Gusty variant with PURPLE streak???

[LadyGuinevere]

Intriguing! I think it could go either way to be honest! She is gorgeous whatever though

[Griffin]

What a beauty! No idea if she's genuine or not, but she's gorgeous in any case.

[willa]

She looks lovely with a purple streak!  I'm leaning towards rehair, especially as the head is loose but i guess anything is possible these days! x

[hathorcat]

She is lovely....I am hedging to rehair simply because of how messy the inside is but also because even her tail looks incredibly glossy and shiny and has a little "new hair" look....if the green of her mane is a perfect match to the green of her tail why dont you see if she has an original washer or other on her tail?

I am going to hope for "cool variant" though cause thats always fantastic!

[TokiBear]

She's gorgeous... whatever she is.  Purple suits her well.

[SummerSkye]

I think she is a rehair also but she's beautiful! 

[Hatsetsut]

she is a great pony! :O I hope the hair is original, because is most beautiful that the original red
but, the hair inside... the original hair is plait inside, and this is glued :S
I don´t now if she is original, but she is lovely ^^

[kellyponyfeathers]

OK, this is getting weirder and weirder, and I'll tell you why in a minute.  First, let me say that I've been collecting ponies almost since the beginning, about 29 years now.  I have about 700 G1's.  I've cleaned up lots of flea market ponies, but I've actually never rehaired or customized, and I've only removed the heads a few times.  So I wasn't really sure what the internal weave looks like when it's original.  I was actually under the impression that factory weave is usually messy and tangled, whereas rehair weave is generally neater.

I actually don't have another US Gusty with me right now to do a direct comparison, but her green hair (both mane and tail) is an exact match for my UK Gusty.  The tail looks to be original; it's secured by a metal washer, and it just "lays" right, you know?  With the customs I've seen, the hair just never lays quite the same as a factory pony's.

Same with her mane.  It just lays right, and the ends look factory even.  They're even, but not straight-cut even; they don't look like they were cut with scissors.  The same with the purple streak; the ends are just slightly different lengths.

The weave is equally messy for both the green hair and the purple streak, and there's definitely some glue on it.  PKW raised a good question about reddish staining around the plug holes, and I don't see any on the outside.  Her neck around her hair plugs looks white (or slightly off-white).

Now here's where it gets interesting:  I tried to look inside with a flashlight to see if I could find any reddish bleeding around her plugs internally.  It's impossible to see her white body past the tangle of plugs, but I saw something red in there.  At first I was disappointed.  I thought, "Well, that settles it then; she's a rehair after all."  But I kept looking at it for a while, and I realized I wasn't looking at her white "skin" stained by red hair plugs that had been removed.

There's a small tangle of red hairs mixed in with the purple ones.  They're not visible on the outside; there's not a single red hair in her external purple streak.  They've all been pushed inside.  They're tangled and mixed in with rest of the messy green and purple plugs.  Most of them are held in a tight tangle very close to the plug holes, but a few of the hairs loop out with the rest of the tangle closer to where I can see them.  They're definitely red, bright-Gusty-streak red.

So now I'm pretty sure she's the real thing.  I am such a proud mamma right now. 

I'll try to get a better pic later tonight with a real camera (instead of the camera phone pics I posted), but it won't be easy.

[cloud_weaver]

I completely understand where you're coming from!  I had this huge discussion about my Icey and his dark green stripe (see siggy).  But that sounds similar to what I found with him.  He has three plugs of blue threaded into his mane, two were cut out.  (more info in his description in my link below)

So I'd venture to say she's the real thing. 

[Rhini]

Maybe the ponies I get are just extremely poorly done, but whenever I've taken off a head the weave was extremely messy and tangled inside. (This is true of a Gusty I just finished restoring)

Maybe you got one by someone new to the factory who was practicing with the wrong color hair 

[kitkatvintage]

She looks pretty with the purple stripe, but I'm leaning toward rehair.

I always thought the factory weaving is usually neat & clean since its done by a machine. A rehair can go either way on messy vs neat depending on the technique of the person rehairing... years ago people did rehairing with a more " neatly stitched" look from the inside of the head using a curved needle, but now people tend to use the "knot & poke through with a rehairing tool" method. If the stitching is messy, I'd assume it was a rehair. If the green of the mane matches the tail, it could be because people use original pony hair (typically from a donor tail) in restoration work.

[kellyponyfeathers]

I completely understand where you're coming from!  I had this huge discussion about my Icey and his dark green stripe (see siggy).  But that sounds similar to what I found with him.  He has three plugs of blue threaded into his mane, two were cut out.  (more info in his description in my link below)

So I'd venture to say she's the real thing. 

Yeah, I read that discussion about the blue hairs mixed in with Thai Icey's dark green streak.  I was thinking the same thing.

[relcelestia]

Omg how awesome is this!?!?
So friggin cool!!! man I swear we wil never run out of new nirvana ponies!!!
Super duper big old pooper congrats to you!!
She's outta sight!!

[SFlame]

I think it's likely that the red hairs are residual from where the red was removed and the purple replaced them?

[TE_Starflower]

DEspite her beautiful looks (though I really like that surgerberry red) I feel she's a rehair, especially with those red remainant hairs.  The purple streak is too full looking.  And it's possible to rehair only the streak and leave the main colour, which I think may be the case.