Shaun's diorama entry

Last year, we said goodbye to one of the hobby's most prolific and best loved bloggers, Andrea Gurdon, the self-proclaimed Breyer History Diva.

This year, her close friend, Shaun Basch, honored her memory by creating a Breyer History Diva themed entry for the BreyerFest Diorama Contest. 

Shaun writes: So here it is…my tribute to Andrea. 

This year, entrants were challenged to build a diorama depicting their favorite Breyer moment from the last seventy five year. Picking just one moment in my lifetime of being a lover of all things Breyer was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. The year was 2009, and I was living in Kentucky and hoping to attend BreyerFest for the first time ever. I had made a post on a Breyer forum page with hope that I wasn’t too last minute to find someone willing to let me sleep on their hotel room floor for just one night. To my surprise, someone answered nearly immediately - oddly enough another collector from Michigan! 

That person was the one and only Andrea Gurdon, who I would later come to find was the self-proclaimed and known in the hobby as the “Breyer History Diva.” When I met Andrea, the course of my Breyer and Breyerfest life journey was utterly altered for the better. She was a walking plastic pony encyclopedia! I learned everything there is to know about Breyer and Reeves as a company. 

I had a lot of firsts courtesy of Andrea; my first Ninja Pit of Death (NPOD), my first cool Breyer store find - she told me what to snag and why, my first Clarion experiences, and the list goes on. She helped make Breyer even more exceptionally special and even got herself ordained for my 2015 Breyerfest wedding.

A chance meeting led to fifteen years of true friendship. 

This will be my second Breyerfest without one of my greatest friends because I - and the rest of the hobby - lost Andrea to cancer in early 2024. I can only hope I will help carry on her legacy. She was terrified of being forgotten, but I promised that wouldn’t happen. I know she would have gotten a happy laugh out of knowing I completed this diorama to honor her. I can hear that laugh. So, here’s to 75 years of Breyer and the immortality of Andrea Gurdon - forever first in line (her bench says so) and forever the one and only Breyer History Diva!

Congratulations, Shaun. Not only is this a fabulous contest entry, it's also an amazing tribute to a well loved and very much missed friend. Good luck in Kentucky!