Buying Figures

[kev85hasbro]

Hello Fellow collectors,

I thought I'd start a new thread about buying figures and to a point selling figures. Basically I think it would be good to have a thread for advice on buying figures because sometimes it goes wrong. Also sometimes we can get tricked into believing a item is a error when infact it could be a fake.

Thankfully I havent had many bad encounters purchasing figures through out the years of collecting, The only bad thing that happened to me (so far) was when I purchased a Macho man #1 mailaway. It was on ebay. I gave the guy £55. and waitied for the arrival. It came and at first it looked very smart, the numbers matched and it looked really smart. So a few hours later I took a closer look and discovered there was major paint wear and the packaging was rough. I was convienced that the figure was a fake and emailed the seller asking for a refund. He then admitted to his error and his excuse was that he was going to list the figure as a custom mailaway.

What bad experiences have you had? What would your advice be?

my advice is fairly simple.
If you are unsure, don't buy.
Buy from a trusted seller
check packaging. inspect it
If your not happy ask for a refund

[ICHIBAN 一番]

If an item is a prototype, make sure you have the items validity checked- get it's history, where and from who was it purchased and if your gonna spend £500 on it, get close up pictures, and ask tons of questions.

I have only been stung a couple of times, on was waiting months for a box of ljns to arrive, the seller had been in hospital and then had sent them a month later, they never arrived and I went to claim. I was too late and over the time to get a pay pal refund. I was very angry.
I've been dissapointed many times when figures arrive, especially when the pictures poor and they say it's a c9.5 and when it arrives it's a c6, sometimes that's the way it goes and I guess as I'm so picky about the condition of things (must be c8 or above) most of the time I have to re sell to find another auction that says c9+. hasbros are especially hard to get in top condition, I've had 6 virgils just to get a c9, come on, it's only Virgil right!

[pandelis]

Appreciate this thread. I've got something I'd like to share. Not sure it's the perfect topic - but I was looking for an outlet.

I recently bought a fantastic lot of AWA Remco figures. Plenty of RARE ones. I was dealing with a young lady who said she was selling them on behalf of her hubby. Everything went well - until I received an email from her 3 weeks later asking if I'd sell them back to her.

As an active eBay seller - I had already sold most of the lot and what I had left, I didn't want to sell back to her. She got angry at me (at me!) and called me rude for not wanting to sell them back.

TIP: Never buy something and agree to sell it back to the person you bought it from. Not a recipe for success!

[ICHIBAN 一番]

Mar 3, 2010 8:57:36 GMT -5 @pandelis said:

Appreciate this thread. I've got something I'd like to share. Not sure it's the perfect topic - but I was looking for an outlet.

I recently bought a fantastic lot of AWA Remco figures. Plenty of RARE ones. I was dealing with a young lady who said she was selling them on behalf of her hubby. Everything went well - until I received an email from her 3 weeks later asking if I'd sell them back to her.

As an active eBay seller - I had already sold most of the lot and what I had left, I didn't want to sell back to her. She got angry at me (at me!) and called me rude for not wanting to sell them back.

TIP: Never buy something and agree to sell it back to the person you bought it from. Not a recipe for success!

I bet she saw your starting prices on shawn and marty and figured she could do the same!

[fallbrawl]

I also have something to share.

I was at a flea market a few years ago and seen a booth that had a lot of wrestling figures mostly hasbros and i saw a hasbro billy gunn that someone tried to custom the guy told me it was a rare DX hasbro and he wanted $35.00 for it. i said i would pass and walked out of his booth. since that time i have never seen that guys booth when i go to that flea market.

[ICHIBAN 一番]

Lucky you walked away!

[elrey82]

I bought a M$M loose figure and the guy marked it as an error on ebay and at this time I didn't know much about the funskool figures Anyway I ended up paying $30 for a loose M$M funskool!!! I kept the figure since it was pretty cool but still!!! I just want to say that if you are a collector there's going to be times that you overpay if you want a figure and sometimes you can get lucky and get very expensive figures for dirt cheap so!!! A while back there was someone selling a supposed Hulk Hogan Mailaway meanwhile it was a custom and the figure was in like a Ziploc bag and starting bid was sky high!!! Getting background info is very important if you're going to be a true collector !!!

[''Adam74'']

Similar to pandelis, I purchased a MIB JC Penny Hulk, for £25 of some chap on eBay. He said if I'm willing to pay that, I could have it buy it now. He had no idea what it was. We agreed the deal, I paid and I thought that was that. A couple of days later, a thread was posted on here by an interested buyer, who said he had been in contact with the seller, who said if he would offer a high enough price, the Hulk was his.

I think this is when the seller realised it was worth a bit more that what I paid

Then the funny bit, I had an email from the seller,saying the figure was in the post, but begging me to sell it back to him for, wait for it, £30. His reason, because he had changed his mind and wanted to keep it...

I allready knew because of the thread on here, that he was lying out of his rear end.. The real reason being he had been offered over £100 for it, and had made a huge mistake..

