Another Copperfox cob for the collection

Yes, this week welsh cob number seven has come to join my herd!

D'Abernon Tiger Woods, portrait of a real horse and one of the very first Copperfox model horses - the initial Kickstarter edition can be told apart by their mapped socks, just ten were made, compared to 250 of this later regular run version.

I'm not usually a great fan of jet black models, without the depth of variation and shading a colour can seem a bit unexciting and plain, but I think he's got just enough white to stand out and look striking, he's a very handsome horse and his coat has a velvety smooth sheen to it, rather than looking too shiny and plasticky. 

The reason he was sold for around half the price of the seller's other Copperfox listings was some damage to his cheek, a deep chip in his paint which went through the primer and right down to bare plastic. With a little bit of super fine sandpaper I smoothed out the edges of the chip, and carefully filled in his missing paint with some of my own - this is where being black was a huge advantage, I'd have struggled to get the colour and shading matched on my other Copperfoxes, but pure black is pure black and his repair was a perfect match straight from the pot!

I've named him Harecroft Welsh Legend, in keeping with the rest of my welsh cob conga - he's going to have plenty of new friends to stand with, here. In fact, there's only one friend left for me to find for my herd, the chestnut, Rupert, and then I'll have the complete set of regular run cobs.

Copperfox Cob Number 6

A very handsome arrival to introduce this time, it's another welsh cob for the herd!

He's absolutely lovely, with soft dappling applied well, and not too evenly all over - the dapples fade in and out over various parts of his body, gently blending into a well-shaded base coat, with his face palest and legs darkest, just like so many real horses in the greying process. He's very different to the paler dappled grey, Percival, so if you try to avoid collecting repeats of too-similar colours on the same mould, you'd be ok aiming for both these!

With my other Copperfox cobs so far, something related to their original release name, but this boy's officially called Gibson, which I couldn't really work with as a theme, so I just picked something which seemed suitable! So he's Harecroft Welsh Magic.

I got him on Ebay, quite a bit cheaper than average for the second-hand market, because one of the pointy bits of his mane had been broken, but it'd been neatly mended, you wouldn't notice it unless you knew where to look. 

Annoyingly, he managed to topple over sideways during his photo shoot, and despite landing gently on his side on my nice slightly-plush fake grass, he broke the same bit of his mane again, a fraction of an inch along from the previous mend. I can superglue it to stabilise the crack and stop the loose piece coming off, but it's clear now that's the vulnerable spot which hits the ground first when falling, and judging by the amount of chipped or snapped ears I've seen on second hand or body model sales, the plastic must be more brittle than Breyer or Stone use. I'll certainly be even more cautious with my Copperfoxes from now on, handling them more like resins than plastics.

So my welsh cob conga is one horse longer, and I'm still hoping to get my hands on the complete set - just the chestnut and the black to tick off the wishlist, now!

The Copperfox Conga gets Longer and Longer

First of two very exciting parcels to post about today, and as the title says, my Copperfox Welsh Cob conga line has lengthened a little bit lately!

The two gorgeous new boys actually arrived last week, but some truly hideous weather stopped me taking their pictures til today. And because my garden is so shaded now the sun's slower in the sky, I still had to chase the only tiny patch of un-dappled light across the lawn, and halfway into the flowerbed and bushes, just to get any pictures at all!

Here we have Sovereign, the regular run of 250 from 2016. I've had my eye on a few of these since I set my sights on collecting Copperfox cobs, but each one sold for £100 or more, finally I was able to get one for much less, and I'm so pleased - isn't he handsome!

I've named him Harecroft Welsh Gold - at last I've hit on a naming scheme for these cobs : rather than words in Welsh (which I find way too difficult to figure out the right pronunciation for!), I'm calling each one 'Welsh something', the name taken from whatever he was officially released as. Celtic Warrior becomes Harecroft Welsh Warrior, and Prince Cavalier is Harecroft Welsh Prince.

A really striking colour with his true-white mane and tail to match his socks - the 'fact' that a palomino has to have white hair is one of those lines horse books always seem to make note of, but in real life and also in model form, they're very often flaxen or blonde-haired instead, so it's interesting to see one who really does fit that old much-repeated rule. He's also got beautiful subtle dappling, the picture doesn't really pick it up so well as the eye.

I don't know what it is about these Copperfox cobs, but they do seem to like bringing friends along for the journey - he came with this travelling companion, from the same seller...

This one's Percival, also one of 250 from 2016, and another really beautiful colour I was thrilled to add to my collection. Again, his dappling barely shows up in the photographs, it's so faint and soft, but this is a very good thing when you think back to the rather polka-dot spots the first batch came out with way back at the launch; the delicate dappling of the later runs shows how the factory did get things very right in the end!

I've given him the name Harecroft Welsh Knight (Sir Percival was one of King Arthur's loyal knights). 

His pictures aren't the best for lighting and bad shadows, but by this point I was standing with one foot on the garden and the other on the drain outside the back of the house just to be able to reach a shot from where my chair-of-scenery set-up had ended up!

