This is Applewood, a run of factory customized Pebbles Arabians for the Springamathing live show in 2012. Her run size is unknown. I bought her online direct from Stone after the event. She has also been on the show table quite a lot, 37 times, and does just as well in breed as her sister A Cappella, though she is not as competitive in collectibility due to her unknown (and therefore assumed to be larger) run size. Her show name is Worth the Wait because it took a loooooooooooong time for them to get her out of the factory and on her way to me. I ordered her on September 3, and she didn’t get shipped out until the very end of October!

Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Great Spirit sets

A bit of a shorter post today; I find myself with a dearth of mental energy due to how chaotic work has been. I’m a Clinical Data Analyst (aka Giant Data Nerd) and my organization started switching to a different instance of our Electronic Health Record in late September, which has made my job ... interesting. No mapping was done for some of the things that changed (like patient visit types and appointment scheduling modes), so the data between the systems doesn’t match, and figuring out how and why and then wrangling the new data around to match the old data has been nightmarish. I want to have enough brain left to keep up with these blog posts, but it’s a struggle at the moment.

For today’s Gift Horse post, I needed something both easy to write about and easy to photograph, so I’m visiting Christmas gifts from 2001 and 2003, when JCPenney produced several sets of models with “Great Spirit” in the name, symbolizing (according to the COAs) the “Great American West” and spirits of animals valued by Indigenous People of the Great Plains.

 

 

#410201 Great Spirit Mare & Foal set was produced in 2001. No piece count was ever released for this set. They were just called "Breyer Paint Mare & Foal" in the catalog, but came with a COA with the Breyer-issued name above. The bright flaxen chestnut Marabella has a bear shape on her flank; if you squint, you can see it on mine. The masking went a little askew, so the bear's eye is up underneath its ear, and it also looks like it has a camel hump. The bear is much easier to perceive on other copies I've seen. 

 

She was my second on the Marabella mold; the foal was my first on the Ashley mold. I got them for Christmas that year from my parents.

In 2002, JCPenney released the Great Spirit II set, called Legend of the Wolf. The molds were Buckshot and Phantom Wings, and the Buckshot had a wolf in the pattern on his side. I’m not a fan of those molds and don’t currently have any of either in my collection, so I didn’t ask for the set that year.

 

 

#410703 Great Spirit of the Mighty Eagle III was produced in 2003, again with no piece count released. I got them for Christmas that year from my parents. The set represented Mustangs with an eagle pattern on them. The eagle is easy to make out on the Running Stallion, though the foal's head is hiding a good bit of it here. 

 

The COA doesn’t name them individually, but the JCPenney catalog called the Running Stallion “Kwahu” and the Action Stock Horse Foal “Alo.” Both were the second of each mold in my collection, with the #810 Action Appaloosa Foal preceding “Alo” and Rumbling Thunder preceding “Kwahu.”

 

I ended up with a second set of these guys when I bought a small lot of random models from a local Pittsburgher selling her collection through Craigslist. The duplicate set found a new home during BreyerFest 2012.

Full Spectrum: Still More Winter Blues

Wrapping up the Winter Blues series today, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Meteorological spring started on March 1, with astronomical spring just around the corner next week. January and February were especially brutal this year. My gas bill was insane. March started better - we hit 78 degrees in Pittsburgh a week ago, ahead of a storm that I would swear dumped 2” of rain in fifteen minutes. It looked like we were under a waterfall. My poor sump pump couldn’t keep up and we got water in the basement and the garage (sigh). 

Anyone who knows me knows I’m as big of a weather nerd as I am a model horse nerd. Half my BreyerFest photo album every year is clouds. So of course I saw Saturday’s beast coming on radar and was out snapping pictures and panoramics as it approached. The shelf cloud at the front of the storm was pretty cool.

 

 

Anyway, back to the ponies. I saved the Breyer Traditionals for last on purpose. You’ll see why when we get to the last horse.

 

 

In 2006, Breyer did their first Treasure Hunt series, releasing the Lady Phase mold in four colors - palomino pinto, fleabit gray, chestnut, and black appaloosa. The lucky finders of all four colors could send in the UPC codes from the boxes to redeem a prize model, who was this lovely Wedgewood. The snippet on the back of her box listed her number as #1248, but I’ve also seen #1215 listed. The latter makes more sense, since the other four colors were released with the numbers 1211 - 1214.

