BreyerMidwest Day 2

 Well, the second day of BreyerMidwest is over! It was...a bit slower of a day than yesterday, but that's probably for the best, considering the extremely long drive awaiting me tomorrow. It was a pretty leisurely day, really - sleep in, head to Equifest, wander around there for a while...the only deadline I really had was getting to the silent auction at 2:30 (success!) and then the swap meet at 7 (also success!) Behold, the day's purchases! 

I was successful in both of today's goals - get the glossy Athenian Lady in the silent auction, and find a gray Salud! Woohoo! I also found the two blind bag Stablemates I still needed from last year's new series (well, technically I still need the G2 TB chase piece, but I don't want to pay much more than retail for it), plus a red filigree Wassail for a decent price. Not pictured: the two pony pouches I bought with the last of my cash. They're intended for Stablemate foals, with two spaces each. I may have to buy more later if I keep showing a lot of Stablemate foals.

So the swap meet was a success as well, although the room really wasn't quite big enough for the amount of selling going on within. There was a big long hallway right outside, so I kinda figure some of those tables could have gone out there? They probably could have sold even more tables, too. I'm low-key jealous I couldn't get into the swap meet, because there were a ton of people shopping and it would have been great to get some stuff sold. Oh well.

So that's pretty much it for my BreyerMidwest trip! Now to get some rest before the long drive tomorrow.

The Grinch strikes again, and other stuff

 Good news, everyone! My Wassail models all arrived today - I was able to use UPS to delay their arrival until today. So without any further ado...here we go with the unboxing! 

What a tantalizing stack of boxes. While I am getting pretty tired of the gambler's choice everything, it is fun to open up a stack of random things every once in a while. 

I carefully opened each box, pulled out the model inside without looking at it, made a pile on the table, and took a photo (also without really looking at it, which is why it isn't centered). 

And after a lot of unwrapping...behold! 

Rats, I was hoping for a better color distribution than that (doesn't everyone?) - but hey, at least I didn't get four solid greens. 

There's actually a lot of variation between the three solid greens. The one on the left is pretty dark, the one in the middle is about average, and the one on the right practically GLOWS green in comparison. I was a little torn about which one to keep, but ultimately settled on the greenest one, because...he's just so green! And these paint jobs do look better in person than they did in the photos. 

Here's a closeup where you can hopefully see more detail on the glitter. How cool would it have been if they'd had some holographic effects on these guys, too? But they still look pretty cool. 

So I'm keeping the green filigree and the brightest of the solid greens, and I'll be looking to trade the other two for the solid red and filigree red. I may have a trade for the solid red lined up already, which is good. Hopefully I can get the other one traded as well and have the full (obtainable) set! 

In other news, there are so many things I need to write about today! I'll start with the stuff from yesterday, since I just didn't have a chance to write a post yesterday. We were busy flying back home to KY after a Christmas visit to our home state. So where do I start? We got another Breyerfest Stablemate silhouette:

Cool, it's the Prince Charming mold again. Hmm, I thought to myself. Could they be on a streak here? Dare I hope they pick four molds I don't collect, and I don't need to bother with getting any of the single-day Stablemates for once? It's too much to hope for! 

Yesterday's other big reveal (unless I'm forgetting something) was the optional purchase for the 2024 Stablemates Club! Behold: 

It's Cassidy! And two foals! The foals are randomly shipped, so you won't know which foal you're getting until it arrives! I am not happy about this! 

I had reservations about this year's Breyerfest mare and foal set for the same reason - anyone that collects both the Standing Stock Horse Foal and the Action Stock Horse Foal would inevitably end up with an extra of the Lady Phase from this set (if they didn't end up buying multiple sets trying to get both versions of the foal). I don't have quite the same problem, since I only want the standing foal from this set, but it still irritates me. 

Also, I'm confused by the Cassidy's color (clearly Breyer really is trying to get their money's worth from the mold). The clue about the Breyerfest Cassidy seemed to imply a primitive color, but Hadley's color is primitive too. Would they do two? I'm confused. Maybe the clue was referring to something else. But I suppose we'll find out more next week. 

So that's our full Stablemates Club lineup for 2024! It looks like I'm only going to need three of the releases (or I guess four if you count the standing foal version of Holden). Oh well - I think that's better than this year. So I broke down and joined the club today (along with the 2024 Premier Club because I didn't want to forget about it). 

Back to Breyerfest 2024: today's teaser was...this! 

Holy crap, they did it! They actually did it! I won't need any of the single-day Stablemates next year! Hooray! It probably sounds weird that I'm celebrating not needing to buy anything, but every little bit helps, right? Maybe I won't need to bother with a VIP ticket, either. Well, maybe I won't hope for that yet...much. 

