BreyerFest Keychain - Prancing Morgan

Shannon Rodgers gifted me with this beautiful charcoal Prancing Morgan keychain at Happy Trails 2.

 The color charcoal is one of my favorites!

BreyerFest Stablemate Keychain, Prancing Morgan, #711985, 2005 only, gift from Shannon Rodgers at Happy Trails 2, 6/2019.

Smoke Running Mare #2

Oh, the irony! Drive four hours to BreyerFest and only spend a measly $25 on one purchase, then come home and stop by one of your favorite haunts and hit the jackpot.

Yeah, it happened.

 Sugar, #121, 1961/63 - 1970, $20.25, Countryside Antique Mall, Lebanon, Indiana, 7/15/2017.

She's my second of this color in the Running Mare mold, and she's darker than my other one. Actually, she's very close to charcoal. I am thrilled to have her!

Glossy Charcoal Fighting Stallion

I picked up this beauty at Devine Antiques yesterday for $54. Definitely worth the price!

 Glossy Charcoal Fighting Stallion, 1961-1963, $54

 You can't see it in the pictures, but it has footpad remnants (on the tail, too.)

I already had the piece, but the new one was such a good piece, I figured I could sell it or, if it was nicer than the one I already had, keep it as an upgrade and sell my old one. My first one is on the right and is much darker.

I think I will keep them both.

Rhett - Another Five Gaiter

Rhett was a January-June, 2001 collectors' special. Somehow I missed him. I've found a few pieces over the years, but the cost has been more than I wanted to pay or it was snapped up before I could get it.

As I've stated before, the Five Gaiter mold is one of my favorites. And glossy charcoal? One of my favorite colors!  So, when I found this piece on the H & H Winners' Circle web site, I snagged it pretty quickly.

He came with a hang tag and, surprisingly, a 2000 50th Anniversary catalog.

Rhett, $44.75 ($54.74 with shipping)

Mustang and Western Prancer

(From Breyer History Diva, May, 2012)

They were so plentiful on Sunday I could have easily had a very fine day with the stuff I left behind. This handsome boy was not among the unchosen:

Yep, a fancy old #87 Buckskin Mustang with a partial dorsal, gray points, nubbed hoof and unbelievably, eye pinking. I’ve seen pink shading around the eyes of some Fighting Stallions, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in person on a Traditional Mustang. (It’s there, trust me.) He has a few minor condition flaws, but honestly, he’s one of the nicest Buckskin Mustangs I’ve seen in a long while, and I’d keep him if I didn’t have horses coming out of my ears right now.

His friend will be sticking around, though:

The Charcoal variation of the Western Prancing Horse! Also in beautiful condition, with just a few minor issues. It’s hard to believe, I know, but up until now I had never really had one of these variations in my collection. 

It’s not a particularly hard one to find; the majority of older Smoke Western Prancing Horses are actually Charcoals, as is the one pictured in the 1963 Dealer’s Catalog. I just never found one that was the right combination of price and condition. 

And he’s such an early guy, too - I don’t doubt he’s from the first year or two of production, especially since his Mustang buddy is of the same vintage (but not among the earliest of his kind, though - remember, the earliest Buckskin Mustangs would have painted eyewhites. But he also came out a year or so before the Western Prancing Horse, so the chronology’s still good.)

I also noticed - comparing him to my many other Prancing Horses - that his saddle is exceptionally dark, compared to later WPH saddles; I have a Black Pinto one whose saddle is of a similar shade. Those of you trying to find saddles for your saddle-free Prancing Horses might want to take note of that, on the extremely remote chance I may judge collectibility someday. (This saddle is not a vintage replacement! No NAN card for you!)

Charcoal Five Gaiter

(From Breyer History Diva, January, 2011)

I suppose you’ve all heard of it, seen it, or bid on it by now. For those of you who haven’t, here’s the link:

Charcoal Five-Gaiter

That means there are at least three - or possibly four - vintage Charcoal Five-Gaiters now in collector hands. As I said on Blab: one is an oddity, two is a coincidence, but three or four now becomes something else.

