Spotting a counterfeit Figma Saber Lily
Autor: Kamugin | Publicado: 2009-08-24T11:08:00-03:00

Since this post may interest many other people around the world besides Portuguese speaking ones, I'm writing it in English, so forgive any mistakes that appears.On my trip to São Paulo city last month I spotted a counterfeit figma Saber Lily being sold in a store by R$200,00 (about 109USD), the price of an original one, but I couldn't take pictures of it unfortunately. Later I added this information to the MyFigureCollection database and because of my post, Lenneth pointed out that many people there (70 until that moment) declared that they have the figma Saber Lily, too many owners for an exclusive and expensive figure.Some days later, I received an e-mail from a Brazilian member of MyFigureCollection, Jean Fred Higa (jfhiga), asking for my help to determine if a Saber Lily that he purchased via eBay were counterfeit. I told him to compare the figure he received with the pictures of foo-bar-baz Saber Lily review. Unhappily for Jean his Lily were a fake and he e-mailed me a lot of pictures of it. That was when I got the idea of writing a post to help people to spot couterfeit figmas Saber Lily.Generally a strong evidence that a figure being sold at eBay is a fake one is its price, if it is far below the original price, is almost certainly that the figure is a counterfeit. But with figma Saber Lily dishonest sellers are asking a high price for it. Jean paid 75USD, plus shipping, and the seller had 100% positive feedback. Perhaps the seller didn't know that the figure was a counterfeit, but got I my doubts. So the cheat is even worse when you paid a high price for a knock off.Saber is a very popular character among otakus and for that reason she is very popular with figurine fakers too. To get a precise idea of how serious this is, the Saber Lily Distant Avalon by GSC wasn't released yet and there is knock offs being sold at eBay already! I'm not telling you to avoid eBay when purchasing figures, actually eBay is a great place to purchase figures, but some attention is required to avoid traps. There is even a guide to help people when purchasing figures at eBay.I've purchased many of my figures at eBay and only in three occasions I purchased a counterfeit. I got my money back in all of that occasions. The guidelines that I rely on are: always check seller's feedback before purchase (avoid if it is below 99,5%), avoid figures much cheaper than it's original price, check seller's other product listings to see if there is an obvious fake among them, check carefully the item pictures and... if still there is a doubt, ask the seller directly if the item is counterfeit or not! The last advice: always pay via PayPal, it refunds you if you get cheated.Here are Jean's pictures of the counterfeit figma Saber Lily:Only one protective plastic sheet wrappers the figure. (see my own pictures at the end of the post for comparison)Many rough spots are fair visible everywere.The two different color tones on the halves of her hair screams that this is a fake.What crap is this?!Her eyes paint seems to be peeling off.Her fringe looks real bad.Weak joints.Here you can see that some of the writings  below her base are in Japanese, the original figma base don't have any Japanese writings. (see my own pictures at the end of the post for comparison)And one piece of her skirt already came off!I took some pictures of my own Saber Lily for comparison:This is the set you should receive when purchasing it if the seller hasn't removed the videogame:There is many protective PET frames and plastic bags inside the box to protect the figure.Even the original figma has some rough spots if you look it close to your eyes or under a magnifying glass but they are far less severe than the ones on the fake.The scriptings under the base:Here she is side by side with a juice can for size comparison, figmas are very small figurines.I couldn't refrain myself to take some pictures more because she is such a pretty girl =)Saber warns:"I'll cut off your hands thou bloody fakers!!"Our many thanks to Jean Fred Higa (jfhiga) for taking the pictures of the fake figma Saber Lily and letting me to use them here.