Let's see. What else was revealed today? The final Collector Club newsletter of 2023 is in email inboxes, so check your email if you haven't. There's a whole bunch of archive footage from the 1990s, a giveaway of a Mustang throw blanket (really? That's all you could find?), and this sneak peek:

There's been some speculation online that this is a new bull. That works for me - I won't need to buy it! The new for 2024 line is slated to be released next week, apparently (so much for releasing it before 2024 actually gets here). So we won't have to wait too long to see it. 

Other random things that were released sometime in the last few days: updated packaging for the Premier Club (Nobody cares about the packaging! Give us the first release in the club!); the PC Stablemate will be a new mold (Trying to figure out the odds on whether this is an actually new mold, or something shrunk down to Stablemate size again); Grab bags are being offered again on Breyer's website (not worth it! Avoid! Avoid!) and 2024 Stablemates Club releases will be released in window boxes rather than the hat boxes (Boo! Go back to the satin bags!). There may be more I'm forgetting.  

At any rate, I can't believe we're already at the end of 2023! I don't know if I'll have anything else to post about before the end of the year, aside from one more Featured JAH post. Let's hope there's something...but in the meantime, I hope everyone has a happy New Year! Here's to a great 2024, everybody! 

Wassail is revealed!

 Season’s greetings, readers! Well, the heavily-anticipated Wassail reveal happened today - behold!

Ooh, pretty! When they’re all arrayed together like that, they look great! Although I don’t think anyone was expecting Coal to literally be the charcoal colorway (or very close to it) rather than solid black. 

The hobby was also surprised to see none of these models had a bald face, despite that descriptor appearing in the original (pre-deletion) description of the models. Honestly, the solid faces look a little weird to me, and when you see each of these models by itself, they’re all a little cheap-looking. But at least two Coals have already been bid to more than $3,000 - which is about on par for a run of 24. 

People are still receiving their Wassails and so far I think I’ve seen about seven Coals pop up - so there’s still hope for the people still waiting for their models, like me. I was able to reschedule delivery for all four of mine, so Friday is going to be a fun delivery day for me! Crossing my fingers that I’ll get a Coal! Good luck to everyone else out there still waiting, and Merry Christmas!

2024 Collector Event, and more!

 Exciting news today, readers - the 2024 Collector Event has been announced! I’m typing this post on my phone while traveling for the holidays, so please forgive any formatting errors.

Ooh, interesting! We’re heading to Oklahoma City this time. I was just thinking about this event the other day and the possibilities for the theme - though I thought it would probably be in New Jersey, since it’s been almost 10 years since the last NJ collector event.

So, here are the ticket models for the event! Each attendee will receive these models as part of their ticket. Behold!

Whew! Nothing I need so far. Nice color on the Bobby Jo, though. The tickets are being done via lottery again, and I’m definitely going to try to enter - I’ll have started a new job by then, but I’m hopeful that I’d be able to take Friday off if I managed to be drawn to attend. Shouldn’t be too hard to jump on a Thursday night flight to OKC from where I am if I do get chosen. I’d be thrilled to be able to report from the event as it’s happening - I haven’t been able to do that since 2016! But I’d better not start counting my chickens before they’re hatched. Let’s just hope I manage to get drawn.

In other news, we got another Stablemates Club reveal today, too! Say hello to Wallowa!

So this is the G1 release for next year! And he’s being released in a glossy and matte finish - bad(ish) news for people who collect him, not-so-bad for people who don’t, like me. Huzzah! Kind of a strange color - why are the spots on the front half of his body so light? Actually, he looks like a fleabitten gray in front and black Appaloosa in the back. Maybe he started graying out in front first. At any rate, he’s nothing I need, so I’m going to need a little more encouragement before I join the club for next year. Maybe we’ll get another reveal tomorrow?

In other, other news, people who shelled out the money for the expedited shipping on the Wassail models started receiving them today (!), and while I don’t have any photos I can use just yet, they’re definitely interesting-looking. No one has gotten a Coal yet, but all four of the other colors have appeared. First off, none of them have bald faces, so I have no idea how that description got into the original description on the website yesterday. Secondly, I guess “with filigree” just means “filigree” after all, because both the red and the green “with filigree” were the same as every other filigree model we’ve ever seen, except they don’t have bald faces and look a little weird as a result. The colors look nice though! I was just kinda hoping for a slightly more interesting paint job…and they would have tied in really well with the Swirls’n’Snowflakes horses. Oh well. 

