The third Old West Rope Horse Sale sold 21 head to new buyers—led by a Show Me The Buckles mare and a buyer who didn’t throw his first loop until he was 50.
Twenty-one horses sold to new buyers at the third Old West Rope Horse Sale in June for a combined $4,319,000—an average of $205,667 per head. At the top of the board was Relentless Empire, a mare who brought $900,000 from Bryan Beaver.
The $900,000 Mare
Relentless Empire is a Show Me The Buckles mare out of Relentless Glory—the mare Trevor Brazile built his calf-roping on. Beaver bought her from the Relentless Remuda, Brazile and Miles Baker’s program, and Wittwer Performance Horses. For Beaver, that cross was the whole story.
“Do you remember Relentless Glory? That’s the dam, out of a sister to the horse Trevor did all his calf-roping on,” Beaver said. “For a Show Me The Buckles mare out of that mare, I was like, this is the one. I’ve got to own this horse.”
Beaver is not a lifelong roper.
“I didn’t even start roping till I was 50,” Beaver said. “To have people help me learn to do it, as a not-so-young guy, is amazing.”
Those people—Brazile, Baker and the Relentless Remuda crew—have become more than trainers to him.
“They’re like our family,” Beaver said. “It’s just something in life you can’t make up.”
He has bought from the program before—he owns the palomino RR Buckles Clubhouse (Show Me The Buckles all-time high-earning offspring) and has owned two more from the Remuda—and he and his wife, Nancy, came to Heber City this year with a plan.
“I didn’t get the one I wanted bought last year. I came back this year determined,” Beaver said. “Nancy and I were going to leave with the best one here. We did.”
I’m an addict — call me what you want. It’s who I am. I have a passion for horseflesh.
Bryan Beaver
A $4.32 Million Market
Beaver’s mare topped a sale that moved real money — and marketed a good deal more. In all, Old West reported marketing 43 head. Beyond the 21 that sold to outside buyers, consignors retained 22 horses valued at $3,860,000—an average of $175,455—after buying them back through the ring. Counted together, Old West said it marketed $8,179,000 in rope-horse prospects, an overall average of $190,209. The sale’s highest bid of the night, $1 million on Painted Stevie Rey, was one of the retained horses and did not sell.
An owner-retained horse is one whose consignor keeps it after running it through the auction, becoming the final bidder and paying the full 8% Old West commission. Old West frames the practice as a transparency measure—a way to set a horse’s current value through open bidding while keeping one the owner believes in. Retained horses stay eligible for the Old West Million Dollar Bonus and the Sale Graduate side pots, and many are held through partnerships or syndicates. Just under half the catalog—21 of 43 head—found a new owner.
The Road to the Million
The sale anchors a program built on the $1 million bonus, which goes to a sale graduate that wins an Old West futurity. No graduate won outright at the 2026 futurity in Heber City, Utah, so the bonus rolled over unclaimed — but the graduates still split $165,000 in Graduate Sale side pots during the week, led by two $50,000 winners in Reys Version and Reyzin Royals.
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