Other Makes: Copperfox

Copperfox entered the scene in 2014 with a kickstarter campaign, aiming to bring more British breed sculpts into the world of OF plastic models. They were successful for a few years, but then the models started having paint issues. The base plastic was a PC/ABS combo, which was extremely durable, able to hold the level of detail they wanted, and cheaper than Cellulose Acetate, the plastic used to make most Breyers and Stones. The paint didn’t adhere well to this type of plastic, though, and eventually started crazing (cracking) and falling off in chunks. The company also had difficulty finding a factory that would produce the models at the quality demanded by collectors while also keeping the models affordable. That led to the shuttering of the original Copperfox in August 2018.

I think the sculpts are pretty fantastic, personally, and I’m sad that the original iteration of the company folded. I had high hopes for the big guys to be resurrected when new owners purchased the company and moved it to the U.S. in 2019, but it’s been six years, and I think that would have happened by now if it was going to happen at all. There is a market for the mini-scale clearware and resin pieces they've produced since then, but as a mostly-Traditional-scale, mostly-OF-plastic, and mostly-realistic-color collector, I am definitely not their target audience.

 

This guy was my first OF Copperfox - and what a shock, it’s a glossy bay. He’s CF623G Cadbury, a regular run of 150 pieces in 2017 on Copperfox’s Irish Sport Horse mold. I got him from my friend Bonnie, who had been a Breyer dealer from 1991-2015 and started carrying Copperfox models shortly after Breyer unfairly revoked her dealership over a 99-cent pricing error on her website. I was enraged with Breyer and obviously still wanted to support my friend and her business, so I boycotted Breyer for over a year and did all my direct purchasing from their competitors instead. Cadbury was part of that.

I do show him, and his name has an interesting story. If a model was issued with a name, I often first try to assign something related that name. My immediate thought for this guy was Cadbury creme eggs, which made me think of this commercial from the mid-90s where other animals were auditioning for the role of the Easter Bunny. My sister and I found the commercial hilarious, and we’d often imitate the lion and the llama, both in person and in texts (and still do, to this day). We translated the lion’s loud yelling phonetically into BRAWK!  So that’s Cadbury’s show name.

 

 

This fat, adorable, roly-poly pony is CF608 Trifle, a regular run of 250 pieces on the Exmoor Pony mold. I bought mine from Bonnie out of her room sales at BreyerFest 2018. 

 

My Trifle was sold for a cheaper price as a Second, a shelf-quality model with minor flaws in the paintwork that Copperfox prohibited from being sold at full price, and is marked on her belly as such. I honestly don’t see anything wrong with her that isn’t typical of a mass-produced model - I have Breyers that have looked much worse straight out of the box - so I haven’t hesitated to show her. Her show name is Flibbertigibbet.

 

 

My love for shiny bay things is well-established by now, so when this model popped up for sale in February 2022, I didn’t hesitate to message the seller. This is CF606G Cadno, a run of only 9 glossy models (the regular run was matte) produced in 2016 on their Connemara mold as the Reserve Champion Live Show Prize at Copperfox Events throughout that year. According to his hand-written COA, this model was won at the Copperfox Scotland Tour event on May 2, 2016. I purchased him from his original owner - and for additional nifty reading and history behind this particular model, here is her blog post about winning him!

 

 

Unfortunately, in the time since I bought him, Cadno has fallen victim to the paint deterioration problems common to Traditional PC/ABS Copperfox models. He’s already missing a couple chunks. I started showing him in Other Plastic Collectibility right after I got him, under the show name Loch Lomond, but I’m afraid to touch him at this point, so he’s been retired and just sits on my shelf looking pretty (at an angle where I can’t see the missing paint!)

 

 

This little necklace charm is based on Copperfox’s immensely popular Welsh Cob mold. I initially couldn’t remember how I came by him, except I know he was a gift from a friend, so I reached out to my friend Beth, who still actively collects Copperfoxes, and asked if she remembered what it was from. 

Happily, she did, because it’s a great story.

In 2021, in-person BreyerFest was cancelled for the second year in a row due to Covid. By that time, my friends and I had all been vaccinated, so we decided to have a small gathering at my house during BreyerFest since we couldn’t be together in Kentucky. 

We did our usual auction game, where we try to guess how much each auction model will sell for, and I printed out sheets for the 2001 and 2011 auction models as well for an extra level of competition. We also had a “just for fun” live show with a class list I made (with a few suggestions from my friends!) The classes were largely color-based, with an added element of BBQ because that’s what we had been planning to eat. (I’m pretty sure we ended up with pizza instead.) The class names were:

1. Spotted bastards
2. Pinto jagoffs
3. Mel used to not collect decorators but she does now and this is where they go
4. Glossy bay things because Mel loves them
5. This color is not seen in nature
6. Colors Breyer thought were “realistic” in the 1990s
7. Rainbow things
8. Fluorescent things
9. Things with stripes or polka dots
10. Your favorite horse color
11. Your least favorite horse color
12. Things you colored yourself
13. Horses the color of BBQ sauce
14. Burnt ends (tiny dark things)
15. Animals that make tasty BBQ

We all judged each class using pieces of candy. The two models with the most candy in each class went on to the overall champ/reserve class at the end. Based on the photos, I’m 99% sure I showed exclusively out of my Sham conga, since there is a Sham in almost every photo. The classes were also up for interpretation, so they weren't all horses! The rainbow class had a rosette, there was a stuffed animal in the stripes/polka dots class, and a scary-looking monkfish swam through the BBQ animals class - and yes, monkfish BBQ is a thing!

At the end of the show, we awarded overall champ and reserve as follows:

Champ - Heather’s glossy silver bay Esprit, winner of class 10
Reserve - my Smurfy Sham, winner of class 3

[Guess that’s what happens when you stick a bunch of collectibility nerds in a room together.]

Our prizes were the Copperfox charms, graciously donated by Beth, so that’s how I got him.

And here I thought this was going to be a short post! This is why I'm writing the blog, though - to relive these fun moments and share why I love my collection so much.