This Week In Your Plastic Crack, Action Figures and Toy Collection 26 26

[comicwiz]

55 minutes ago, Yorick said:

@comicwiz I will probably be in the minority here, but I am fine with a graded repro card (it should be the "purple label" of toy collecting).  The grade label states that it is a reproduction card, correct?  The asking price for the item is what would pull in an unsuspecting collector (and seeing that price for those particular figures, one might just hit the buy-it-now without reading or looking closely).  When you are paying that much for any collectible, one should look closely at all photos and read full descriptions.

I do recall seeing a Super Powers Made-in-Mexico Batman that was graded by that same company as a pre-production figure, so I personally would be wary of that company.

This is one of the counter points to this, however here are a couple of things to consider. The proliferation of recards has been kept at bay by the mere fact that they are not allowed to be limelighted or sold in any of the SW online marketplaces or Facebook groups. This disincentive usually works by people posting (sometimes without knowing) what they saw, are looking to buy, and they are immediately cautioned to steer clear. Furthermore, the collecting cutlure is actively suggesting they be destroyed to avoid the down the line effect of people buying these thinking they are authentic.

That's the house cleaning part. When a company encases them and slaps a label on them, they are, intentional or not, giving them a legitimacy they don't deserve.

Moreover, the seller tried to take advantage of the fact that they didn't properly mark the vinyl cape Jawa with a notation or remark that said the cape was fake. It just said the bubble and cardback were reproduction. In one exchange with someone who had established contact, the seller insisted it was real because there was no mention of it, and that it was graded so it had to be real.

How someone seemingly submits them to CAS at a show, saying he knew they were reproduction, then does a complete 360 and tries to sell them as real, opens up the liability issues of encasing/archiving/grading something that is fake to potential buyers, and you cannot overlook how this enables frauds to pass off fakes as real.

In my opinion, a TPG needs to have a refusal policy for fakes/counterfeits. PSA won't grade fakes. AFA won't grade fakes or any restored toys. Without these policies, you open the floodgates for people to do things they shouldn't be doing, and that includes scamming people into believing the TPG has given it a thumbs-up.

Edited August 24, 2018 by comicwiz

[Yorick]

10 minutes ago, Martin Sinescu said:

The situation involved here would be more analogous to CGC grading (or "archiving", what a joke) a color copy of a comic that you or I made at home, so I don't think the purple label comparison would apply.@comicwiz

I was under the impression that the figure itself was authentic.  However, Comicwiz appears to have clarified that there is also "extensive restoration" (adding a non-production cape) in the case of the Jawa figure.  It appears to me that the seller of these items is committing fraud.  This is more akin to someone buying a single page from Action Comics #1 and then making color copies of the rest of the book before putting it all together.  CGC would grade that.

10 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

Moreover, the seller tried to take advantage of the fact that they didn't properly mark the vinyl cape Jawa with a notation or remark that said the cape was fake. It just said the bubble and cardback were reproduction.

There is a market for bootleg/custom figures which will not be going away any time soon.  If a grading company does decide to encase these items, I would expect nothing less than full disclosure of what is "authentic" (if anything at all).

[comicwiz]

1 minute ago, Yorick said:

There is a market for bootleg/custom figures which will not be going away any time soon.  If a grading company does decide to encase these items, I would expect nothing less than full disclosure of what is "authentic" (if anything at all).

I think it's important to make that distinction clear here. These are niether bootlegs or customs, they are fakes. Any idea of allowing such fakes to be graded will only crank-up their production. The best example analogous to why a counterfeit should never be legitimized is if you take a low denomination currency (let's say an old $1 bill) bleach it, and then print a $20 image on it, this isn't something that should either be allowed, much less accepted. If a retailer accepts them, they not only continue to circulate and defraud, but it emboldens the fakers to crank-up production.

If you become that shop that doesn't discriminate between a fake and real note, you will inevitably take a hit. In the case of a TPG, their reputation is their currency.

[Yorick]

2 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

I think it's important to make that distinction clear here. These are niether bootlegs or customs, they are fakes. Any idea of allowing such fakes to be graded will only crank-up their production. The best example analogous to why a counterfeit should never be legitimized is if you take a low denomination currency (let's say an old $1 bill) bleach it, and then print a $20 image on it, this isn't something that should either be allowed, much less accepted. If a retailer accepts them, they not only continue to circulate and defraud, but it emboldens the fakers to crank-up production.

If you become that shop that doesn't discriminate between a fake and real note, you will inevitably take a hit. In the case of a TPG, their reputation is their currency.

