My First FAKE!
Before I begin this story, let me say that I have had NUMEROUS people contact me about my fake balloon chaser and that what I have learned has come from them as well as myself. So I want to thank all of those individuals that have been involved in this over the past 24 hours. I am NOT trying to steal anyone’s thunder or jeopardize anyone in posting this article. I feel that this is a serious enough problem that the sooner this information gets out the better it is for every collector out there. It’s been a WILD 24 hours so here goes!
Any Other Day
Yesterday started like any other day. I woke up went for my 2 mile run, came home went through my usual routine. I took my son to basketball camp and then later in the day around lunch time I decided to post my pictures of my GREAT TRADE! After I posted the picture almost immediately I was contacted by someone that said they could tell by my picture that my balloon chaser was a fake. Well of course like any other collector I thought this guy is crazy, I have never heard about fake vinyls before. Scrappers, YES, but a fake vinylmation, unbelievable. So you tell me, can you tell that it’s fake.
The Saga Continues
So as the day went on, several messages, phone conversations, e-mails, looking at many balloon chasers, yes I am still seeing red for more than one reason, I have come to the conclusion that I have my FIRST ever fake vinylmation. So how can you tell that this is a fake, I will tell you what I was told and some things I noticed for myself. The first thing that I noticed is on the front of the vinyl is the DL castle. I had another member of these forums, Travis D, send me some close up pics of his chaser. I noticed on this that there were flags flying at the top of the castle, three to be exact. But if you look at the picture below you will notice that you don’t see the distinct triangle shapes of the flags, just black blobs.
This next thing was brought to my attention by several people. If you take the head off of the vinylmation, any vinylmation for that matter, inside of the head is a number, well on some it is a letter. Believe me I was popping heads off all night. I know what you are thinking, taking the heads off of rare vinyls, but yep I did it and I also checked some Park 3′s and Park 4′s. So here are two pics, on the left is the FAKE and on the right is my Park 1 Figment. Notice that the Figment has a number 1 inside the head. I believe the REAL balloon chaser has a #2.
Now this next thing is something I discovered after looking at close up pictures of a vinyl sent to me and I can’t zoom in close enough on my fake to show you so I will describe as best as I can. On the back of the vinyl inside the Walt Disney World logo, inside the D is a mickey mouse shape and inside that shape there are little squares. There are 4 on the top row and 4 on the bottom row. Here is a pic of the real thing.
Now on the FAKE their are 5 or 6 squares in each row, I wish I could get a pic of it but my camera won’t zoom in as well. There are other ways that you can tell it is FAKE but I won’t go into all of them as these are some of the biggies. I also noticed that when I pulled the head and arms off they almost came off too EASY. As a custom artist I spend A LOT of time pulling the heads and arms off of CYO’s and sometimes they can be downright impossible to get off. Well this one came off really easy.
Fake Cards Too!
I know news broke a while back about fake Park 1 cards on ebay so this is actually not new news, but in case you missed it. The card that my balloon chaser came with is a fake as well. There are a couple of ways to tell it is fake but the easiest one to see and recognize has to do with the disney copyright logo at the bottom of the card. If you look at the logo at the bottom notice on the balloon chaser card how it is away from the edge of the card, then if you look at the figment card you notice that it is much closer to the edge. I looked at all my Park 1 cards and they are all the same, in fact I looked at ALL of my Park cards and they are all the same. The copyright disney is much closer to the edge of the card.
Check the Serial Number Right?
I know in the past people have used the serial number to validate their vinyls. Well let me tell you whoever is doing this has gotten so good that the serial number, artist signature, the art of disney parks logo is all there, check out the picture.
What Does This All Mean?
I can say that I am very disturbed by all of this. Who would have thought that someone or a factory somewhere was able to make fake vinyls. I think that if this is not stopped this is going to RUIN this hobby. People will be terrified to buy or trade for high end vinyls because they don’t know if it is real or not. It happened with pins and now it is starting with vinyls. I hope Disney pays attention to this and gets the wheels in motion to stop it. All I know is from now on if you are trading or buying you better POP the head off of that baby to see if it’s real!