But what kind of something else - a special run, regular run, or some crazy sort of color variation?

My guess is that it represents yet another brief, early regular run model, like the Buckskin Running Mare and Foal and (possibly) the Appaloosa Shetland Pony. From the level of detail on these models, it’s also possible that these models were sales rep pieces from a proposed regular run that was cancelled before it went into production, sort of like what happened to the original Small Poodle.

The ribbon colors on the Charcoals are identical to the Gloss Palominos, and some have suggested that these fellows are just a more-peculiar-than-average variation of the Palomino. That’s a very appealing notion: the Five-Gaiter’s distinctive "Honey Sorrel" coloring appears on a number of early models (the Family Arabians, the Fighting Stallion, the Western Prancing Horse) as an apparent variation of Bay.

Another point in that theory’s favor is that term "Charcoal Palomino." As I’ve discussed before, "Charcoal Palomino" is a term that appears in some early Breyer-related ephemera, and was used to describe the color we now simply call Charcoal. That term, as far as we know, still hasn’t shown up on any actual Breyer materials from that time period (yet), so there’s still a slight chance that it was a term coined by the mail-order companies instead.

Gloss Charcoal and Gloss Palomino were both introduced as new Breyer colorways at roughly the same time - ca. 1961 - and if they were using the term "Charcoal Palomino" to describe the Charcoal, I could see how that could have lead to interesting mistakes happening. (Are some of you salivating at the thought of Gloss Palomino Mustangs? I know I am.)

Rather than regrind the otherwise perfectly good mistakes, they could have discreetly mixed them in with the regular shipments. Or perhaps, they made it a one-time-only, oops-we-made-a-mistake offer.

As always, our lack of documentation from the era is a problem.

Blue Charcoal/Brown Charcoal

(from Breyer History Diva, 2009)

I see the Cream and Cocoa sets are starting to ship. Very pretty! The price seemed a little on the high side to me; combined with my ongoing space issues, I decided to take a pass on these two for the time being. If I see them in the NPOD next year I’ll definitely reconsider, in spite of my reservations about the whole "Gloss Smoke" thing.

Ah, such is the power of Gloss Charcoal.

Although I’m not a big fan of online polls - they’re far too easy to manipulate - whenever there have been polls about Decorator colors, Gloss Charcoal always comes out on top, or darn near it. And it’s easy to see why: black is very dramatic, and gloss black? Doubly so!

Such was the selling power of Gloss Charcoal that it continued to be produced even after the transition to Matte finishes ca. 1967. Both the Fighting Stallion and Mustang continued being produced in Gloss until they were discontinued in 1970. And one model, the Running Stallion, was actually introduced in Gloss Charcoal in 1968. (If any of these three models exist in a Matte version, it’s darn rare. Or it’s a test color.)

The color did undergo a bit of a shift, however: later Gloss Charcoals are darker, blacker, and less dramatically shaded than their earlier counterparts. No less beautiful, I would argue, just different. Sometimes I refer to the two different hues as "Chocolate" and "Blue," though the only blue tinge detectable in the later, blacker versions is in comparison to the Chocolates.

As always, I speak in generalities: there are earlier Charcoals that are profoundly black, and later Charcoals that have a definite Chocolate hue. You see that tendency more in the Matte finish Charcoals than the Gloss, and with Family Arabians more than any of the other vintage Charcoals.

There’s even a variation of the Matte Charcoal Family Arabians that are very, very brown, with shocking hot pink hooves. I suspect that they are very late variations, possibly among the last batches produced; all of the ones I’ve seen had the characteristics of models produced in the early 1970s (the mold marks, the trimming idiosyncracies, the painting style, etc.)

I’ve cut back considerably on my variation addiction, but the Matte Chocolate Charcoal Family Arabians are still on my want list. It’s just something about that color combo that tickles my fancy. (I've been watching way too many home decorating shows, I'm sure that's it.) But they've been darn hard to track down.

