Fake Baggie Evidence Thread

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edd_jedi

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Below are some opinions from Frank (owner of what is believed to be the only known genuine example) on Jeff's light blue Fetts - In summary only one known example was confirmed, then suddenly Jeff has multiples all with differently painted figures, different coloured blasters, and baggies with the text in different places which seems incredibly unlikely if they all came from the same source at the same time.

Frunkstar said:
Further to Marty's post & before I go on at any length I would first like to say that if these tro logo fett's were refused a grade regardless of if they were opened by AFA (which BTW if they were real would be a travesty IMO) & have been refused a grade for obvious tampering - having clear signs of being repainted then a full refund should be issued under Jeff's "no questions asked refunds policy" IMHO - my thinking - if they had been fine they would have graded & there would never have been any need for a refund simple as that.

It is worth noting that they differ in paint apps with one being a painted dart & the other unpainted even the paint colour of the yellow /mustard on the dart are, which to me would indicate they came from different batches, to me it also looks like at least one has touch ups to the belt, it is also worth nothing that the paint type used on the figures in the production process do not show up under a blacklight so even if it has been touched up at production due to bad take of the paint in the spray mask stage any further subsequent paint added would have not been viable under the black light as a different colour as the exact same paint type would have been used.

Below are examples I have on the baggie guide which till now I just took as being cool paint app variations, I will get to my point about all this further down to summarize after pointing out bit's on each so please bear with me.

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Painted dart (mustard) /dark belt / painted knee / dark blaster / font at roughly crotch height

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unpainted knee /unpainted dart (lighter lemon yellow) / lighter blue blaster / dark belt / font at shoulder height

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Unpainted Dart / painted knee / belt with dark in the middle but light brown on both legs to the belt / dark blaster / teat at knee height

So to summarize the above - these were all bought from the same place - Jeff, all 3 are different in terms of paint app's one has a different colour weapon & Marty's 2 are also different (paint app's & blasters) these were all offered for sale with mailer boxes which "quote by Jeff" came with them when I got them & offered up for sale with them so though maybe not stated as a tri fett mailer, the images would indicate so, can't remember if they were indeed listed as mailer or just with mailer boxes, though I am sure someone can can clear that point up for us, to me also quite an important issue is where the font placement is on them as well as the boxes being the incorrect size for any known & confirmed fett mailer be in kenner SW or ESB era or Palitoy as all know examples are identical in dimensions, the boxes offered with these are the same size as is associated with the Nien Nunb mailer.

Now my reasoning -

1. till these turned up I owned the only ever confirmed palitoy-a tri logo fett which I will post a photos of below as a reference, I got it off long time baggie collector Del Hooper who was just selling up & getting out of the hobby when I was coming in to it, so it's been about a long time, it has the light blue blaster.

2. If these all came from the same place I.E Jeff bought them in for onward sale, then surely with the sum in question there would be some record of the transaction & a name of the seller as he had a lot of these I count 5 above alone & I know of at last one more owned by someone I know also from Jeff, most likely a great deal more of them as well that I do not know of, it's a recent transaction so must be some paper trail?

3. why if they all came from the same place would they have so many differences??, surely if they were from a single run which I would expect they were (hypothetical) then would not the entire batch be of the same paint applications as well as variation I.E all painted knee + unpainted dart + dark belt + same colour weapon for example??.

4. If they did indeed all come from the same batch would the bags not have also come from the same batch?, if so would the font not have been roughly in the same place on all of them give or take a few MM's as it the norm with batch runs off machinery.

For the record I am not stating they are fakes, I am stating there are a great many "possible" red flags with a single batch of figures of the same type, which I find worrying as a collector of baggies.

If however (speculation) they had been made up recently by "someone" not saying Jeff himself directly or maybe even indirectly as I simple do not have all the answers I would wish, but that would certainly explain the vast variations, does this not strike anyone else as a little odd at bear minimum??.

I know there is by no means anything concrete or conclusive, but there are enough red flags for this to warrant full investigation IMO considering many of these changed hands at I think up to 750 quid a pop,so not small potatoes by anyone's standards.

