This piece has turned out to be quite the interesting find.
Western Horse, #57, 1951 - 1991, $8.40, Cabbages and Kings, Crawfordsville, Indiana, 6/13/2018.
Lisa and I went to Crawfordsville and visited Cabbages and Kings, a downtown antique shop, last week, she to look for red transferware plates, and me to look for horse shaped objects. I spied this guy on a shelf fairly soon after we had walked in.
At first glance, this seemed to just be a Western Horse that had seen better days - no reins, no saddle, and some rubs.
But the eyes caught my attention. They were unpainted!
And so was the bridle and the breastplate!
The legs were a very brilliant white, and were bare plastic.
Chalky plastic!
I checked to be sure that this was a real Breyer - there was a USA up under the right hind leg. The bridle conchos were rounded, so it was not a Hartland.
The bottoms of the hooves did not show any drain board pattern or signs of being a basecoat chalky.
That white plastic simply glowed and was a richer color than Breyer's unpainted white plastic.
The tail had a similar glow to the white plastic.
As did the mane - I was pretty certain that I had found a chalky plastic Western Horse. But why was it unfinished? Was it a factory escapee? A cull? One that a factory jobber took home and then got rid of? What was its story?
I put it out on Facebook's Western Horse and Ponies Lovers Page. Here is a cut and paste of what Sande Schneider said in response to my query as to what I might have found:
As far as I know, there's really no way to tell what escaped from the factory from what Breyer openly sold at some of their past parking lots sales. I don't know specifics because I never attended one. But it is my understanding that back in the days of the Chicago factory that they hosted a parking lot sale of some sort toward the end of most years (Christmas clearance?). Plus after Reeves took over and moved the factory to NJ, there was a toy shop/dealer somewhere out East -- somewhere in Pennsylvania or Virginia perhaps -- that used to take a bus load of enthusiasts to the factory for a tour and shopping event once a year, or so. I'd have to dig through my files in search of notices about those to refresh my memory before I could write quotable details.
Plus in more recent years Breyer has had bins full of blank (naked) models for sale in the Breyer store during some BreyerFests. I never bought any but I remember seeing them there.
To my way of thinking, an escapee is not something that was released freely or openly. But rather something that left the factory under mysterious and/or unauthorized conditions.
Back years ago they did a warehouse sale in NJ. You went the day before and slept in line on the sidewalk to be one of the first in the door to grab deals out of bins. There could have been mistakes, oddities, OOAK, or other neat ones found at a great price. They also had other toys as Steiff’s too! This was always like the first Saturday in December. You nearly froze to death.
Hmmm. Still a mystery. I am going to record him as a factory cull or escapee, and see if the mystery doesn't unravel as time passes.
Such is the fun of collecting!
