Spotting Fake Warhammer


Fake models are becoming more common.

This is not a guide showing where to get fakes or how to make them,  only spot them.

The main problem with fakes is when you are sold them as legitimate and you pay the value of the legitimate version, not the recast. This can be 4-5 times more if they are rare items or 2-3 times for forgeworld/gw items.

This guide to spotting fakes is not fool proof, just because a model ticks one thing on the lists does not mean it is always a fake, fakes tend to tick 2 or 3 things at a time.

METAL

Metal fakes can be almost impossible to spot if a good recaster made them. Some fast ways of spotting a poor fake:

  1. If they used a professional method of casting and not silicone rubber, then spotting a recast is even harder.
  2. Follow the cast line around the model. Is it uniform, constant, and straight? GW-made models usually only have one cast line, and it is straight and clean all the way around the model, including the base tab.
  3. Look for two cast lines in the metal. If the recaster is lazy, there will be two. This is because his mold has copied the original cast line, and there will be a new one made by the recaster's mold.
  4. Look for air bubbles in areas such as between legs, armpits, and detail. 
  5. Find a good picture of the original, or even better, have a legit model and compare the detail. You are looking for loss and missing detail in any area.
  6. Look at the legs and arms, particularly for thin casts, warped, or misshaped areas.
  7. Look at the base tab. Is it plain or different from what it should be?
  8. Is the metal softer? Scrape the base tab or bottom of the feet to check this.


RESIN

Resin fakes are much easier to spot as the recasters don’t have access to Forge World resin. It will help if you have Forge World stuff already, but they can still be spotted if you don’t.

  1. Examine the colour of the resin. Does it match pictures of the item? Some older items may have a yellowish tint, not grey.
  2. Check the resin's finish: is it matte or reflective? Fakes tend to be very reflective/shiny.
  3. Pick up the model. Is its density similar to other Forge World products, and does it feel the same? I have found recasts to be much lighter than the Forgeworld original.
  4. Check for two or more cast lines in the resin. If the recaster is lazy, there will be two.
  5. Look for air bubbles in areas such as between legs, armpits, and details.
  6. Find a good picture of the original and compare the details. Look for any loss or missing elements.
  7. Examine the legs and arms, particularly for thin casts, warped, or misshaped areas.
  8. Verify if the model is indeed resin and not a plastic stand-in.
  9. Ensure the resin texture is correct; Forge World resin is smooth and non-porous.
  10. Check if it's on the original Forge World or Finecast sprues, or if it's attached to homemade sprues.
  11. Determine if the model is supposed to be made from plastic. Quite a lot of Forge World kits come as part plastic, part resin models. For example, the Legion Glaive is based on a Baneblade, and you get several Baneblade sprues used to make up the internal lower part of the tank. Are the parts that should be plastic made from resin?
  12. Look for edges on the models not lining up (sometimes Forge World may overlook this in quality checks).
  13. does the model have clear canopies? are they cast in clear/grey resin instead of plastic?

There is not much you can do before you buy, but you can always initiate an eBay or PayPal case.

However, you can take precautions:

    1. Examine the seller’s location. Be very cautious if the seller is from Russia, China, Singapore, or Brazil. (However, don't assume all sellers here are trying to rip you off; there will be honest gamers too.)
    2. Examine a seller’s history; large numbers of the same model are a warning. Check the seller’s history. If it is private and they sell the same models every week, this is also a warning sign.
    3. Look at the item: is it a set of 10? When GW sold them, was it a set of 10 different models, or were they sold in sets of 5, each being different?
    4. If the seller's item is a set of 10, 20, or more, but there are only 3 varieties of models instead of 5 or 10, that is another indicator. Be cautious of models that are rotated or flipped.
    5. Check for a constant sale of large sets with no original packaging.
    6. Are all items sold primed but never painted?

Examples
Russian seller on eBay selling resin casts of plastic items

Resin recast of plastic item

recast, look at base tab and loss of detail v original

Recast, look at base tab

A recast in shiny metal look at base tab and loss of detail on front leg and ball
Russian seller on eBay

 look at the base tab there is a corner of flash were it is poured and there is missing text on the tab
Original copy


 look at the base tabs there is a corner of flash were it is poured and is missing text on tabs



look at the base tabs there is a corner of flash were it is poured and there is poorly detailed text on tabs


Fake resin casts
Gw plastic cannopy
 Another thing to watch out for is with Vehicle recasts, clear canopies are cast in resin not plastic as seen above


 Example of incorrect spruces


 Example of the edge not lining up 


 Space hulk terminators made in resin instead of red plastic, note the resin chutes on the bases as well, and parts.

