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Ever received any? How'd you know? Have any good resources online people can use to check what they do get?

Guess what I got for "Valentine's day".

with an iron fist wrote:Ever received any? How'd you know? Have any good resources online people can use to check what they do get?

Guess what I got for "Valentine's day".

You got counterfeit minis for v-day? o_o?


stuff i look for if its counterfeit:

1) constant large sales of kits out of box ( but not as bits ) with resin first, metal 2nd, plastic 3rd
2) if pic allows close up, i check for mold lines . recast doesnt seem to always follow the original.
3) continuing from #2 , the lvl of detail could be off.
4) lack of ID number on casts.
5) if seller originates in china.
6) I know professional painters that sells counterfeited recasts. But due to the quality painting
its really hard to tell , nor are people crazy enough to strip the figure to check.

Those are all the facts , whether people believe it or not, matters not to me. For i have nothing to gain
but atleast i have done my part to let warn / raise the awareness.

Very shiny lead models with low detail levels. Good way to tell.

BYE

Also, note the packaging, if it has any.

Very shiny lead is a great indicator, as is everything being sold primed, but never painted.


In terms of quality, if it looks good, feels good, and plays good, I'm less concerned about it's authenticity. If I can't tell it's duped, well then even if it were, why would I care? I"m not suggesting anybody buy or sell duped minis, it's just that it's rare to received duped minis so obviously counterfeit they can't be used.

Everything stated above is still a good sign, but there are a few other factors:
1) Minis in large quantities of old, OOP minis that were never popular. Classic examples are lots of 10+ OOP Fiends of slaanesh. Sure, some hard core fans had a few big units, but most of the time any lot that big is probably duped.

2) painted/primed "limited edition" models without the packaging. Sgt. Centurius is the most egregious example, but there are probably more duped versions of the popular figs than legit ones.

3) Almost any of the old Armorcast GW stuff, unfortunately. The relatively low detail level means pretty much anybody with a Warhound can use it as a master and dupe more.

4) Anybody that sells a lot of the same models, always out of packaging is a big give away. Sure, somebody might have 10 wraithguard to sell, but selling 10 every week?

Dupers make their killing on high margin items. The ltd edition are higher detail, but make a fortune. Stuff with relatively low detail but that are expensive at retail and are hot are more likely to be duped: Wraithguard, Bloodcrushers, Legion of the damned.

If they're the same quality as the originals I personally could care less. I mean someone doesn't want to spend a $1000 on a new WH army, or actually use Wraithguard while still eating lunch for a few months, why that son of a bitch...

As for how to spot them, generally large lots of primed OP metal models are the most suspect to me. The shiny lead thing too, or really any slightly off color. Though as I said before, price gouging makes people angry and I shed no tears for GW. When someone else can make the same thing for cheaper and you suffer, well that's called real capitalism. Don't like it, well support a social system that doesn't reward greed, but I don't think you're going to do that anytime soon.

*Yes this post was mostly an angry rant, no need to point that out so feel free to ignore it, but I stand by what I said.*

If it meant finally being able to get them in plastic, I'd buy duped GKs/Sisters.

...just saying...

My 100 Steel Legion troops were all counterfake. He only sold the 1 peice models, so I got all the basic troops and special weapons, but no Sgt.'s officers or Heavey weapons. Even having to buy all these seperate, I saved about 50% on the GW price. That was about 6 years ago, from a guy on FleaBay, who no longer trades.

If GW lowered their prices, people would buy more of their stuff.

It's rubbish to say that counterfeiters are operating the capitalist system by producing figures cheaper than GW.

They can only do it because they don't have to design and sculpt the figures.

I would beg to differ with Killkrazy. I think they can only do it because GW figs are so widely used. I doubt the sculpters and designers are paid so much that it drives the price of the mini up that much. I would think that "amortizing" the hugely expensive reproduction equipment and profit margin end up making up much more of the cost of each individual mini than cost of design or sculpt. However, that's really not much more than opinion. I don't have access to the data to do much more than that.

Guess what I got for "Valentine's day".

What type of figure was it a fake of?

When it comes to Counterfeiters....why buy from them?

What right do they have to make money from someone elses labours?

GW goes to the trouble of making up all the designs and moulds, hence the higher price. Someone just makes a cheap copy for quick proffit?
i think ill buy real stuff thanks.

with an iron fist wrote:Ever received any? How'd you know?