All four of the original colors came in both short- and long-tail versions, as did the Wedgewoods. I have a complete set of both. I wasn’t collecting at the time these were released, being a poor, overworked grad student, so I’ve come by all of them secondhand. I bought the short-tail Wedgewood Lady Phase from Model Horse Sales Pages in June 2011, and the long-tail Wedgewood joined my collection from a room sales pickup at BreyerFest 2018. I’ve only shown the short-tail; her show name is Stonewashed.

 

 

This little cutie is #710301 Shadow of Blue, a 2001 BreyerFest special run of 1600 pieces. I picked her up in room sales during BreyerFest 2013. She could pass for a realistic model in this crappy lighting, but she's definitely too blue for that when you see her in person. Her show name is Sapphire.

 

 

As soon as this guy was announced - #711508 Franz, a 2022 BreyerFest special run of 2000 pieces - I knew I had to have him. Even though it was twenty-cough-cough years ago, I distinctly remember my first time seeing Franz Marc’s blue horse paintings during an undergrad class for my art minor. They struck a chord (obviously, look how obsessed I am with blue horse-shaped things) so I didn’t hesitate to put Franz onto my BreyerFest special run preference list that year.

 

 

BreyerFest 2025 was one of those years where I didn’t really need any of the special runs heading into the event - except this guy, #B-EV-10441 To the Ties That Bind Us. Silver mold? Yes! Blue? Yes! Outlines of other Breyers, including Sham, on his butt? Yes!

Could have done with a shorter, less awkward name, but whatever.

The first few people through the tent line quickly discovered that there was a gold variation on this guy. Rumors flew that the gold was a micro-run, and the prices went absolutely nuts for the gold guys on eBay for a few days. As more people obtained and opened them, it became pretty clear that the blue and gold were evenly distributed and that the silver Silver (ha, silver Silver) was the micro-run. A silver Silver would have been cool (I’d have given it to my friend Nina for her conga) but I was happy to open the blue that I’d had my heart set on.

The high resale values on both the blue and gold have persisted well past BreyerFest, likely due to Silver's popularity in general and how well this particular release was received. They’re still selling regularly on eBay for $250-350.

And now … drumroll please … the paramount blue horse in my collection, the grail of all grails, the horse I never in a million years thought I’d ever get to own:

 

 

The one, the only, Smurfy Sham.

BreyerFest in 1991 was divided into four parts across the country - Redmond/Bend, OR; York, PA; Lexington, KY; and Pomona, CA. Each location had its own raffle model of 21 pieces. Oregon had a Copenhagen San Domingo, Kentucky had a Gold Charm Man O' War, and California had a Florentine Legionario. #414091 Sham was the York, PA raffle model in the fourth original decorator color, Wedgewood.

His issue name wasn’t Smurfy, though it should have been - their attempts to replicate the Wedgewood of the 60s decorators went a *smidge* sideways. I don’t know who coined the term Smurfy for him, but it’s dead-on.

Being a Sham nut, I always wanted to have a Smurfy, but never expected to actually get one for several reasons. (1) There have been a ton of fakes of this guy over the years, so I had to have one with provenance - one that came from an original winner (or at least had a definitive chain of ownership leading back to an original winner). (2) My pocketbook for rarities is fairly pitiful compared to the heavy-hitters in the hobby, so even if I could find a real one, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to compete. (3) Even if I could technically afford it, I typically have trouble pulling the trigger on large plastic pony purchases. The odds were not in my favor.

In 2020, of all the years, nothing was in anyone’s favor. Everything was cancelled. Work and school occurred from home. Social events happened on Zoom or not at all. The Seattle event (for which I'd been lucky enough to get picked) was cancelled and BreyerFest was moved entirely online. It was a time of isolation, depression, and fear for a lot of folks. 

 

Some hobbyists coped with that by putting out ISOs for their grails. And they started finding them.
 

On May 11, 2020, after seeing yet another person get their hands on something crazy rare they’d always wanted, I said, “What the hell,” and I made an ISO post for Smurfy on the Rare Model Horse Sales Facebook group.