It’s not that they’re particularly rare, but that they’re Family Arabians. Aside from the condition issues that plague these models, most hobbyists don’t pay that much attention to Family Arabians generally, especially the matte-finished ones (except the Five-Gaiter Sorrels) and don't bother making note of their variations, outside of chalkiness or mane wisps.

The brown variation is also pretty hard to photograph accurately. Here's a Chocolate Charcoal FAS I picked up at the flea market recently; even with some extensive color correction, the brownness of coat isn't readily apparent:


Stand him next to a standard Matte Charcoal, in natural light, and you'd swear they were from completely different releases.

Woodgrains - Non-rare

(Breyer History Diva, 2009.)


Some Woodgrains are so common (relatively) that they border on the boring. Even the nicest, most perfect examples of the Family Arabians or the Fighting Stallion will rarely break the $100 price barrier. They had the longest production runs of all the Woodgrains - about 7 years for the Family Arabians, and about 14(!) for the Fighting Stallion.

If you found them with their original boxes or stickers - either the Gold Foil Tenite, or the later blue ribbon - that might change things a little bit. And surprisingly, it’d be the Blue Ribbon Sticker that’d bring the higher premium, rather than the Gold Foil.

Gold Foil Tenite stickers are relatively common on Woodgrains - "common" defined here as "not that difficult to find." In fact, most Gold Foil stickers are found on Woodgrains - not exclusively, but darn near it. This may be a consequence of who bought Woodgrains, and why: Woodgrains were marketed more as decorative items than toys. "Play" Breyers would naturally lose their stickers more quickly than "display" Breyers.

According to my research, the Blue Ribbon Sticker Era began ca. 1966 and continued through 1970, more or less. (Leftover stickers were used until they ran out, presumably in early 1971.) The Fighting Stallion and Family Arabians were the only regular run Woodgrains that continued production into the Blue Ribbon Sticker era.

If my hypothesis on the Ranchcraft Woodgrains is true, most of those were also made during the blue ribbon sticker era, but I haven’t seen or heard of any bearing the sticker. My guess would be that since they were being sold to a manufacturer as a "lamp component" the sticker wasn’t seen as necessary. They might also have given lamp purchasers the impression that Breyer manufactured the lamps themselves.

Chances are that your first Woodgrain - most collectors’ first Woodgrains - was a Family Arabian or a Fighting Stallion. They were definitely among mine. I was still thrilled to find them, of course: Woodgrains are rather difficult to find in these parts, for reasons unknown. I still get a bit of a thrill, after all these years, whenever I find a Woodgrain Fighting Stallion. (Gloss Charcoal Fighting Stallions, on the other hand, I could swear they sold them in bulk around here …)

Charcoal Palomino

(From Breyer History Diva, 2009.)

Charcoal Palomino?

I was reviewing some of my earlier material the other day - the stuff from that nebulous, lightly documented period of 1961/2 - and again found myself wondering about the origins and history of the color Charcoal.

The color Charcoal didn’t make its debut on a Breyer model until ca. 1961, when it first appears on the Mustang. On the duotone insert sheet, he’s simply listed as "Charcoal." (Interestingly, Charcoal is not listed as an available color for the Fighting Stallion, which means he might have been a later, or last-minute addition to the lineup.) Charcoal is the term used to describe this color in all known Breyer catalogs and price lists (except in the rare instances where an exceptionally dark Smoke model that could pass for Charcoal was represented. Those were still called "Smoke.")

However, in a couple of early mail-order fliers - both from Red Bird Sales, and Mission Supply House - the term used to describe the same color is "Charcoal Palomino." The fact that both of these mail order companies used this rather idiosyncratic way to describe this color suggests that they took it from the same source: presumably, from a still-missing wholesale price list from that era (1961, I'm guessing.)

Here’s a little snippet from the ca. 1961 Mission Supply House flier. I was going to include clips from the ca. 1961 Red Bird Sales flier, but they’re really poor quality multigenerational copies and rather unsightly. This is straight from an original.


