Happy Friday, and welcome to the first ever guest judge on the Friday judging clinics. I asked my wonderful friend Kelly if she'd be willing to be the inaugural post, and she graciously agreed.
Mini Breyer Collectability
by Kelly Marlett
As much as I prefer to show Breed, I have a huge passion for Regular Run Collectibility classes. When people think about Collectibility they think multiple dollar signs and rare pieces. And normally these pieces are the ones bringing home the rosettes and yellow NAN cards.
However, there are circumstances where things that were available in the Regular Run catalog are not only harder to find, but there are less available on the market.
When it comes to Regular Run Stablemate Scale sets with their wagons, riders, fantasy props, and haunted sounds, these sets still overwhelmingly end up in the hands of children (which is exactly who they are being marketed towards.) This is the exact opposite of most Special Runs; while kids do attend BreyerFest and purchase them, the higher end pieces usually end up in adult hands and collections. With pieces primarily bought for play, fewer and fewer of these horses make it into the hands of collectors. Even harder to find are the complete sets that were released with the horse. The little plastic harnesses and colorful carriages are often lost or broken, just like the horses from the set.
What I wanted to concentrate on are three particular horses that are part of Stablemate sets from the same catalog year. To complicate my placings even further, these pieces were also only available for a single year or less. All three of my selections are from the 2005 catalog. I have decided to judge these as if the horse has been presented with their complete set.
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| Photo courtesy Kelly M |
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| Photo courtesy Identify Your Breyer |
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| Photo courtesy Heather B |
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| Photo courtesy Identify Your Breyer |
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| Photo courtesy Kelly M |
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| Photo courtesy Identify Your Breyer |
Find Kelly's placings under the jump!
The Placings:
🥇1st: Horse B - Spirit Play Set
While each of these pieces was available for roughly the same amount of time it wasn’t unheard of for Breyer to swap one mold out for another after as sometimes as little time as a couple of months. The Native Dancer mold lasted a full year in the set before Breyer brought in the G2 Appaloosa to replace it. In 2006, not only were there no G1 horses left in the Regular Run catalog, but 2006 was also the release of 12 new Generation 3 molds. The G1 molds have always been highly sought after, but as one or two G1 Stablemate molds find their way into the Stablemate Club offerings and other various Web Special and Club releases each year, it has reignited the search for the earlier pieces. Along with the piece being a G1 mold, the IP crossover with the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron series appeals to collectors outside of the hobby. Equine collectors, western collectors, cartoon collectors, and fans of the DreamWorks Animation film of the same name are just a handful of crossover fandoms that would show interest in obtaining this particular set.🥈2nd: Horse A - Haunted Hay Ride
Honestly you could make quite the argument for Horse C and why it belongs in second place. The G2 American Saddlebred mold is more popular than the G2 Arabian. The pale palomino and 5-colored ribbon is a colorway that is highly sought after on the second hand market, for both breed and collectibility classes, with the complete set reaching $150-$200 on eBay. And if we were judging strictly on the horses and not the complete sets, I’d wager that Horse A and C would swap placings more often than not.The Halloween industry made a record-breaking 13.1 billion dollars in 2025 in the United States alone. Halloween crossovers for cartoons, TV shows, food and beverages, movies, clothing companies and toy companies exist throughout the year. The Halloween horses that Breyer continues to release year after year find themselves purchased by many different types of collectors, and equine collectors barely scratch the surface of who just has to have these whimsical and spooky ponies. One of my best friends has her entire house decorated for Halloween year round, and while she’s not a hobbyist she owns and displays every Halloween horse that Breyer has released over the years.
On his own Horse A doesn’t really seem like anything we haven’t seen before. To many collectors he’s almost identical to #5651, the shaded grey with four stockings that was available from 1999-2001. But as a complete set with the wolf, pumpkins, and the wagon that DOES make adorable spooky sounds when you place the driver onto the seat it’s a popular themed set that was promoted in the Spring of 2005 and available for at least half of the year.
🥉3rd: Horse C - Cottontail Express
As a collector, Horse C is my personal favorite of these three pieces. I absolutely love this color on the mold. It was extremely popular with children as well, the pink and purple harness and wagon and the cute little bunny were more than welcome additions in Easter baskets in 2005. However without the draw of a G1 mold or the Halloween season (while more money was spent on the Easter industry than the Halloween industry in 2025 an overwhelming majority of the Easter money went towards candy sales, while the Halloween profits were more evenly spread out over all other categories) this pastel set didn’t have the IP or holiday season power behind it that the Spirit or Halloween pieces had.Now if you remove the sets from the equation Horses A and C could easily swap places. It took me several years to find a Cottontail set in nice condition when the Haunted Hay Ride set was one I lucked into finding a couple of years ago at the Clarion during BreyerFest weekend. I’ve heard from several people that their Cottontail set was an easy find and they’re still on the lookout for the Hay Ride set, or that they’re still trying to find a Hay Ride wagon where the sound still works.
Regular Run Collectibility definitely has it’s place in the hobby. Finding a show that has a Regular Run division that is being judged for Collectibility is extremely uncommon, but I’m hoping that in the future these harder to hunt down pieces will be as appreciated as their Special Run buddies!
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| It's not a Kelly post without an Earless Eddie photobomb! |
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