Later that same day, I got a message on Messenger from my friend Nina. I knew she had a Smurfy (even before she messaged me), but I also knew that he was incredibly sentimental to her - her mother had won him at the York, PA BreyerFest, and her mother had since passed, so he was extra special to her. I didn’t think she’d ever part with him for that reason, so I was really surprised when she responded to my ISO post. She said she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to let him go, but she’d think about it, since she knew how special he'd be to me and that he'd have a forever home here. I told her to take her time and if she decided she wasn’t ready, that was totally fine.

Within a couple weeks, she messaged me that she was ready and named her price.

I have never transferred money between my bank accounts that fast in my LIFE.

Smurfy at FAMulous 2022, winning all the things.

 

He’s come to every single show with me (as long as I’m not judging the Breyer division) since things started up again post-pandemic in late 2021. He’s been on the table sixteen times, hasn’t ever been shut out of the ribbons, and has completed the ribbon rainbow - nine firsts, three seconds, and one each of third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. He’s also been section champ twice, section reserve champ twice, and an overall collectibility champ once. His show name is Once in a Blue Moon.

He is one of the most special models in my collection, and I will be forever thankful to my friend Nina for allowing a piece that was so special to her to find a new home on my shelves. He is greatly treasured here.

Collectibility Spotlight: Diorama Contest Prize Models

Since at least 2008 (perhaps before that, too?), Breyer has included a diorama contest as part of BreyerFest. There’s a theme for the contest that aligns with the overall BreyerFest theme, and there are a few rules - at least one Breyer model must be used, and the whole thing has to fit within a 12x12x12 inch cube. Twenty-eight are selected as winners from four different age categories; there is only one category for adults 18 and up, so only 7 prizes go to adults. The vast majority of entrants are adults, so it’s really tough to win.

I did the diorama contest in 2013, 2014, and 2017. Because these are technically models in my collection, here are pictures of my three dioramas. None were winners, but I had fun making them all.

 

 

In 2013, the BreyerFest theme was Denim and Diamonds, and the diorama contest theme was the Music City Mashup, where entrants were to transform a Breyer model into a famous Country music legend. I did a diorama of Patsy Cline singing at the Grand Ole Opry. This picture was on the Wikipedia page for the Grand Ole Opry and I used it as my inspiration:

 

 

In preparing this diorama, I walked into a local hobby store and asked the person at the front if they had any doll clothing that I could reasonably slice and dice to fit on a model horse. They didn’t even bat an eyelash and pointed me to the right aisle. I didn’t find anything that would work, so I bought a Barbie outfit on eBay. I did experience a little pang as I started mangling the Barbie outfit, hoping I wasn’t destroying something rare and collectible from that realm. But the eBay listing wasn’t new nor was it expensive, so I figured I was okay. The boots, hay bales, and pitchfork were loaned to me by a friend, and I had the Ruffian body on hand. Everything else in the diorama was made by me.

 

BreyerFest 2014 was the Silver Jubilee - the 25th anniversary of BreyerFest. Many of the exclusive models had party-themed names: Pop the Cork, Champagne Toast, Jubilee, Celebration. Accordingly, the diorama contest theme was Party Time, and entrants were encouraged to share one of their favorite Breyer-related memories. I loved going into toy stores as a kid and wondering what Breyers I might find there. Walking into the Vendor Fair for the first time at BreyerFest 2010 was that same excited feeling, magnified by ten. There were SO MANY models. In honor of that feeling, I made a miniature Breyer store at the Vendor Fair, complete with the blue and yellow dividers Breyer used to separate the vendor spaces.

I had a little bit of help with this one - my Dad sized and printed out the Breyer logos and model names for the little plastic boxes. I made the boxes myself; I took the clear plastic from the front of a Breyer box, cut it slightly larger than the yellow box backing, and then scored it so I could fold it up and fit into the front of the little yellow boxes. The boxes were the most challenging part to make. I had a great time with this one.