I guess I am not understanding this correctly.  The figures are not production?  I mean, I can go buy an authentic loose Jawa all day long for $5 or less (and then dress it up to look like the rare vinyl cape variant).  Why would anyone spend the time recasting a Jawa?!!

What is "fake"?  What is a "bootleg"?  What is a "custom"?  Perhaps toy collectors we need better terminology for the hobby?  Maybe it's out there and I need to educate myself?

[comicwiz]

2 hours ago, Yorick said:

I guess I am not understanding this correctly.  The figures are not production?  I mean, I can go buy an authentic loose Jawa all day long for $5 or less (and then dress it up to look like the rare vinyl cape variant).  Why would anyone spend the time recasting a Jawa?!!

What is "fake"?  What is a "bootleg"?  What is a "custom"?  Perhaps toy collectors we need better terminology for the hobby?  Maybe it's out there and I need to educate myself?

The value in that variant of Jawa is completely stored in the vinyl cape. The value on a SW MOC is almost entirely stored in that figure being in factory sealed state packaging.

A fake attempts to monetize on the cape, by using a fake cape, and putting it inside a recard kit. Put another way, any recard kit that uses even an original base figure is assumed to be tainted by the very nature that the figure could have been tampered with, be mismatched to that letter version of the cardback, right through to having a reproduction accessory or weapon. It not only taints the figure, but seeing a recard in a collection would invariably taint the entire collection. That's how big a deal having a fake in your hands, much less your collection, is for the SW collecting culture. Deciding you are going to go against the grain now is going to be met with a great deal of resistance and pushback.

A bootleg, at least in terms of the historical context of why bootlegs were made in foreign countries, almost always relates to the condition that the country did not have a toy manufactor that was contracted as a licensed maker for Kenner. An example of a licensed or contracted maker would be Irwin Toys, who produced and distributed toys for Kenner in Canada. This wasn't possible in countries such as Turkey, so the bootleg line that emerged known as UZAY is highly desired due to it's relative scarcity (when compared to the hundreds of millions made for the US market), but mostly for their kitchiness. What's important to understand here is these in no way they could be confused as something Kenner made, because they depart so greatly in terms of their appearance from the original Kenner toy line figures.

The same could be said about customs - again, they do something in the way of the packaging graphics, or the toy itself to make them easily distinguishable from a real or original piece. I do accept some customs cross the line, but in those cases, I would suggest that the moment the lines become blurred, people should not make the mistake of describing them as customs, but reproductions or fakes. For the latter, see Mark Poons Rocket Firing Fett's, white Stormtrooper and Vlix.

Edited August 25, 2018 by comicwiz

[Martin Sinescu]

2 hours ago, Yorick said:

I guess I am not understanding this correctly.  The figures are not production?  I mean, I can go buy an authentic loose Jawa all day long for $5 or less (and then dress it up to look like the rare vinyl cape variant).  Why would anyone spend the time recasting a Jawa?!!

What is "fake"?  What is a "bootleg"?  What is a "custom"?  Perhaps toy collectors we need better terminology for the hobby?  Maybe it's out there and I need to educate myself?

Not to stray too much from your overall point, but bootlegging vintage figures has already happened with a run of "vintage" stormtrooper figures that started popping up a few years ago (and they're pretty hard to detect if you don't know the specific tells). I'm sure you already know that repro weapons are ubiquitous in the loose figure market, with more and more secretively making their way into collections worldwide every month it seems.  There's absolutely money in it, especially if these things can be cranked out for a few cents in China and sold for $5-10 here. There's a diehard community on Imperial Gunnery that are dedicated to finding and documenting fakes as they hit the market to make as many collectors aware as possible. Transformers are just as bad with knock-off figures old and even new as well as vintage packaging. Check out HighEndTFs and see just how prevalent this stuff is. 

For a grading company to validate, even encourage, these items (which are many times created or distributed to capitalize on less savvy collectors) by "archiving" and labeling it, in my opinion, is irresponsible and not in the best interests of the specific community which they serve (which is one of their selling points, they're in it for the collector). It's not out of character for them, though, as this company also grades, yes actually grades, the infamous Toy Toni carded figures which are one of the biggest scandals to hit the SW community that I can ever remember. Again, legitimizing something created to defraud. Amazing. If nothing else, when they made the decision behind the scenes to start doing this, they should have been upfront with the community in declaring that their "we archive anything" can and will include fake items. Instead they just nonchalantly squeak them out into the hands of collectors and let collectors find out after the fact. Who even knows how long they've been doing this? Now I don't even know if that steak knife they archived is authentic or not!  Again, it's expected that a grading/authentication service should be the watchdog against this kind of stuff, not encouraging it. That doesn't fall inline with CGC's policies, I know, but I suspect much of that is down to the age of the hobby, coming from a time period where this sort of stuff may have seemed harmless. I believe with PSA they at least used to reject trimmed cards, so I was amazed to find out that CGC legitimized trimmed and touched-up books. It boils down to the target audience, but for SW collectors, this company was absolutely out of touch with the ethical standards of the majority and good on the community for standing up to them.

