Black Friday Breyers

In a moment of insanity, I drove 40 minutes (1 way) to do my only in-store Black Friday shopping - at Tractor Supply, the land of 20% off Breyers. I could have gotten the Christmas Horse online for the same price, but I was hoping they'd have some of the Classic family sets left. Turned out the only one left was a Far Ute Keno set, and given the lousy masking and overspray on the stallion, I decided to pass on the set.

I did come home with Jewel, the Classic Trail Ride set, and a pair of Schleich moose (mama and baby), but passed on Far Ute Keno and Bet Yer Blue Boons or whatever her name is. I had a hard time finding all the Breyers at first, TSC likes to split the toys up and put a bunch of the gift-type horses (Xmas, etc) in a separate toy-gift area. Which was on the other side of the store from the regular toy area, and there were enough people there that getting from one side to the other took a while. I also got to stand in line for 40 minutes, and was probably lucky that I'd waited until almost noon to drive down. Apparently at opening time, the credit card machine was down, and checkout was taking a while.

Finally

After 4 years, I've finally sent my UVM Yesteryear off to be painted. I hope it turns out well; it was a spur-of-the-moment decision based on an artist's post to HaynetExchange, offering limited painting slots this fall.

JCPenney SRs

My set of the JCPenney Stablemates was delivered this week. First time I've seen any of the G4 molds. Of the 3 in the set, I like the "dressage horse" the best. The "Para dressage" horse is so-so - the feet look gigantic, and something about the head/neck area looks a tiny bit off to my eye. The "endurance horse" also isn't bad overall, other than (mine anyway) having blobby ears.

I do wish the factory workers would be a little more careful cleaning seams on the SMs. (Not to complain - I've got vintage SMs with atrocious seams.) At least one of my SMs had some overzealous seam-cleaning, and ended up with a flat surface on the front of a hoof.

I do love the red bay on the Shetland. I'd like that color on almost any mold.

Escondido

Well, Escondido is here. UPS timed it so that the box wasn't sitting out in the lovely torrential downpour, which is good.

Escondido is described as a palomino, but I'm not convinced yet. The mane & tail are very close to the colored parts of the mane & tail on Treasured Moves, and the body color is dark enough that, combined with the mane & tail shade, I'd lean more toward sorrel for this one. Sooty/smutty/dark palomino is possible, I guess. Have to wait for the sun to come out so I can get a look in some good light.

Delayed gratification

I wasn't able to line up someone to pick up an Escondido for me at Breyerfest, so I've been watching Ebay. Then, I luckily checked my email while on a vacation weekend, and managed to see Breyer's email about the extras being sold online. I gave in and bought one (for much less than the $225 "buy it now" prices on Ebay).

Made a quick run to the mall today, hoping that UPS would be as late as they were last month. Nope. Came home to a yellow & brown UPS sticker on the door. And since it's a holiday weekend, the next delivery day is Tuesday. When I'll be out on an errand again. Rats!

Project horse

I've got a bit of a project going. Here he is:


There's an online offshoot of Freecycle here, called Kwikswap, sort of an online yard sale. I scored a deal last week: the large Breyer truck and trailer, a vintage black tobiano Stock Horse Stallion, and the SR Stud Spider that came with the truck & trailer set a few years back. Plus a Ben and Brenda Breyer, with most of their clothes. And all for $35.00. The truck set went for $90 when it was in the stores, and that may have been the sale price.

Spider, though, has seen better days. Lots of black marks in the white areas, some rubs in the black areas, pink stains on his back legs, and an odd-looking blue-ish patch on his shoulder. However, he's unbroken, and he's black and white, so I figure he's a good start for learning to do small bits of restoration work.

So far, he's been cleaned up with soap and water to get any random grunge off. I tried the old toothpaste method on the black marks, with a little success. Then someone shared a tip on Haynet about using rubbing alcohol - on the white areas only - so I gave it a shot. It did a pretty good job, most of the black marks came off. Still have the pink stains, though, and that weird blue-looking spot. I may try a bit of bleach on those, I'm not sure what else to try.

After that, it'll be time to dig out the black acrylics and see if I can manage to cover the rubs without being glaringly obvious.

After seeing Spider next to the vintage 1980s Stock Horse Stallion, though, I wonder about Breyer's black & white paint jobs. For some reason, the work on Spider looks really flat. Maybe it's the contrast between the colors - Spider's white is very white, while the SHS is from the glossy-white-areas years (different paint? no paint?) and has yellowed a bit. He seems to have more shading than Spider, though.