This is my older example which as said till these showed up was the only one found in the past 20+ years -

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is also worthy of note that the oldest known example would seem to have a different top seal to any of these other examples from what I can tell from the photos alone.
 

edd_jedi

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This post suggests Jeff deliberately avoided sending baggies he knew were suspect to Frank for examination

andrewneo17 said:
I must start by qualifying I am a newly registered member of this forum though part of the initial investigation team. It has taken me a while to get on here due to work commitments and trying to get up to speed with the torrent of posts.
Kudos to Frank, Edd, Mike and some of the other guys for taking flak for calling it out as it is. There are many in the investigation group whom are passionate about baggies and don't stand to gain other than to see a clean up for the good of the hobby.

My dealings with Jeff started late last year when he listed a SW-a Han Solo and Lando on Ebay. I wrote to him offline to secure a deal for both, of which we now obviously know are fake.
Not long after I went on to buy another 3 baggies from Jeff, a ESB-c Yoda, ESB-f Han and a Pal k (or rotj-j) Tusken Raider. As my location is in Singapore, I requested Jeff to send them to Frank instead. He did for the Yoda and Han but funnily enough (at that point), he chose to send the Tusken Raider to me in Singapore instead which obviously cost him 3 times more. I remarked at that time to Frank why would somebody do that. That kicked off my suspicion and upon having the baggie in hand, conferred with Frank and we pretty much came to a consensus the TR was a fake as did the Sw-a Han and Lando (of which both these were sent directly to me as I paid for the international postage). On the other hand, sure enough the ESB-f Han and ESB-c that were sent to Frank were legit.

I will leave it to the group to make their own conclusions whether Jeff intended this all. I highly suspect he knows what he is doing, picking specific baggies to send to Frank and what not to, to avoid being called out.

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edd_jedi

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Link to Jeff's interview:

http://swtvrpodcast.podbean.com/e/microcast-a-baggie-report-part-one/

Richard_H said:
I'm going to put a transcript of comments from the podcast here for historical purposes. This may take a while (I've lots to do) so bear with me. It will just be the facts and not the waffle. Here's the first question I will tackle as it's the most damning at the moment.

Q. (58:25) I'm going to ask you a question that's specific about baggies with red text.......

Jeff - I've never sold a baggie with red text....I've sent pictures... I've still got them in my collection. I've never sold any.

Follow up Q. Ok, because Frank says that he's seen them listed on your ebay account even though you knew that they were not correct and he told you 6 months ago (edit - should be 6 months before hand) that they weren't correct. You're saying that's not true and they weren't on your ebay account?

Jeff - No. I haven't sold a red text baggie on my account. I can't remember... I've got 3 red text baggies....this was about 5, maybe 4 years ago and I bought them all. I said to Frank, "have you seen these before?" and he said "I think they're fake". And I said ok. I've still got them. I've still got them in a box. But I've not sold them on. Because.. you know. I'm a little bit dubious sometimes because Frank says sometimes that something may be fake or not legit then all of a sudden it pops up on his site, actually these are determined legit... I don't like taking them out their bag really because just in case that bag was legit..... somebody said I should destroy them just in case they got in the wrong hands, it's a good point.... I didn't think it that way.

Follow up Q. So, I'm going to clarify that because a couple of people have asked about the red text baggies... you're saying about 4-5 years ago you contacted Frank about these red text baggies... he said they're either fake or rebagged from another toy line.... and then he said 6 months after that date they were listed on the ebay account. You're saying no, that's not true.

Jeff - I can't remember ever selling these erm.. they're folded....their almost rolled, someone tapped them and then they've stamped MIHK over the top, and they've gone over the top of the cellotape as well, when you take the cellotape off the actual Hong Kong stamp is on the cellotape. There's (indeciperhable) on the bag first it's been taped over... I've never sold. Did anyone show me where I've sold that on ebay? I've never sold one on ebay as far as I can remember.

Follow up Q - that's a good point. If any of our listeners is aware or has any evidence at all of a red text baggie being sold on ebay we'd like to see the picture.

Jeff - I've never seen the red baggie being sold on ebay. I do know I have a red text made in macou (sp?) baggie which is on Frank's site there... and that's got red text on it and I asked Frank about that and he said that's genuine... (then goes into a description of baggie with O and U)... and I want to show Frank...I wouldn't know the value of that.. I put things a higher value to see if they sell, if they don't sell I drop it by £10 or £15. If they don't sell I take them off and put them back in the box. I just see what sort of interest there are on it. It's not that I need to sell them.

