What Clinky Collectors Already Suspect, But Were Afraid To Ask Outright

With several serious HR collections dispersing in the past handful of years- Cheryl Greene, John Renaker, Keith Bean, Denise Deen, Nancy Kelly, The Hagen-Renaker On-Line Museum- and another on the horizon (Karen Grimm/BHR), there is an uneasy vibe about what will happen to the china values.

"What's going to happen?"

We can look at FB and MH$P to see the first effect: cascading. In the face of the sudden availability of so many great HRs, collectors are prioritizing their own collections, and culling items that do not fit their current focus. This results in lots of makes and models hitting the market at the same time. Just because HRs are the most plentiful right now doesn't mean that other makes are immune. The need to raise money to buy their wish-list HRs cascades down through other makes, including bone china studio ware, Beswicks, and Made-In-Japans, causing a flood. It's a cascading effect of all types of collectibles, surpassing demand and thus lowering asking prices. If an item is to move with any speed, the prices must be made attractive, or even below market value, to entice buyers. If time is not a factor, and the seller can afford to sit on inventory (like a lot of us non-shop-owners, with zero overhead), their prices don't change.

What if there are stubborn sellers, who refuse to lower their prices, or sell for less than they paid? Is it fair to make comments berating them for their refusal to make a discount deal with you or your friends? No, it isn't. The private seller of second-hand collectibles is not obligated to stick to values in books (which are outdated and give built-in lowballing) nor to a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. It's their own vintage or secondary market item, and they can price it as they see fit. I would argue that you should be thanking those sellers for their steadfast dedication to values. They are the thin line defending and insisting on values, so that our entire hobby market doesn't crash.

My husband has taught me a useful, but cheeky, shut-down phrase to use when I am asked to ridiculously reduce prices on my original art or collectibles: "If you don't like my price, buy it at Kmart." Of course, the chain store name is interchangeable, but the gist is, if you don't like my price, try and find this unique or hard to find item for sale at discount just anywhere. You aren't going to find it at the corner store, and certainly not priced by the pound.

"What should be my strategy?"

Everyone who has written me for advice this week has received this: Few things are going to hold universal value when the market floods. It's not an If, it's a When. Say your heart is set on a piece that you know was produced for more than a year, well, chances are, another will be available in the next few months. Don't despair that this one sold; you'll have another chance. This item was made in quantity.

"What if I just want just an example of the mold, not a competition/show horse?" 

I advise checking the years made, and reading up on which variant is the oldest and made the shortest time. Try to buy mint items. Older mint condition items survived to the present day, through collector care, and there's a lot to be said for that. In HRs, the oldest horses had character eyes and lined nostrils and mouths, which hold them back in breed/realism judging. They are golden for collectibility. If you decide to collect for history, not showing, don't reject the non-realistic finishes; select for age and condition.

"I am ready to spend, and I am excited about all the stuff available. I have been waiting for a dispersal like this." 

If there is no upper budget, consider that the test, one-off goof, and employee customs are unique (or close to it). There won't be another just like it coming up for sale, ever.  if anything, that exact piece might come up for sale sometime in the future, but only that one. Thus, demand for the most attractive tests is never met. Also, tests in particular tend to hold their value every time the market dives. This is not so much true of the value of batched Samples, which are sometimes called tests, even though they are seldom unique trials on damaged ware. Examples of tests' values persisting include documented Breyer tests despite the plastic market ups and downs, and vintage HR tests (less so for batches of Samples) holding their collector values throughout the market flooding of eBay, and so on. When buying from collectors, expect to pay collector prices for these investment pieces. Sometimes, one gets lucky on eBay finding a bargain test for sale from a non-collector (steel/ash gray Roan Lady!), but don't expect those who educate themselves in the fancy to ask anything less than full value. 

