Seeing Dots

It is that time of year where we start reflecting on our favorite purchases. I hit a bit of a nostalgia streak this year for 1990s models. In particular the very distinctive 90s polka dot dapples. Was it a subconscious reaction to the April Fools stablemates or have I just hit that stage of midlife?!

The polka dot dapples were relatively short lived. They first appeared around 1994 with Tara the Cantering Welsh Pony and the Arabian Stallion and Frisky Foal sets with the infamously mismatched Sham and Classic Arabian Foal pairing. They appeared on dozens of models for the next few years and petered out in 1998. By 1999 Breyer had returned primarily to the normal splatter resist dapples.

The 90s were a particularly kooky time for Breyer paint jobs - a sort of last gasp before production moved to China and realism once again took center stage. I myself was becoming a Serious Collector during those years, graduating from my carpet herd. I was only accepting top live show prospects in to my herd and a lot of these oddballs were just not going to fit. It didn't help that a lot of them were made on older or less popular molds, which were also very passe at the time.

Here I am 30 years later with fond memories of seeing them in the toy stores and catalogs and scooping them up for my collection.

Unfortunately this has also been a year of hobby estate sales. I've picked up a number of these nostalgia models from estates and I like being able to carry forward from one collector to another.

The Bonnie Ellis estate has certainly be generating a lot of buzz in the hobby. She had an amazing and very extensive collection so the auctions have been very exciting and well attended (virtually). I've been able to acquire a few models from her estate, including this polka dot CAM and her foal.

This year I also bought Laag and Talisman from the Sharon Coleman-Farley estate, among others. (Her family is selling from a facebook group if you are interested in joining. Very reasonable prices and well cared for models.) These are definitely from the height of the polka dot dapples era, being from 1996 and 1997 respectively.

It's another very niche sub-collection I'll probably continue in the new year now that I'm in my 90s era. They still aren't particularly popular and so you can find them pretty cheap.

When I look back on the 90s I think of the perfectly round dapples and appaloosa spots, the slightly unnatural colors (like lemon yellow and jet black Fugir Cacador or the very green tinted blue roans like Shane the Stock Horse Stallion), and of course the truly weird like Cinnamon on Lady Roxana and Cloud on the classic Swaps.

I remember people at the time thinking these will be the "decorators of the future" because they weren't very popular and were very distinctive. Interestingly these are now as old as the original decos were back then and that certainly has not come to pass (I paid $20-$25 for each of them and as you can see from Laag that's even less than they cost new!). I think I should do a whole post on models I have saved because I also thought for SURE they would be the "decorators of the future" - we can all get a laugh out of it anyway! LOL.