That Breyer used one term to describe a color in the catalog, and quite another on their wholesale price lists, is something we covered briefly just a couple days ago. It’s not a surprise. Or a really big deal, to be honest, though it does suggest an interesting research topic.

What if Charcoals were actually based on an actual photograph of an especially Dark Palomino? Or maybe it was a photograph that labeled this color "Charcoal Palomino"? If so, it could be possible to track down the photograph that actually inspired the color.

Were other oddball colors - like the Gray Appaloosas, and "Honey Sorrel" also taken from similar photographic inspirations? Hmm.

Notes on Glossies

(From Breyer History Diva, 2009.)

There used to be a long standing notion in the collecting community that Glossy = More Valuable. It's true in some sense: the Glossy Finish was largely, but not entirely, discontinued around 1966/7. And some, like the Bay Fighting Stallion, were discontinued in Gloss much earlier than that. But a lot of Glossies were made well into the Matte Finish era, such as the Glossy Charcoal Mustang, Fighting Stallion and Running Stallion. While they are certainly quite lovely, they are not necessarily rare – or at least the kind of rare that attracts a high price tag, like a Dapple Black Belgian or a Gloss Bay Fighting Stallion.

What I find especially amusing is that there are actually MATTE finished models that are significantly more rare than their Glossy counterparts. These were usually models that were originally made in Gloss Finish, and only happened to switch to Matte near the very end of their runs. Since they were likely not selling well by then, these pieces are numerically quite rare, especially when compared to the models entire production run.

One notable example may be surprising: it's the Palomino Western Pony. In gloss finish, the Palomino Western Pony is one of the most ubiquitous of vintage Breyer models: it was made from ca. 1953 through 1973, and was the horsey component of the vast majority of the Grooming Kits sold in holiday catalogs during that time period.

Like its bigger brother the Western Horse, most assume that the Palomino Western Pony also made the switch to Matte Finish. And he did. Good luck finding one though: he's so rare that even in the 1997 editionBreyer Molds & Models, Nancy Young thought he was nonexistent.

I have one in my collection, of course:


I hadn't thought him especially rare before then, either: I had found him several years earlier at a local flea market, and being the mildly obsessive variation enthusiast that I am, he was incorporated into my collection without much fanfare. If I had had to go looking for one to fill that hole in my chorus line, I might have noticed his apparent rarity. But I had one already, and not much motivation to upgrade.

Silver FIligree

(From Breyer History Diva, 2009.)


Silver Filigree is one of the “newer” Decorator colors, first issued on the lovely and highly coveted 1993 BreyerFest Judge's Model Proud Arabian Mare. It wasn't used again until 1999, when The Ginger Horse commissioned a Legionario in that color as a special run for Equitana that year. It had been used sporadically since then, but within the past couple of years it appears that Reeves has decided that Silver Filigree – and hobbyist favorite Gloss Charcoal, to a degree – are their Decorator colors of choice to drive us all crazy.

While other Decorator colors have lost a bit of their luster with recent reissues, the “mystique” of Silver Filigree continues unabated. That's mostly because except for the Legionario “Grane of Gotterdammerung,” who had a healthy 2000 piece run, virtually all of the other Silver Filigrees Reeves has issued have either had extremely low piece counts, restricted distribution, or both:

Proud Arabian Mare: Volunteer Model (30)
Saturday Night Fever (Proud Arabian Stallion): BreyerFest Raffle (26)
Born to Run (Proud Arabian Foal): BreyerFest Raffle (26)
Quicksilver (Clydesdale Foal): BreyerFest Contest Prize (<30)
Silver: Treasure Hunt Surprise (250?)
Silver Snow (Othello): Web Special (200)
Surprise (Quarter Horse Gelding): BreyerFest Gambler's Choice (10)

That's not including tests and auction pieces, which are by nature either unique or close to it. (And I just noticed that five of the eight official releases were BreyerFest-related, too! Interesting.) There may also be a very small run of Running Foals (less than five?) that was associated in some way with the Ginger Horse's promotion of the Grane model, but I've only heard rumors of this little fellow, and no pictures, so I'm a bit reluctant to list it as something official. (Any pics or links would be appreciated!)

