This month, our guest judge is friend and fellow blogger Amanda Reed! She asked me to curate a class for her, and as I know her to be a Breyer collectability expert, I created a fun little all scales collectability class.
Breyer Collectability
by Amanda Reed
Hello everyone! My name is Amanda and I’ve been in the live show community since 2003! I began as an entrant during my teenage and early college years, then got into judging in 2012 and hosted my first show in 2014. My favorite division is collectibility! I strongly believe that every model is collectible to some degree and I love seeing mid-level and “common” tier collectibility class offerings in addition to all the love the big rarities get. That makes it so much more accessible and less intimidating to the average entrant, and I’d love for nothing more than lots of people appreciating collectibility just as much as I do! I am also very involved in Novice/Intermediate level events in my region, including my own show where I offer all divisions individually rather than double-judged to help promote learning for newcomers.
Outside of live shows, I also enjoy photo shows, creating art for myself, hobby predictions & statistics, and learning more about hobby history and model collectibility. I have a personal blog, but I have not been posting as much this year due to my work on Stone’s Tribute and History blog series for their 30th anniversary!
All that said, let’s take a look at our class today! We’ll call this one “Special Run – Editions of 500”. It encompasses three different scales, as well as a couple of different Breyer eras.
If you have not read past blogs in this series, here is a quick synopsis of the judging standards I use to evaluate (in no particular order of importance):
- Age
- Rarity (not only how many were made, but also original source – how difficult was it to get one new, was it made available towards a collector audience or a general one, did the original purchaser have to shop at a certain retailer, be part of a club, or attend a certain event)
- Desirability/Popularity (of mold, scale, color, and release in general)
- Condition
- Overall impression/presentation (at a live show, this is where I would consider the accuracy of documentation. This step is also where I consider a model’s color/shading – especially nice examples may get a nod in rare cases where I need a tie-breaker)
Horse A: Horse A is “Scotty”, a 2017 Gambler’s Choice Web Exclusive for the Collector’s Club. While many of these Gamblers Choice runs do not have stated run counts, Scotty does and 500 were made of each color.
Horse B: Horse B was released in 1988, as one of three different color Clydesdale Foals sold through Horses International. 500 were made of each color.
Horse C: Horse C is Mini Gladwin Lucky Grey Lady, sold at BreyerFest 2009 in a set with minis of the other 19 BreyerFest Celebration models up until that point (20th Anniversary Commemorative Set). 500 sets were made.
This might be a little more challenging than some other collectibility judge posts, but think about the details of each model, and place the class yourself! See my rankings and thoughts below the skip.
🥇1st: Horse C - Mini Gladwin Lucky Grey Lady
While the decisions were tough here, I went with the Stablemate for first! Her shading & dapples are nicely done, and I don’t see any obvious condition issues. This 2009 set is highly desirable, and among them Grey Lady is one of the most popular. Due to this, she can be difficult to find either in an intact set or on her own. As a judge, it is important to consider models of all scales fairly and to not discount the smaller ones or place a heavier bias on scale. Even if she might sell for less than her classmates here in some cases, she is still often on the higher end of popularity & sale prices *for a Stablemate of her rarity tier*.
🥈2nd: Horse B - Dapple Gray Clydesdale Foal
As a judge, I often place higher importance on the “survivability” factor and choose to favor older models when they are present, but I’m always keeping condition and other factors in mind as well. This model looks to be a bit yellowed and may have some small flaws, but it is hard to tell from the photo. The Horses International set of foals is decently desirable but can be found for reasonable prices if one is patient – I also would say the black is the most popular of the 3 HI colors over the 2 grays. Otherwise, this model does have nice shading and dappling.
🥉3rd: Horse A - Scotty
The shading, masking, and gloss are nice on this model, but being the most recent of the 3 in this class, he’s not terribly hard to find. He may be the most popular of his trio over the silver bay and roan appaloosa because he’s a mini of Jazz Fusion, but they’ve remained relatively close in popularity over time, and I wouldn’t say any of them stand out that far from the others. Traditional and Stablemate scales are often preferred by many over Classics to collect, so under some conditions scale popularity can influence placing along with other factors, as I did in this class. Additionally, the Collector Club provided the “easiest” method of obtaining the model originally out of the 3 – BreyerFest required attending in person or paying a pick up person, and Horses International would have required a person be a regular customer of that company or find out about the SR in time from someone who was in a time where communication was not as fast or easy as in the 21st century world.
I hope you enjoyed this class! Of course, you may place them differently yourself – it is up to each individual to determine how much weight they place on each factor. The one important piece to remember is your personal subjective opinions, particularly which models you favor for your own collecting habits, should be a very minimal or absent part of the equation. Personally, I do not go all the way out to personal bias unless I have two VERY evenly matched models to decide between, and even then I usually save it for callbacks only rather than individual classes.
In the context of this class, I do not own any of these models, but I’d like to someday! The Clydesdale Foal is a major conga mold, I also conga Swaps at a lower priority, and I only collect colors I like on the G3 Belgian (Grey Lady happens to be one of them).
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