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I have been looking on eBay to get some FW models on the cheap. I have seen some really good deals. But they all really cheap sales come out of Russia or China. I have heard that models sold from these countries are often counterfeit recasts. Are these ebay deals too good to be true or am I just being paranoid?

I think that they're probably fake, I wouldn't buy unless there is a picture with the actual model IN the forgeworld bag.

Almost all coming out of China/Hong Kong are recasts (at least the ones I've purchased have been). Still, the quality is generally pretty good (on par with the actual FW stuff I've bought), so as long as you don't mind knock-offs, the savings can make them worthwhile.

As far as only buying stuff pictured 'IN the forgeworld bag', I'd just point out that a) the recasts are taken from an original FW model (which came in a bag) and b) if they're taking the time and effort necessary to create the molds for recasting, they can also take a minimal amount of time to scan and print the FW label and slap it on zip-seal bag. The FW bag is easier to recreate than the recast, so it's no guarantee. You want to guarantee you're getting FW? Only buy direct from FW.

I've bought from these Russian and Chinese sellers before, I didn't seek them out I just saw that they were the cheapest around. The ones I got were perfect and pretty indistinguishable from the real thing.

The morale implication question remains though.

Yeah, there's plenty of good reasons not to buy from recasters, but from what I've seen, quality isn't generally one of them.

I've seen some where there simply is no difference between the genuine article (and that is in a side by side, unpainted, not cleaned up comparison) and several where some extra clean up or remedial work was required, but nothing that wasn't quite straightforward and more than compensated for by the saving in price.

I have also used one of the sites where many recasters list their wares for purchasing legitimate products (have yet to buy any recasts..yet, but I've looked) and can say that the protocols and protections in place are as good, probably better, than EBay for buyers.

That's the ticks in the "For" column, the ticks in the against column are that, while not illegal (you're not breaking the law by buying them, Chinese IP law is lax enough that the recasters likely aren't breaking the law by selling or making them) there is a clear morale argument against it, you do not know for definite what materials are used in the production of the resin, and while it is almost definitely safe, you can't be 100% like you can with original product, and the lead times and shipping can be lengthy, and I find about one in three tracking numbers never show up on the system, but the parcels do generally arrive ok regardless.

Ultimately, if you can make your peace with the morality of it, then it is a risk/reward situation, and that is a personal decision, but assume anything based out of Russia, China or Hong Kong is fake unless there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary (and be cautious even then) and set your expectations and price you're willing to pay accordingly.

As a general rule, if it's cheaper than Forgeworld and not second-hand, it's a fake. Because Forgeworld don't give trade accounts to stores, so there is no way for a store to be buying their product at less than retail.

Beware of some of the sellers from China... if they have less than 200 previous transactions and brand new profiles - it's probably the guy that ripped me (and hundreds of others) off.

He does apparently sell some re-casts to get a few positive feedbacks, then just takes a lot of money and sends you a cheap metal space marine, so you have to play the return/wait/refund game with ebay... then he makes a new profile and does it again.

Zookie wrote:
I have been looking on eBay to get some FW models on the cheap. I have seen some really good deals. But they all really cheap sales come out of Russia or China. I have heard that models sold from these countries are often counterfeit recasts. Are these ebay deals too good to be true or am I just being paranoid?

Depends on what you mean by "Too good to be true"

Most of the Russian and Chinese recasters actually put out a good product. You pay for DKoK, you'll get good DKoK.

So no, they're not going to steal your money. But they are counterfeit, indistinguishable counterfeits to be sure.

 Gunzhard wrote:
Beware of some of the sellers from China... if they have less than 200 previous transactions and brand new profiles - it's probably the guy that ripped me (and hundreds of others) off.

He does apparently sell some re-casts to get a few positive feedbacks, then just takes a lot of money and sends you a cheap metal space marine, so you have to play the return/wait/refund game with ebay... then he makes a new profile and does it again.