15 comments:

  1. Fakes, when painted up, still look great! WHO CARES?! IT'S WAAAAAAAAY CHEAPER ANYWAY! :P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ash, classic victimless crime mentality. May YOUR hobby ventures be undercut and undersold. Yeah, a bit po'd, entitlement is a nasty little hobby remaster buyers have stuck up their rears.

      Delete
    2. Won't someone please think of poor little games workshop??

      Delete
  2. Indeed they can look good. But some people do care if they get conned out of alot of money and some recasts are really poor and not worth painting.

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  3. id rather have the real thing then a shoddy recast :) your doing a good thing here and helping people out who don't know the difference id don't like seeing people being scammed into buying a fake. to be honest there is some good fakes out there and some of your pictures are hard to spot them without help, your doing a good job here babe xxx ;)

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  4. yeah hi. I just wanted to say that you really dont need to be cautious abt the models from singapore. Partially is because singapores wargaming community is so small, and people will not go through the trouble of making casts and selling, even less so if they are gonna sell online. Its too much of a hassle for singaporeans. ot only that, getting your hands on the materials to cast in singapore is a ridiculous nuisance as it largely controlled by the customs department here in singapore and lots of resins and casting latexes are not allowed into singapore.

    Just wanna say. So if you buy anything from singapore. Chances are that it will be real. Just saying.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello
      Thank you for your comment. While yes there will be honest gamers there and I hope you don’t think imp labelling everyone there as fraudulent thieves I am not same goes for any country i named. ill add a litle note to the page

      While you may not have come across fakes there, I have, 3/6 models that I have had from Singapore were fake. While the quality was pretty good and would pass to most people they were fake. They clearly had two cast lines around the entire model and the base tabs were wrong.

      However a 50% hit/miss rate is much better than that of say Russia. All the models I got from there were fake, kind of asked for it but knowing PayPal will cover you it didn’t really matter.

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  5. Hi
    iv just started looking for limited stuff and hopefully i have bought the real deal. I wouldnt have a problem buying fakes if i knew that they where fake when i was buying them. Its the fraud of listing recasts and charging full price that annoys me. If people said hey this models cool but its a recast want a cheap copy, id buy it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've been playing and collecting since the early 1990's, and I have gotten more than a few metal models from GW (e.g. in blister packs from a reputable /chapter approved retailer) that had flawed casts or that shiny look to the metal.

    Of course the base tab was never blank, but sometimes the base tab and the slim areas could have wasting and still be legitimate GW miniatures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I collected in the late 80s and I can tell you some tabs then were blank.I bought all my figures from GW in Birmingham.So they should not be fake

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  7. I have been buying Citadel miniatures since the late 80s and I agree that quite often original miniatures had all sorts of flaws. In very few cases they had obvious miscasts. I agree with the original post about the second cast line. I have never seen that one. Same story for the tab, although I seriously mistreat the tabs of my miniatures. When I was younger I used to cut a good part of the tab out because they would not fit easily in the plastic bases.

    Especially for older miniatures it is almost impossible to find them in the original blister. I have always bought a lot of them and to save space at home I tend to take them out of the original box and store them in a more compact way.

    About the resin it might be easier to spot the difference from original FW and recast. The color is not an indicator. I buy miniatures directly from Forgeworld.co.uk and they often come in sightly different shades of grey. Some items (my experience is with the battlefleet gothic ships and with the vehicle add-on parts) used to be cast in cream colored resin, kind of white/yellowish color.

    All considered it is extremely difficult to be 100% sure that a miniature is a recast unless it is really bad quality. Even more difficult if you try to buy a limited edition or even worse an unreleased miniature.

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  8. Any Tips on what you should do if you think you got a fake? Like should you try and contact GW or FW?

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  9. Well all that is great, but gw models mostly overpriced as hell. Some china sellers even warn you today if they sell a recast, and, by the way, last fake maulerfiend that i bought was just perfect, but with the half price of original. I always say one thing and get banned everywhere - "an army for a game should not have a price of a real car" =)

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  10. I've seen sealed GW blisters with double mold lines on the minis; they are not definitive proof. The minis GW sells are not directly cast from the original green - there is at least one extra step of duplication.

    ReplyDelete