As you can imagine, I didn't send it back, and just said no thanks matey

[tibbo]

Mar 3, 2010 11:59:21 GMT -5 ''Adam74'' said:

Similar to pandelis, I purchased a MIB JC Penny Hulk, for £25 of some chap on eBay. He said if I'm willing to pay that, I could have it buy it now. He had no idea what it was. We agreed the deal, I paid and I thought that was that. A couple of days later, a thread was posted on here by an interested buyer, who said he had been in contact with the seller, who said if he would offer a high enough price, the Hulk was his.

I think this is when the seller realised it was worth a bit more that what I paid

Then the funny bit, I had an email from the seller,saying the figure was in the post, but begging me to sell it back to him for, wait for it, £30. His reason, because he had changed his mind and wanted to keep it...

I allready knew because of the thread on here, that he was lying out of his rear end.. The real reason being he had been offered over £100 for it, and had made a huge mistake..

As you can imagine, I didn't send it back, and just said no thanks matey

Haha!
I remember this well!
It was great to see one of us get one over on the 'bad guys' for a change!

I have been stung on this very forum before!
Fortunately I got all of my money back via Paypal, but it was still a horrible experience!
If a deal seems to good to be true, it probably is

My advive is to avoid doing transactions on forums such as this with users who have recently joined and suddenly have a welth of items for sale.
It is common sense really.

If they really want to sell the items, I am sure they wouldn't mind listing it on eBay to carry out the transaction as a 'buy it now'. At least then you will be trading upon a secure platform, and if anything does go wrong both parties will stand a chance of coming to an amicable agreement, and get their item/money back.

I feel that as true collectors we are a little too trusting, and there will always be snakes out there trying to make a 'quick-buck' from the honest enthusiast.

Just be careful

[ICHIBAN 一番]

I have done 2 great deals on this forum, its always good to check refs and use pay pal as you would an e bay auction :-)

[Guest]

I'm with Kev on this - too many "errors" or variants" out there. not to list any listings but there is a certain seller on EBAY LINK NOT ALLOWED that has constant relistings of "error" loose hulk hogans and IRS, now i don't know if they are legit or not but the fact that they have been relisted every week for the past year makes me think twice...

In terms off buying from members of the board (sounds like some high powered business doesn't it!?) i would only buy off someone who has a good interaction with the board i.e doesn't just post 1 day and sell the next or just posts to advertise items for sale, for instance Judge, Adam74, Kev85hasbro and hasbromaster would all get my money ouside of ebay, no questions asked

[kev85hasbro]

I do believe there is 1 or 2 varients, but i don't believe there is so many. I think its sun fade with most occasions. But thats my personal view.

glad to see everyone involved on the board and kinda taking note.

I seen a TV programme a while back about a con man who mad thousands from copying bits of pottery and selling it on to dealers, The way they found out it was fake, was when one of the pots got dropped. It shown the custom job he added on. and his custom skills were fantastic.

A artist creates... A genius steals

[hasbrocustomsdude]

This is a great post, there seem to be hundreds of hasbro variants out there these days, in terms of sun damage, logos rubbed off, no mustaches, no accessories when moc. The sun damaged ones for a start really dont interest me, i have hundreds here that look different eg hogans with bright yellow trunks, tatankas with wierd skin tones, various figures with white heads. but the only conclusion i can make of them is that they were poorly looked after and probably displayed on a window or around alot of smoke. In terms of carded figures if you can see a slight tear or anything that looks like it could have been tampered with then avoid. i keep seeing people on here buying moc figures where you can see the liitle snages where the card has been opened to either remove or alter something, and i just cant bring myself to burst their bubble as they are parting with stupid amounts of money for it. in terms of these types of figures and unknown mailaways etc, id only buy if i found them for less than £5 badly listed on ebay theres no way id risk parting with good cash for a gamble.

The worrying thing is that there are still a lot of hasbro collectors out there that are not members of this board and dont even know about it and there are kids parting with their parents money starting hasbro collections and buying whatever they can see.

i must admit it really annoys me when i get complaints for the customs i sell with people claiming 'this said hasbro and its not its a fake its just been painted on' but i suppose if you cant grasp the english language you shouldnt buy from a site that is english

[familyguy84]

I would also be vary wary of the so called Hasbro test-shots. I played about with some acetone and it isn't hard to remove all the paint from a figure and leave them looking like a test shot in the colour the base plastic is.

Now i don't know much about the production process of these figures but I don't imagine if you were going to make a test/shot prototype they would be made from the exact same base colour plastic as the standard release would be. This is why I would only buy the multi-coloured ones which have clearly been created as a test shot.

[tibbo]

I am a little confused as to why a few threads on this forum have suddenly changed to say:
"This message has been moved to Evidence Room by Jack Specific."

Has something dodgy been going on that we should know about?

Great thread once again Kev
We should definately all be looking out for each other where possible.

[kev85hasbro]

Nothing has happened Tibbo, just recently alot of rare stuff has appeared on the market all of a sudden. From warrior prototypes to razor without a mustache and many other rare items. I'm not saying the mentioned figures are fakes or other rare figures are fakes....

When you look at it, we the figure collectors are vunerable to dealers. The thread is basically a refresher to us collectors to remind us of the scammers out there.