BreyerFest Week: NAN & More

The choice has been made, and to my surprise, it is not Gawain.

Pony Pal Susie chose Cosmus! It was a surprise but not a surprise, either. Because she had been so delighted with Gawain, I based my guess on that. But, she had also spent a lot of time looking at Cosmus - it seems it was the "wings that can fly" (she could make them flap) that were the decision maker.

Susie's name is now on his tag and Cosmus will be passed onto her when the time comes.

Today is the third and final day of NAN. Because I have been busy with family, I have only caught bits and pieces of it on social media, Fortunately, Shannon Call and Shannon Rodgers have sent me some pictures and given me permission to share them here. 

From Shannon Call:

This year's NAN cookies are so lovely!

The Top Ten ribbons.

The show hall. (Back in the BreyerFest host hotel again after many years elsewhere.)

Shannon C's NAN show string.

Top Ten in North America!

Two Top Tens and a North American Nationals champion!

Top Ten!

Top Ten and North American Champion!

Top Ten and North American Champion!

And another! (I love this mold.)

Shannon C. will be volunteering at today's NAN and this is her volunteer thank you gift.

From Shannon Rodgers:

Her show table displaying ribbons she's won.

Shannon loves green and a year or so ago asked me to make her a show tablecloth from that fabric for her. (I believe she also uses it on her antique dining room table, too.)

Top Ten!

I saw this last model when he made his show ring debut at Great Lakes Congress and he is fabulous!

An Appaloosa circus horse? Oh yes!! It is one of the most beautiful customs I have ever seen.

Thanks, ladies, for letting me use your pictures. And if any of you are at NAN (or in the CHIN or at the KHP) and would like to share pictures here like they did, please do! Send them to horsiemama8@gmail.com.

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The July Give Way is going on! Information on entering is below.  As for what I am giving away, I am keeping that a surprise, just as Breyer is doing. I thought that it would be fun to mirror the Mystery Surprise Horse here on the blog.

To win the Mystery Blog Surprise, you need to guess Breyer's Mystery Surprise Horse. Or at least try. Here's how it works:

1) You may guess on every blog post that I publish beginning today, Tuesday, July 9 through Friday morning, July 12 at 8:00 AM Eastern time. Your guesses can vary - they do not need to be the same every time. One guess per blog entry, please.

2) When we find out who the model is Friday morning, I will take all correct guesses and spin to win.

3) If no one has guessed correctly, then all people who made a guess will be entered, once for each guess, and I will spin to win.

Easy Peasy!

Auction Models & An Updated Guess

Earlier this week Breyer revealed the last five auction horses that they planned to announce. Note that last part, "planned to announce." As I scrolled through this batch of auction pieces, Breyer had a blurb written at the end:

These are all the auction models we can show you now! We have held back four special lots that will be revealed on Friday, July 12 at the Kentucky Horse Park and in the online catalogue. We promise these four are worth the wait!

So, there are four more special lots that will be revealed. (If you remember, I mentioned that the web address showed that all the auction models were not yet listed in the program.) My guess is that one of the auction lots will be a complete set of the Mystery Surprise Horse.

So, here is the last revealed auction lots.

I sure like the color on this piece. I am not a member of the Premiere Club, but I think this is one of this year's new releases and the auction piece is appearing before the release. (As you might imagine, I have fallen behind in keeping up with fact-checking.)

I like both these molds already, and I really like this color on them.

So, how does my Mystery Surprise Horse look now? I'd said that my list would probably change before BreyerFest, and it has. Here is my new list of guesses:

Lynn's Most Recent Mystery Surprise Horse Guess

1) Wixom

2) Lippizaner Mare 

3) Weather Girl

4) Proud Arabian Mare 

5) Lady Phase 

HM) Marabella (long shot)

Wixom

I'm staying with Wixom, even though she is an auction horse, and many hobbyists are certain that Breyer would not use an auction horse as the Mystery Surprise Horse. 

Screenshot from Amazon.com

However, Wixom's last appearance was as Puffin in the Birds of a Feather series in 2021 and only 380 were made. She's a large, heavy mold; it makes sense that if they were going to run her mold, they'd run more than 380 and an extra couple of pieces for auctions, etc. She also fits the BreyerFest theme well.

Andalusian Mare

The Andalusian Mare, who is also an auction horse this year, has been removed from my list. (She was at #2.) Unlike Wixom, the Andalusian Mare has been used quite a bit recently. 

