"Is this seller a recaster? " Topic

What do you think? And if he is, how can you tell? auction

It would appear to be.One of the tell-tale signs for me is the pitting on the casting that comes from the metal not being hot enough, long enough to flow into the mold cavity. It's really obvious of the Silent Death fighters he's calling BFG proxy. Those fighters were originally cast by RAFM and I'd never seen that occur on any of their work.

Just my opinion.

If they're genuine, the prices seem too good to be true.

The detail on the witch hunters seems really poor.

I am with FABET01---I have a large collection of Silent Death and the auction minis are just not right

Surface pitting
Small imperfections that are repeated on all 4 minis

A personal red flag to me is when a seller has a group of multiple "same" minis and there are no alternate views--in this case with the poor surface finish of the top of the ships---I want a clear view of the flight peg area

Man O War has been OOP for decades now. Also I believe all the ships were originally done in plastic, not metal.

No a lot of Man O war stuff was metal (but with plastic masts) his look very shiny for metal miniatures that have been OOP for 20 years….

I've reported multiple recasters to ebay before with no results I can see.

I reported a recaster to a famous manufacturer once and they told me to mind my own business.

Another red flag, no bases, no packaging, no plastic parts.

Any sense of shrinkage? Recasts are usually smaller too.

Yes: the silent death ships have to be recasts.

I'm quite surprised at that as well.

If you look at his feedback , hes selling the same things over and over again. He clearly either has the larges mountain of old GWs lead figures in the world or hes a recaster.

From looking at the miniatures I would say yes.

But since GW decided to stop making these miniatures nearly 20 years ago you really do not have many choices.

GW could see a petty good profit if they put out Man-O-War again.

Though they would have to keep the prices of the ships down.

Thing is… 'Shiny' is no indication of a recast.

If I was to put my 1980s Citadel collection up for sale, Im guessing many here would assume its recast as it has 'shiny' metals. Neither is quantity. I bought a huge collection of unpainted Man O War a few years ago… So it does happen and Im sat on around 1200 unpainted 1980s Citadel figures (for when Im bored in retirement! ;))

Ive bought still blistered Citadel packs in the last year and many are very shiny. Indeed anything from 85-86 onwards could be shiny and bright as the metal content varied. As for no bases… Well I've bought hundreds of Citadel figures in the last few years and I don't think any of the second hand figures I have bought have come with plastic bases or plastic shields… Again, that's no indicator Im afraid.

No idea on this seller, as the only way to really tell would be to buy some and compare directly with originals, but even that is fraught given the sometimes variable quality control of GW at times in its past… and I don't know the more recent figures from 40K to judge them fairly from those pictures.

So they could be… and they might not be. Unless you buy some and directly compare to an original, or unless its heavily miscast or has multiple moulding lines (still no guarantee of a recast either but an indicator that rings alarm bells), or perhaps a blank tab (again not a guarantee as some Citadel sculpts had blank tabs), its very difficult to say for sure from a picture that old Citadel miniatures from the 1980s period are recast.

As for Ebay and recasters… They don't seem to bother. There is a seller on Ebay selling recast AB figures in resin. Despite many people sending complaints to Ebay (I've sent one everytime he lists a recast product) and even links to the AB figure site to show the originals in metals, Ebay have yet to do anything…

Why would they if he sells stuff and pays his fees.

I have been skeptical of Eastern European sellers of OOP Warhammer figures, loose without bases, always sold "primed" and seemingly less crisp on details. That could be unfair, but the odds are long they suddenly have stocks of rarel OOP figures with odd traits.

Ebay doesn't care, the original manufacturers don't care… so why should you? If you want it, buy it. Otherwise, just pay more for "the real thing" or whatever.

Talk about blatant: auction

@Jeeves--I am guessing Steel Legion aren't produced in plastic? I am not a 40k guy but that listing seems odd.

Never as far as I know.

The imperfections on all of the Silent Death recasts are substantial, and out them as poorly-executed copies of our products.

I've reported the matter to EBay, so now the ball is in their court.

Buyer beware! The quality of these counterfeit copies is well below what RAFM produces for our customers.

Further, a friendly reminder, we're having a 20% off sale until midnight May 31! So if you buy from us, you get a good price, AND you get quality unlike this ne'er-do-well pi-RAT of a recaster!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
silent-death.mx

the original manufacturers don't care

Um, yes we do, actually.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
silent-death.mx

Looks like he's recasting at least one SFB model as well… I reached out to ADB and gave them a heads up on this…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
silent-death.mx

This might be a tough one for the mini. companies to win. If he is doing recasting, how do you actually prove it?

The seller has a 99% positive feedback rating, so whoever is buying from him is happy enough with the quality of the casts, be they genuine or counterfeit. If there was serious issues with the casting quality customers would be red-flagging this I would think with negative feedback, no?

