counterfeit products

[bootstrapbill]

How can you tell if you have bought counterfeit GW products? I think I might have been suckered by someone on eBay

[DeathsHead]

They would be a lot cheaper would be my guess, and if the seller is located in China or Russia would be another clue.

[bootstrapbill]

I think its the plastic, it is a way lighter gray than normal

[WH40kgamer]

Right around the time that the new Grotesque models came out I bought a bunch on eBay for almost half price. When they arrived they were out of blister and not on sprues. They were the worst Finecast I have ever seen, took me on average of 2 hours to build each model. They had huge potholes in them and had bad breaks in the worst places.

I thought these were possibly counterfeit, but in the end I almost think they were the miscasts of the first batch of FineCRAP that GW was experimenting with. I asked the guy selling them where he got them and he never replied.

I will never buy a Finecast model except from the local gaming store from now on as I can buy it, open it and inspect it right there and pick out a different one if it is in really bad shape and at the moment GW is ok with this concept and backs their products 100% as long as you have a receipt from a legitimate store.

[bladeofdeath3]

GW's finecast was very miss when they first came out. I've been pretty lucky and all my finecast stuff is good. What did you buy which leads you to this conclusion? There are several manufacturers out there who make stuff that looks like GW but is not.

[DAPHEEL]

If it helps, I find G.W. plastic varies in shades from year to year, I've got piles of vehicle accesory sprues that are all sorts of shades of grey.

[Captainparty]

I think its the plastic, it is a way lighter gray than normal

3rd ed models sometimes used a much lighter grey plastic, I have some Orks and Space Marines from that era that are almost whiter, plastic models are much harder to counterfit, if it was resin, it would be possible, but plastic, its unlikely really, it requires a massively expensive mould and machining process from form plastic models, the set up costs would be too high for an ebayying counterfitter.

[Wolfshade]

One way is to look at the model lines.
If the model lines are not in the right place, then that is a sure fire way of them being re-cast from a GW original. Sometimes this might result in two model lines being shown, the one from the original GW master and the other as a result of the re-casting process

[dave1032]

The counterfeited models have different shades of grey, while GW models are all a consistent shade, although some older models are a bit lighter grey.

[Captainparty]

The counterfeited models have different shades of grey, while GW models are all a consistent shade, although some older models are a bit lighter grey.

GW has used a variety of greys through out the years, as stated earlier in the thread, its been darker than it currently is too