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Marty _Norfleet said:
I have new information from CAS here -

Hi Marty -

I received your Boba Fett figure and just examined it. Unfortunately I do have to agree with AFA on their outcome with this piece. It has had paint touch-up at some point in time both on the nose and the belt. It is tough to see with the naked eye but under an 800x microscope it is very clear. I also noticed and believe the rocket has been replaced on this one as well. There are small pry marks on the top of the rocket holder and with the Palitoy Fetts the rocket can be removed since they aren't sonic welded in like the US versions. I've attached a few pics from our scope, take a look at them and I think you'll see the touch-ups for yourself.

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Frank bought and returned this baggie to Jeff for being fake, it is listed in Frank's baggie guide as being questionable here (ROTJ-i at bottom)

http://starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15937&start=30

It was later resold, note the crease is exactly the same. It also has a blue Han Hoth/Luke Bespin blaster. Baggie weapon errors do happen but are not common.

kevlad said:
Hello Folks

Although i have had an account for several years this is my first post on the forum so i may not get it quite right. i am part of the investigation group i havent been able to respond until now due to an ongoing illness for the past few weeks and due to this haven't been as involved as i would like in the investigation group. I have had at least 30 baggies from Jeff over the past 4 years and agree that he has been very friendly and never refuses to refund when i have sent back baggies that were not right or were clearly 100% fake

Although i have purchased many genuine baggies mailers from Jeff i have however shared concerns with Frank over the past couple of years discussing certain baggies that i purchased from Jeff or have been offered by him that were either out n out Fake or were highly odd or suspisious. I Im not one to ramble so lets get down to the evidence i will provide this over several posts

Firstly The Solo baggie

I contacted Frank on 22/09/2015 with regards this Han baggie which he has on the guide as it remained unconfirmed.

i purchased it off ebay around 2014 but cant find it in the ebay purchases as i cant go back further than 2015 i am however looking through paypal records so cant confirm it came directly from Jeff but was purchased from ebay however the crease in the baggie is identical to the one in the guide in length angle etc also its such a dam unusual baggie unlike anything i have previously seen before the material is fairly crisp but very thin with no print it is clearly the same baggie Frank confirmed he had purchased and sent back to jeff for a refund previously

i sent the pictures of it to Frank at the time and his very words were "Let me guess, you bought it from Jeff?" pic of email attached

Frank confirmed he had previously he bought from Jeff and returned it as Frank stated I bought it, checked it & also asked Steve about it, sent it straight back for a refund as I can not confirm it & it does not conform to any other baggies types I have identified".

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momike said:
All these baggies are from Jeff's recent sales on eBay apart from the SW-D DSC baggie he sold to me directly, I'm going to try and break down traits that all these different baggies types have in common, i can't seem to find other examples like these anywhere online or in franks guide so would seem all roads lead back to jeff with these. like I said they all seem to share common trait's. Bare in mind the originals are different baggies from a different printing tool/factorys and a different era of production, some of the original Baggie type fonts differ slightly but look nothing like the ones jeff has been selling

Apart from the ESB-B (font is to warn) baggie I believe these baggies may well of originated from the same source

I'm going to show pics of some fake & questionable baggie fonts followed by pics of the originals for comparison

ESB-B

I don't think there is much left to say about these really, to say they are very poor is an understatement, I will say the one thing I have noted with this Baggie is all the examples (fake) look really rough and I believe they have been done this way to detract from how bad the logo is, imagine if the baggies were mint and the text unworn those logos would stick out like a sore thumb more than they already do, I think they look like monkeys have gone to town with a bottle of tipex myself

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momike said:
SW-A

Like with the ESB-B these have the whole tipex/spray paint vibe going on, take note of the A in made you will notice the triangle in the centre of the A is very blotchy and undefined and pretty much none existent on these which is one of the common traits I mentioned in my previous post also note another trait how the letters MAD in MADE all touch, I wouldn't class this as bleed, the letters are far to close and out of proportion and are definitely not defined like the machine made originals (it's worth mentioning that on the originals the letters in MAD can touch slightly but nothing like these) lastly another trait, if you look closely you will notice that the O in HONG has a line linking it to the H & N, my first thoughts on this was some kind of stencil had been used but can't say for sure