 

 

The theme for BreyerFest 2017 was Gateway to India, and the diorama contest had the same name. I had a PAM body I’d inherited from a friend - the poor gal had been stripped with bleach at some point (not by my friend) and had all kinds of interesting cracks all over her body. She wasn’t ever going to be stable enough to do anything with as far as a legit custom, so she got primered in black chalkboard paint, which was thick enough to hide most of the damage, and used in my diorama. I knew right away that I wanted to do something with rangoli, a form of art displayed during festivals and ceremonies where designs are drawn on the floor using colored rice, colored sand, flour, charcoal, dry pigments, or flower petals. The designs are often augmented by candles.

I printed out some rangoli designs I found on the internet and bought a bunch of colored sand. Using the sand and some good old-fashioned Elmers glue, I replicated the rangoli designs on the PAM, putting on the glue and then dropping the sand over her, one little section at a time. Since chalkboard paint was her base, and thus easy to color on, I used colored pencil for her stockings, stripe, mane, tail, hooves, and eyes. She was also a lot of fun to make. She’s still hanging out in my basement.

The story doesn’t end here - though I haven’t ever won one directly, I do have two diorama contest prize models in my collection. One is an “I can’t believe I actually own this model” and the other is the result of one of my favorite BreyerFest stories of all time.

I’m gonna start with the first one.

 

 

This horse, #711443 Walk of Fame, is the sole reason I started entering diorama contests to begin with. He was the prize model for the 2013 Denim & Diamonds BreyerFest, where I made Patsy Cline. I was sad not to have won him, though not surprised, given the competition and relative scarcity of prize models for adults.

On March 10, 2020, right before everything shut down with the pandemic, my friend Beth E messaged our hobby friends group chat and asked if anyone was interested in her Walk of Fame. I was like ME ME ME BETH ME ME ME!!!! She told me all she wanted for him was the value of the trade she’d done to acquire him a few years ago, and that she’d take time payments. I was like, “Beth, are you sure? Are you really sure?” Because the trade value back when she got him was nowhere near what he was worth in 2020. Beth said, “I’m sure. I’d rather he be kept in the family.”

To this day, every time I look at him, I still think to myself, I can’t believe I own this horse.

He does great in collectibility (no surprise there) and has NAN’d all but two times he’s been on the table. One of those was a justified third place given what else was on the table, and the other … well, to put it nicely, the judge really didn’t know much about Breyer collectibility and pinned a lot of not-rare things over rare things that day.

His show name is the one Beth gave him, Act Naturally.

 

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Now onto one of my favorite BreyerFest stories of all time.

So most people reading this blog probably know about the Ninja Pit of Death (NPOD). For the sake of my parents (who I know tune in here regularly and aren’t as well-versed in the more niche aspects of the hobby), the NPOD is the Breyer store first thing on Friday morning at BreyerFest. Breyer was known for putting many Rare and Valuable Things in the NPOD. The NPOD got its name due to the flying elbows, shoving, and other general not-coolness amongst rabid hobbyists trying for a big score.

By 2014, Breyer said, “Enough of this nonsense behavior,” and started handing out numbers to shoppers waiting in line. Back then, people started lining up on Thursday; now it’s like Tuesday, or something equally as eyebrow-raising. The line numbers helped cut back on the chaos a little. Breyer also announced that year that they would be “spreading the wealth” and distributing the rarities at random throughout the weekend, not just putting them all in the NPOD for Friday morning. Many hobbyists were skeptical.

I’ve never participated in the NPOD. I enjoy sleeping, and my hips and spine don’t enjoy prolonged contact with pavement, and there really isn’t any Breyer I would deem worth potential bodily injury to obtain. (Even a Sham.) I find the phenomenon fascinating, and there are definitely things I’ve been sad to miss out on - the volunteer chestnut 2010 WEG Esprit that found its way into the pit in 2011, for example - but it’s never been something I wanted to do.

Thus, I don’t go into the Breyer store until much, much later in the day on Friday, and if there’s not a Limited Edition I’m interested in, sometimes I don’t get there til Saturday or Sunday. 
 

On Friday, July 17, 2015, I wandered into the Breyer store at 3:15 p.m.

On one of the tables closest to the roll-up doors was this.

 

 

I did a double take, then a triple take, and went wait, wasn’t she the diorama contest prize model last year? 

