Rotating Draft Surprise numbers and Collector Club July Newsletter!

 Greetings, readers! Well, first things first - we finally have our Rotating Draft Surprise numbers! Has it really been two weeks since Breyerfest already? Well, here's a look at all the glossies together:

Here are the numbers:

Dapple Gray Pinto with Braided Mane: 1,110 matte / 375 glossy

Chestnut Leopard Appaloosa with Braided Mane: 1,250 matte / 475 glossy

Buckskin Pinto with Loose Mane: 950 matte / 375 glossy

Glossy Silver Bay with Loose Mane: 1,250 glossy only

Wedgewood Blue Pinto with Loose Mane: 975 matte only

Varnish Blue Roan Appaloosa: 375 matte with braided mane / 375 glossy with loose mane

 

Interesting that they did a Glossy Only option and a Matte Only option - the only previous time I remember them doing that was in 2019, with the decorator Hero's Welcome - those were all glossy. I'm glad I don't collect the Cleveland Bay, though - I wouldn't want to have to squeeze 10 more of them onto my shelves. Someone pointed out the silver bay looks like Epona, though, which I can totally get behind. I do like the wedgewood blue pinto, as well - he has the same pattern as Josiah from the 2020 Vintage Club, which was a release I liked, but not enough to buy. Same with this one - well, maybe someday they'll use the color on something I want. Interestingly, the blanket Appy has the same pattern as Chickory, which makes me wonder if Sommer designed these colors as she usually does? That particular color has a kind-of-old-school look to it, which I liked. The glossy gray pinto was quite pretty, too. No surprise that the glossy quantities increased again this year - I pulled three of them this year, which is about as well as I usually do. 

Anyway, today's other news is the July Collector Club newsletter! If you're a Collector Club member, check your email for more. There's an informative article about showing, a pony pouch giveaway, and this reveal of the mysterious Classics gambler's choice sneak peek we first saw back in April - Johann!
 

Interestingly, it looks like all four of these are glossy - usually they leave at least one matte option, but not this time apparently. More on these guys whenever I get started with my Breyerfest Closeups series! In the meantime, I need to finish up with the New Arrivals first...

Breyerfest Day 1: Confusingly, Still Pleasant

 Greetings, readers! As the title says, I'm still a bit confused about how relatively nice the weather has been in KY this year. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like it isn't nearly as oppressively hot and humid outside as it normally is. Maybe I forgot what KY is like, since I've been gone for 3 years? Who knows. In any case, it made for a much-less-tiring first day of Breyerfest. But I digress. Here's my report on Breyerfest Day 1:

Firstly, and most importantly, I can confirm that the surprise model is the Cleveland Bay! Here's the set being sold in the silent auction:

I know at one point I had changed my prediction to the Cleveland Bay, but I can't remember if I changed it to something else after that, so I'm going to just say I was right for once! Huzzah!

Unfortunately (or fortunately for my wallet), the Cleveland Bay is not a mold I collect, so now I'm going to have to figure out what to do with 9 Rotating Draft Surprise tickets. On a similar note, the only special run variations we've seen so far is what appears to be a matte/glossy split on Landler and an alternate bay color for Marzipan. So, I may end up trying to trade Rotating Draft tickets for more Landler tickets if I can't get a glossy one with my one remaining Landler ticket. Otherwise I'll probably just redeem all the Rotating Draft tickets and sell the models, but part of me just doesn't want to be bothered with that many models. Guess I'll figure all that out tomorrow.

Anyway, here's the test Halla from the silent auction!

And here's the Musicians of Bremen test set!

And a glossy Nikolas from the silent auction gift basket!

And the Best Customs Contest grand prize and runners-up prize, Brandenburg and Westphalia:

And here's the full set of alternate deco models from Breyerfest 2021!

And a glossy Ben Nevis volunteer manager's model from Breyerfest 2020!

That's about it for the silent auction - there's also a Design Your Own Breyer lot as usual, though that didn't have any bids when I went by.

Let's see, what else do I have to talk about? There are some fun reveals in the Collector Club tent, but I don't want this post to get too long, so I'll cover that tomorrow or Sunday. I redeemed a few of my model tickets today, but not all of them - I want to spread things out to potentially increase my odds of getting any variations, if there are any others. I'm completely befuddled that they would do an alternate color variation on Marzipan when a mane switch for Rapunzel is RIGHT THERE. Oh well.

Sales-wise, things are going quite well, except in the Stablemates and Classics department - I've sold very few of those so far. I also haven't had anyone come by and mention the blog yet, which is a little concerning for me as I usually get at least a few people. 

Ooh, and it's been revealed that the bonus Stablemate for the Vintage Club this year is a mini-me of the woodgrain Indian Pony from yesterday, so that's exciting.

It's getting pretty late and I'm too tired to think of other things to talk about, so I'll wrap this post up for now. Check back tomorrow for my recap of Breyerfest Day 2!

Breyerfest 2022 Surprise Hints and Speculation

 All right, folks, it looks like we have a reveal...of the name of this year's Breyerfest surprise model! It's...the Rotating Draft Surprise! Okay then...

There are a lot of possibilities for what this could be, but first, here's a list of previous Breyerfest surprise molds:

2009: Quarter Horse Gelding
2010: none
2011: Ethereal
2012: Flash
2013: Roxy
2014: Nokota
2015: Lonesome Glory
2016: Esprit
2017: Latigo
2018: Smarty Jones
2019: Moody Andalusian
2020: Giselle
2021: Dundee

So for sculptors, we have Kathleen Moody with four, Sue Sifton with three, Kitty Cantrell with two, and Brigitte Eberl, Sommer Prosser and Chris Hess tied at one. 

Now, up until 2019, the surprise mold had more-or-less followed a pattern of having appeared as an auction model the previous year, but the Moody Andalusian that year had not been a prior year's auction model. The pattern returned in 2020 (Giselle was an auction model in 2019) but broke again last year as Dundee wasn't an auction model in 2020. So it's anyone's guess as to whether they'll revisit this "tradition" again in 2022. That said, I have been thinking it would be Brishen for quite some time now, so that's the guess I'm going to stick with for now, until I see something that indicates otherwise. Using the word Draft in the name is naturally going to make people think of draft horses, and they have used draft models in reference to beers before (the 2012 single-day Stablemates), so I'm sticking with Brishen for now. Goffert, Othello and Georg were all used as auction models last year though, so any of them could show up as well (but probably not Georg as he's this year's first Collector Club release and has had several other releases lately - he'll probably be a raffle model instead). 

We also have a sneak peek to be revealed tomorrow:

The conclusion on the Internets is that this a rotated photo of Misty's tail/butt area, and that she's a German flag decorator. Interesting...and not something I'd need to buy, if that ends up being the case. I guess we'll find out tomorrow!