Disclaimer: Please note that I'm not a native speaker, so the technical terms might be a bit off.

I figure the same techniques used for finding out other counterfeit products apply: I think the first step to finding out about counterfeit miniatures is trying to do it yourself. If you don't come from a country where it is legal to reproduce stuff for personal use, just do a mental exercise, of course. ;-)

What materials can you use to reproduce miniatures? Some metals, ceramics and resin. Modern plastics for injection-moulding are out of question - even GW does not do that very often, because it only makes sense for really big production runs. There are counterfeits in plastic in other niche hobbies: Airsoft players might know the fight between Chinese and Japanese companies that produce nearly the same models (KJW, KWA...). This mostly stems from them using the same moulds - Japanese companies having their stuff produced in China, then adding their own QA (hopefully...). The Chinese companies then use the moulds themselves. Since GW does not produce in China, this is pretty improbable to happen to GW miniatures.

So metals, ceramics and resin-like plastics remain. For metals, you would normally use tin-based alloys, because brass and silver, while pretty good stuff for the job, are either to expensive or require temperatures that are not reached within small workshops. Also, these temperatures break most moulds.

As for tin-based alloys, the composition of the alloy is usually a good hint. If you have old Rackham miniatures and "white metal" GW miniatures, you'll see the difference. Confrontation had a much higher detail level, because they used a softer alloy. A reproduction will usually use a different allow, sometimes even pure tin (amateurs!). That leads to a loss of details.

Also, the choice of material limits what you can re-cast. If you find the modern-style terminators (the bigger ones) made from tin, they is a forgery, I guess, because they were only made in plastic.

For ceramics and resin, I have no idea. Colour and weight usually give those away.

How can you build moulds? Modern moulds used by GW have a pretty slick design. If you follow the mould lines, few of them are made with two rectangular blocks as mould halves. Mimicking this is possible using rubber moulds, but it is hard to do. A hint therefore would be the placement of mould lines. Additional mould lines might be results of a re-cast, too.

These moulds also restrict the available materials a lot. You cannot cast brass in those, unless you use really expensive moulding material. As for the price: Re-casting stuff to sell it only makes sense if you can reuse the form. Rubber moulds will last a hobbyist for quite a while, but producing enough to sell is not easily done with the finer moulds. Again, this would lead to a loss of detail. Btw.: Old Rackham miniatures also showed the wear and tear of moulds reused too often: I spent several days trying to find out what a specific part on the coat of a Meliador model was supposed to be until I understood that this was just the result of a broken mould that lost a part.

How do you use moulds? Creating moulds is a topic you learn for quite some time as an apprentice , so it is not that easy. There are a lot of mistakes to make and to recognize, but I dunno much about that. One typical problem is making the canal for the metal too short. You need some weight pressing the metal in the lowest parts of the form, so it has to be big. And you need it to be very long, so the metal can cool down properly. Making it not big enough leads to improper casting on the lower part of the miniature. Making it too short means a lot of heat on the upper part. Both result in a loss of details in those places.

Since fitting forms sometimes is a problem (putting pressure on the rubber mould to make it fit snugly), mould lines then to extend a lot, creating small areas of very thin material. This can be seen on FW resin casts, too, but on tin (commercially made in very sturdy and expensive moulds), this is rare.

Are the forgeries you cannot recognize? Of course. And if you buy stuff that's not in its original box any more, you'll never know ;-) There are people who learned this kind of stuff: Dentists, goldsmiths and civil engineers mostly. But usually they don't sell this, because there is not much money to be made if you do it properly. Also, these people are usually taught copyright laws, too, so they know doing this might ruin you easily.

A personal note: Besides the legal aspect, the loss of details and the needed clean-up to me is a reason not to buy any counterfeit miniatures if I recognize them. It's not worth the additional work. That said, sometimes I was tempted to create a special weapons sprue, pay for the injection mould tool to be built, create 10.000 of those sprues, ship them to GW and shout at them "Sell them now. Or I'll do it!". I'd probably add a lot of insulting terms the word filter here would eat anyway, too.
But that is just wishful thinking. *sigh*

P.S.: If someone knows a bit more on this issue, we could collect the info here and then I'd venture to make a wiki article out of this.