I snatched her up so fast, I’m shocked I didn’t accidentally drop her or launch her into the air and across the store. I made a beeline for the checkout, clutching her to my bosom, scared someone would ascertain what I had in my hands and I’d be a victim of those flying elbows everyone always talked about.

I checked out without issue and my brain promptly turned into nothing but a series of exclamation points.

When I unwrapped her at the CHIN, I noticed a partially scratched-off signature on her belly that said "CC 11/7/13." I took her upstairs to my friends Kelly and Kelly and said, “What could that be, and is she worth less because someone signed it and then poorly attempted to remove it?” They immediately recognized it as what is typically signed on the model when it's approved as a prototype - the approver's initials and the date. [Why they'd try to remove that before putting her in the store is beyond me.]

 

 

So not only is she something rare - she’s the prototype from which all the rest were made, and she was just lying on the table in the Breyer store at 3:15 on a Friday, waiting for someone to discover her. 

Spread the wealth, indeed!

She is by far the coolest thing I’ve ever found in the Breyer store.

Her show name is Rose Blossom.

Special Effects: Classic Gambler's Choice Models, Part 1

In July 2016, Breyer conducted a poll to vote on four colors for an upcoming Collector Club exclusive release on the Classic-scale Swaps mold. The release was named Scotty and the colors were modeled after previous releases - Jazz Fusion (glossy bay pinto), Fandango (matte dun), Burbank (matte bay roan appaloosa), and Uncalled For (glossy silver bay). In 2017, Breyer announced that all but the matte dun were so closely tied that they decided to do a gambler’s choice release on the other three colors, in quantities of 500 pieces each - and it was such a hit that they did another Classic gambler's choice later that year, and have continued to do one every year since.

For the March and April Special Effects posts, I’ll be covering the Classic gambler’s choice models in my collection.

 

 

#712231 Scotty in glossy silver bay was part of the first gambler’s choice release in 2017, as I said above, but is actually the most recent gambler’s choice Classic to join my collection. I liked all three colors, but for whatever reason, I didn’t participate that year. I’ve been low-key hunting them ever since.

With a finite quantity of 500 apiece and extreme popularity as both the first release and one of the best color lineups, they can get pricey on the secondary market. I lucked into this silver bay at the BVG Live Show and swap meet in April 2025. He was priced at only $30 - that’s less than he would have cost to get him direct from Breyer if you factor in shipping. I was so busy showing that I didn’t get to check out the swap meet vendors until lunchtime. I couldn’t believe he was still sitting there with that price tag on him. Lucky me!

 

I’m interested in the other two colors, but like the silver bay, I can wait to find a good deal.

 

 

#712237 Calvin was also released in 2017 with quantities of 500 apiece. All three had the same appaloosa pattern and leg/face markings, but the colors were different. Felice had a Collector Club membership that year, so I was able to order one on “her” account and one on mine. The blue was my first choice, but I received two bays. I traded one with my friend Ellen for her extra chestnut. Where I got the blue guy remains a mystery.

 

 

#712261 Callahan was the Classic gambler’s choice release on the Shire B mold in 2018. There were three colors, styled after popular releases on the Wintersong mold - a glossy palomino pinto like Pamplemousse, a matte silver bay like Silverado, and a silver filigree like Silver Snow. Unlike the past two releases, Breyer didn’t announce a finite quantity. As was the pattern by then, I wanted the silver bay the most, and received the other two with my membership and Felice’s. I was later able to trade the silver filigree with my friend Jackie for her silver bay.

I’ll probably sneak them into some photos with their larger counterparts, Pamplemousse and Silverado, once I get to my Wintersong conga.

 

 

#712302 Lancelot was the 2019 Classic gambler’s choice on the Man O’ War mold, in three colors - glossy interference blue, glossy palomino, and matte bay appaloosa. Blue was again my clear first choice, and again I received two bay appaloosas. As I mentioned in my Winter Blues post in January, Heather B came through for me and straight traded her blue for one of my bay appaloosas. I’m still on the hunt for a glossy palomino.

Next month I’ll get to Nayati, Slyder (of which one has a cool story) and my personal favorite of all the gambler’s choice releases, Zayn.