More Pins

 With the arrival of Mishkazelle, Mink's latest Imperial Unicorn pin, my collection grew too large for one board (at least to my taste).  I made a new, though smaller, board, with very deep blue velvet, and put all the Mink Unicorns together.  My original brass unicorn remains with his old friends.  Really, how could he possibly blend in with these -- ?!  And Mystashani [upper left] now has her whitesilver moon upon her side.  :)

Above we see two Original Unicorns, two Celestials and two Imperials, to give them their Minkiewicz series names.  This post will be about 5 of my latest new pins:  a Minkiewicz and four Breyers (Arabian, Snowbird, Hope and Jewels).

Collecting pins seems to satisfy at least 4 criteria for me, one of them being affordability.  I spoke in an earlier post about how the Stein pin was my best chance to own one.  Now I am 'owning' the Snowbird Christmas Morgan and, seen below, the Jewels Fighting Stallion.  Another criteria pins satisfy for me is durability and archival quality, or lastingness.  (I need a word meaning permanent, aha, thank you thesaurus.)  It was a surprise to me when I realized I'd been, after all,  jealous of chinas  for a very long time;  and was collecting pins as one way to assuage this yearning, since I haven't yet allowed myself to collect chinas.  They are breakable.  Pins are so much less breakable.  The fourth criteria was sheer jewellike beauty.  Bright colors and gloss, metal and bling,... and tactile smoothness, which is like the final kicker for me (and part of why I like Glossies so much).

Here's a better photograph of the Snowbird pin, as well as the most interesting Black Malik (called merely 'Arabian' by Breyer).  Black is a very hard color to execute using enamels, yet I think Breyer did a good job here.  (Yes, that is a hair on the velvet.  I'm leaving it there to show they aren't just suspended in space.)

You're probably tired of being told how hard it is photo them so as to bring out the colors.  I was enchanted to discover Hope the Pinto Pony's tail was blue!  Amazingly, in both these next photos you can see it.  Another surprise was how large Hope is -- look at him next to the Big Ben (Brahms).  (Bouncer must've eaten his Weetabix that morning!!)  Probably Breyer wanted to get in all Hope's pinto details, such as the handprint on his rear.

You can also see the Cinderella castle, mentioned in an earlier post.

I think the Jewels pin is my first-ever rainbow Breyer horse.  To demonstrate (yet again) how hard it is to shoot these things, the photo below has no processing or PhotoShopping.

Photographing Mishkazelle had predictable results.  I defy anyone to find a bluegreen sparkle in common between these two shots of the splendiferous Rose Gold Imperial Unicorn.

You can finally see that my unicorn board really is a blue and not a black velvet. 

It seemed appropriate for all the Mink Unicorns, plus it just happened to be what I had!  Ah, the mother of invention...

I have made myself a spreadsheet of all Mink's enamel pins, drawn from her newsletters' data.  Data I am keeping track of include the date a pin is first mentioned (I call it 'date of first published' or '1st pub'), the date of its sale, the Series and Name, a description and the sale price.  I tried to keep track of how many were in the issue, but after Rainbow Zigby the answer stopped being always 50 and went to nothing (not mentioned).  Sometimes I add dates of further description in the 'first pub' column.  I also try to keep miscellaneous notes such as whether the pin was soft or hard enamel, the first screen printing, whether it was sold with 'mug bundles' and the like.  If anyone has questions about just the enamels, I could probably answer.   

How many are there?  Counting the 2 Teal FlutterPonies as one, and counting Jorannazazi (sale date tomorrow), but not counting those others who haven't been sold yet (that includes the Purple Hippicorn!), it's fifty-two (52).