Luke Stormtrooper Black Blaster?

One last thing.

Looking through the figures again I came across this blaster which I'm thinking could be the V 5 get without dot Taiwan one, what do you guys think?

The blaster on the left is the Stormtrooper one from earlier and the one on the right is the one I'm wondering about (struggling to get great pictures at the moment with the light so sorry about that).

Ian

I agree if it's real, it's certainly a V5 rather than anything else, however I am troubled by the rather soft sculpt on your one. The example on TIG seems to have a much sharper sculpt all round, but the difference is especially noticeable on the grip / handle. Also, perhaps it also came in other colours, but TIG advises the V5 no circle is dark grey / black, and unless it's the photo / flash, yours looks more blue black to me. However, as always I am happy to be corrected by someone else with more knowledge... So I haven't really helped much! Sorry

I have concerns like Jeremy. Maybe it's the flash knocking out all the detail, but the grip on the handle should be very distinct.

I do agree with you both about the sculpt looking soft on the handgrip. I couldn't seem to get a sharp enough picture of it for some reason but maybe that's because the detail just isn't in the sculpt itself.

I'll have to take a better look at it in the daylight and maybe with a magnifying glass, the colour to me is more of a grey black and it does look to be the right shape of a V 5 with it also floating so who knows. Also I can't find a repro one like this but of course it's possible that it's something we haven't seen before.

Thanks anyway gents and I'll report back when I get a better look at it.

Ian

Well I've had a good look this morning and taken some pictures and as you can see the dye doesn't seem to have gone the whole way through the blaster. Has anyone ever seen something like this before?

As mentioned before it floats as it should and I've compared it to a stormtrooper blaster I know is 100% legit and the feel and sound when doing the drop test all checks out perfectly. I tried this on a repro one that got passed onto me as well at some point ( :evil: ), and this one sounds different with the drop test and feels much stiffer (it won't really bend at all).

Other than the handle detail looking soft (although I can see it's the right pattern for a V 5), and noticing that there's a dent towards the back of the barrel/stock (you can see it in the top shot a took a picture of where you can see the seam line and are looking at the top of the triangular clip), everything checks out that this is vintage.

I'd love to hear some more thoughts if you have any as I've not seen anything quite like this before.

Ian

Ian

I had another look at your imperial blaster and i can confirm according to TIG the one on the left is a V9 repro. I have attached the image from TIG no vintage blaster has this dot in the recces. It was easy to see the image better on my desktop monitor than on the phone.
I know the colour is different and this one has some flashing but the sign's are there .

Sorry mate i know its a **** iv found a few and spent a whole weekend almost going through my loose collection cross referencing TIG and other sources i found a couple i was unsure of so just left them out half of that was mine from the late 80s at least. Recently i found a few repro's sold to me that either the sellers didn't check properly or just didn't care.

Stubbs said:

Ian

I had another look at your imperial blaster and i can confirm according to TIG the one on the left is a V9 repro. I have attached the image from TIG no vintage blaster has this dot in the recces. It was easy to see the image better on my desktop monitor than on the phone.
I know the colour is different and this one has some flashing but the sign's are there .

Sorry mate i know its a **** iv found a few and spent a whole weekend almost going through my loose collection cross referencing TIG and other sources i found a couple i was unsure of so just left them out half of that was mine from the late 80s at least. Recently i found a few repro's sold to me that either the sellers didn't check properly or just didn't care.

Click to expand...

Looks like you may well be right after reading the TIG description of the V9 repro one ( You did mean the blaster on the right didn't you, the one I thought was a V 5 Taiwan one? ).

With the flashing missing on my one and all the normal checks checking out this one almost got passed me as real so it's great that someone could see it wasn't right. These repro's sure do sneak into our collections at times and it's getting to be a bit of a minefield out there.

Well it's another for the bin but at least I have some more knowledge so it's been a good use of time.

Thanks for the heads up

Ian

Hi Ian

Yes it was the one on the right. I would be happy to see if anyone else would agree I don't want you to bin vintage weapons if I'm wrong haha.

It certainly is a mine field I have been putting my loose run together over the last 18 months and I couldn't believe how bad this had got from eBay to toy shows and boot sale apps.

This is mostly the reason I still have 4 figures to get a wing pilot lando general and imperial gunner the blasters are a pain to find and I will only buy them in person now. Also need EV9D9 but waiting to see if he comes down in price he will probably have repro arms lol.

I agree it is the 'revised/modified Repro V9 with the same mould flaw/dot carried over.
A similar thing occured with repro V5- tell tale dot remained

I never bin or burn my Repro, just put it in a clearly labelled bag. I do this for two reasons:
- once you've binned a suspected Repro there's no going back, especially if you discover that it's the real thing later... when you become a little more knowledgeable. Remember TIG is just a guide and doesn't contain all the known original variants
- it serves as a useful comparison tool for future purchases, which I find particularly useful with ST lightsabers

TheJabbaWookie said:

I never bin or burn my Repro, just put it in a clearly labelled bag. I do this for two reasons:
- once you've binned a suspected Repro there's no going back, especially if you discover that it's the real thing later... when you become a little more knowledgeable. Remember TIG is just a guide and doesn't contain all the known original variants
- it serves as a useful comparison tool for future purchases, which I find particularly useful with ST lightsabers

Click to expand...

I do agree with you on not binning them and do have a bag marked Repro Junk with a few of them in. I bought nearly all of my loose figures years ago so have been lucky for the most part with having only a few repro weapons trying to be passed onto me as real and also the earlier ones were easier to spot. This one I've pictured is from one of the last lots of loose figures I picked up and think the seller threw in some of the harder to find blasters like Leia's to make it seem a more attractive deal. Never mind, I did get some nice figures out of it so it wasn't a loss really.

Thanks again for everyone's help, really appreciate it.

Ian