I am loathe to guess what broken/glued or restored items will bring compared to their mint counterparts. As shown in examples in John's estate dispersal, the same item damaged can bring just as much as a mint one, or one leg break can reduce it by half. My speculation, without accounting for world situation and larger problems like war or food shortages: The first wave buying tests and uniques will see their values held, perhaps even see those grow as investments. There will be a big ocean of regular run, long-produced pieces swirling about, unsold, for a while. Before it's all over, we'll see collectors exchanging things like HR DW Swaps for $30 (my personal yardstick for HR secondary market low, yours may vary). All the while that the big estates are settling, experienced collectors continue to disperse pieces and retire from the hobby. After even the BHR sale, there will be more collections up for sale, due to unforeseen circumstances. If you miss out on a mass-produced grail from any of the dispersals, know that there will always be another. And another. Do not despair. Also, think back to before you learned that X piece was even attainable, before it was offered at auction/for sale. You still enjoyed your collecting hobby then, without X, so do not let a one-time loss tinge it now.

If you do not want to wait another decade for your grail, I'd say, find funds outside the already-squeezed horse hobby, and buy it now. Clear out the garage, have a yard sale, make crafts, cook at home more often: all the things we used to do to support our hobby spending when the HR market was ferocious, in the pre-eBay 1990's. Now there are even more opportunities to raise money in one's spare time, without going back to school. Try driving for Uber, or walk dogs, raise your own produce, etc. My point is, it's folly to expect all your grail funding to be generated from sales to the very same market that is already flooded.

In closing, the best advice I received in collecting, I share again with you: a grail will find its way, however implausibly and circuitously, to the person(s) it was meant to find. We are all temporary curators. It may be heart-wrenching to see your long-loved favorites exchange hands beyond your grasp or even imaginable price range. Remember that is just a little delay. Maybe you worry that you didn't know the right people, you're too new, or feel outside a clique? We all start as outsiders, and we all did our tours as newbs. Keep your reputation clean, keep on with collecting in your favorite way, and eventually, your diligence will pay off. I would not pass along this as a fairy tale, I have experienced it and it is fact. Impossible, unfathomed things found me, and I know they can find you, too. I hear from collectors every year about crazy chains of events that led to their amazing $5 Finds, or gifts from friends, PIFs, all manner of unexpected avenues. Aim high with your patience. Shed no tears if you missed recent opportunities; smile and save up for the opportunity winging its way to you, on the gusts of time.

Cast This Way

This post does not reflect the opinions of Hagen-Renaker nor its employees. The following is my opinion and interpretation of the submitted examples. This disclaimer is necessary because the established stance is that HR's Designers Workshop molds were never altered between Monrovia and San Dimas. 

The awkward grazing pose of a young, leggy animal is captured in the Hagen-Renaker "Scamper" mold. Designed by Maureen Love in 1953, as best as we can guess, while the stickers read "1953" on the Colts. The Handbook says, "Spring 1954 through Fall 1958". As I do not have access to the 1953 order forms, I can't check if this was the actual release year. The mold was released in brown gloss with character eyes, brown matte, palomino gloss with character eyes, palomino matte, and white matte. I did find a date error.

The Handbook indicates that the white color was only made 1958, while it is only present on the order forms for 1954.

In 1958, the offered colors are brown (sometimes collectors call this rose gray) and palomino.

Not only does the Scamper mold change genders, but there are corresponding changes in the mane and tail. These consistent-with-gender mold differences support the theory that entire mold reworks occurred, and that the Fillies aren't just "flattened" boys, or individually altered while wet clay. They were cast this way.

Tails go from curly and lumpy with a defined tailbone on Colts, to smoothed outline and longer sweeps carved in the tail detail on the later Fillies. How do we know Fillies were later? Because there are no known Filly mold version with character eyes, and the 2 varieties of stickers found on Fillies date them late 1950's to early 60's.

<  Fillies           Colts  >          

Fillies have longer detail sweeps but smoother outline.    

Both Fillies. Photos courtesy Marcia Miner.

The Fillies' mane detail in outline is broken up, rather than the smooth, continuous wall of the Colts'. One can spy a Filly immediately by the knob in the mane, even present on less-detailed examples.

          <  Chicks           Dudes  >

< Lass                            Lad >

It's a Girl!

No idea about photo source, sorry.

It's another Girl! Owned by Jayne Kubas.

This one is unusual, as it has the engraved © HR in the inner thigh.

It isn't seen on Fillies often, and never on Colts.

gloss Test

Did you know that she has two names? 

Scamp and Scamper, both Fillies, both stickers date to late 1950's.

Here is the data I gathered on some Scampers and a copy: 

Updated with completed file.

The term "C Eyes" in the chart refers to "character eyes", which was a decorating style on many DW animals in early Monrovia.

