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I was looking for miniatures on eBay for painting and I wanted to get some feedback from anyone here who may have purchased from eBay sellers in the past. There are a few walkers I've been looking at and wanted to know what their quality was like. If anyone has input or lease let me know.

The sellers I was looking at include but not limited to:

Wares-mini
Black arketminitures.org
Dzur2003

Any other suggestions are welcome too.

Thank you and happy New Years

Dave

Simple. What's their seller's rating and feedback?

If they have 150+ and a 99%+ rep...go for it.

If they have 12 sales and a 89% rep...don't.

Some eBay sellers have 12,000 sales with 99% feedback. eBay is terribly biased toward the buyers (letting them lambast any seller for almost any reason) so if someone has good feedback they've probably earned it.

PS: In this instance, for "grey market" stuff, the feedback should still be applicable...if they're selling a crappy product, people should be mentioning it.

I have purchased from Dzur on multiple occasions with no hiccups.

No walkers, but various Ral Partha and other historical bits. No complaints with their service.

Thanks for the information thus far. I had figured the ratings are good and that's a way to judge what I'm getting.

The comment on grey market items, do these items have no value to the game world? I'm looking to just paint and maybe a diorama one day. If I was interested in something others who are interested in miniatures for gaming would the grey market items not have value? Do they not work for the game? I'm to new at this for understanding the game needs thus far.

Thanks
Dave

The grey market items are normally third party bits. Blood and Skulls Industry is an example, his store is purely on Ebay. Great conversion bits to work with if you like the aesthetic.

There are also far more questionable sources for miniatures on Ebay, that crop up once in a while before getting slammed shut again. They almost exclusively market forgeworld models, but at significantly lower costs, because they're technically stolen molds. Quality on them varies, and once painted there's honestly no visual difference, but there's a moral issue in acquiring such things.


No, crusaders, I was not Advocating, I was merely Educating. I'd rather not see this thread turn to nine hundred pages of hate and vitriol about recasters, let's stick to educating please.

I agree, this is all about education and not morals of stealing the molds. That said I am interested in knowing if a seller is selling original items or ones remolded. I would rather not support stealing if I can help it. As an artist I don't like that others steal someone's work.
Dave

because they're technically stolen molds

Does FW even produce in China? I doubt these people are literally breaking into production facilities for molds.

One could say they're stolen IP, I'm sure there's no doubt about that. But hyperbole doesn't help anyone.

The stuff I have purchased from dzur was all original that I could tell and not recasts.

I remember hearing that at one point they had a small facility in China. Could have been a rumour, but little difference.

I did say Technically, because they reverse-engineered the original cast product to get the molds to use. They ARE Stolen IP.

Generally, Forgeworld has a rather consistent shade of grey in their product. I have heard of a few batches that were off colour, but for the most part it's a consistent colour. That's one of the clues to recasts, is if they don't have that light-medium grey to them, they might be recasts. Price is generally a rather steep discount from core FW prices as well, which is usually a tip off.

 ScarletRose wrote:

because they're technically stolen molds

Does FW even produce in China? I doubt these people are literally breaking into production facilities for molds.

One could say they're stolen IP, I'm sure there's no doubt about that. But hyperbole doesn't help anyone.

well the way black market goods are made in China is during the day product is made for the "Client" and at night they make stuff for the black market.

China is an interesting place. My friend and I took a vacation there in 2007 after working in India for three weeks. Knock offs were everywhere.

Our last stop was Shanghai, and he needed a suitcase to bring back all his trinkets. We went into this six story luggage and bag store so he could find something. After dickering with one of the booths he finally picked out a bag for 10 bucks (he is Colombian and the best wheeler dealer at that sort of thing I have ever met). The clerk hands over the bag and my friend, trying to get him even lower (started as like 60-80 dollars or something like that), says "but I wanted Samsonite, this is not Samsonite." The clerk opens a drawer full of tags and badges, finds Samsonite ones, and slaps them on the bag. Whereupon he proudly announces "See, Samsonite."

I thought we were both going to die laughing. Even my friend couldn't argue at that point it was so funny.

Sauragnmon wrote:
I remember hearing that at one point they had a small facility in China. Could have been a rumour, but little difference.

I did say Technically, because they reverse-engineered the original cast product to get the molds to use. They ARE Stolen IP.

Generally, Forgeworld has a rather consistent shade of grey in their product. I have heard of a few batches that were off colour, but for the most part it's a consistent colour. That's one of the clues to recasts, is if they don't have that light-medium grey to them, they might be recasts. Price is generally a rather steep discount from core FW prices as well, which is usually a tip off.

Not a rumour. FW DID have a casting facility in Shanghai. They shut it down a few years back. It only operated a couple of years.

From the way friends have described the way things work over there, there's no need to "reverse engineer" moulds.

The FW people would have brought mould masters with them (to make new production moulds from). The locals would have been shown how to do make those moulds and the best would get used for the production runs. You can then create a new master form from one of these when/if needed. I have worked in an SFX moulding shop so some of this is what we did, and some of it is just supposition.

FW staff show them how to do the castings (where needed). Production starts. FW probably run an 8 hour shift. Shut down at end of shift, lock up moulds. FW staff go home.
Next shift starts. [this bit is supposition]
"Spare moulds" get pulled out of storage (their "practice" moulds produced during the mould making procedures - the "FW" moulds that were locked up stay locked up. Normally the practice moulds get shredded once you have your masters done, but once shredded, you can't tell the good from the bad.). Production starts. These get sold on ebay. These moulds get "locked away" when FW come back for next day shift.

When FW shut the facility down, standard procedure would be to document that the original moulds are destroyed to prevent illicit production. It wouldn't be hard to pull the "practice" moulds from storage and substitute them for the "production" moulds before destruction. FW see moulds before and after (shredded), sign off and go home. Original masters preserved and the party continues.