First Reveal of Some Live Auction Pieces

Yesterday Breyer revealed the first group of the BreyerFest Live Auction models. They also announced that the live auction had been moved from the Hall of Champions to the Beer Garden. If you plan to attend in person, take note of that change.

I have been to many BreyerFests but the Live Auction has never appealed to me and I have always skipped it, preferring to be shopping in the CHIN in air conditioned comfort. Now that you can watch it in real time online, I do watch it every year from my home. 

Here is what Breyer has released thus far. (Screenshots of auction models taken from Breyerhorses.com.)

 A pretty color done on a popular mold, I think there will be many people bidding on Lot #1.

Vintage mold? Appaloosa? Black coloring? Glossy? I think this Cantering Welsh Pony is lovely. I won't be bidding on anything, but of the four that were released yesterday, this is my favorite.

Speaking of the CWP mold, the Valegro looked familiar to me.

The coloring is similar to the CWP from the 1995 QVC Parade of Breeds set. Like the auction Valero, it is a bay roan with a dark head, and black points. The Valegro has a blaze and three socks that the CWP does not have. 

I couldn't reach my Indian Pony in the same color (it's up on the top shelf in my office) so I took a screenshot of the one on Identify Your Breyer/Triple Mountain Horses. 

I am pretty sure that Breyer has done at least one other dark headed roan and that that piece is in my collection. A quick scan of the shelves didn't turn up anything, though. I'll keep looking.

I was disappointed in the last auction horse that Breyer revealed, even though it's on an iconic mold that I love and conga.

The color is gorgeous, but that face is a problem for me. It seems cartoonish with the lip marking looking like a painted on smile and the outlined eyes too small for her face. (The eye may be a trick of the light - I think it may be a blue eye with a black pupil.) 

The ears are small, but then, that's not new - Lady Phase's ears are known to be getting smaller as time progresses. I would love to see a close up photo of her head. It may be less cartoonish that this photo makes her appear.

Interestingly, Lot #1, the Smart Chic Olena, has a similar mouth marking to the Lady Phase - a line above the lip. His is better done, looking less like a line and more like a spot. As a result, his doesn't jump out at you like the Lady Phase's lip marking does.

BreyerFest is a month away! Here's hoping we get more Live Auction reveals soon; maybe even today.

Stay 'tooned!

The 2019 BreyerFest Live Auction

This year's BreyerFest has generated a lot of chatter and some controversy on several topics. One of them was that the Breyer Live Auction had a blow out day with one piece setting a new record.

(I pulled the following two photos off social media and forgot to write down who posted the photos. If you know who took them, please let me know so that I can give them proper credit. Thanks!)

The prices on this sheet are fairly normal for the BreyerFest Live Auction, although that Silver at $10,000 is pretty amazing.

As are these, except for that jaw dropping selling price for the Alborozo! - $22,000! That set a new record for a piece sold at the BreyerFest Live Auction.

This Five Gaiter was the 2018 high seller at $5700. 

Photo from Breyer web site.

If you look at 2019's results, there are six models that went higher than that in this year's auction. As someone mentioned on social media, that is indicative of a healthy hobby economy this year.

The hobby has been buzzing about someone having paid $22,000 for a model horse. Some argue that it's an Alborozo so it's worth it, while others claim they'd never pay that much for a model. Rebuttal comes back that it's that person's money so let them spend it how they see fit. And so on.

Jennifer Buxton has an excellent write up that includes a video of the Alborozo auction. Go here if you'd like to watch it.

Do I have an opinion? Of course! But I've stayed out of the controversy. It is not my business how someone chooses to spend their money any more than it is someone else's as to how I spend my hobby money. Personal choices are just that - personal. I learned that as a mom of six kids - I'd go out in public with them all and strangers would come over, ask first if they were "all mine," and then ask IN FRONT OF MY KIDS if I knew about birth control. No words...

We never know the why behind someone's actions unless they choose to tell them. And for the record, we chose to have six kids and would have loved more, but in an ironic similarity to the Alborozo, Cole, our sixth, "broke the mold" so there weren't any more!