So Now What?
I contacted the person that I made the trade with. I am not accusing him of anything, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. He was very understanding and apologized to me for having this happen to me. He has already refunded the money that I had sent him and he is sending back my vinyls that were involved in the trade. So in no way do I want to assume guilt on him or have anyone else do so, with that said please do not send me any messages asking for the identity of the trader.
I am so sorry you had to go through this Crazy
Well it was definitely a learning experience and I hope no one else ever has to go through this either. BUYER BEWARE!
That it is – at least you were able to trade back – sucks, but at least you didnt lose $600+
This is such a worrying issue…
The big high end vinyls are worth so much its easy to see why this problem has arisen…with these park 1′s at silly prices, i can easily see this spread onto variants and other expensive chasers since there is so much money involved..
This has to be looked at and sorted out, this is much worse than scrappers… this is fake goods and it could kill vinylmation…the top prices for these vinyls could plumit if this problem isn’t dealt with.
I agree with you 100%. Everyone thought the new mold was going to KILL the hobby, this is much worse and if it gets out of hand, it could hurt the hobby beyond repair.
That’s crazy. There’s no way it’s hand painted..but I can’t believe someone was actually able to reproduce that so accurately by machine. I know they obviously did somehow but it’s still so unbelievable.
No it’s not hand painted, made by a machine but it is scary how close it is to the real thing.
Does it look like it could be airbrushed?
It doesn’t look like it was airbrushed, it was clearly made in a factory somewhere, not someone sitting at their kitchen table creating this.
And of note: I think the number inside the head only applies to old mould vinyls. I popped the heads off some of my new ones (specifically ones direct from Disney) and none had numbers/letters inside. My old moulds did. Please correct me if I’m wrong, collectors!
I just checked my lion king ones and they do have the number inside the head, I checked my windy city one from Chicago and it does not. So maybe it just depends on the series.
wow thank you SO MUCH for this incredibly useful post. this should be a sticky on all vinylmation forums. wow. i’m going to go home tonight and pop all the heads off the rare vinyls I traded for. seriously, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
My AiW has letter, my A2 has a number.
I noticed on mine too that some have letters in the head and others have numbers.
Not even sure what to say… Before last night I had no idea that these were even out there. Even possible. The amount of work and money that must go into producing one of these “Balloon Chasers” seems to be higher than the amount that you could sell one for. And by looking at eBay there are very few Balloon chasers listed. So in reality how many of these could have been made? I am a bit disturbed buy this. The numbers do not seem to add up in my mind. These are not hand painted items. Weird on soo many levels. Was this done for pure evil and not profit?
I am in bit of disagreement. I do not think that this will kill the hobby. Many healthy hobbies have and are currently surviving counterfits. The health of the hobby relies upon the superiority of the product line. (That may be an issue, but I digress).
Copycats are inevitable.And the grails are always the ones hit. Just too bad that VMs time has come.
Buyer beware – thanks for the post. This needs to be known
For the record – in the world of VM there is no bigger story than this!!!
Is it possible that this was an early prototype or something like that? Or manybe even a “scrapper” ?
But if it was a scrapper wouldn’t it still have the number inside the head? And there are just too many differences I think for it to be a scrapper. Xero I will s*** if it turns out to be a prototype but I know that others have seen some similar to this so I don’t think that is case.
This counterfit still does not make any sense to me. But I guess that it seems like the en vouge explaination.
There are so many FAKES and SCRAPPERS… I mean everywhere!!!! It started from HK and China, now there are many in US. I start notice more and more fake and scrapper VM on ebay, last year after I bought my Urban 1 chaser and Park 1 Figmouse, I found out those 2 were all fake… if is scrapper those still worth something but fake…. $0… seller was from CA and FL… I tried contact them, they both told me it is real however when I take pictures and show them real VM next to the fake one, they start getting angry and blocked me. On the urban 1 chaser, color was way darker. and on fake park 1 Figmouse, eyes were bigger and Figment letters it shirt, all straight. We all know disney not going to do NOTHING about it, however we as collectors should really do something. We need start take action…. and take down those scrapper sellers will be our first step on crack down fake VM makers
Lazy Disney,
Can you please share your photos of your fakes with us. Pictures of my fake P1 Kermit are posted on Crazy4vinyls original Mailday Thread.
