Passing On The Love Of Breyer Horses

Growing up as a crazy Horse Girl, I was a Breyer horse owner and collector for most of my life. My obsession with horses spanned from riding, to studying them, to collecting Breyer models since I was just a kid taking lessons on fat ponies with rotten attitudes.

I hadn’t touched or played with my Breyers in years. They stood in the same spot in the same stalls of their miniature wooden barns, forever frozen in time and collecting dust. But there was something about seeing them in the bedroom I grew up in every time I came home to visit that made me feel nostalgic. It was the Breyers that really made the room feel like my room.

Then I got a call from my mom while I was driving home from the barn one day. My parents, who live in a town about an hour north of me, were putting their home – the one I grew up in – on the market. I wasn’t surprised to hear this at the time. Both my younger brother and I had been out of the house for a few years.

My mother had slowly been going through my things in my old room, packing faded horse show ribbons, dusty trophies and medallions into boxes. She had donated my old clothes and given away the majority of my stuffed animal and beanie baby collections. But she wasn’t sure if I wanted to hold on to my Breyer horses, which at 30-plus unique models, three wooden barns and a dozen or so wooden jumps, pasture fences and stable accessories, took up an enormous chunk of my room.

The next time I came home I started going through them. I smiled as I held Cigar close, the first model I ever purchased, who was nicked and scratched from too many trips to explore the front yard and eclipsing Roy Roger’s Trigger in races over my many jumps. Or the half dozen black-and-white paints, ranging in breed from Saddlebred to Gypsy Vanner, which I got for Christmas and birthdays following the purchase of Tuffy, my childhood mount, a black & white tobiano gelding who I adored more than anything else.

Even though a part of me knew it would be painful to part with them, I had no reason to keep the Breyer horses anymore. So I packed them up and carted them back to my house knowing it was time to take some photos and post them online to sell. I wasn’t in a real rush to get rid of them, but I posted an ad on Craigslist.

A few collectors inquired, wanting to know more about their condition and the years they were made. But no one made the effort to come out and see them in person, until one local woman called interested in purchasing the horses for her daughter.  After exchanging photos and an address, the woman warned me that her daughter had saved up some money and would likely only be able to purchase just a few models.

Nori was the girl’s name. She was tall and lanky, and had her long, dark hair pulled back into a messy pony tail. She was nervous to talk to a stranger, so she hid behind her mom and let her do all the talking. Her mother told me she was new to the world of horses, and had recently started taking lessons at a local hunter/jumper farm. She had just a handful of Breyer horses at home, which she cherished more than any other toys.

I brought them into the room where the Breyers were, and Nori’s face immediately lit up. She looked to me for permission before picking them up. One by one, she inspected them, holding them close with a big smile on her face. Her mom asked her which ones she liked the most.

She couldn’t make a decision.

Nori reminded me of myself at that age. I remembered how exciting it was to get a new Breyer horse, and what it felt like to introduce that horse into the herd of others back in my room. I would give them the same qualities and personalities of horses I knew in real life. Like Cigar, who was nervous, but very fast like the Thoroughbred gelding Max, whom the older girls at the barn got to ride in lessons.

In the end, Nori took home my entire herd. It didn’t matter to me that I could have made more money on the lot of them. I knew the horses that I had adored so much over the years were going to be in good hands with a young girl who would love them all over again.