Sometimes the saddle can be passed around pretty easily, but bridles are often quite tricky. Any time I find two or more horses that can share everything, I get pretty excited. It means that a sales piece for ________ will also fit _________, which means that it appeals to a wider range of buyers which means that the chances of a sale just went up.
It also means that buyers can get more bang for their buck. WeeJay is kind of limited to over fences classes, but The Babysitter could tackle a wide variety of events, english and western. With rising prices in the rest of our lives, economizing in the hobby becomes a necessity for most people. Instead of a saddle for every horse, a set of tack that can go from the CM/AR classes to the OF ring is a great way to cut expenses if you plan to order new gear.
One of my favorite groups of horses to trade tack between is Working Girl/Breyer's WEG Driving Horse. Working Girl, of course, is no longer in production and actually rather hard to find second hand, but well worth it if you can. Sarah Rose's minis hold their value extremely well. Working Girl and Breyer's WEG Driving horse are both versatile, working models that can be used in a variety of settings. Because of loose manes, most english flat classes will have to be in lower levels or schooling, but often times fewer moving parts means fewer things to mess up. A correctly done entry, no matter the level, should always be competitive.
Quite a few of the G3/WEG (G4) models can swap saddles and sometimes bridles, but I have found that in most cases tack cannot be swapped around between generations. There's a substantial size difference between the G2 (1998) and G3 (2006) molds, and within both generations there's a wide range of head sizes. The G1s typically have very delicate, refined heads and that is their main problem when swapping tack. A G2 saddle may fit, but unless you want to do a bridleless reining demonstration you're out of luck.
Resins, of course, are an entirely different ball game. There's a wide variety of sizes and poses without Breyer and Stone's level of continuity in shape and scale. Based on the handful I have in my collection, models from Horsing Around and Animal Artistry tend to stay fairly close in scale and are performance friendly. Animal Artistry models tend to run larger than most plastic models, while Horsing Around runs closer in scale to Breyer's G2 molds.
Unfortunately, I can't finish off this post with a comprehensive list of tack-sharing models. It's been a long time since I've had orders for G2 or G1 models, and most of my recent sales pieces have been for the WEG Driving Horse/Working Girl/Little Lonestar trio. What I DO have is a Google Spreadsheet with measurements for bridles. I've wanted to do an Equine Resin Directory-like database with tack making measurements for a long time, but it never really got off the ground and I don't have time to put it in a website form right now. Tack makers and anyone else who needs it are welcome to use the information as reference. I plan to add more models as I have the time to measure them, and if you happen to have measurements for a model feel free to email them to me! (check out the contact page for my email address)
Model Horse Measurements Spreadsheet
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