The picture headlining this post is a model you could buy in any reasonable quantity you wanted (even by the case! :-) ) for ~$40-$50, depending on where and when. It’s gorgeously correct, with tiny nose whisker bumps, adorable wrinkle spots, and excellent biomechanical fidelity. It’s performance-friendly, ready to compete in pretty much any kind of model horse performance class you can imagine, strategically sculpted to accommodate tack or even a marathon carriage. This particular colorway, a portrait model made to follow a real life successful show horse, has adorable little nose spots, really nice shading and dapples, painted shoes, and a detailed and flattering blaze.

My Catch Me has been very successful showing in performance, both live and photo, including against resins and customs.

As a teenager of the 1980s, I would have been hard pressed to find a custom horse this nice, and whatever I could have found would have cost far more money in absolute dollars (not just adjusted dollars). Customs in that time were sold sight unseen via text lists, and they had none of this sophistication. Neither the paint or the sculpting was as nice. And there was a huge amount of luck involved in finding out what was for sale and being the first one to send for it.

I always wanted a horse from one of Julie Froelich’s lists, but never managed to be the first person to send my money. It wasn’t until the mid 90’s when artist-produced resins became a viable business model, where artists suddenly found a way that they could do their art full time and still pay their rent, and that created a huge expansion of supply of nice horses that people could find and buy. (The beginnings of the hobby finding the internet via Haynet and others helped a little too.)

Today Catch Me (and the other color variations on this mold, known as True North) is readily available to everyone. And if you don’t like this particular horse, Breyer has a dozen others just as nice for whatever type of horse you like, in all kinds of glorious realistic and interestingly arty deco colors. Like today you could have a very interesting collection of just jumping horses, horses in the air, and not just the clunky old Jumping Horse who was oddly positioned on his tiny, broken down wall and only came in Overspray Bay.

Breyerfest Special Run Bristol, sculpted by Morgen Kilbourn, “Jump and Drive,” in glossy sooty buckskin splash, produced in 2023

Breyer produces horses at literally every price point, from tiny Mini Whinnies and Stablemates that are under $5 at full retail to one of a kinds auctioned off in the five figures. You can join the Premier Club for three brand new sculptures with specially chosen highly detailed paintwork for around $200 each.

Even at the toy level, Breyer is killing it with their wonderful playsets, items I would have desperately wanted as a kid, like the camping set or the veterinarian set or the stall mucking set. Just so fun.

If you don’t find what you want at Breyer, we have the revitalized Stone, with a little different strategy, selling only into the hobby and specializing in mostly one of a kind highly detailed artist pieces. They’ve pioneered factory customization, repositioning parts and creating different manes and tails and even some quite drastic resculpting. Once obscure and hard to buy, today they have one-of-a-kind factory customs for sale every week at auction, breathtaking and original pieces that range from highly realistic to incredibly creative deco pieces.

The artist-led market is amazing and has gone in my collecting time from being a situation where you might want to have bought every artist resin produced to being impossible to purchase even all the ones you love, just because of the sheer volume. I can’t even count all the artists who are able to do production full time now, which has been remarkable not just for producing more horses, but for absolute leapfrogging in what is state of the art, in what can be produced in sculpture and reproduced in resin and china castings. Not to mention how much Breyer and Stone have tapped into these very skilled artists.

We have amazing pieces coming out constantly ranging from tiny micros to even 1:6 scale horses, and a whole new culture around bas-relief “medallions” as well. The creativity and out of the box thinking has never been larger, and with the help of services like YouTube and events like NaMoPaiMo, there are tutorials available for just about everything you want to try, thanks to the generous people who take the time to share their knowledge.

So thanks to everyone who has made the dreams of my childhood come true. It is absolutely a delight to get to enjoy so many fabulous pieces every day.