New SMC Horses

 The Hendriks and their ride-along buddies arrived, and for a change, not in separate packaging.  

It was an interesting few days, since Breyer sent two UPS numbers for each order.  I had to wait to find out what was up - turns out one number of each pair was a phantom number, which has  been happening a lot with Breyer lately.  And one of the boxes had a big dent in one corner.  

The Hendrik run seems to have had some issues, mostly with the mane masking, and with lint and stuff in the gloss.  And the dapples, because Breyer keeps trying to do dapples on SMs, and it rarely ends well.  

Both of mine have decent masking.  One is pretty good overall, but the other one, poor thing, has massive and blatant dapples on his off side, plus a couple of lint bits in the gloss.  The other side is probably good for photo showing.  Given the rate of issues I saw, mine weren't that bad, and I didn't bother asking for a replacement, because it could have easily been worse.  

The ride-alongs were a pair of Walking Arabian, one blue/teal, one red/pink, and the new Prince Charming in yellow, from the newest unicorn blind bag series.  No chase horse, darn it, but at least not triplets or something.  

(4/23/21)

The other Atticus, and a Gold Charm

 For once, I managed to find a swap for a gamblers' choice horse fairly quickly.  So now, I have a pair of Attici.  Glossy Atticus is named Percy (or Perseverance), and the matte Atticus is Jezero.  Both named for the Perseverance Mars rover - the matte is named for the landing crater, which is dusty and therefore not glossy.  The other is Percy because Perseverance is the shiny new rover. 

And the gold charm SM that's the bonus Vintage Club model arrived the same day.  Both got delayed a day for whatever reason.  But now I've got to figure out how to get this gold Native Dancer out of the package without destroying it.  

 

 

The Attici have landed

 Because the plural of Atticus must be Attici, right?  

Anyway, UPS finally delivered everything, and as suspected, the Attici were shipped separately, in their tiny flimsy boxes, while the Pocket Boxes that were intended to bump them up to a larger box were shipped in bubble mailers.  They did put two PBs in one mailer, though, so one of the tracking numbers must have been an oops. 

This UPS situation

 The curiosity about this is killing me.  One of the packages will hopefully be delivered today, so maybe that will shed a little light on things.  

So far:  2 orders, 3 items in each (1 SM, 2 Pocket Box bags), and a variety of tracking numbers depending on where I look.  For order #1, on my account, the Breyer page lists one tracking number, the shipping email lists two numbers.  For order #2, on Daniel's account, Breyer lists one number, the shipping email lists three.  Then, the UPS MyChoice account page lists 4 numbers - which are the same as the ones from Breyer, minus one.  And right now, one package from #1 is out for delivery, two (one from each order) are in Earth City and will be here tomorrow, and the fourth, from #1, is still "ready for UPS" aka still in the warehouse.  

Which kind of sounds like Order #2 is really one package (assuming that "ready" package was a phantom number), and #1 is in two packages.  Which means they split things, thus negating my plan for the Pocket Boxes to bump things up to a bigger box. And also that they probably lost money on that $5.95 shipping charge, after considering the cost of both packages and the shipping cost for each.

Julius, and adventures with shipping

 Julius is here finally, and looks amazing.  

His journey was interesting.  First delivery date was Friday the 12th.  So I shoveled a path for the UPS driver.  By 9:00, UPS admitted he wouldn't make it.  New date - the 16th.  On the morning of the 15th, he was out for delivery.  But then it snowed, so he got bumped back to the 16th.  Musical delivery dates. 

And the adventures continue.  Last week, I paid for both SMC Atticuses (Attici?), and two Pocket Box ridealongs on each order.  Yesterday, I got the shipping notices and tracking numbers.  Five tracking numbers altogether.  Right now, three will be delivered tomorrow, one the day after that, and one is "check back later" status.  I'm thinking one order is in 3 boxes/envelopes, and if Breyer's shipper really shipped a Stablemate and 2 Pocket Boxes in three separate packages, then (a) they really need to have a talk with the shipper and (b) they lost a lot of money on that $5.95 shipping fee. 

New not-horses

 Won an auction last night for a group of Hagen-Renakers.  No horses, but there are a Mama and Papa Penguin, three Eskimos (Inuit, now, I think), and a trio of Polar Bears.

They're in pretty good shape overall.  Some crazing, Mama Penguin has a chip out of her beak, and one of the Cubs has a tiny chip on his nose.  

$44 for the whole lot, so $4.50 average each. 

Cool things found at Michaels

 While buying extra posterboard (because you need an emergency supply of posterboard and foamcore when there's a high-school student), I found neat things for photography purposes. Along with plain solid-color posterboard, there are patterns.  I found a fluffy cloud posterboard, and one with a space pattern.  

 The space one is going to be great for unicorns and things, I think.  The handy thing about the space sheet is that it's got a nebula on one end, while the other end is less variegated.  So, especially for SMs, rotating it 180 degrees will make it almost like another background. 

Full sheet of space

Pavel and Ivanova with one side of the space sheet.

Unicorn with the other end of the space sheet.

Cassidy with the sky sheet