I know that when I worked for GW, one time this kid, about 15-16 from out of town came in to our store with these awesomely painted tyranids. Man, we were impressed. "dude, did you paint these, because they are awesome!" "Yeah I did, my dad got me all these models for me to paint, etc" "Can i pick one up?" "Sure"

WTF... all the metal models weighed less than plastic. (Keep in mind this was when carnifexes were metal and so on) I told the kid to packup his things, and had a chat with him outside the store, and told him while his painting was excellent, it was actually what saved me from snapping his models in half, since they were fakes/recasts.

Like mentioned above, the painting was really good, so whether he was lying when he said he painted them because his dad or whomever bought them off ebay, I'll never know, but they weren't SO good that it wasnt unreasonable that he painted them. He looked very sad, because he didn't know you couldnt use fakes in our store, and in the end, if it wasnt him that bought the models, whoever DID, ended up screwing him over since he couldnt play in our big event that day with his models. I of course let him use mine, from Hive Fleet Tankbrushicus. But yeah, that was my only time in 5 years of GW that I have run into recasts, but the detail was pretty good on them, though I suspect my armorcast warhound was a recast, but it came in the right tan resin color, had the box and instructions, etc.. but I'll never know for sure.

I believe GW have a things to look for list when it comes to recasting.

Plastic Models cast in Metal.
Older models cast in White Metal (for example, Squats and Rogue Trader era were cast in Lead, the White Metal switchover came during 2nd Edition)
Secondary Mold Lines
Different coloured plastics.

That sort of thing.

Matt Varnish wrote:WTF... all the metal models weighed less than plastic. (Keep in mind this was when carnifexes were metal and so on)

Probably ceramics then. Seems to be something to look at if the details were that good ;-)

told him while his painting was excellent, it was actually what saved me from snapping his models in half, since they were fakes/recasts.

Considering that you worked for a shop makig money selling the genuine article, I can understand that you felt like that. Yet the fact that destroying someone else's property would, afaik, not have been in line with Canadian law ("ultra vires" -> federal case) nor the GW approach (as a copyright holder). The last time I looked, GW still exchanged all your counterfeit models against real ones if you gave hints (some might say "ratted out" to where you bought it.

The link below has it all: "If the products are indeed counterfeit, we will reimburse you for any postage costs and will try our best to replace any counterfeit with the genuine article.".

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I believe GW have a things to look for list when it comes to recasting.

Right. There it is: http://uk.games-workshop.com/legal/counterfeiters/1/

Different coloured plastics.

That one does not seem to be a good indicator. I got sprues from different years lying around. They are all coloured differently.

Is not so much the shade of grey of the plastic.

For example, Genestealer Hybrids, when in plastic, were in my experience universally a sort of cream colour, as were the Terminator Libratians they shared a sprue with.

Thus, if I was to find some on Ebay in Grey Plastic, I would be suspicious to say the least....

Shades of plastic / grays are not accurate. Like MDG mentioned some older plastics were actually yellow , the skeleton regiment for another example.

There are actually 2 shades of gray now days, look at my HOChaos in gallery if you want. The older lighter gray ones seems softer , and more prone to snapping , bending.

Just glad there are some people on Dakka*2 that knows first hand that counterfeit do exist without calling me crazy xD

Regarding the cermic tyranids , When a counterfeit is in a good painter's hand ( like i mentioned #6 ) The amount of detail actually becomes less important. If they work with the models long enough , they know where to apply even more shadows on the areas that arnt as detailed ( same way as good painters deal with skaven warrior feets )

Like i said, lot of counterfeiting seller / painter knows this ( they know you wont strip the $90 you just paid ) just to check for counterfeiting , they'll take advantage of it.


Those of you Canadians that live in Vancouver area, that want to see my claims first hand , feel free to visit Richmonds Night Market ( open in summer )
where the items sold 70% are counterfeits 10% are food so doesnt count , and 20% are legit.

Great video.

Love the semi-random twitches on the zoom at the beginning, to give it that authentic "yoof" style.

This thread first shocked me, then made me laugh.

First, I had no idea that there were such a thing as counterfeit plastic/metal army men. I really didn't.

Second, EVERY GW MODEL IS A HIGH MARGIN MODEL.

It costs a few cents to make a plastic sprue. It really does. GW makes exorbitant amounts of money selling stuff to stores, who in turn have a standard 40% markup, and then they sell it to you and I - the consumer.

