The mysterious 1960s Buckskin Running Mare and Foal

In the early 1990s, my family used to frequent a large monthly flea market in the Atlanta area. Over the years, many dealers began to recognize my mom because she was always looking for Breyers, and they would let her know whenever they had models to sell. We had a lot of holes in our collection at that time, and the models were usually cheap, so Mom would literally bring home grocery bags full of Breyers. It was awesome.

On one occasion, a dealer introduced my mom to a gentleman who was helping a friend of his sell off items from his late mother's estate. These included a rather large collection of Breyer and Hartland models from the 1950s and 1960s. There were a number of nice pieces including old glossies, woodgrains, and many horse and rider sets. Sadly, there were no decorators, but there were two pieces that made up for it, the rare and mysterious 1960s buckskin Running Mare and Foal.

At the time, we knew of one other collector who had found a mare and foal pair, and if I'm remembering right, that collector also knew of one other mare and foal as well. Interestingly, all three mares and at least two of the foals had been found in Georgia. Needless to say, we put in an offer for the collection and won it, and these special pieces have been in our collection ever since.

When Nancy Young's wonderful Breyer book came out a few years later, I was very interested to see if she knew anything about the buckskin Running Mare and Foal. Based on the other models from the collection, we knew our buckskins most likely dated to the 1960s. Nancy concurred---the models have the round Breyer Molding Company stamp that was added to most molds beginning in 1960 but they lack the USA stamp that was likewise added to most molds around 1970. Like us, she guessed that they were probably a small special run.

Like the #87 Buckskin Mustangs, some of the buckskin
Running Mares have a partial dorsal stripe. 

Very few examples of this set have been found in the intervening 30 years, and almost no information about them has come to light. But what little is known tells an interesting story. Around 15 years ago, a page from a catalog from a retailer called the Red Bird Sales Company turned up on eBay, and it sold for a small fortune. While it didn't picture the buckskin Running Mare and Foal set, it did list them as items available for order as though they were regular runs. 

Fascinatingly, the buckskin Running Mare is listed as model #122 and the buckskin Running Foal is listed as #132. These numbers fit perfectly into Breyer's numbering convention for the other regular run Running Mare and Foal sets listed in the 1963 dealer catalog, the year the molds first appeared in the catalog (as far as we know.)

Here is a close up of the text at the bottom. Note that the mare numbers skip from 121 to 123 and the foal numbers skip from 131 to 133. The buckskins belong in that gap, but why aren't they listed?

The Running Mare and Foal molds are not present in the 1960 dealer catalog or price list, but they do appear in the 1963 edition as pictured above. If catalogs were issued in 1961 and 1962, they have not yet come to light, but supplemental pages presumably meant to be added to the 1960 catalog are known. We also know Breyer regularly made models available for the holidays before they debuted in dealer catalogs the following year, so the Running Mare and Foal may have been released in late 1962. The Red Bird catalog page therefore can not date any earlier than late 1962, and based on the presence of the Hartland 7" Mare and Foal on the page, it can't date any later than 1964, the last year the Hartland set was produced according to Hartland historian and author Gail Fitch. Given the gap in the 1963 catalog where the buckskins ought to be, I suspect the earlier date must be correct.

Another piece of the puzzle came to light (publicly, anyway) last fall. The info booklet that came with the 2023 Vintage Club release Thunderbird included this snippet from another Red Bird Sales Company catalog page. It lists the Buckskin Running Mare and Foal as "discontinued" due to "manufacturers' changes." This corrections page likely dates to late 1962 or early 1963. 

Photo by Barrie Getz

The fact that Red Bird had Breyer's manufacturer numbers for the Running Mares and Foals, including the buckskins, suggests that a price list that included them once existed. If it should ever come to light, I would be most curious to see if it was dated. My guess if it was would be a date late in 1962 or early in 1963. The official Breyer dealer catalog for 1963 must date from a bit later in the year, hence the exclusion of the buckskins. Which of course leaves us with the question of why the buckskin run was canceled? Perhaps Breyer didn't receive many orders for them in the run up to Christmas 1962? Whatever the case, it seems that their release as a regular run was planned but ultimately scrapped before the 1963 dealer catalog went to the printer.

Since I don't own any of the Red Bird catalogs myself (nor even copies, alas), I was interested to recently learn from a fellow model horse history nerd who does have some of the catalog pages that the Red Bird Sales Company was located in Dunwoody, GA, a suburb of Atlanta about 10 minutes from my parents' house. The collection we bought that yielded the Buckskin Running Mare and Foal came from, you guessed it, Dunwoody. Undoubtedly, the original owner ordered her models from the Red Bird Sales Company. Given that several other buckskin Running Mares and Foals turned up in the Atlanta area, it makes me wonder if Red Bird was the main retailer, or perhaps even the only retailer, who ordered and received any of these models? It seems unlikely we'll ever know for sure, but the buckskin Running Mares and Foals remain elusive, suggesting that very few were ever produced and distributed.