This is why I said I feel the protocols and procedures may be better on the site I use than in EBay, on that site (can't name it as will break forum rules, sorry) the money is held in escrow until you have received the goods and are happy with them, so the sellers won't see a penny of your money until you have your product and are happy (or you haven't said either way within 40 days of dispatch IIRC) If there's delays, you can always request extensions on deadlines too, unlike the portcullis that is Paypal dispute time limits.

I have to break the "you get good models" trend here and mention that this is far from guaranteed. I got a Malcador and Valdor that were garbage, horrible casting with really brittle resin that lets all of the details chip off in shipping. And I've seen a lot of ebay recasts where the pictures have clear casting flaws that are worse than what you'd expect from FW. So some sellers might give you FW-level quality at lower prices, but you're taking the risk of buying garbage and wasting your money.

 PastelAvenger wrote:
The morale implication question remains though.

Moral implications? You clearly have not understood the philosophy of the greater good (the greater the pile of goods for a given value, the better :-p)

I'd recommend staying away from them. They invested no work designing these models and supporting them just takes money from the designers pots.
If forgeworld is making good profit, more money will be spent on new designs. Which will gives us more goodies to buy. Something that wont happen when you purchase the knock offs.

I won't buy any knock offs from china. It's not just forgeworld, it's everything. You can buy china's knock off version of a vw and many other cars. They simply reverse engineer other peoples work to get a leg up on the competition.

I wouldn't ever buy anything like this. While I can't really approve asking for 400€ for an Eldar reaver titan I even more hate product pirates who still want a gakload of money for what they stole.

Software/game pirates at least spread the warez for free, but stealing intellectual property and still asking for a gakload of money hopefully gives them really bad karma.

I'll preface this reply by explicitly stating that you are, of course, entitled to feel however you feel on the subject, but just wanted to insert a couple of counterpoints.

 Rotary wrote:
I'd recommend staying away from them. They invested no work designing these models and supporting them just takes money from the designers pots.

True, but then GW have salaried artists who get paid regardless of how many units their designs sell, so while, ultimately recasters could lead to redundancies, GW have actually taken on more staff in the studio over the last year or two, and I personally would cite some of the other issues people have with them being directly or indirectly responsible for future redundancies as their sales have been falling far more recently than the existence of recasters would account for.

If forgeworld is making good profit, more money will be spent on new designs. Which will gives us more goodies to buy. Something that wont happen when you purchase the knock offs.

As above, FW seem to be chugging along just fine, if recasters start to eat significantly enough into their sales to be worth action, perhaps they can look into that 70-odd % gross margin they're rocking and take steps to make the market non profitable for the recasters?

I won't buy any knock offs from china. It's not just forgeworld, it's everything. You can buy china's knock off version of a vw and many other cars. They simply reverse engineer other peoples work to get a leg up on the competition.

Conversely, not everything from China is a knock off, sometimes it is the real thing before some other manufacturer slaps a badge and a healthy mark up on it.

 Murenius wrote:
I wouldn't ever buy anything like this. While I can't really approve asking for 400€ for an Eldar reaver titan I even more hate product pirates who still want a gakload of money for what they stole.

Software/game pirates at least spread the warez for free, but stealing intellectual property and still asking for a gakload of money hopefully gives them really bad karma.

How are they asking a lot of money? Let's do a quick calculation.

Even for the most basic recast you need two things: Moulds and actual casting material (epoxy-resin, PU or whatever).

Current german prices are in the range of ~25€ per liter for both substances. Now let's say you want to recast one of the bigger FW models. Something like a Ork Megadread. You will use up at the very least one liter (more like two) of silicone for the moulds and probably like 300-500 mL of resin. That's allready about 35€ just materials cost, not factoring minor materials (mould release agents, sealing agents, disposable stuff like gloves, cups, stirrers etc.), not factoring actual workhours, misscasts you can't sell, free shipping that a lot of these guys offer, initial costs to buy the required model in the first place and the fact that the caster wants to make at least some profit out of it. From what i've seen here and there, the prices are low enough that it put me off of recasting myself (in fact, I'm sure that for some models professional recasters are even cheaper than what I would spend on recasting the model, even if I would somehow get the initial sculpt for free). In this case I've seen prices as low as about 50€ and that would be less than the raw materials required to do so myself.