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momike said:
SW-B

This ones is totally different font and does not have the lines joining the letters, it does have the touching letters and the blotchy A though, this looks very wrong when compared to the originals

SW-B baggies have been traced back to Jeff that differ slightly from these but are very iffy like the ones pictured in this thread that ukg declined to grade

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momike said:
SW-D

As you can see the A in MADE on these look half right and defined compared to the others but all the other traits are clear as day, the font on this has an almost ink like look to it that looks very off also worth mentioning that the Baggie has lots of dotted/pitted indentations in the material the same as can be found on a lot of the palitoy-k baggies coming from Jeff mentioned in the OP

SW-D baggies have been traced back to Jeff that differ from these but are very iffy none the less

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momike said:
ROTJ-J (regarded as questionable in the original post)

I only know of him selling the one (imagine he has sold more behind closed doors) of these but thought It was worth mentioning as it has the same traits as the others, when compared to the originals you can see how off they are, also worth mentioning all the originals I can find online have wider baggies than the one sold by Jeff and look to be a different material imo

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momike said:
Palitoy-K (regarded as questionable in the original post)

These have been a difficult one to pin down because even the originals can be a bit on the rough side, none of the originals have the lines linking the letters together like the chewie pictured of Jeff's and the A in made on the originals are more defined than the ones coming from Jeff.

As stated these are questionable and have been a difficult one to nail down, on the one hand some of the ones jeff has been selling look ok with the A being the only obvious trait but then there is some that have all the traits and are all round diabolical and just wrong, he has also sold many that are believed to be legit

Worth mentioning these are one of Jeff's best sellers and when ever I have asked for a figure he seemed to almost always have this particular Baggie type available in the figure I asked for

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momike said:
Comparison shots of the fonts on Jeff's together, as you scroll down you can't miss the similaritys

Ive added the pic of the Tusken Raider again, Jeff did not give a Baggie type for this one in his listing but it shares a lot of the same traits. This is the one jeff sent half way round the world instead of sending to frank which he did with the other legit baggies that were to be forwarded on to Andrew

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kevlad said:
fake bossk mailer

Here is the Fake Bossk mailer i bought from Jeff on 23/09/2015 as soon as i received it i knew it was not right the mailer was far to crisp and clean the label print was not right either, also i weigh my mailers its my thing so as soon as i put the box on the scales knew it was far too light to be original the cardboard was too thin the flyer bio was also wrong on paper that was far to thin also it was not the only fake Bossk mailer he had sold which his email states they came from the same source.

i had a conversation with Frank and Steve at UKG as you can see from the attachments as well as contacting Jeff i have attached his reply .

the bossk baggie was authentic i found no issue with that or the catalogue

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momike said:
He also sold me one of these, was far to good to be true and you could smell the fresh Adhesive (yes I like sniffing vintage cardboard lol) gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time :roll:

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Evidence Jeff sold a set of fake last 17 baggies to a novice collector, too much info/photos to copy and paste so direct link to post here:

http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32539&start=495#p433723
 

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Two examples of Jeff buying loose light blue Fetts that may have ended up in baggies, worth mentioning that one was bought with a different account and one in a backdoor deal:

elcroz said:
I was explaining the 'Jeff' subject with a friend last night and he says that Jeff had contacted him regarding a collection of figures that he was selling on eBay back in late October 2016.

Jeff offered £300 for a pale blue tri-logo Boba Fett (great condition) which was amongst the collection. My friend did not sell it to him.

Obviously Jeff may have wanted it for his own collection?However Jeff has sold a fair few 'tri logo' Fett's in baggies so why not keep one back for himself? Why buy another? Especially if you have been in the vintage world as long as he has.

When you consider him selling all these 'rare' baggie TL Boba Fett's as per the listed evidence - it does make you think that by offering to quickly buy a TL-Fett for £300 (a pretty steep price) - then POSSIBLY touch the paint up and then POSSIBLY put it in a baggie and then charge an extortionate amount to a collector who doesn't know any better.

It's all theory & paranoia though and nothing solid.

Please see screenshot.

Hats off to Frank and the team for safeguarding the hobby.