Various character eyes, and outlined nostrils and lips on the gray Tony.

Only the glossy regular run Scampers are known to have character eyes.

The Japan copy was produced by Enterprise Exclusive. It is from an entire set of copies of the HR Morgan foals: Scamper, Clover, and Roughneck. The other models in the chart, with the exception of the EE Japan, all have lash-dot eyes with eye-white. The Japan lacks the eye-white decoration.

                      <  Oddity                       Japan EE copy  >         

What is this Oddity? 

What she's not: a white slip Scamper pulled out of the white gray decoration line-up, and accidentally sprayed as if a palomino. Her body slip is tinted a cold eggshell color, almost a greenish tan. She has the same rust color body shading as seen on regular palomino Fillies of her sub-era. The shading and hoof black is even decorated at the same angles and in the same places, so it "feels" like a genuine HR.

The available palomino filly for comparison is a gloss Test, hence the super-rich color.

Look beyond the gloss to the shading directions.

Odd filly compared with an earlier, matte Colt Scamper.

Other examples of HRs with the wrong overspray deco for their slip color are well known and documented. Instead of the wrong body (since the tinted castings all look very similar when dry) being grabbed and decorated as something it's not, I suspect the wrong slip color was grabbed and poured into a Scamper production mold.

Here's the Morgan family mother, Heather in what appears to be a similar coloration:

Owner unknown, photo by author at NAN 2014.

When I saw the above mare in harsh lighting before, I thought she was a white slip casting, factory-goofed as palomino. Without seeing this horse in natural light, I can't tell you if she has the same cold eggshell color of body slip, contrasting with the white legs and mane/tail, as the Scamper. The similarity is pretty uncanny, though.

Wait. In the chart, this Oddity is a full quarter inch smaller in every dimension than her siblings, yet weighs right about the same. How is this possible?

It could be that she over-fired, burning the clay pigment out and shrinking her overall. Her weight would remain because she isn't losing material, just the spaces between clay molecules got tighter and melted together. This idea seems to be supported by her dry, sandy glaze... glaze doesn't absorb well on partially vitrified ware. Her mold features are all there, except no sign of the copyright in the inner thigh, which has been established as the norm. Her airbrushing does appear to be by the same hand that decorated her palomino sisters (brothers were airbrushed in an earlier sub-era).

Here is what over-firing can do to the pigments on an earthenware piece. 

< Normal                  Over-fired >

I tried the vitrification test, and her unglazed dryfooting is resistant to water. A normal Scamper kept a sheen of wet on its dryfooting, but this Filly wouldn't absorb and wiped dry.

Maybe she is a mold reduction at HR? If so, we'd expect to see more small Scamper Fillies turn up. Do you have one?

Or, she might be a Japan copy. I have heard a rumor that a person once-associated with the company went forward with some DW molds to be made overseas, many years ago, against HR's wishes. I have seen very few Asian copy molds as nice as this, and none that matched complex airbrush angles, stroke for stroke.

How about another decoration oddity?

Here is a brown Scamper missing his mane decoration, which could have been confused for a palomino by collectors. This is the Colt version of the mold, and we know that by his mane detail, not just his show tag.

Model courtesy Dawn Sinkovich

Better view of the Test Filly gloss palomino.

No character eyes, and the gloss is tinted yellow, visible in mold grooves.

This model was photographed (before and after restoration) in all three editions of the HR Handbook.

Maybe there was something about gloss and Fillies at HR? Another Test gloss, also a Filly. 

Photo courtesy Ed Alcorn, The Hagen-Renaker On-Line Museum.

Whether they glitter or not, with knobs or nobs, this mold is one of my favorites. It is a great study in animal sculpture. Too often, Scampers get passed up in the show ring because they are grazing, and it's hard to see their faces. Perhaps this will lead to a new appreciation of their variety, even within the mold's most common color: palomino. Do you have a brown or white with even more variations?





Thank you to Jayne Kubas, Ed Alcorn, and Marcia Miner for the use of your models and/or photos!



References:

Benuish, Alison, ed. Hagen-Renaker Research Materials: 1949- Present. N. pag. Salisbury, MD: WMHC, 1995.

Roller, Gayle. Hagen-Renaker: A Charlton Standard Guide. Third Edition. Page 76. The Charlton Press: Palm Harbor, FL, 2003.