And please consider sharing the ebayer’s screen names. I have seen the old scrapper post in the forums, but I think it’s time to revamp it.
That’s insane! I don’t believe we will be in parks popping off heads any time soon, but what’s a fella to do? how would we know unless we carried the OFFICIAL pictures with a detailed description at all times. And now that the fakers know we know, it’s just going to get harder to tell the difference.
WOW…rocked me to my core.
For the record – in the world of VM there is no bigger story than this!!!
I agree with who ever wrote that
“in the world of VM there is no bigger story than this!!!”
Some really smart guy wrote that
I have heard of near accurate fake vinyls in the past but almost to perfection is just impressive. I have to agree this isn’t someone hand painting them on their table, these have to come from some factory. Which is why I believe this could likely be a prototype IMO, yet I must admit the card is what’s throwing me off – that looks handmade from a printer.
Another thing. *deep breath* Iwouldn’tmindbuyingthisoneevenifitwas$50butandONLYbutbecauseitwillbethecheaperalternativetogettingtherealthingwhichIcan’taffordnoworever *whew*
Your not the first person to mention that it could be a prototype but what convinces me that it’s not is that there are OTHERS just like this one out their floating around, so I still think these are FAKES and multiples have been made.
WOW! I’m at a loss for words..So sorry this happened to you…Cant say i’m surprised with the rediculous prices out there on some of the early vinyls. It was bound to happen i guess.
Just as a heads up I have a scrapper copenhagan (I knew there was no way I could get a real one), and it does have a number inside the head
Well I think there is a difference between scrappers and fake vinyls. The scrappers came from the factory but were thrown out for one reason or another. The fake vinyls are not being made by disney.
I wish Disney would put out some kind of statement about this, because a number of my Urban 3′s don’t have numbers or letters in the head or on the arms, and I know I blind boxed most of these myself!!!!
Please don’t take the number/letter thing so seriously, I have found and others too that some vinyls do not have numbers/letter in the head. My HAL mickey has nothing in the head and others also don’t have any. My point of mentioning in the article about the number is with the balloon chaser I have had 3 other people check theirs and all of the balloon chaser had a #2 in the head of it. Some others have checked their Park 1 Kermits and have found that some of those have a #1 in the head while others have a #2.
Yeah, this really kills my dream of going back and collecting Park 1′s over the course of the next year. My oldest son got a Moons & Stars out of a trader box at EPCOT a couple of years ago, and unfortunately, it sounds like that will be our only Park 1.
It would be interesting to see the exact weight, as precise as possible, to see if the fake was made of the exact mixture of vinyl that the real vinyls are made from. Seems it would be difficult to get a proprietary mix of the raw materials to match up unless it was made at one of the original factories. Also, the idea of what does Disney do with the original molds that are used in the manufacture of the vinylmations. Are they destroyed, sent back to Disney, recycled? Lot’s of questions for sure.
I’m trying to buy the variant of Alice in Wonderland series on ebay, the pink Hedgehog, but it’s confusing the differences between them. I just know the obvious, is pink, but on ebay I see 4 very different shades of color and I mean it. Please, post some pictures of the real one to see it. Thank you!
Anyone know if this is real or fake?
http://tinypic.com/r/2yw72wn/6
I have one that I bought from the official store when I was traveling (airport Disney store in Hong Kong where it was first released). The one I have is indeed authentic, but the box says Hong Kong Disneyland along with the official Disney holographic sticker. So I am not sure how they would compare, to the ones in the U.S look like…
Could anyone let me know if this is real or fake?