How to see the difference? And rare ponies?

[Nilenna]

1) How can you tell if the hair on a pony have been rehaired or not? I mean if the color is similar or the same as the original? How can you tell just from looking at a picture?
I see some ponies have a bit more matt hair than others and you can just tell it's old. Some have super shiny hair looks brand new.

2) Also the so soft ponies..when people have deflocked(?) them, how can you know which one used to have flock and not? Is the symbol on the so soft ponies only on so soft ponies. I thought I'd seen the same ponies with and whitout flock..
Do people like deflocked ponies better?

3) Last but not least.. What ponies are rare or sought after? Does this change? Or is a pony that people loved 5 years ago still the one people want today? I know the TAF babies are popular and mimic... and the Nirvana ponies, although I'm not sure which ones which. I don't know if I even know about all the ponies that exist. Ponies that I see people sell a lot and all the time.. I know those aren't as popular.. Some series/families that are popular.


Post Merge: November 07, 2014, 10:14:32 AM

Some series/families that are popular??? Forgot the question mark..


[Moving to corral, MA]

[melodys_angel]

~From a picture? I think its just an experience thing--you can tell from how the hair flows. You cant tell based on how shiny it is because most of the time there will be some kind of frizz so the hair wont look brand new.

~SS ponies have brighter bodies and symbols when deflocked.

~Honestly it depends on the person, though I don't think they change much as the years go on.


Im going to move this over to the right forum for you since this is about ponies and not off topic

[Katika]

From a picture, it's hard to tell if a pony has been rehaired unless the hair is notably a different shade or too long for what is normal for the pony (to complicate things more, there are a few ponies that have long haired versions ).  Some hair can be shined up by washing and conditioning, as well as the look nicer depending on the photographer's skills.  If you actually have your hands on a pony, you can usually tell with G1s and most G3s if they may have been reharied if their heads are loose (keep in mind, some ponies do also have their heads removed for deep cleaning, so a loose head doesn't always mean a rehair has been done).  If you look inside the head, rehaired ponies will either have little knots along the plugs or a slathering of glue along the entire length of the mane (G3 ponies came with horrid glue blobs to begin with... you'd probably be safe to bet that if the glue looked tidy and intentional on a G3 with a loose head THAT one was more likely to be rehaired  )  Factory G1s have their hair sort of woven in to the plugs and is actually very tidy if you look at it from the inside.

Some ponies actually were released in both a so soft and a "normal" or non-so soft version.  Off the top of my head, that includes Surprise, Heart Throb, Posey and Lickety Split.  I'm pretty sure that I'm missing some, but that's just a couple of quick examples

Typically, there is a difference between "hard to find" and "highly sought after" ponies, too.  The HTF ponies are usually mail orders or those that had shorter release periods or were not packaged as evenly as the rest of the ponies in their set (I believe hathorcat knows more about that sort of thing).  They are HTF simply because there were actually fewer of them that made it to consumers.  Highly sought after ponies aren't necessarily any rarer in numbers, it's just that they seem to appeal the most to collectors.  This typically happens with unique poses (such as the boys and the sitting pose) or ponies that for some reason just come across as more beautiful.

[Nilenna]

Thank you both!    Really helpful! Feel like I'm learning something new each day! 

[Katika]

The pony world is deceptively huge when you actually jump into it; it can take a while to figure everything out and honestly, I think that even those of us that have been collecting for a significant portion of our lives still learn new things about it   This community's a great place for new collectors - very friendly, knowledgeable and willing to help (provided answers are actually known)

[hathorcat]

Echoing everything Katika has said - there is so much to learn about ponies it still amazes me and I dont think it matters how long you are collecting you find out something new all the time.

I dont have much to add on your main questions that has not already been covered. But I will say that sometimes reading back through the Corral and you will learn so much!