Stickers
http://hagenrenakerhorses.com/WebPageStickers.html

Muddy Monday: Intent of Purpose

This is another Collectibility opinion piece, based on my own experience as both a producer and collector of ceramic figures.

Something that is hard to grasp about pieces that fall into the "gray areas" of provenance or collectibility is Intent of Purpose. In my opinion, this should be considered before one runs with an assumption about whether or not an unmarked piece is a legitimate test, and competes it as such. It doesn't matter if you want the piece to be a test or not. What matters is, what did the factory that produced it consider it to be? What did the factory intend to learn or achieve with this item?

How the producer's intended purpose for an individual ceramic item affects what we call it today, where it shows, and its value when it is resold.


Glaze Tests

Today's model horse potteries are careful to mark all their tests clearly, in pigment beneath the glaze, on the hoof soles, or with fired-on glaze decals. These potteries are run by people with at least a working knowledge of the model horse hobby and show definitions. They know how important it is to mark such rare items clearly, even if they do not foresee these items leaving their archives or reaching collector hands in their lifetime.

Pour Horse Pottery "Suspiro"

Left: a marked test, with my name because I was the one who wanted to know

 if a "contrasty" bay could be achieved in our glazes!

On the right, a marked glaze custom with the name "Pour Horse", 

because it was intended to be the company's donation to a benefit auction.

This came out a second, so it was replaced with a perfect and identical custom donation.

Normally, customs from this factory bear the decorator's name, 

and occasionally a "©PHP" because they own the sculpture design.

In recent years, Hagen-Renaker has taken to marking tests clearly. This helps build collector excitement for them, and ensures correct recognition of special items, for generations to come. There are still occasional unmarked tests, perhaps doing double-duty as Dealer Samples?

On the left is a normal reissue Sespe Violette in dapple gray.

On the right is a test mulberry (aka "white") with iridescent dark teal ribbons.

Did any other reissues come with this ribbon color?

She lacks a number and has no test mark, but has excellent provenance.

A year later, that excellent provenance was backed up by found paper documentation.

Vintage factory tests, be they HR or any other pottery, may or may not be marked. I have seen a vintage HR glaze test marked only with the serial number of the underglaze or slip tint color used on it. Most of the HR vintage tests I have seen have no marking. I know of three (maybe four) vintage tests with factory stickers.



Decorator or Greenware Assembly Samples

Some smaller studio potteries may re-purpose a test as the decorator's work station guide. Pour Horse Pottery and my own pottery did this. The test would be used as the guide, unless new techniques changed the edition (it's another way variants happen).



Dealer Samples

Some Miniatures pieces were glazed onto HR Lilypads and sent as Samples for Dealers. The hard base would be more durable than a standard HR paper card, and could be easier for transporting to shops and giftware shows. An article in a collector newsletter (I will post reference, when I locate it again) said a dealer glued samples to smoothed (vein-less) brown Lilypads for his/her own use. These were later recalled by the factory, according to that report. Here is one that is very certainly glazed to the beige veined Lilypad, not glued. I even checked for glue edges with a blade. It was most likely done by the factory, with the intent of being a Dealer's Sample. In fact, that is this piece's provenance, at time of sale from a collector.

Dealer's Sample HR Miniatures Donkey Baby mold # A-021

Sculpted by Helen Farnlund.

Lilypad is not smooth.

Not all Dealer's Samples are as obviously different or marked. This was purchased direct from the dealer, and at slightly higher price than her regular pieces, because it was her only sample. It bears no marking.

Again, the producer's intent is what matters: neither of these samples were intended for retail.



Prototypes for molding 

In the case of modern potteries, these may be made of green or brown plastilina (oil-based clay), Plasti-Carve wax, brown foundry wax, Castilene, or resin. 

PlastiCarve HR guinea pig.

Mold Tests and Security Bisques

The HR mold security bisques are sometimes confused with the mold-numbered sample bisques that were submitted to Breyer in 1974.