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Frunkstar said:
Interesting elcroz!!

As I was digging a little further through my emails & found the below from Jeff asking about Tri Fett's & did they come in baggie, if so which type & so on, I also late in a reply confirm they are stupidly rare with only one known & confirmed example.

It is also interesting that I know of at lest one other Mint Tri Fett Jeff has bought for a fairly high price (from one of the members on here) wonder why he would want so many of the same figure then ???

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momike said:
Talking of Tri fetts here's a graded one he had of me in November which I presumed he purchased using his other halfs account

This was a very reluctant sale, only sold it to fund another purchase from Jeff that turned out to be fake, sold the graded fett because I thought I had a legit example in the baggie i had from him in late 2015, which is looking more and more likely to be fake unfortunately :(

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Another example of Jeff selling a fake baggie long after being told it was fake. The last email also implies he opened it to take it out of circulation which again is untrue because it was later for sale on his stall still in a baggie

Frunkstar said:
Emails from Jeff about hammer head (purple text) & walrus man baaggiess, which I bought both of & returned as both turned out to be fakes, I wanted to look the purple text one over as had never seen any like it before, but both were as said clear fakes & returned as such.

Now this is the EXACT SAME baggie Jeff had on his stall for sale at the last FF event (August 2016) which was pointed out to be one of the 3 fakes spotted by Marc C (theguiltyone) on here which I am sure he will confirm.

So yet another example of a baggie that has been 100% confirmed as a fake to Jeff all the way back in 2015 & still being offered for sale :?

he also confirms he removed the figure from the baggie to be added to his loose set in the final reply :? so how did it end up on the stall aat FF in 2016 when you opened it back in 2015 ???? - I don't understand the fuzzy logic

Also a little interesting info about knowing there were indeed obviously distinguishable differences in some of the SW-a baggies he has like soft baggies (only ever came in crisp baggies) & top heat seals (never came with top heat seals) the top heat seals bit ties in with the other fake SW-a type that was listed for sale on ebay last week BTW

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Analysis of fake baggie heat seals

Frunkstar said:
Right sadly some further shocking discovery's with some of Jeff's baggies (shocker).

Remember the 2 Taiwan R2 baggies with correct figure but fake baggies?? the solid dome R2 never made it beyond the ESB-a baggie & no other Taiwan R2 baggie has ever been found by any collector that I have heard of & likely never will, I have them in hand (big thanks Nick) & have taken detailed close up's of them & as good an image as I can capture of the heat seals to try to find out which seal types are being used on the fakes, my suspensions about the ROTJ-a (also Taiwan) that Jeff has sole many of including on to myself are also 100% fake as the seal is unlike any other ROTJ-a I have (I have many to cross check against).

Now by all accounts the ROTJ-a fett baggie is stupidly rare, I had been after one for 3 years before I saw this one I own listed by Jeff on ebay, since I bought it I know he must have sold a bear minimum of 5 others (high value item again), I have also cross checked with Andy Raymond who is the only guy I know that owns a genuine one & also the multi pack with other baggies it came with, he has confirmed his has the exact same seal type as all his other ROTJ-a baggies, the seal type on a genuine one is slick with tiny tiny vertical lines within the seal every few mm's, unlike both the fake ROTJ-a that have come from Jeff which both have crosshatching, which looks like small squares in the photos, but with the naked eye you can see a little more detail.

Luckily Mark A Baker from jabbas court was here at the time of me getting the baggies from Nick & we both checked them both with the naked eye & a 10 X's eyepiece in good natural daylight & agreed they were identical - see seals below

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R2

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Fett

Also some side by side photos below as well as full frontal shots to show these are the same ones shown in the close up seal photos

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& below the other ESB-h fake again with a Taiwan R2 figure, the baggie does not conform to any other known style of ESB-h baggie, nor does the heat-seal which incidentally is identical to a fake Luke X wing pilot baggie I also got from Jeff

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The sheer volume of baggie types that have been tainted is becoming more & more worrying, I am in the process of working on others at the moment, luckily every single one has ways of being distinguished against the genuine article so with luck it can all be documents & eradicate them from the hobby & not affect baggie collecting any more than it already has
 

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A recent email from Jeff to Frank debunking his claim that he would not stand to gain financially:

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