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I sculpt and cast my creations as well a the occasional recast of big companies IP for for personal projects.

My blog has info about casting metal and resin, including a price point breakdown / break even comparison on metal models. I believe I was able to price out equipment and suppiles for 59-60 figures at about $295 assuming that you were able to make a perfect mold on the first try.

Selling 30-60 of the same fig on eBay will get you noticed.
You would have to sell hard to find high value figures to be worth it vs selling figures that can be bought at around %20-%25 off new.


Long story short, casting metal figure is expensive. If these toys were a reasonable price to purchase there would be no profit available in recasting&selling the copies,.

Now recasting resin is far easier and most companies resin offerings already come standard with defects, cases in point FW and Finecast.

I have no problem buying recasts of OOP products, or of horribly over-costed products. I purchased my first Barbed Heirodule from FW currently about $175 delivered it was from a mold that should have been and parts of the casting had bad mold slip/mis-alignment. When you factor the high cost, low quality, long wait times, and general disregard that GW & FW show for their customers it made my decision to buy my 2nd barbed H from a popular Chinese recaster for $68. It was delivered faster & the cast was near perfect.

When a recaster can put out a better quality product at less than %40 of the originals cost and treat me better as a customer it becomes hard not to consider them for future purchases.

If FW were to reduce the final cost of their products I would not consider a purchase from a recaster, If FW had not farmed out the labor to china to reduce their cost of production/increase profit margins then the recaster would not have been trained so well and not have had acess to master copies to be recasting from now.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Does GW switching from metal to resin really make it easier for recasters?

I'm not arguing against that idea, I'm actually interested in knowing.

From my point of view as the former owner of Armorcast, it does, but I have not ever cast white metal but am familiar with the process. I've cast gold, silver and bronze using the lost wax tecnique professionally though.
I'm assuming you need a spin caster to do more than limited numbers of minis.

All you need for resin is mold rubber, mold frames, mold release, resin and some experience. Molds are easier to make than molds for spin casters. You get better results for complicated designs (like 28mm human figs) with a vacuum chamber or pressure pot.

One of GWs's problems as they still seem to be using spin casters for the resin. I'm sure I could get better quality castings with less rejects like the ones we are seeing posted with my vacuum chamber, but I certainly could not do it in the volume that GW needs to match the demand.

Samus_aran115 wrote:I've got a genius idea. Recast finecast models in METAL

You'd make tons, because everyone would think they were the old models. Even if I knew they were metal recasts, I doubt I'd care.

Sure, but you are going to have to deal with the same higher metal prices that GW is.

Tim

timd wrote:

One of GWs's problems as they still seem to be using spin casters for the resin. I'm sure I could get better quality castings with less rejects like the ones we are seeing posted with my vacuum chamber, but I certainly could not do it in the volume that GW needs to match the demand.

Tim

If GW would just go to a slightly longer cure resin I suspect we would see better spin castings from them.

Sadly after talking to others that I would say are "in the know" FW make molds under vacuum but they don't degas the resin nor do they cast under pressure, which is why a lot of us garage casters are able to get better results.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Does GW switching from metal to resin really make it easier for recasters?

I'm not arguing against that idea, I'm actually interested in knowing.

It makes it a million times easier. Before the transition you had to recast in metal to make a suitable copy. There's much more to pouring metal than there is to pouring resin. There is a lot more people who can recast resin than there is metal recasters. Resin casting uses no heat, while metal casting uses high temps and is a more dangerous undertaking for a small time operator working out of a spare bedroom.

As far as the OP goes. Yes there is a large number of recasters turning up now that resin casting has become so popular. I imagine that we will really start seeing a crackdown coming. Especially on US sellers on ebay. Saying you didnt know something was counterfeit doesnt make it legal. Personally I'm surprised ebay allows recasters to remain in business. They are super strict if you want to sell a bunch of Coach purses, certain cosmetics, sunglasses etc.

I can see that making things out of resin is easier than metal (for all the reasons you've described), but that wasn't what I was asking.

The comment I quoted was saying that GW switching to resin made recasting easy, and I wanted to know why the change from metal to resin would make any difference in how easy it would be to recast, not how easy it is to make resin models vs metal ones.

The difference is in the material used to get a suitable recast.

I haven't looked at everything being recast on eBay but it seems that the asian recasters are currently targeting Forge World stuff more than they are Finecast. A co-worker got a Contemptor from one of the Russians and it was utterly flawless. The only way you could tell it was a recast was by the color. Several years back, I wound up with some recast Epic bits from a recaster in the USA and they were clearly inferior to what GW was doing.

I suspect that recasters are going to ruin it for everyone selling on ebay. I suspect to see crackdowns soon.

Lots of people are buying from the russians on ebay , especially the primarchs and body guards.

Then we have people posting direct links to counterfeiter's webstores.

It spreads like wild fire really, who wouldn't want fakes that are actually superior to the original while being cheaper?

I have reported it multiple times, mods just locks it. It would be more effective if they edited out the links -_- ........

The "Primarchs" aren't recasts though. They may violate ip (not a statement, hazy area) but they are original sculpts. There is a good deal of counterfit FW coming from there as well, there's just a difference between the 2.

I dont think the originals were made by Russians.
I dont think the originals were being sold multiple times by a seller that sells tons of FW counterfeits and admits to being none FW ( admire Russian for their bravery )

Actually a lot of the originals did start in Russia. Not the Kabukis but some of the other Primarchs. Originally they were cast in white metal. You should be able to go onto CMON and follow the origins of most primarch sculpts on the market.