The way mold test bisques were described to me is that these are the first castings poured in the first production mold. They are white bisque, even if the final product is produced in a tinted slip. These castings tell the moldmaker if he or she has made a production-line-friendly mold, and where any pulls or errors may be located. The mold security or "insurance" bisques serve another purpose: if something happens to the master block-and-case that generates the production molds, the bisque can then be pulled from the archives and remolded. This has occurred at least a couple times in HR history. Think of these bisques as safety nets for each design. Depending on the factory, at least one, and up to several copies of the same design, may be archived.

Pour Horse Pottery "Suspiro" mold security bisque, out of the waste mold.

The rusty marks are where brown plastilina residue remained in the waste mold, 

and adhered to him when he was poured.

Custom Glazes Outside the Factory and Employee/Factory Customs

This is a very important type of model to distinguish from tests. These, in my opinion, should not show as, nor be sold as, tests. There are whole divisions at model horse shows that welcome custom glazes; they have a place. Happily, current potteries mark their customs clearly, to avoid accidental misidentification. A collector who has paid for a test on the secondary market, only to find out from the factory that it is a custom instead, is not a happy collector. Today's potteries, with the perspective of history, mark pieces clearly to avoid this.

This is an example of a vintage non-factory Custom Glaze on a white Ferseyn. Note how the artist imitated a San Dimas eye decoration.

Dapple gray custom glaze Ferseyn by a collector (Mary Ann Black).

Note the glazed/pigmented initials and year, on hoof.

"Are there vintage custom glazes finished in factories, or are you just trying to scare me?" Oh, yes, I was present when a factory moldmaker, and later, Jim Renaker himself, described certain pieces as custom orders, or playful experiments, but not tests. 

HR vintage factory custom glaze

The intent is the big difference: if the factory does not intend to reproduce it, or see if it can be produced, it is not a test for production. That's pretty much the cut-and-dried reason tests ever exist: to try out a potential for the production line. Some of the custom items that leap to my mind were heavily, intricately detailed by free-hand airbrushing, a technique that would not have been efficient or affordable for a whole production run. Such decoration would have been completely unreasonable for mass production, without the use of modern masking techniques. Sometimes, a potter just wants to know if something can be done at all, for fun.

A glaze color that was originally a custom, but is repeated later on a whole edition of a mold, has a double provenance. The factory's initial intent is what is important, here; a model should be sold/competed as the identity marked by the factory. Only in very specific situations, where direct evidence can be shown that the producer went back and enlisted that exact model as a guide to produce an edition, is it appropriate to also mention that the model is a test. There is no room in today's serious collecting world for selling pieces as "I think this was not just a custom, but a test, because I saw a similar color/pattern later on X edition." If you have it in writing from the factory, if the source of the model was the factory archives (where tests reside), and/or compelling photographs, you can build a case for it being a test + custom.

Fortunately, today's market is about equally strong for glaze customs as it is for tests. Between these two, there is limited monetary incentive to ignore the maker's intent. Both are high dollar items, now. This was not the case years ago, when values flip-flopped between the two. Of course, mistaking a lesser-value production run for a pricey test or custom will quickly be caught by sharp eyes, so there is no point or reward in falsifying collectibility designation. 

"This one has a little bit [bigger/fewer/more] spots, it must be a test!" No. The HR books and this blog have shown many examples of how wide variations can range.

"This one has initials carved in the hooves, it must be a test!" No. Many vintage models have employee initials. There will be a whole post about these, in the future.

Devil's advocate: "What if it is vintage piece that is totally weird?" Generally speaking, there is some kind of paper trail, eBay auction forum thread, or collector familiarity with the exact unusual piece in question, because this is a small world. Some pieces can be easily traced back to a specific factory employee. Some are dealer estate sale finds. Some can be traced back to an infamous counterfeiter. An eye for production and materials, and interpreting factory artifacts on the piece, will help you determine a lot before you reach the documentation-hunting phase.


Fakes

They are out there. Searches on the breakables yahoogroup will yield some discussions of fake tests on vintage bodies. There is a report of reglazed or retouched eyes of (at the time) less valuable San Dimas mini horses to pass them off as (at the time) more valuable Monrovia. Suffice to say, HR never used a sponge to apply overglazes/glass paint/ underglaze on top of an otherwise normal, completed, airbrushed, glazed horse. Knowledge of factory techniques for each product line can help guard against making an expensive identification mistake. If you have a suspected fake, feel free to contact me privately. I may be able to direct you to those who can identify it, or I can help interpret it from photos.