[Yorick]

@comicwiz & @Martin Sinescu

I appreciate being educated ("schooled")!  I am completely in line with both of your views that trying to pass a reproduction as authentic is a serious problem (fraud & illegal).  Further, if a toy grading company cannot detect these differences they really should not be in the business of grading them.

I'm on a different wave-length however when it comes to whether or not the practice of recasting figures/accessories is "wrong".  I guess it's a gray area I need to think about a little more, but the fan in me screams for toys that were never made, never will be made, or having that accessory that I am missing for cheap (when I cannot afford the MOC version).  I would hope that individuals doing repos would cast the finished piece in a slightly different color (or even better, completely different) or mark it a way to differentiate it from a legitimate version.  I thought Poon's rocket firing Fett had such marking.

It seems to all boil down to greed (and that it may be difficult/costly for the copyright holder to pursue legal action).

[archiecomicscollector]

On 7/3/2018 at 6:00 PM, archiecomicscollector said:

B. My dad was always into building and painting Aurora models, and I immediately wanted Archie's Car with Archie and Veronica, c. 1969-1971. It's a very rare model, so I' still hunting for it! 

I FINALLY found it!   

[followtheleader]

Cool!

Is it open? If so, let's see some pics. 

Patrick

[Yorick]

23 minutes ago, archiecomicscollector said:

I FINALLY found it!   

 

 

1 minute ago, followtheleader said:

Cool!

Is it open? If so, let's see some pics.  

Patrick

I am also interested in what's inside.  I wonder if the characters have alternate lower halves (so that they could either be standing outside the vehicle or seated inside)?

[followtheleader]

Already posted the Ring. 

Here are my recent boxed set additions. 

2 have never been opened.  They are really nice.   

2 are open and complete.  

3rd has all non-flesh MUSCLES.  I need to see if they are legit to the set.  I know the colored MUSCLES came in these sets, but I'm not sure if there were one similar color or mixed. 

Patrick 

[archiecomicscollector]

 

27 minutes ago, followtheleader said:

Cool!

Is it open? If so, let's see some pics. 

Patrick

 

24 minutes ago, Yorick said:

 

I am also interested in what's inside.  I wonder if the characters have alternate lower halves (so that they could either be standing outside the vehicle or seated inside)?

 

It has been opened, but never built, as many of the pieces are still attached to their original plastic brackets. The figures, according to the instructions, are always sitting in the jalopy. 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2018 by archiecomicscollector

[Yorick]

3 minutes ago, archiecomicscollector said:

 

 

It has been opened, but never built, as many of the pieces are still attached to their original plastic brackets. The figures, according to the instructions, are always outside-affiliatelinksnotallowed 

 

I think I see a seated figure there at the left...

[followtheleader]

Is this new to the boards = "affiliatelinksnotallowed "?  

Not seen that before. 

Patrick

[archiecomicscollector]

1 minute ago, Yorick said:

I think I see a seated figure there at the left...

Yes, I had to edit my last post to "sitting," as "are always seated" was automatically replaced with "outside-affillatelinksnotallowed." Weird.  

[archiecomicscollector]

Just now, followtheleader said:

Is this new to the boards = "affiliatelinksnotallowed "?  

Not seen that before. 

Patrick

Not sure! It kept appearing in my post, despite editing it 5x times. 

[followtheleader]

1 minute ago, archiecomicscollector said:

Not sure! It kept appearing in my post, despite editing it 5x times. 

Here's a pic of a built one with a broken down tire.  

They look pretty hard to find. 

Patrick

[archiecomicscollector]

 

37 minutes ago, followtheleader said:

Here's a pic of a built one with a broken down tire.  

They look pretty hard to find. 

Patrick

Definitely! I've been looking for one in the box for 20 years! 

Edited August 26, 2018 by archiecomicscollector

[Myparentsbasement]

 

[bane]

For all you He-Man fans out there, there is a great documentary on Netflix called “The Power of Grayskull”, charting the history of the toy line, cartoons and movie.