The Philosophy of Collecting, Part Two

With Hartlands, Breyers, and later Stone Horses, I toyed for a while with the idea of having one example of each mold.  That fell apart once it became apparent that I'd never be able to keep up with Breyer's new releases alone, let alone anything coming out of Hartland or Stone.  Also I discovered that this philosophy required vast amounts of space and entailed collecting some molds that I simply didn't like.  So I happily let that collecting philosophy fall by the wayside.

One thing I never have done, although I have often thought about it, is collecting by colour.  Very early in my collecting career someone told me that her favourite horse colour was bay and that, given the choice, she preferred to collect bay horses.  While collecting only bay horses doesn't do too much to limit a collection (bay and chestnut being among the most common horse colours), I've often thought of how neat it would look to have a collection of similarly coloured horses.  I'm partial to appaloosas and have thought about focusing my collection on them, but never seriously enough to attempt to move my collection in that direction.

Another way to cull a collection is to collect only certain breeds or breed types -- like only Arabians, or only Warmbloods -- or to collect just one brand or material:  only Beswicks, for instance, or just resins.  Although I am partial to ponies and mustangs and love British chinas, collecting within such limitations has never been of much interest to me, as I value variety in my collection. 

 A mixture of chinas, artist resins, and commercial resins

One nice thing about having a collecting philosophy is that you can always switch philosophies in mid-stream -- I've done this many times over.  You can also work with two or more philosophies at once, as long as they are compatible.  

For instance, while I am not generally a conga collector, I'm in love with the Breyer Traditional Shetland Pony and so I have allowed myself to conga that mold.  I do not have a complete conga of them and am not trying to fool myself that I ever will -- I don't suppose I'll ever find an appaloosa Shetland "in the wild" and I doubt that any test runs or Breyerfest auction models will ever come my way.  But I have no problem with having a small conga of variations within my larger "favourite molds" Breyer collection.

Today I try to keep my collection in check by following a number of intersecting philosophies.  When seeking to add to my collection, I look first for models with what antique collectors call "provenance," or an interesting backstory, affordable chinas or "clinkies," ponies and mustangs over other equines, and shelf-stable models (especially standing ones) over beautiful but tipsy action models, all the while maintaining a mix of model horse brands and a balance of both new and vintage models.  I also try to collect models in the colours I find most attractive on them.

Because I no longer show my models, Live Show Quality (LSQ) Original Finish (OF) models, customized horses (CMs), and artist resins (ARs) represent a minuscule portion of my collection, while items of some historical interest in telling the story of a brand are beginning to form a larger part.  I've always like history, so the more I can learn about model horses, and the more I can demonstrate that knowledge through examples in my collection, the happier I am.  And in the end we should all collect what makes us happy, shouldn't we?

Well, at least that's my philosophy.