Just seems like a VERY hard to thing to prove.
Particularly with secondary market miniatures and parts/components who's original date of manufacture was years and sometimes decades ago (the company's original manufacture vs. a counterfeit I mean).

One other note is a response to what was said above about the lack of bases and plastic components with the metal minis. That proves absolutely nothing. There are hundreds of second-hand market mini. sellers on Ebay that sell metal and plastic bits from vintage kits, and hundreds more who sell vintage metal minis. without bases.

One other thing, in reference to the notion that because he's got a bunch of the same item he's selling over and over again he might be recasting. Perhaps he is, but again that to me also proves nothing.

There are Ebay sellers who have stocks of literally hundreds of old bits from various GW kits, be they plastic or metal. There is an Ebay seller who sells a lot of old Warmaster, they've got a huge stock, both in blisters and loose.

People don't realize how much of this stuff was actually in circulation in the world when it was being sold retail by GW over the course of three+ decades. The fact that you can still readily get hundreds of different vintage GW models still in their original blister bubbles or shrinkwrap, models and boxed sets that are 15, 20 years old even that have never been opened.

Right now if I wanted to, I could go on Ebay and literally buy an entire GW Warhammer army and get every bit of it still new in the blister or still in shrinkwrap.

I just took a quick look at about six pages of his Ebay customer feedback. There is not ONE complaint about problems with the casts. One thing I know about gamers is that they watch for the quality in used miniatures above all else. Metal or resin, the first thing they will raise a protest about is a poor cast or some other problem. There is not a single complaint, warning, or negative comment from any of his customers. How is that possible?

So either the defects and pitting that people are seeing in his photos are being exaggerated by us because it's that psychological thing of "finding what your eye wants to see".

Or could it simply be that he's selling genuine vintage metal models and that the ones that DO appear to have some defects or pitting occurred when the ORIGINAL manufacturer cast them?

Just saying…

@Baranovich,

I will speak only for Metal Express here: RAFM Miniatures is our exclusive contract caster, and having personally done business with RAFM Miniatures AND ICE starting back in the day stretching back to the 1980s, I can confirm that neither entity would have ever released such overtly execrable models. Period.

Since Dr. Greaves and I have been the principle partners in Metal Express, I can confirm that quality control matters to both RAFM Miniatures and ourselves, and we do not release such overtly poor quality product. Period.

Further to the point, the models are spun cast to ensure that they are fully and correctly rendered in the final product, and such overt casting flaws as are evident in the photos do not occur as a result.

The Silent Death knock-off models depicted in the photos have been hand cast. This is obvious due among other reasons to the compressed appearance of the Djinn models (seller is referring to them as models for "Battle Fleet Gothic Cetswayo"). They models also have clear gaps in the wing flaps, again, this is most likely due to the copies being hand cast rather than spun cast. You do not get this same outcome from the same models or any other for that matter cast by RAFM MIniatures and purchased through our webstore.

Ya see, @Baranovich, this is the whole point and purpose of spin casting, namely to enable the production of crisply rendered models with depth and precision to them that hand casting will not produce. Simply hand casting a mini places the caster at the mercy of gravity, plus it adds a host of other limitations as well, IIRC including the overtly obvious surface pitting evident in the photos when the caster is not using the best quality casting materials and methods.

This is not "finding what your eye wants to see." This is decades of firsthand experience with scale models, miniatures, quality control, and learning from experienced producers of professionally rendered miniatures in my case starting back in the mid 1970s. This is knowing our own product when we see it, and knowing a pirated copy when we see it.

One last thing, arguing that the seller's feedback rating somehow equates to the models not being counterfeit is asserting some seriously flawed logic, as is your use of Argumentum Ad Populam in your claim, "One thing I know about gamers is that they watch for the quality in used miniatures above all else."

Seriously, @Baranovich, our bottom line and I suspect that of ABD and GW is that if this seller relists these pirated items, they're a U.S. based seller and therefore subject to U.S. laws and a U.S. court. In our case unlike the Chinese company who pirated our Core Ships back in the 1990s, that puts this EBay seller within our legal reach, and we will act appropriately and promptly in defense of our IP. Period.

Oh, one last thing, the seller lists one of our models they copied as "Battlefleet Gothic proxy ships 6 lilth." Besides misspelling the proper name Lilith, the exceptionally poor quality of the models is obvious to me on a personal level, as besides the points I listed above, I am the original designer of the Lilith itself, which was a kitbash of the SD:TNM edition Seraph and the 1st edition Seraph models. I created the Lilith for Silent Death: Q'raj Void Protectorate back in 1999.

A parent knows their child, @Baronovich.

'Nuff said.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
silent-death.mx