I have two pretty large armies; Tau and Orks. I've given GW a good damn bunch of money for them. I don't care if people play with pennies as proxies, or with actual plastic army men because I'm playing there to have fun. So what if people use duplicated figures? If it becomes a serious issue, GW will either take legal action or reconsider their pricing scheme. Remember, GW invented the phrase "counts as." They support the idea of people playing the hobby even though they don't have the models for it. If someone puts down an army in front of me, I don't care who made the models as long as they visually represent something I understand, and as long as we're about to have some fun.

Because if people are buying counterfeit models, some arsehole is making a profit at GW's expense. Regardless of company, that takes the piss.

Also, it is a obvious breach of copyright, as gw paid for the copy right.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Because if people are buying counterfeit models, some arsehole is making a profit at GW's expense. Regardless of company, that takes the piss.

First of all, I understand breach of copyright. Raise your hand if you've never downloaded a song, movie, or game from the internet?

Second, its GW's copyrighted material. I support GW - I've given them a lot of money for some plastic army men. But its THEIR copyright. Its their business to pursue, and neither I nor you have any reason to have ruffled feathers over it. Just like when you play an MMO...there are always gold farmers trying to make money off the MMO company's work. So? I'm not worried about it. That's their business, and I have enough to deal with.

These things exist because of demand. My point is that we're supposed to be playing this game to have fun. Who are you...who are any of us to frown on someone for not using the models that we think they should? For using proxies? For not having as much disposable income to spend on plastic toys?

I don't go looking for counterfeit GW stuff, nor counterfeit anything to buy, but I'm not going to go out of my way to damn other people. That's not my (or your) sphere of responsibility. That's all I'm saying.

If someone got an entire 40k army from China for $50...as long as the plastic sprues don't say "Games Workshop" on them, and as long as they aren't identified as GW models, then we're golden. They can paint them and use them all day long. And if they ARE imitations pretending to be GW products, then I hope GW smacks them down. But I don't care - they have plenty of money.

Read the other threads in this forum; material costs are down 60%, transportation costs are down 70%, wages are pretty much static, and their prices are going up. GW doesn't seem to be particularly concerned about giving me or anyone else reasonable prices for the goods they present, is it any strange idea then that someone would go into business trying to compete with them?

Dashofpepper wrote:Who are you...who are any of us to frown on someone for not using the models that we think they should?

Because it's Grotsnik you're talking to. He's Dakka's self appointed Moral Guardian. To him, buying a counterfeit model is not only illegal, but downright evil. And the one's making the counterfeit models are even more evil than that. They're like evil (x2), or something.

BYE

Thats not how i see it. GW is a hobby not a necessity .

Why be so desperate to play with counterfeit stuff if GW is too expensive? just find another game works too right?

GW is expensive for a few reasons : broad range , long history in miniature gaming. You can expect to buy their product and not run out of people that plays it.

That and players demand for their product deem no reason for them to lower the prices. They are business company not charity.

Moral? this is moral? rofl no silly.

Its class and integrity. If anyone think wearing fake Rolex makes them high roller, they are
only lying to themselves.

LunaHound wrote:They are business company not charity.

Correct. GW prices are still too high in some cases though. And none of that has much to do with spotting counterfeit models.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:

LunaHound wrote:They are business company not charity.

Correct. GW prices are still too high in some cases though. And none of that has much to do with spotting counterfeit models.

BYE

Oh i agree its high, nor do i like it. But i still wont buy counterfeit stuff because i rather have
legit a$$o take my money then counterfeiters.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:Who are you...who are any of us to frown on someone for not using the models that we think they should?

Because it's Grotsnik you're talking to. He's Dakka's self appointed Moral Guardian. To him, buying a counterfeit model is not only illegal, but downright evil. And the one's making the counterfeit models are even more evil than that. They're like evil (x2), or something.

BYE

No, I just don't see why some little scrote should benefit from anothers hard work.

If someone wants more of a particularly rare model, for example, Trenchraider and his Space Slaan, there is the morally netural approach of making your mold, and melting down existing GW models. GW get their cut, you get the models you are after.

The difference between downloads and knockoffs, is that downloads, whilst still not right, aren't lining *anyones* pockets.

Another thing to note if the idiot is selling half a dozen duplicates of the same pose as a lot, then they're probably fakes.