I apologize yet again for the double daily post, but Breyer has been pumping out horses faster than we can save for them. Now without further ado... Meet Avoriaz the Collector Club winter decorator lottery model! It appears that this horse is on the Performance Lipizzaner Mare mold and is rose gold. You could either win her in a gambler's choice of filigree - aka dappled - or solid colored (usually called "charm") and there were only 175 pieces made of each. While I admit she is tempting, as I absolutely love rose gold anything, I have to pass. Her $160 price tag is just too steep for me at this time of the year. I'm already having a hard time saving up for the club deposits. Ugh! Breyer you really know how to drain people's wallets.
Collector Club members get early access to Black Friday deals on Breyer's website, in addition to exclusive club models that won't be available to the public! Darwin and Rosemary were sold out within 5 minutes of being put on the website ands that is the reason why my stablemate collection will never be complete. I just can't ever seem to snag those rare stablemates while they're decently priced. I went on there 7 minutes too late, or I would have loved to have the original Darwin. I'm kind of meh about the mold but I love that dun pinto color! Anyways here was what was offered today:
The rest of the deals included mostly sales on regular runs that are retiring this year. I'm assuming that the deals released for the actual Black Friday for non-Collector Club members will be the same, minus the horses pictured above. They usually do a Cyber Monday sale which has mostly the same thing.
Double post today! There's been sooooo many reveals lately it's hard to keep up, so I decided to separate them into a unicorn post and a horse post. Today, Breyer made an electronic newsletter for Collector Club members. Is this a new thing or did I just not remember them doing this? Anyways, it had a sneak peek of the upcoming holiday decorator. If you read my previous post about the upcoming holidays, I mentioned this decorator. Typically it's a filigree, usually silver, although last year they made a blue filigree and this year it looks like they're going with what looks like rose gold. The only question is now what mold will it be on? It will be a lottery model, not available for outright purchase. There should be a holiday animal also coming up. These models are very limited so they will run on the higher end for pricing. And speaking of high end pricing, take a look at this test model, the bay roan Wixom! This lady, if you are the lucky person to win her, is $850 out of pocket. Really, that's not bad for a OOAK model considering that BF auction horses go for thousands of dollars... just ask the person who won that Alborozo at last year's BF and they'll tell ya! I do notice that a lot of the test models are some shade of roan. It seems like Breyer is trying hard to perfect roaning, one of the most difficult colors they could probably do outside of, say, brindling. I mean it's incredibly hard to get a roan to look realistic. Another possible web exclusive is a Pony for Christmas. Decked out in a shiny green blanket with red bow, he looks like a present himself. He also comes with a gift box with a ribbon tied around it, perfect for gifting. It's obvious he's a bay horse, but with that blanket over him, we have yet to find out if he's solid bay or pinto. It would be cool to remove the "present" blanket and find out he has some white markings underneath - but I'm probably dreaming.
Update: He actually does have minimal white underneath as well as some awesome dapples! I won't spoil the surprise much more than that for those who want to purchase him :) The unicorn addiction has me rolling my eyes by this point. By golly I'm going to start calling the company Breyer Unicorns if they don't start making more horses LOL. I've been saving up for the holiday mare and foal set, which can now be scratched off my list since they're unicorns. If the Santa Surprise horse is a unicorn again this year or if it's as pricey as the SS was last year, I'm probably going to use the money saved for that to join the Premier Club instead. Anyways, here is your latest unicorn lineup: First up are the Starry Skies Stablemates. They are limited to four per person and are a gambler's choice of four different designs. All have star patterns on their bodies and glow in the dark. Big Dipper is a green Clydesdale, Little Dipper is a blue Magnolia, Cassiopeia is a pink Warmblood Stallion and Cepheus is a purple Alborozo. Warning... rant ahead! Don't even get me started on the blind bags. Now I don't want to sound like one of THOSE people that complain about everything Breyer does (I LOVE Breyer as a company or else I wouldn't have this website) and I like gambler's choices every once in a while, but they are taking it a little too far. Seems this whole year almost everything has been a gambler's choice or blind bag. Ugh! I like surprises but not this many, Breyer, and I'm sure plenty of other collectors agree. Ok, rant over. On to the next horse... Zenith is the unicorn that they released today. She's a Classics model, not traditional. She reminds me of a sunset. She'd go great with the other Classics unicorns breyer has released as web exclusives in the past (meaning Zenith is only available on Breyerhorses.com) and honestly I used to collect Classics unicorns, but then there got to be so many that I chucked them a long time ago. I'm thinking about doing the same with the stablemates unicorns I have. There's just too many to collect that really it's getting a bit overwhelming. These unicorns are taking the place of Breyer's annual holiday mare and foal set. It seems like they're doing a flip flop between regular horses and unicorns. This year their names are Mira and Antares and they're on the Andalusian Mare/Foal molds. I love the realistic dappling on these two and the pearly sheen, but the mare isn't one of my favorite molds. I own Celeste and currently she is part of my "tipsy girls" shelf, along with Natasha on the Weather Girl mold. These molds remind me of the vintage Pacer with how they fall over so easily. By the way, when ARE we going to get a new Standardbred? That has been way overdue by now. I also wish Breyer would lay off the brown for these molds. Anybody with me when I say we need a nice dapple grey pair? The final release is not a web exclusive but a Fairytale Friends Club exclusive. This is Rose, the latest release, with her Mini Whinnies mini me. As a side note, I'd love to see realistic horse colors made on the unicorn molds for the FFC rather than just fantasy colors.