Flea-marketing

I have some child-free time, so I hit a flea market I hadn't been to before. I didn't buy any horse-shaped objects, but I did find a Sam Savitt book, the Big Book of Favorite Horse Stories. Savitt didn't edit it, but he did do the illustrations, foreword, and a bit of info on all the writers. It has some stories I haven't' seen before, which is always fun.

Horse-wise, I finally saw my first Hagen-Renaker in a flea market. It was the small "Running Mare"and was grossly overpriced IMO at $22, when I think it's still a current release. I also saw one Schleich, a current horse, for $12.95. I bought mine for $6.49 at Target last month.

Breyers were similarly overpriced. $56 each for a very-yellowed Alabaster Fighting Stallion and bog-common Clydesdale Stallion (although the Clyde looked in good shape, and all the bobs were still there). $10 for the Simmental bull missing both ears and both horns. $24 for Jasper the Market Hog, $10 each for old G1 Stablemates in crap shape. The only realistically-priced Breyer was a Little Bits ASB for $4.95, probably because his mold mark says B.M.C. and they didn't realize it was an ultra-rare (LOL) Breyer.

Every now and then, I find something worth buying at a fleamarket, but lately I've had better luck online. The dealers seem to think that all Breyers are 50+ years old and scarcer than hens' teeth.

Best thrift-store deal I ever found was a black pinto Western Horse with the snap-on saddle. I paid $12 for him in pretty good condition, although he later lost an eartip in a fall. Mom had better luck for me when I was in school - a glossy grey appy Running Foal for a quarter and a palomino Standing Stock Foal for a couple bucks.

On an oldies kick

It must be all the reading I've been doing at Breyer History Diva's blog, but I'm on a kick of buying older Breyers lately. Plus, most of them have been cheap. I've gotten at least 4 Family Arabian Mares recently - glossy grey App, glossy Alabaster, woodgrain, and glossy charcoal. Plus a matching Family Arabian Stallion and Foal in glossy grey App - these two are a pair, with very similar blankets, from the same seller. The Mare was a separate seller, and has fewer spots with the belly-stripe style blanket.

Two of the mares survived some pretty crap packing, too. The seller used two Priority shoebox-size boxes - okay, one and a half boxes - taped together. The packing material was two plastic shopping bags and a square of white foam, maybe 8 inches square, half-inch thick. Amazingly, they arrived with no broken parts, and no serious rubs, although it's hard to tell which rubs happened en route.

My neat find of the month

I browse occasionally at a couple of online auction/sales sites, including Ebay and MHSP. Last month, I had some luck. I found an auction listing for "3 brown Breyers" with this slightly fuzzy picture:



I've been a fan of the Breyer/Hagen-Renaker Kelso for a long time, so the picture caught my eye. And after a closer look, I thought the model just might be the Sears special run from the early 1990s, which was sold with Sam Savitt's How to Draw Horses book. I didn't have one - it was a run of 900, according to Nancy Young's Breyer book, and I kept getting outbid online.

The seller was selling a bunch of odds and ends, not a collector, so it was kind of a crap shoot, but I took a chance on bidding without any other pictures.

So I kept an eye on the auction, put in an early bid to remind myself about the auction, and managed to park myself in front of the PC as the auction closed to put in a higher bid. My luck was good, and I was the high bidder. A few days later, UPS delivered a box of 3 well-wrapped horses. Two were in kind of scruffy shape, but the Kelso was the Sears Savitt SR, and he's in darned good shape, all things considered.



Ear rubs, of course, a small flaw on his face (which I didn't notice until DH pointed it out, somehow), and a small faint rub or two. Otherwise, for a 20-year-old donation, not bad.


Of the other two, the Proud Arabian Stallion was also a Sears SR, and the Family Arabian Stallion was a short-release from the 80s or 90s. Both are pretty rubbed up, more than you could tell from the pictures, but they'll be good toys for my little boy if he wants them.

Kelso, on the other hand, is mine. I can mark something off the grail list, finally. And maybe, someday, I'll be able to afford a Hagen-Renaker Kelso to sit on the shelf beside him. For right now, though, he's sitting on the printer by the PC.

Grrr

When will I learn to go through Ebates before I shop on Ebay? I could get a tiny percentage back - not a moneymaker, but better than a poke in the eye.

Sigh