It's a smart move, albeit a frustrating one for those of us who absolutely love the color: by associating a certain color with rarity and exclusivity, it makes new releases in that color even more desirable. That's what fueled the online feeding frenzy with the Silver Snow: for a lot of collectors, it was a rare chance to get an example of a rare color, at a reasonable price.

Remember when we used to get the same thrill when they started rereleasing the old Decorator colors on new molds? They still have the power to excite hobbyists – especially when a new or popular mold is involved – but they are no longer as rare and exclusive as they used to be. If you really want a Florentine, Copenhagen, Gold Charm or Wedgewood Blue and you're not extremely picky about your choice of mold, you can get a newer release for a not-scary price (well, maybe not Wedgewood Blue, just yet. Talk about another color that drives collectors crazy!)

The only Silver Filigrees I have so far are the more “common” Grane and Silver Snow – and I was lucky to have a friend help me with the Silver Snow. I'd love any of the others, but I don't have that kind of money or luck right now. Maybe I'll be lucky or rich in the future: I doubt we've seen the last of this color. (Silver Filigree or Charcoal would look mighty fine on the Stretch Morgan, don't you think? It would also probably cause my head to explode.)

No discussion of Silver Filigree is complete without mentioning the fact that we also owe its existence to the power of suggestion. And in this case, it's one of those rare instances where one person was responsible: the late hobbyist Shirley Ketchuck. The Powers That Be at Reeves liked her idea, and started making their own.

Charcoal - Brown or Black?

Although I’m not a big fan of online polls - they’re far too easy to manipulate - whenever there have been polls about Decorator colors, Gloss Charcoal always comes out on top, or darn near it. And it’s easy to see why: black is very dramatic, and gloss black? Doubly so!

Such was the selling power of Gloss Charcoal that it continued to be produced even after the transition to Matte finishes ca. 1967. Both the Fighting Stallion and Mustang continued being produced in Gloss until they were discontinued in 1970. And one model, the Running Stallion, was actually introduced in Gloss Charcoal in 1968. (If any of these three models exist in a Matte version, it’s darn rare. Or it’s a test color.)

The color did undergo a bit of a shift, however: later Gloss Charcoals are darker, blacker, and less dramatically shaded than their earlier counterparts. No less beautiful, I would argue, just different. Sometimes I refer to the two different hues as "Chocolate" and "Blue," though the only blue tinge detectable in the later, blacker versions is in comparison to the Chocolates.

As always, I speak in generalities: there are earlier Charcoals that are profoundly black, and later Charcoals that have a definite Chocolate hue. You see that tendency more in the Matte finish Charcoals than the Gloss, and with Family Arabians more than any of the other vintage Charcoals.

There’s even a variation of the Matte Charcoal Family Arabians that are very, very brown, with shocking hot pink hooves. I suspect that they are very late variations, possibly among the last batches produced; all of the ones I’ve seen had the characteristics of models produced in the early 1970s (the mold marks, the trimming idiosyncracies, the painting style, etc.)

I’ve cut back considerably on my variation addiction, but the Matte Chocolate Charcoal Family Arabians are still on my want list. It’s just something about that color combo that tickles my fancy. (I've been watching way too many home decorating shows, I'm sure that's it.) But they've been darn hard to track down.

It’s not that they’re particularly rare, but that they’re Family Arabians. Aside from the condition issues that plague these models, most hobbyists don’t pay that much attention to Family Arabians generally, especially the matte-finished ones (except the Five-Gaiter Sorrels) and don't bother making note of their variations, outside of chalkiness or mane wisps.

The brown variation is also pretty hard to photograph accurately. Here's a Chocolate Charcoal FAS I picked up at the flea market recently; even with some extensive color correction, the brownness of coat isn't readily apparent: