Featured Breyerfest - 1998

 Hello and welcome to another edition of Breyerfest 1998. This week we're traveling back in time to 1998. Here are some notable things that happened in 1998 (not an exhaustive list): 

• Google is officially founded
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is released, the first 3D game in the series
• Titanic becomes the first film to earn $1 billion at the box office, and also wins a billion Oscars
• The Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan
  

And of course, Breyerfest 1998 happened! Notably, this was the first year a new mold made its debut as the Celebration Model. 
Date: July 24-26, 1998
Celebration Horse: Rejoice
Number of Celebration Models produced: 3, 900 
Attendance: No solid numbers, but the JAH recap says the event drew "one of the largest crowds since its debut nine years ago." Speaking of attendance, I received this statement from a reader: 

1995 was the first year that I attended the whole weekend (just one day in 1994).  The attendance of 3000 is correct as Breyer served a buffet type dinner to the attendees which would have been impossible if the attendance was 15,000 as stated for 1994.  The buffet type dinner went on for several years.  The earliest attendances was 3000 or under.  I attended every year from 1994-2016.  It wasn’t until later years that it started to grow to over 10,000. 

So, I think the attendance records from those early years are, well, spotty to say the least. But anyways, here's the first 1998 page from the commemorative program:

 
















The real Rejoice was a National Show Horse who, as the breed suggests, excelled in the show ring, but I haven't been able to find much information about her. Special runs this year included more keychains, as well as Shannon, the glossy charcoal Clydesdale Mare who ended up being the inspiration for the timed tickets in the special run line starting in 1999. The special runs were sold first-come first-served, and people stood in line in the burning sun for hours to get a Shannon, only to have her sell out. So, the special run tickets were introduced, and each ticket had a number from 1-450 and an assigned time every hour. 15 minutes before that time, a random number between 1-450 was drawn, and that was where the line started. Much better than the old system, and still in use today at the collector events. 

The volunteer model for this year was the gold charm pinto Fighting Stallion, and the raffle model (still only one) was Serengeti, the beautiful Copenhagen Big Ben. Still highly sought after today! 

These pages are from the Sept/Oct 1998 issue of JAH. Those auction models are beautiful! Hmm, I think I know who owns that smoke Marabella...

Here's the Breyerfest recap from the same issue of JAH. 

And here are some other auction models on IDYB:

That blue roan PAM is beautiful! I'm surprised there isn't a matching PAS/PAF to go with her. 

This buckskin Sham is sort of like a prototype for this one a few years later.

I love the color on this Jumping Horse. Very similar to Royale Te! 

And lastly, another handsome Pluto! I'm a sucker for a light gray with the black mane and tail, though. 

That's it for today - check back next week for 1999!