The seller is a bit of a con artist. I'm pretty sure he knows this is the knockoff.

You can tell it's a knockoff because the holepunch is centered, among other things.

http://cgi.ebay.com/G1-Transformers...oryZ4696QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

No "China" or "Re-Issue" designation on the label.

 

Oh, and I did just email AFA about grading Chinese Tfs and knockoffs. Hopefully they will read it.

 

Well, AFA thinks it's real... i've seen the actual knockoff graded by them before and AFA wrote "chinese reissue" on it.

So either AFA or you are mistaken.

Doesn't make the seller a scam artist if the most respected grader thinks it's real.

 

Trust me, AFA is mistaken. No real Minibots have the holepunch in the dead center. It's really easy to spot if you know what to look for.

"China reissue" isn't correct either--it's a completely unlicensed counterfit.

The seller is a con artist because he's lied to me before in a deal in an attempt to flip cheap deals by pretending he was buying them for "friends"/"cousins" etc. He was just flipping them to a guy he knew who would pay twice as much and trying to fool me into thinking he wasn't. That's why he's a con artist. This auction only strengthens the claim.

 

Beachcomber is also easy to spot because he was never released with the autobot symbol on his chest.

 

It does if he sells it twice.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160200698586
Sent him this:

 

hey if AFA is dumb enough to grade a K.O. then i say more power to him

 

might gaine definately knows his facts, its a KO

 

I've offered him $20 for it; that's more than it's worth IMO. I've also emailed AFA about them grading a knock-off. Somehow I doubt I'll hear anything back, despite describing myself as a "prospective client".

 

I'm not really into AFA (ove the acrylic cases though), but this brings to liight a very scary trend. I know AFA are professionals, but even they "could" make mistakes, this however really blows the validity of someones AFA collection should this become a habitual problem!

 

That makes one of us, then.

AFA is wack.

 

For archiving purposes - here's a screen grab of the auction. This way, when the auction ends (or Ebay pulls it), we'll have this to reference.



And here is the other one that AFA states was a CHINESE REISSUE - FUNNY!

 

Ok, the even more scary possibility is that this guy has a real g1 beachcomber that he submitted to afa, but is now packing KO beachcombers into KO boxes and with replicated stickers from a real afa graded toy.

I'm surprised that hasn't happend yet.

 

Well, in fairness to AFA, this was graded in February 2005, back when the knockoffs had just started showing up. I had heard anecdotally that they graded some knockoff Beachcombers as originals when they first started showing up. The same anecdote says that when they found out their mistake, they bought up all the graded knockoffs they could find to fix the problem. But if that's true, apparently they missed at least one.

I don't think they've graded any knockoffs as originals since then, but this is proof that 3 years ago AFA screwed up very, very badly.

 

I think it's more likely that the buyer didn't pay for the first one or returned it when he found out it was a knockoff.

 

oh dear

 

[Homer] Stupid AFA. [/Homer]

 

I don't know who's the bigger con artist, AFA or this guy.

(someone was going to say it sooner or later  )

 

Afa Sucks.

 

I've contacted the person who won it with a best offer of £250, to let him know he's been scammed. Hopefully he can get his money back from this guy ASAP.