Friday Feature: Celebration Model Values

I thought it would be fun to take a look at Breyerfest celebration model values today as we follow the hype train towards Breyerfest 2025. People often ask - how much will my celebration model be worth? Will it go up in value? How much of the cost of my ticket price should I allocate to the ticket model? Will I even be able to sell my extras?

The main two factors that drive value are rarity and desirability - also known as supply and demand for the economists among us. Rarity in the hobby is usually driven by the number produced and relative age and can often factor in to desirability as well. Condition of course also plays a part in both value and desirability. That's part of why age comes in to play with rarity - the longer a model has been out the more chance it has to have been damaged in some way and so it gets harder to find perfect ones as it gets harder to find older models in general.

The funny thing about the celebration models is that even though they are an exclusive special run they make a lot of them. And I mean A LOT of them. This year it looks like over 13,000 Phish models will be made. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that is more than even some regular runs. Also since such a large percentage of hobbyists participate in Breyerfest, most people who want one are already going to have gotten one with their ticket. So that pretty much makes rarity a non-issue. At least for this year and for the recent past. They've been runs of 10,000 or more since 2021. Amazingly they have doubled where they were just 10 years ago, when 2015's Simba was a run of "only" 6500.

That leaves the desirability as the primary value factor for most of the celebration models. This is heavily influenced by mold choice and you'll see in a moment that most of them are actually selling at "body price" and so naturally molds which are popular for customizing or harder to find in general often hold a higher value. Vintage or less popular ones can be as low as a few dollars.

So let's take a look! Here's a chart of Breyerfest celebration model prices over the past 3 years. The black lines show the high and low price for each one and the blue line shows the average selling price. As you would expect it is generally a downward trend from the earliest models to the most recent.

Some things I thought were interesting. Imperador das Aguas and Bravour 54 had the dubious honor of the two low points, both with a model that sold for just $1. Bravour also has the distinction of the lowest average price, coming in at $19.50. All Glory has an unusually large spread from a low of $10 to a high of $170. Normally having your model signed by the owner does not add significant, if any, value. However in the case of All Glory some were signed by none other than owner William Shatner and that actually does have a big impact on value, as you can see. Roxy also has a pretty wide spread and that one is harder to explain - I am not sure why some are $30 and some are $200 in her case.

I'm sure you noticed I left Alborozo out. He is a special case that totally skews all the other data! He was a run of just 6000 pieces (which actually at the time was a high number) and was a mold made exclusively for his release, never to be used again outside of auction models or other tiny runs. On top of that he was, and still is, one of the best sculptures in the Breyer line and so he has both scarcity and popularity going for him. Thus the amazing average price of $750 for a run of 6000 pieces!

What does it all mean for this year's model? Well I think he's going to be down in the $20 or less range with Bravour. Cigar isn't one of the more popular or hard to find molds and he is likely to have the highest run number yet.

For me personally I do think of the celebration models as "free" and I split the ticket cost in half and apply it to my two special run purchases. That's where the real value in the ticket is for me. This is hobby blasphemy but some years I have not even picked up my celebration models. Sometimes I will just get the one for me and leave the extra(s). This year since I have online tickets I don't think I will pick up any Phish models and just stick with the ones that will be shipped to me. Unless I happen to see one that I really really love in handpicking, because I do want to keep one this year.