Well, I guess this is it then. The whole building starts to topple, and GW will keep bunkering in, while raising the prices in defense against the rising recasters.
I think I'll order a piece, out of curiosity.

Do you know if they recast metals too? I bought recently two Space Marines characters from around 1993 fairly cheap, and now I've got them in my hands I'm not sure if they are real or copies. The seller had a very small stock of them, like 2 or 3 copies. More than a simple collector like me, but much less than a recaster. They were based in the UK.

SM characters from that time period are not worth the effort to copy. There's millions of them out there. Unless they're limited edition I highly doubt recasts.

Korraz wrote:Well, I guess this is it then. The whole building starts to topple, and GW will keep bunkering in, while raising the prices in defense against the rising recasters.
I think I'll order a piece, out of curiosity.

And that's one way that recasters hurt legitimate business.

I bought a bunch of metal Marine shoulderpads once, and after paying I saw they were from China. I'm pretty positive they're recasts but I already spent my money so I'm not going to go melt them down for the sake of it or whatever. Since then I've made a point to check the feedback, other auctions, and location of anything I'm buying that seems suspect.

Somehow I don't believe that price rises are a sound strategic response to recasting? If GW did this, they would simply push their customers into the hands of the recasters.

It's actually quite funny, with the secondary market that has sprung up in "support" of WH40K and the combined efforts of the recasters that are out there, I wonder if WH40K as a game could actually survive without further input from GW.....at this stage, I would actually hazard to think that it could.

If any company out there needs to fear the recaster (as it were) I think GW sit in the number 1 slot!

Delephont wrote:Somehow I don't believe that price rises are a sound strategic response to recasting? If GW did this, they would simply push their customers into the hands of the recasters.

Sounds familiar to me.

GW will still do great as they move more toward plastics. Nobody seems to be interested in recasts of plastic bits. It's Forge World and Scibor that I'm worried about.

Breotan wrote:GW will still do great as they move more toward plastics. Nobody seems to be interested in recasts of plastic bits. It's Forge World and Scibor that I'm worried about.

Good point!

I wonder if this guy is legit? He has 10 Contemptor dreads for sale, they have no bases, and he is from Russia.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Forgeworld-Warhammer-40k-CONTEMPTOR-PATTERN-DREADNOUGHT-BODY-/280807041068?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item416167682c

I think you answered your question on your own lol

He is a legit seller, check out the feedback.
You will most likely get exactly what you see when you win the bid.
It will most likely be a recast of a FW original, and I bet that it will be a better quality than most that FW sells.

Recasters like this seller usually make sure they don't piss off buyers so they can keep selling.

The recasters to avoid are the ones on trade boards like here and Bartertown, when you don't have to have top notch recasts because their are less repercussions for dishonest sellers.

The Russians I have dealt with have been great. look at feedback and remember that around %15 to %20 of ebay buyers dont leave feedback when things go right, all leave FB when things go wrong.

LunaHound wrote:I dont think the originals were made by Russians.
I dont think the originals were being sold multiple times by a seller that sells tons of FW counterfeits and admits to being none FW ( admire Russian for their bravery )

Not sure if we are talking about the same person, but the Russian I know once sold his own sculpts of Primarchs and Custodes. He also made the Tervigon I own. And he claims to sell original FW stuff.

I once bought Tyranid towers from China when they were long discontinued by FW. So being flawless casts, I don't care if they are recasts or not.

Delephont wrote:I believe recasting is MASSIVELY illegal, although, the ones I bought are coming in from China! where recasting is probably not illegal.

How this sits with trading across boundaries I'm not entirely sure, to buy the goods in the UK from China is not technically like recieveing stolen goods per se, as the item itself has been legally sold by its owner, I would imagine it would only be a case of "illegal selling" if the I.P. rights to the item were contested and found in a court of law to be in infringement....until that happens, I believe the item can be traded across boundaries....

It's a bit more complex than that.

Piracy is illegal in China but the laws are not well enforced. If fact sometimes the local government which is supposed to be enforcing the law owns the firms that are pirating.

Kroothawk wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I dont think the originals were made by Russians.
I dont think the originals were being sold multiple times by a seller that sells tons of FW counterfeits and admits to being none FW ( admire Russian for their bravery )

Not sure if we are talking about the same person, but the Russian I know once sold his own sculpts of Primarchs and Custodes. He also made the Tervigon I own. And he claims to sell original FW stuff.

I once bought Tyranid towers from China when they were long discontinued by FW. So being flawless casts, I don't care if they are recasts or not.

Yup. A lot of the Primarchs did originate in Russia. I had a few of them, and bought them a few years ago when they first popped up.

inquisitorlewis wrote:SM characters from that time period are not worth the effort to copy. There's millions of them out there. Unless they're limited edition I highly doubt recasts.

Thanks! I guess you're right.

Meh, the Chinese place is way cheaper than the Russian guy.

Samus_aran115 wrote:So, on the other hand, I could see that GW doesn't want to piss off their older fanbase who have been collecting for their entire lives.

I Really doubt that's the reason but it's a nice thought, all the same.

I have to admit I'm most tempted by the recast Rackham models at about 15% the price of Legacy Miniatures models and as their OOP and the companies gone belly up it'll be the only way I can get some models. For GW models I have to go meh I'm not particularly in the market for them. It's more Heresy, Hasslefree and the other little ones I worry about.