Breyerfest preference lists are now live!

 Attention, Breyerfest ticket holders! If you bought an All-Access or Online Access ticket, you can now submit your preferences for special runs! If you're logged into your account, the link for the form will be visible in the Breyerfest tab on the website. We have until 6/9 to submit preferences, so don't miss out! You'll be assigned models at random if Breyer doesn't receive a preference form from you. Good luck, everyone! 

Live Show Reserve prize revealed!

 Well, readers, we have a reveal for the teaser earlier in the week - it's Lapland, the live show reserve prize! 

Ooh, I thought it was a buttermilk buckskin! He's so pretty! Nothing I need to collect, but that's a good thing - I won't be too sad when I don't win one. I feel bad for the Peruvian Paso collectors, though - this is the second time he's been a live show prize. Although this one may be slightly easier to obtain than the first one, which was a run of 4. Silver lining, I guess. Good luck to all the Breyerfest Live showers out there! Which reminds me, I need to start working on my show string...

Whoopsie!

 Well, this is pretty old news by now, but I was looking through old Breyerfest stuff (well, not that old, but still), and realized that somehow I never posted about the glossy prizes for this year's Breyerfest! They were revealed back in April. Oops! But anyway, behold: 

That's a glossy Orren Mixer buckskin on the Geronimo mold (although they appear to have missed the model's head when glossing this particular individual) and glossy Cody's Wish on Carrick. Neither of them are anything I need, but 10 years ago I would have wanted both of them. That's just how it goes, I guess. But I'm still hoping I can win one in the mini show on Thursday! Also, I'm glad I stopped collecting the Carricks, because he was a live show prize last year and glossy prize this year. Next he'll be a raffle model! 

Another sneak peek!

 Hey, there's another sneak peek on the blog! 

Too bad we can't really glean anything from it other than maybe the color. Buttermilk buckskin? Palomino? Who knows. I'm going with buttermilk buckskin. Probably one of the live show prizes? Guess we'll find out! 

Featured Breyerfest - 1994

 Hello and welcome to another edition of Featured Breyerfest! We're moving right along and covering 1994 this week, so let's get started! 

Breyerfest 1994
July 29-31, 1994
Celebration Horse: Bright Zip
Number of Celebration Models Produced: 2,244
Attendees: 15,000 (according to a later JAH) 
Here's the 1994 page from the commemorative program:

At this point the commemorative program expands each year to two pages, so here's the other page for 1994. 

The real Bright Zip was an Appaloosa stallion who belonged to clinician John Lyons. As the commemorative program states, John Lyons was highly-sought-after as a trainer/clinician and used Bright Zip in his demonstrations. Bright Zip died in 2003 at the age of 28. 

This year's raffle model is Winchester, the handsome glossy charcoal Buckshot. Meanwhile, this year's volunteer model is the old-style red roan Indian Pony, and there's an exciting new development! Special run models! Just some G1 foals turned into keychains, but still! As far as I know, there wasn't any special system for distributing these special run models - people who wanted to buy them had to stand in line in the hot sun for hours with no guarantee that they'd get a model, and this system continued for the next several years. 

Here's the first page of the 1994 recap from JAH: 

And here's the next two pages:

And here's the last page:

IDYB has (tiny) photos of lots of the auction models for this year, which is great! One of my favorites is this brindle bay PAS - I wish there were more photos of him! 

I'm also intrigued by this gray/chestnut Paso Fino:

I'm also wondering what the story was behind this strawberry roan Pluto:

But now that I think about it, I think the story was that the model turned out to be extremely similar to another strawberry roan Pluto that was sold at the live auction the year before, and while there's no photo, there is a strawberry roan Pluto listed as a test model in the 1993 live auction. Drama! Well, at least it was caught. Interestingly, the high seller at this auction was the raffle model, rather than any of the test models; that would definitely not be the case today, as they've started to gloss the raffle model in the auction to get those prices back up. Anyway, the second-highest-seller is this rosy rabicano Sham:

And with that, we've reached the end of today's post! Check back next week for 1995! 

More Breyerfest split runs and the Collector Club newsletter!

 Greetings, readers! Well, they had me fooled - I didn’t think there would be any other Breyerfest variations. But it did seem odd that there wasn’t a color split. Well, turns out there is one, because Breyer revealed more variations today! Check out this sooty palomino version of Thingvellir!

That color is amazing! Too bad I don’t collect the mold. 

And lastly for the variation reveals (for real this time, or so they claim), 1/3 of the Hygge models will be a beautiful pink!

I’m not really that into pink…but I’ll make an exception for this guy! I love him. Since there are 3,000 total, that means 1,000 of these will be pink. Those odds aren’t too terrible. I hope I get one!

And in other news, the May collector club newsletter was released today! The feature story is a retrospective on 3 decades of Breyerfest (that ties in well with my recent Featured Breyerfest series), there’s an Athenian Lady giveaway, and this sneak peek! 

It’s textured, but I have no idea what it is. Some kind of bull? Seems like an odd time of year to be getting the bulls out for a special run. Maybe it’s a mid-year release? 

Carmen is now available!

 Attention, Premier Club members! The first release of the year, Carmen, is now available to order! Huzzah! 

I ordered a matte one, and am getting a glossy one from a friend, so I guess I'll get to see them in July! Hmm...the order deadline is 6/11, so it may be worth waiting on completing your order, because the next Stablemates Club release might come out by then and we all love combining shipping on stuff, right? Food for thought.