"Battletech & WH40K bootlegs on Ebay?" Topic

I have come across certain sales claiming authentic Battletech miniatures of the "unseen" battlemechs. I can tell they are obvious fakes as I used to buy the originals when I was a kid in the 1980s. have other people gotten hold of the original molds and are now making bootlegs? Some of these look like crap and are of poor quality.
Has anyone encountered this on Ebay?
Should I report this on Ebay?

Here is an example: auction

A while back I was looking for the old Adeptus Mechanicus figures by GW. I found a seller out of Hong Kong Claiming these to be authentic, but the detail was poor and they looked like crap. I cant find him but if something like this comes up again should I report this?

It has been happening for years. Most of the people who are serious about battletech miniatures already know about the copies. You can contact IWM but I don't know if they will do anything about it.

There was a Hong Kong seller of Forge World models that their models were cleaner then the stuff that Forge World sells.

I don't know. If you look through all of his auctions he has some of them still in the old blisters, like this one:

auction

I'm not sure that they are bootlegs, some of them are painted, some look pretty old. It seems odd that someone bootlegging them would have gone to the trouble to putty bases in and stuff like that. It might just be someone with a large collection getting out of it.

There are a few mechs in there that I had and I'm not sure that casting on mine is any better than those.

I think if you find that caster in hong kong selling multiples of rare minis then you have more of a reason to report him. At least let a manufacturer know when you suspect their stuff is being ripped off.

I don't think the auction in the first post is a fake. I think your memory of what you bought 25+ years ago may not be a realizable indicator.

It looks authentic to me too. I have four of these, two still unmade, and if that is a repro it is a very fine repro indeed. On balance I think an old original is more likely.

No point in reporting it to IWM even if they are bootlegs. IWM have no rights regarding the old Unseen mechs, they never made them.

They certainly look like the real thing to me, wish I had the money to get hold of them…

Mick

There certainly are a lot of bootlegs of Battletech minis out there. I unknowingly bought a bunch, and didn't realize it until I was cleaning up a pair of identical pieces (I buy mechs in pairs, and noticed the same cross-hatching done on a glue area on both. That's what really tipped my hand…

Damon.

Wow, I didn't realize that I owned so many Unseen mechs. I must have 30+ of these.

That's interesting.

Thanks,

John

Thank you for your answers, except for AgustinSantos, I do have a good memory of what the originals looked like, as I still have some unpainted, thank you verry much.

There is no reason for reporting since no miniature company has no claim to the unseen mechs. If the quality is good It does not matter if it is an original or fake, and I will be helping someone keep honing their craft for casting.

I guess for the games workshop figures, they are not losing money on it. I guess it comes down to buyer beware in these cases. thanks again people :-) cheers.

Hey, not my fault you couldn't recognize the real thing and started asking if you should start reporting people for things they didn't do.

I don't know where this guy has managed to find and sell a few thousand battlemechs over the past several years, but they don't look a bit like the pictures of the recasts we've seen pop up over the years.