Making her the Mystery Surprise Horse along with an auction model, would be over exposure. She's completely off my list.

Lippizaner Mare

The Lippizaner Mare (moved from #3 to #2 on my list) follows a similar path to the Andalusian Mare's when you look at production. But, she is not an auction piece this year. (Although she could be one of the four lots Breyer will announce next week. )

The Lippizaner Mare appeared as last year's Volunteer/Ambassador model but has not appeared anywhere in 2024 yet. She is very popular with collectors and I think she is a strong candidate.

Weather Girl

This is a new addition to my list although she was in consideration on an earlier one. Last appearing at BreyerFest in 2019 as a special run and then in 2021 as an auction model, she's due for some limelight.

An Eberl sculpt, Weather Girl was seen in 2022 as Flamingo in the Birds of a Feather series and has not appeared since. I think she is a good contender for being the Mystery Surprise Horse. I may move her up the list in a day or two.

The Proud Arabian Mare, Lady Phase, and Marabella remain on my list. 

Lady Phase and the PAM are two of Breyer's most popular molds ever, despite being two of their oldest molds. (PAM 1958; Lady Phase 1976.) 

The Lady Phase mold is really popular with me as you can see from this photo from December, 2020 when I celebrated the Twelve Days of Horsey Christmas.

Photo from Identify Your Breyer.

Marabella doesn't have the fan loyalty and is an older mold (1997), but she is a lovely mare and has not been in use for a while. She remains on my list but I consider her a very long shot.

There are some molds who have appeared both as mares and as stallions depending on how Breyer has modified the mold. It's possible a mare version of one of those could be used. It is also possible that Breyer might modify a mold that has not been changed before, too. I felt I could not keep up with those possibilities and left them off my list.

We will find out who the Mystery Surprise Horse is in less than a week! Stay 'tooned!

The News Keeps Coming!

I  spent many hours the past two days researching and writing today's blog post about my guess for this year's BreyerFest Mystery Horse Surprise. It's ready to go and was scheduled to post this morning. 

And then two big news items from Breyer dropped yesterday and took precedence.

First, Vintage Club Kirk is available!

He is on the Geronimo mold (one of my favorite new molds) in a vintage glossy splatter dapple grey and he's a nightlight. Even better, the plug in his belly can be removed if you want to use him in your show string for a halter horse or some other reason.

Vintage Club collectors have two weeks to order Kirk, but I did not wait - he's already ordered. But ordering was problematic.  

I was asked to verify that I was not a robot and to click all the buses in the tile square. But there were no buses. Not a one. There were a lot of RVs, three in fact, so I thought that might be what I was being asked to click and so I did. 

I got a message to click ALL the buses, and the tile photos changed. Still no buses.

I clicked the refresh button and two school buses popped up. I clicked those and yet again got the "click ALL the buses" message. This led to several refreshes, clicking more random school buses, and being told I needed to click on them all despite the fact that I just had.

Finally I decided to start over and went to click the log-in button again. But when I did, my account popped up instead of the log-in page. Somehow, I had been logged in while the tile square had remained present and still asking for image clicks. 

This is the first time I have ordered anything directly from Breyer since the new web site went live. Is there a glitch in the log-in process now? Or maybe the first time an account is logged into?  Time will tell.

And second...

Emails went out to those who are attending BreyerFest in person and since I have an All-Access ticket, I got one of those emails.

In that email, we were told which two models we had been selected for and could pick up at BreyerFest. I got my top two choices!

 Better than Revenge

Can't Hold Us Down.

I'm really happy about that! The Mystery Horse Surprise is my third pick and then, aside from the Quagga, I am not interested in the others. In other offerings, I do hope to get Fortitude (this year's crystal) and, if I like the mold, the Mystery Horse Surprise.

But after all the research I have been doing on this year's Mystery Surprise, I think I might be okay with not getting one, especially if the model is a Moody mold as rumored. And I like Moody Molds. It's just that it doesn't look as though the Moody molds I'd like to add to my collection are in the running for the Mystery Horse Surprise.

If the rumors are incorrect and it is not a Moody sculpt, then I may need to look on the secondary market for one. Usually the Mystery Horse models are not hard to find although the price point for those may count me out.

Tomorrow I will share that post about my guess for the Mystery Model. It was a lot of work to research it all, but I hope you find it worth the read.

Stay 'tooned!