This leaves me with three to find for my Welsh Cob conga - Tiger Woods in black, Rupert in chestnut, and Gibson in dark dappled grey. I'm not after the original Kickstarter versions or rarities, I don't do glossies, and I'm not going to get my hopes up too high that any future releases will be on the affordable side of pretty horses just to look at and not buy, but finding the three colours to complete my regular run set is a target I can definitely aim for.

Copperfoxes!

Ok, I admit, it, I'm VERY late to the Copperfox party! 

The timing of their launch was just at a really bad point in my collecting history - I was made redundant from my job of 15 years when the company went bankrupt, and because we all knew it was coming, I'd stopped spending much on models at all - I think I went a whole year on only Stablemates!
Even after I started working again, Copperfox models at a minimum of £60 a go were just that bit too much to justify, and because I couldn't buy any, and wasn't on Facebook where all the marketing was done and the tour promoted, I kind of slipped out of the loop and didn't follow what was going on. So I hadn't even seen the later releases, and didn't know they'd been doing shows!

But I had always really liked the Welsh Cob mould. He was the one I'd hoped to get when they were first announced, the one I was really looking forward to when we discussed them all on forums, and the one I planned to buy in at least one colour - til the pricing sadly scared me off them.
In fact I even remember seeing him at sculpture stage back at the UH Hullabaloo and being impressed - before we knew what the mould was going to be for!

So I suppose it shouldn't be any great surprise that this has happened....

Yes, I've gained not one, not two, but a whole three-part conga of Welsh Cobs in a single week! Let's meet them :

First is Prince Cavalier, one of 150, a lovely deeply shaded and faintly dappled buckskin. I remember some seriously dubious dappling on the earlier releases and how relieved everyone was when the later batch of painters actually got it right! These are subtle enough to blend in with his body colour, and look dappley not spotty.

One of those rare, lucky moulds which look equally good from either side, as he's running on a dead straight line it's just a matter of picking which leg positioning you like best as his display side!

Showing off his lovely markings, I really like the adding of uneven-shaped and odd-numbered socks when it's a made-up horse, it makes them look like real individuals even though they're not portraits.

He came from ebay, second hand but with his original box, so it was pretty exciting getting to open him up - just imagine I'm doing this several years ago when the rest of the collectors got to experience that with the brand new models, instead of really late cos I missed my chance!

Second arrival (though confusingly bought first, because they got delayed in the post!) was a box of two, who came from the same seller - having been the winning bidder on one for just £34, I just couldn't resist trying for his companion as well so they could come here together.

Celtic Warrior - the second release of 250 models, not the Kickstarter one, which had mapped socks, different feet, and less dark shading. Having seen pictures of the two versions to compare, I actually do like them both, but the second ones have a lot nicer faces, I think.

Another horse with really nicely designed markings! Oddly the light seems better on this side of him - when facing the other way he seems to catch a lot of shadow in his neck and head, hiding a lot of the detail, I even tried taking him at at three different times of day and moving the set-up around the garden to get a better shot of his near side, but no luck!

I've got very little space in my shelves to fit more horses, let alone find a place for a whole new brand to display, but there's room on top of one bookcase (which, of course, now contains more models, not books!) so they can canter in a row along there!

All three came with their original big bright British-flag boxes - I'll keep them as they're so nice, but cos of the foam middles I can't flat-pack them out of the way, so I haven't actually figured out where to store them yet!

The mould perfectly captures that Welshie look - part big tough horse, part cheeky pony. Look at that cute face!

And finally, his travelling companion, Bertie, a special run of 250 which you could only buy at the Copperfox Tour live shows.

Yet another which I really like the markings on; sure they're not the most detailed or elaborate, but they're right, and that's more important - you see so many unlikely, weird or just plain impossible patterns applied in the model horse world that it really does make me happy when someone properly understands a normal basic tobiano pattern on a cob. 

One of Copperfox's main aims was to make British-looking models, the breeds and colours we actually see here, to make up for the huge American bias in the hobby in general - so many companies and sculptors are based in the States and they make what they know, which is quite fair and proper, but their ideas of what we have over in the UK can be a bit warped. It's so nice to see a model cob that looks like our cobs!

This is the only one of the trio to have gained a name so far, extending his release name of 'Bertie' he'll be Harecroft Bertie Wooster. I'd like something more Welsh-themed for the two purebred colours, but being a partbred cob this one can have an English name, and there's not much more English than a classic P. G. Wodehouse character!

He's missing the peg for under his front hoof, but I made him a replacement from a small piece of stick and he stands just as well with this, and I don't think the plastic ones are any more 'invisible' for being clear, anyway - you can still see them!

So here they are, my little collection of Copperfox Welsh Cobs. 

And no, I don't think I'm finished there - I've looked up what other colours were released on The Copperfox Guide and I'm thinking I'd like to continue this conga of Welshies. I don't do glossy and I'm not into decorators, so I wouldn't need to buy too many to set my target at a full set of regular runs - the light and darker dappled greys, the palomino, the black, and the chestnut. That's just five more to find, as and when they come up on ebay at affordable prices. Considering I found three almost in one go, I'm sure I can get there in the end!