BreyerFest Open Show 2014: More exquisite equines!

On Friday morning, we were up bright and early... Scratch that. Dark and really early as you can see from this picture my sister snapped as we waited for the doors of the show hall to open.

Mom and me and lots of coffee

This was our 25th year attending BreyerFest, so early mornings and little sleep are par for the course. Happily, the busiest part of our show day takes place first thing, so we were well caffeinated and raring to go (no pun intended) for collectors classes at 7 AM.

At BreyerFest, the collectors classes are split into three divisions: novice, variety (essentially collectibility), and commonality (theme). I'll do a post specifically about collectors classes later, but for those of you who may not have seen them before, the purpose of these classes is to showcase a small subset of a collector's best and rarest models. The classes allow you to display 8 to 12 models, and creativity and good documentation are encouraged. Here are some of the winners from each division.

NOVICE

Novice 1st place

Novice 2nd place

Novice 3rd place

Novice 4th place

VARIETY

Variety 1st place

Variety 2nd place

Variety 3rd place

Variety 4th place

Variety 5th place

COMMONALITY

Commonality 1st place

Commonality 2nd place

Commonality 3rd place

Commonality 4th place

Commonality 5th place

Commonality 6th place

As you can see, there were some pretty amazing rarities to be seen! If you're a collectibility nerd like me, it's worth getting up early just to go and spectate. I wish I'd had more time to take pictures once the regular collectibility halter classes began, but both my sister and I had a full showstring, so we were on the move all morning once the collectors classes ended. Maybe next year! :-)