 Murenius wrote:
I wouldn't ever buy anything like this. While I can't really approve asking for 400€ for an Eldar reaver titan I even more hate product pirates who still want a gakload of money for what they stole.

Software/game pirates at least spread the warez for free, but stealing intellectual property and still asking for a gakload of money hopefully gives them really bad karma.

Must this be covered every time this subject comes up?

IP infringement is not stealing. Stealing (theft) requires the physical removal of property and is a criminal act, IP infringement just requires you to copy something and is a civil matter. Recasters potentially have more in common with your average manufacturer of "not-GW" models than they do with someone who breaks into your house in the middle of the night and steals your TV.

Nobody is debating that there is a categorical moral dimension to the issue, and nobody is saying anyone who feels that they wouldn't like to buy them is anything but justified, but if you seriously wish to participate in a reasoned debate in the issue, steer clear of throwing around emotive and inaccurate terms like theft and stealing.

 Peregrine wrote:
I have to break the "you get good models" trend here and mention that this is far from guaranteed. I got a Malcador and Valdor that were garbage, horrible casting with really brittle resin that lets all of the details chip off in shipping. And I've seen a lot of ebay recasts where the pictures have clear casting flaws that are worse than what you'd expect from FW. So some sellers might give you FW-level quality at lower prices, but you're taking the risk of buying garbage and wasting your money.

Those were probably actual ForgeWorld models!

Everything I've ever got from the real ForgeWorld has fit that description. The few re-casts I got were much better and harder resin - however, after I got scammed from China (buying a Tyranid Bio-Titan - receiving a metal space marine) I'm much more weary...

 Gunzhard wrote:
Those were probably actual ForgeWorld models!

No, they were definitely recasts. Also I have the real version of both kits, and they were nowhere near as bad.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
Those were probably actual ForgeWorld models!

No, they were definitely recasts. Also I have the real version of both kits, and they were nowhere near as bad.

I guess on the upside recasters could give forgeworld a reason to up their own game. The genuine article *should* be better.

 Rotary wrote:

If forgeworld is making good profit, more money will be spent on new designs. Which will gives us more goodies to buy. Something that wont happen when you purchase the knock offs.

Logical, but unfortunately false. Forgeworld is going to continue to give us the same overpriced recycled garbage they have for years.

 Rotary wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
Those were probably actual ForgeWorld models!

No, they were definitely recasts. Also I have the real version of both kits, and they were nowhere near as bad.

I guess on the upside recasters could give forgeworld a reason to up their own game. The genuine article *should* be better.

Here I thought FW was high quality. From what I have been reading lately FQ quality is bad. Is FW quality really that poor? I found my Rippers and Flyrant actually pretty good. Only time I got FW so not sure about the rest.

Davor wrote:

 Rotary wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
Those were probably actual ForgeWorld models!

No, they were definitely recasts. Also I have the real version of both kits, and they were nowhere near as bad.

I guess on the upside recasters could give forgeworld a reason to up their own game. The genuine article *should* be better.

Here I thought FW was high quality. From what I have been reading lately FQ quality is bad. Is FW quality really that poor? I found my Rippers and Flyrant actually pretty good. Only time I got FW so not sure about the rest.

The last flyer we got from FW had wings in the shape of an S.

The hell hound I got last needed to be re shaved extensively (huge hunk of resin) to fit the model. Nothing more fun then resculpting the model to get it to work...

Honestly the only perfectly good thing from FW I got was Vulture Punisher cannons.

I have yet to find worse resin from any other company than FW/GW resin.

Well ...my own personal experience with FW, over decades now, has been one of perpetual frustration. Given the price, the cost of shipping, (my own expectation!) - and the standard of other resin miniatures on the market (my ultraforge stuff is amazing) - I think FW needs to do much much better.

That said, no matter how you try to twist it - recasts are not 'helping' forgeworld.

There are genuine ones on Ebay but a lot of counterfeits as well.

I would black list any of the models coming from Spain, Italy, Croatia, Russia and China as they tend to have fake models.

Most stuff that is sold from the UK is genuine and stuff from Germany tends to be as well.

