There are half a dozen horses in Danny O'Brien's yard from Nicconi, which the trainer jokes "couldn't win a race anywhere".
It is the price you sometimes pay for trying to find a bargain before anyone actually has an idea if it will turn out to be one.
This season? O'Brien appears to have stumbled on a couple of crops from first-season sires taking all before them, led by Beneteau as well as the Flemington trainer's former star galloper, Star Witness.
"We've had some luck with [first season sires]," O'Brien said. "Star Witness himself was from the first crop of Starcraft and we've had some other group 1 horses like Absolut Glam who was a first-season Snowland [progeny].
"You can get it right, but a lot of times you can get it wrong. I've got half a dozen Nicconis at the moment that couldn't win a race anywhere. [If you wait to see how their progeny performs] you have a little bit more security knowing they can produce a winner."
There are no ironclad guarantees yet, but O'Brien's two-year-old stock this season have given their sires a head start in life. Blue Diamond-bound Prompt Return has put on the map Beneteau, which stood at stud for only two seasons before his untimely death.
And he is joined in the top five freshman sires so far in 2014-15 by Star Witness, which leaves O'Brien's Mr Humphries chasing a Magic Millions berth on the Gold Coast in the Canterbury opener on Saturday.
Mr Humphries bungled the start and sped home from well back to be runner-up on debut at Morphettville three weeks ago, inducing O'Brien to push on to Sydney in a bid to sew up a spot in Queensland's richest race in a fortnight.
"I think he was about $110,000 by Star Witness, who I trained, so I obviously looked at a lot of the Star Witnesses up there and I thought he was one of the nicest colts by him anywhere in Australia last year. Hence we bought him," O'Brien said. "He's been a promising horse from day one.
"Nothing went right for him in Adelaide. He was out the back, running into trouble and still found the line really well.
"He's coming up to hopefully push his way into the Gold Coast and he'll probably need to win to go onto the Coast. He's coming in great order and we're giving him his chance to push his way into the race on the Gold Coast."
Perhaps he will have no better helping hand than that of Blake Shinn, who can put a space on James McDonald at the top of the Sydney premiership race as the New Zealand whiz-kid takes a short break from Australia over the festive season.
O'Brien handed the then young Victorian apprentice his first group 1 win almost a decade ago on Demerger in the Adelaide Cup. Now Shinn can repay some of that faith by helping Mr Humphries into the Gold Coast scamper.
"Always happy to use Blake," O'Brien said. "If the horse won on Saturday we'd be hoping he would stick with him. That would be great.
"We've got a nice group. Prompt Return has just begun work again to get ready for the Blue Diamond. We've had a couple of others run well that we're looking to butter up into better races in the autumn. Hopefully we'll have some impact. It's a pretty deep year for two-year-olds and there seems to be a different one popping up every week."
Mr Humphries was met with early support for the first at Canterbury, backed from $21 into $16 with Ladbrokes on Friday evening. Gerald Ryan's Perignon was the $4.40 favourite.
