Covid & More UV Light Findings

Yeesh! What a ride this bout with Covid has been! It knocked both Craig and me flat.

Craig rarely gets so sick that he goes to bed, but this time was different. (I love that his two buddies are keeping him company as he sleeps.)

Two days later it was me who felt like she'd been hit by a truck. I had chills and my head hurt terribly. I realize that I'd felt this way before with Covid, so I got a test out and checked.

I've had Covid several times, but never has a test showed a positive result immediately after I put in the drops. I still waited the time that was directed, but the results did not change - they remained a very clear positive result.

I'm still sick but at least I feel well enough to get up, eat a little (I've lost 6 pounds in just two days) and write a bit. I'm sleeping a lot during the day and tire easily, but I am on the way to being well. Grateful!

Thanks for all who commented or reached out to me. It was much appreciated.

So... Back to using my UV light to look at my new models. And after having found the black mark on my Zulu, I was dreading what might show up on my Gilded.

He's on the Geronimo mold, a mold I like very much

and things looked good at first.

The only visible iffy place I could see was under his off front leg where it looked like there was a small black line in the gold.

Sure enough, under the UV light, there was a heart shaped blemish.

I discovered another one on his near hind hock

and a third one on his neck. 

Oddly enough, he also had some lines that appeared to be drawn on his legs. They almost look like the barring that you might find on a horse with primitive markings.

None of these are visible without the UV light, though.

Finally, a third type of mark were darker smudge-like marks above his near hock.

Completely invisible in normal light, but obvious in the UV light.

Wondering if I would find flaws on every model I looked at, I pulled out some recent models, seven of them, including another recent Geronimo.

None of them had flaws.  Good news, but puzzling, too. I mean, what are the odds that two of my newest ones would have significant flaws and others not?

I decided to pull out my 2021 BreyerFest Dani and check her sort of as the "ultimate test." 

When she arrived, she had a lot of masking left on her that I had to remove.

It was EVERYWHERE. I peeled and peeled and peeled masking off.

The fact that it was blue made it easier to find, but still, it took quite a bit of time to find it all.

It seemed to me that if any model had issues, it might be Dani, and so I put her under the UV light. 

Nothing! She was clean all over, and I looked carefully. That was a relief, but I am still puzzled. Why would two new pieces have such flaws? Did they come out of the same group in the warehouse in China? Do other models from that same group have flaws that only show up under a UV light?

Or do I need to look at a bigger sample of models from my collection? After all, seven (eight with Dani) isn't that many.

It is a puzzle for sure. Not only will I go over all future models with a UV light, but I hope to start going through my entire collection, shelf by shelf. That will be a huge job, but hey, I'm retired! Besides, I love to do research and actually did a lot of research, writing, and publishing when I was in the classroom. This will be an old familiar project for me, for sure.

Wish me luck!

(Go here for some of my research papers.)

Wite-Out Cooper

I have a most unusual Cooper.

It all started when I was looking for bits of masking that might be left on him post-production. He felt rough all over, not only around the edges of his spots, but actually ON some of the spots as well as in the white areas of his coat. (Cooper is a chalky, so some of that is to be expected.)

I began to look much more closely at him and the more I looked, the more surprises I discovered. This poor guy just couldn't get a break!

Look at the spot in the center - you can see the outline of what it was supposed to look like, but you can also see that it has been hand painted over in a thick black paint. 

The flashlight on my phone showed that this poor guy had a lot of painting errors that someone tried to fix.

From his ears, down his neck to his shoulder, and then behind his off front leg, someone had "fixed" something by painting over it. (Maybe some more messed up spots?)

There are bright white spots on both sides of his body although they are barely visible without the flashlight.

 The off hind leg has two of the overpainted, rough white areas.

The near side hip, flank, and back.

The near side head and neck - the black paint under the eyes is crinkly and shows evidence of having been roughly painted over. You can see that at the base of his ear as well as more of the white paint blotches.

The off side of the head.

Near side throat latch, neck, and shoulders.

Off hind leg hock.

Off hind fetlock/pastern area. The paint is crinkled similarly to the crinkly black paint under his near eye.

Just when I thought I was done examining him, I noticed one more surprise.

He's got a USA stamp - something that none of my other Vintage Club pieces have.

Is that a nod to the chalky era and deliberately included as part of the replication of the 1980s Brenda Breyer set? Or was Cooper actually made here in the United States? The VIN number under his hoof did not help answer that question.

Last night I had a "teacher dream"and I was using some Wite-Out to fix a mistake on something. In my dream I suddenly thought, "Wite-Out would be a great name for my Cooper - those spots and splotches look just like the Wite-Out on my paper!"

Wite-Out it is.

I am interested in insights any of you might have. Email me at horsiemama8@gmail.com if you do or if you have heard of any similar "Wite-Out" Coopers.

And for the record, I really like my quirky guy.

Vintage Club Cooper

The first 2022 Vintage Club piece, Cooper, arrived a few days ago. Cooper is the Appaloosa Performance Horse mold done in black leopard Appaloosa. 

In the past, the belly stamp on the first Vintage Club offering of the year has been a clue to another model that is to come that year. I always flip that first model to see which model is on the stamp.

Kingfisher?? From the Birds of a Feather series? What was this?

Aside from writing my blog posts, I had not been on social media for a few days. I hopped onto my desktop and discovered that other hobbyists were finding the same stamp on their Coopers.

Yesterday Breyer acknowledged the goof on its Vintage Club blog and said that all 750 pieces have the Kingfisher stamp. You can read the full article here.

I think the Appaloosa Performance Horse looks good in this color.

But, with all those spots, I wondered if, like I did with Dani this summer, I would be finding bits and pieces of masking that had not been removed in the factory. I began to check my Cooper over carefully.

The more I looked, the more things I found that were disappointing. Look closely at this photo - there are four flaws that can be seen. And those flaws are big enough to be seen despite the poor quality of the photo. Sadly, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

More on that tomorrow, so stay 'tooned.