That’s all I have for today, and I’m tired after a day of traipsing through airports. Let’s hope there’s more exciting stuff to post about tomorrow!

What is happening?!

 Well, the Christmas Day surprise model has been released (Wassail!), and then sold out (Wahhh-sail!) - what a long, strange trip it's been! 

The initial release went okay - no website glitches that I'm aware of. At first I was incensed, because there were no actual photos of the model, and I thought they weren't going to reveal the mold at all - but then I saw Huckleberry Bey was in the description, and was somewhat mollified - with photos to be revealed on Christmas Day. The description also revealed the four colorways - glossy metallic sparkling red, glossy metallic sparkling red with filigree, glossy metallic sparkling green, and glossy metallic sparkling green with filigree, with 24 glossy black Hucks thrown in there too (edit: it's my assumption that the Coal models will also be on Huck). I'm using past tense to refer to these items, because not long after the surprise went live, the page was scrubbed of any reference to Huckleberry Bey or the four colors. Uhh...is somebody asleep at the wheel in NJ? Why are they doing this in the sloppiest way possible? Did the higher-ups already check out for Christmas and leave the interns in charge? Why is this being done so haphazardly? 

I guess I'm glad about the Huck reveal mistake, because like I said earlier, I would have been pissed if they actually intended to make us wait until Christmas to reveal the model, while still expecting us to buy it a week beforehand. I was fully prepared to close the page and not buy anything at all until I saw Huck in the description. But now it seems the Huck reveal was a mistake, and they weren't intending to tell us the mold at all? This is a lot of money to be spending on a gamble - if I'd purchased these not knowing what they were, and then had it end up being Big Ben or Gem Twist or some other Moody mold I don't collect, I'd be super upset! It was bad enough buying the 2020 and 2021 Breyerfest surprise models sight-unseen - I really don't need that to become a regular occurrence! Not to mention the fact that the model price has gone up to $145 and the piece count breakdown (2624) evens out to 650 models per color - so if it turned out to be an unpopular mold, I'd likely end up having a hard time getting my money back. 

My best guess as to why they're doing this is because they don't want to have people in the office on Christmas Day trying to figure out the inevitable technical glitches (many people outside the US were charged for shipping when they weren't supposed to be). Add that to many customers' repeatedly voiced desire not to have to be haunting the website on Christmas and a heavy dollop of the usual Breyer ineptitude, and here we are. 

Okay, anyway, with all of that out of the way, let's talk about the colors themselves. Here they are again:
Glossy metallic sparkling red
Glossy metallic sparkling red with filigree
Glossy metallic sparkling green
Glossy metallic sparkling green with filigree

Before being scrubbed of information, the website said the models would have bald faces and stockings shaded by hand, and black muzzles and inner ears. Let's take another look at the sneak peek from last month's Collector Club newsletter:

I dismissed this being a sneak peek of the Christmas release at the time, but now that all of this *waves hands wildly* has happened, I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying this is probably the "glossy metallic sparkling red" color. Well, it looks promising, at least! As for the "with filigree" ones, I think the common assumption was that the mention of filigree meant they'd be a red or green filigree, but there's some speculation that the use of "with filigree" means they could end up looking more like the Swirls'n'Snowflakes Stablemates. Sounds good to me! So if that's the case, they're probably basically like big versions of the red and green Swirls'n'Snowflakes models. 

Some people were confused by how the models could have bald faces in combination with black muzzles. Since that verbiage has now been removed from the website, I guess it's anyone's guess how they're going to pull that off, though I did see speculation that they may end up looking like some kind of Mari Lwyd reference. So we may have some exciting reveals to look forward to! 

I did order four of these guys, since I have a large Huck conga (and like I said yesterday, a glossy black Huck would be great!), and only realized as I was checking out that...since we're flying back to our hometown tomorrow, if these models get shipped this week they're likely going to arrive here and end up sitting on our doorstep until we get home. Curses! Now I'm wishing they'd kept the release on Christmas Day after all! I did send an email to Breyer requesting that they not be shipped until after Christmas, but I haven't gotten a response yet - I may have to call them in between flights tomorrow, I guess. 

That's all I have to say about the Christmas models, but we did get one other tidbit today: the full-body reveal of Lanin in the Stablemates Club! 

So it looks like most or all of his mane is gone, but the tail is more-or-less the same? It looks like the tips are different on the tail, but it could also be a horrendous cutout job in Photoshop, so I'm going with that. Mirado looks a little weird without his mane, but not nearly as weird as the maneless Nokota, so I'm okay with it. Let's hope we get some more SMC reveals this week!