The Vintage Club opened last week and went as quickly as it came. It was literally sold out within a day, which isn't surprising given that they limit the club to only 500 members, and the fact that this is an anniversary year I'm sure added to that. Well now the Premier Club is open, and unlike the VC, the PC is not limited in members so you have until December 31st to sign up for it. I know y'all are probably tired of me talking about the Collector Club but you have to be a CC member in order to join the PC. You can't join the PC without a CC membership. I know, it's a little confusing, but I try to make it as blunt as possible. This means that you first need to pay the $25 for the CC (or $35 if you want to also be a CC member for the rest of 2019 in addition to 2020 - you will get access to the CC Appreciation deal and the Christmas Day Surprise if you do) as well as the $100 deposit to hold your spot in the PC. I get asked all the time if the PC is worth it. Honestly, I have not joined myself so I've not seen first hand the quality of the models, but going by following previous releases, I'd say yes, most of the times it's worth it. Second hand market prices do go up with the PC models, unlike VC where after a few years of being released you can often find them for well below original purchase price. I hardly ever see PC models below $200 unless it's a model that wasn't very popular to begin with, like Rhian and Cadell from earlier this year. Some of the most popular models, like Dundee and Bristol, are extremely hard to find. When you do find them, they usually aren't cheap. These models typically fall into the hands of serious collectors, and once there aren't usually sold. This makes the PC worth it to most collectors in case there is a model released that a lot of collectors love and want to get their hands on. Again, once these popular models fall into collections, they may not be available again for a long time. Now the $100 deposit is split into thirds, so although technically the price of each model is $175 plus shipping, it is reduced to $144.66 per model once $33.34 is taken out of the deposit. The problem is making sure you have $700 to spend on plastic ponies because it's a continuity club, meaning that you're obliged to purchase each horse whether you like the horse released or not, or else you're kicked from the club. It's a gamble because you don't know what the other two models will look like, only the first one. The models are released in May, August and November in which you will need that $144.66 plus $17.50 for shipping. You also get a bonus stablemate FREE with the PC membership. The past few years have had brand new stablemates molds and it has been verified that next year's stablemate will be a new mold as well. This year's stablemate is a miniature version of Hamilton on a brand new mold named Charleston and it's around this time of the year when Breyer ships out the free stablemate so if you're currently in the PC be on the look out for this cutie to show up in your mail :-) I've always wanted to join the PC myself but something has always stopped me. Maybe the guilt of paying $200 per model for a dust collector when my husband could buy a gaming system for that price. However, I have to say that I'm tempted this time because of Altynai. We'll have to see what the Black Friday deals look like, the Santa Surprise (I bypassed the last couple years) and what this 70th anniversary collection is all about before I decide for sure. If there are lots of "other" horses I want then I probably won't due to my rather limited budget.
I've been talking about CC member only exclusives so much that it's nice to talk about limited web exclusives available to everyone for once. The annual holiday grab bags are out, again available in two different sizes. There is the Elf (which I bought a few years back) and the Kris Kringle. I have not heard yet what the Elf came with but here's what the Kris Kringle may contain: *Traditional unicorn Zena
*Traditional foal Van Gogh (Picasso's foal) *Classics Cloud's Encore four horse set *Classics horse (random color) *Classics Breyerfest Scamper with barrels *Paint your own horse *A couple stablemates blind bags *A few Collect A horses Remember that not every bag contains the same things. I thought this one was pretty nice compared to some from years previous, especially with the addition of a BF SR in there. Again, I haven't heard any news from the Elf grab bag but I will surely update this post once I find out! It'd been a long week after fighting off laryngitis and pink eye so I gave myself a little gift in the form of adding Truly Unsurpassed to my herd. I had another 30% off coupon for Tractor Supply and she was marked down 15% off so in total I only paid $25 for her. Good deal, considering that they usually don't like to use coupons on marked down products but the cashier was very sweet and knows me well from going in there weekly for animal feed. So now she is part of my herd, and I love her! Her markings are crisp with very little overspray and she didn't have many flaws that I could see. I'm still undecided whether or not I will join the Deluxe Collector Club or not. I probably won't decide until after Christmas when I hear more about this mysterious 70th Anniversary Collection.
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