"Where did you buy model horses before the Internet?" younger collectors often ask me.
Collectors in the 1950s and 1960s had several sources, of course -- we (or our family members and friends) bought them from bricks-and-mortar (actual) retail stores, from other collectors, and from ads we saw in print publications -- usually horse-related magazines.
This is the first in what I hope will be an occasional series of short posts about ads for model horses in horse magazines.
Here's a small display ad from the December 1960 issue of Western Horseman magazine, showing the relatively-new Breyer Family Arab Stallion in bay, alongside the Proud Arab Mare and Foal -- probably just before the lawsuit by Hagen-Renaker forced Breyer to stop producing the old version PAM and PAF.
You can click on this link to see my earlier post paying tribute to the FAS, which mentions the history of the Proud and Family Arabians: http://modelhorsefriends.blogspot.com/2017/07/ode-to-breyer-family-arab-stallion-fas.html
It looks like they have factory eyewhites!
Then in May 1961, another Western Horseman ad shows the lonely FAS, all by himself, for sale by another retailer.
We'll look at other sources of model horses by mail, in future posts. Stay tuned!