We all have our preferences for what we like to collect. Some of us are just “collect what we like.” Some are very systematic, all of a particular make, or all of a particular mold.
When I was young in the hobby, it was still possible, if overkill, to own an example of nearly EVERY model Breyer had produced, and local-to-me hobbyist Karen Grimm of Black Horse Ranch had such a collection, and hosted many tours of it. She was also a Breyer dealer, which certainly helped!
I tend to collect just individual models that I like, which tends to be models that are performance oriented, models in action, and models that are ponies. But I appreciate any model with a nice face. Since my collection is large, I try to be discerning about new arrivals, but there are so many good new ones out there! I will often excuse myself with “well, I don’t have any examples of this mold yet.”
There are molds where I have several examples, but I’m not completionist, and I’m definitely not the person who would sell models I have just because a new unobtainable model came out on that mold. I tend to like and keep the ones that I find especially flattering on the mold, and I don’t worry about the ones I can’t or don’t have.
Breyerfest special run Bristol “Jump and Drive,” loose mane variation
I think if I were starting a collection from scratch today, I might have a very strong collection of jumping horses. When I was a kid, there was just the one, the chunky jumper in Overspray Bay with his belly touching the wall, and while I loved him, I wanted so much more for him. Today we have so many really excellent jumpers, OF from multiple manufacturers plus many fabulous resins. The technical options to display them only get better too.
They’re jumping AND they’re ponies! (WH Topgun, and Always Chipper, two Breyerfest portrait limited edition models.)
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As I’ve been collecting since the mid 90s, I’m starting to get a fairly large collection and am running out of room. Ha. So I try to be strict and only collect a few breeds - mostly stock horses and Thoroughbreds. Unfortunately for my shelves, Breyer has started producing so many really nice sculptures and paint jobs, so I find myself breaking my limitations frequently. I don’t have to have complete congas, but if it is a sculpture I really like, I will collect all the accessible colors that I like (see nearly complete Love classic QH mare and stallion collection). I do also love a performance friendly sculpture, especially for western. I have mostly OFP, but also have some customs and a growing herd of resins, particularly pewter micros, who will maybe one day get paint. 😂
My personal lifetime goal is to have one of each mold that Breyer makes. (No, I’m not including CollectA, stuffed animals, or china- I’m trying to keep it a somewhat realistic goal!) I’m very close, just missing a handful of the older molds and some of the most recent new molds, and I tend to wait until the new molds come out at BreyerFest or as Regular Runs instead of subscribing to the Premiere Club. But I told my daughter years ago that the point of a collection is to make you happy. If you are happy with just one horse, then it’s the perfect collection for you! She got out of Breyers a few years ago :(, but still has her beloved Wild Cat series.
If I don’t particularly like a mold, I try to get it in my favorite color, palomino. Either way, I try to have it in a color that I enjoy. I’m not a black hole collector- I will sell and trade horses- but once I find a horse in a color I love, I tend to keep it.
My all-time favorite mold is the Clydesdale Mare. I acknowledge her flaws, but love her anyway.
One of each mold is a pretty realistic goal! I also am a total sucker for palomino, especially glossy palomino.
The remnants of my carpet herd date from the early 1970s, finding the organized hobby locally during college in the early 1980s when I started customizing for myself, showing from the mid 1980s into the early 1990s, attending a couple of early Breyerfests, and reconnected in the early 2000s. I have a small collection of OF and vintage CM, but my purchasing focused on resin blanks, which have been sold down to a prioritized point of saner headcount and to raise funds — I’ll see how much I get through in the next ten+ years and reevaluate. There are so many nice things available in all scales/budgets now. My focus is doing my own CMing and I trend towards realism, so the new Breyer and eventual available Stone molds by resin artists fill the bill as prices on resins increased beyond what my rationalizations and situation could bear. Any resin purchases now are occasional venti/SM or medallions, but I also have plenty to work on in-house. I have also sought out Maureen Love Breyers for the workbox, and sampled CollectA and similar lines for plums. I’m caught in perpetual new show string building as life got interesting, making a career shift with a new course of study/degree and living in a stalled renovation. I hand-paint in all acrylics, which lends itself to granular detail like greys, roans, and Lp complex. The breeds I’m most focused on are foundational Arabians and more baroque-type Lipizzaners (first saw Lashinsky’s US troupe in the early 1970s), other Spanish breeds, but the collection includes a sampling of many things, including more draft horses than I consciously intended to amass. I’m in a city cluster in the Northeast megalopolis, so my horse involvement is volunteering with a real-horse organization, traveling to see horses, and the art and research nurtured by that and the hobby. A portion of my model stash was acquired as “souvenirs” of horses seen, and my most recent cats were named after historic Arabians.