You can normally tell straight away if they are counterfeit or not, so you shouldn't have a problem spotting them out.

Even if you do end up with counterfeit models you can make a claim on Paypal and get a full refund.

Ebay also allows for refunds on counterfeits so you shouldn't have to worry.

Davor wrote:
Is FW quality really that poor?

It's worse than it should be, but the worst of it is kind of a gamble. Pretty much every kit is going to have warped parts or need minor gap filling work, but these are pretty trivial annoyances that don't stop you from getting a nice model in the end. Some kits are going to have moderate miscasts require a little more work and be really frustrating, but again, you'll get it right in the end. And then a small minority of the time you'll get inexcusably bad miscasts that make you wonder if FW even understands what "quality control" means. Of course they do kind of make up for it by always replacing defective parts, so usually* the worst that happens is you have to wait another month to build your model. You're not going to end up with a pile of junk resin that you can't build and wasted money.

*The exception being FW's experiments with "we swear it isn't finecast, even though it's exactly like finecast", which were just as bad as finecast. And, just like finecast, your replacement was (is? are they still doing it?) almost guaranteed to be just as bad as the first one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yak9UT wrote:
I would black list any of the models coming from Spain, Italy, Croatia, Russia and China as they tend to have fake models.

Most stuff that is sold from the UK is genuine and stuff from Germany tends to be as well.

Or, rather than trying to figure out which countries have recasters just look at the seller's current items and history. Are they selling lots of new-in-box FW kits, especially with multiple copies of the same kit available, at or below retail price? IOW, are they running it as a business? Recaster. Are they selling a limited number of kits which may or may not be NIB and have a history of buying and selling random stuff? Probably just a random person trying to get rid of some stuff they don't want anymore.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Murenius wrote:
I wouldn't ever buy anything like this. While I can't really approve asking for 400€ for an Eldar reaver titan I even more hate product pirates who still want a gakload of money for what they stole.

Software/game pirates at least spread the warez for free, but stealing intellectual property and still asking for a gakload of money hopefully gives them really bad karma.

Must this be covered every time this subject comes up?

IP infringement is not stealing. Stealing (theft) requires the physical removal of property and is a criminal act, IP infringement just requires you to copy something and is a civil matter.

Can this time be the last time for your pedantry?

It's a common usage definition, not a legal one. Enough is enough from you.

It isn't pedantry when one term is the correct term, and the other is an emotive term that people use to try and support an argument through emotion rather than logic.

So, rather than insult me and tell me what to do, by all means make a counter point, or are you just going to be shouty and illogical rather than have a proper discussion without any red faced finger wagging?

EDIT
Additionally, if we are to have any sort of sensible discussion on the subject, it is important to divorce what is common use from what is correct.

Or, rather than trying to figure out which countries have recasters just look at the seller's current items and history. Are they selling lots of new-in-box FW kits, especially with multiple copies of the same kit available, at or below retail price? IOW, are they running it as a business? Recaster. Are they selling a limited number of kits which may or may not be NIB and have a history of buying and selling random stuff? Probably just a random person trying to get rid of some stuff they don't want anymore.

The problem you will find with that is you will likely have sellers who don't have noticeably negative feedback. You Either have people who have no idea what Forgeworld models are like or people who don't care giving positive feedback.

So don't just rely on feedback.

I listed those countries is that they don't seem to have restrictions or laws on counterfeit goods.

 Yak9UT wrote:
The problem you will find with that is you will likely have sellers who don't have noticeably negative feedback. You Either have people who have no idea what Forgeworld models are like or people who don't care giving positive feedback.

So don't just rely on feedback. .

He didn't say to rely on feedback. He said to look at selling history.

You're looking for a hstory of selling the same items, not what people had to say about it.

Most the recasts I've had have softer details than the FW stuff and some areas where the mould has appeared to warp which isn't easy to fix.

I tend to avoid recasts though because I think it's better to support the people who actually put the effort in to creating the models or simply not buying them at all.

If you have no morale issues with getting recasts and are willing to risk getting models with softer details and greater risk of a dodgy seller, there's not much other reason to avoid recasts.