New Arrivals: Zeitgeist, Rhenish Draft and....

 Greetings everyone! Welcome to my last New Arrivals post for this year's Breyerfest. Tomorrow (if nothing else exciting happens) I'll get started on Breyerfest Closeups! Can't wait. Anyway, I'll start this off with Zeitgeist, this year's volunteer model:

Photos definitely don't do this beautiful girl justice, and I'm really happy I was able to find one for a good price. She's one of my favorites from the whole trip. One of these days I should get a photo of her with Lafayette, because they'd make a great pair. 

Next, here's my matte Rhenish Draft: 

Both of the Rhenish Drafts I ordered turned out to be matte -sigh. Another glossy to put on my list to track down later. I do really like this color on him, though, despite the fact that blond sorrel is really not one of my favorite colors, at all. It suits him really well, though. 

Now it's time for the last New Arrival. I debated about posting about this guy because, well, he cost a lot of money and I don't like to brag. But this may have been my last chance to bring home a model like this, because I may not return to in-person Breyerfest, or any Breyer collector events, for the foreseeable future, for reasons I'm not ready to discuss yet (nothing bad, just planning for the future). So I decided to splurge a bit, pay the most I've ever paid for a model, and bring home...this guy. 

It has been one of my goals to acquire at least one OOAK model for my collection for a few years now, and I finally managed it - this is the Sun-faded Bay Icelandic Horse from this year's Live Auction. Of course, I would have preferred to do it back in 2019 before the prices went insane, but that's just how it goes, I guess. The auction itself was pretty surreal - I was considering bidding on the Andalusian, but just couldn't justify paying that amount of money for a model with a relatively plain paint job. Then, the next few models after that one started selling for far higher amounts, and I started to freak out, thinking they all were going to go that high and I'd missed my chance to even get one. But, I had suspected the Icelandic's price would stay lower, since the mold is slightly less popular and he wasn't glossy, and I was right - so I jumped in, bid on him and won. And now I can stay far, far away from any future Breyerfest Live auctions! Or least from the bidder number registration table. After getting him in hand, one of the things I found interesting about him is that he has some texture to his paint job - my other Icelandics are pretty smooth, but not this guy. I also really like how stripey his mane and tail are. 

Anyway, that brings me to the end of New Arrivals for this year. I'll add that I thought the quality control was pretty good this year - all of the models I looked at up close had few to no flaws, except for my Rhenish Drafts, who both had some minor factory flaws and very mild shipping damage. However, I haven't looked very closely at my Nikolas models yet (the Celebration Horses are often rather...lacking in the quality department). So it's entirely possible that those got the short end of the stick again. 

In other news, emails for Peregrine have gone out! If you haven't received anything, don't give up quite yet - check and see if he's listed on your Collector Club homepage, as sometimes the emails never arrive but you were still drawn to buy him. Looks like I wasn't drawn this time, again (grumble grumble), but I guess there's always hope for the wait list. Congrats to all the lucky winners!