Bond items from Argentina

Mister White · April 2009

I have noticed on ebay that there are several sellers from Argentina offering reproductions of James Bond props as well as custom 12" figures.

Has anybody ever ordered something from there? What kind of quality are they offering and were there troubles at customs?

Please let me know.

nms75 · April 2009

I bought several sets of "Bond" cufflinks from one of these sellers and they were very disappointing - they looked far better on the photos than in reality. I can't complain about the speed in which they ship their items and I can't comment about their other items. However avoid the cufflinks, they are terrible!

NMS

scaramangasgoldengun · April 2009

well the items they sell... in terms of the cuff links.. CR , TWINE and Scaramangas Jewllery etc and a few others.. they sell a set for ..

lets say £45 the ebay seller costumebase or its custombase .... they are from singapore and they sell the same items identical same quality for like £12 a major difference... and there service is fantastic .. a very nice seller....

yes The argentina .. items look far better in the photos and everyone I know who has bought from them ... are very unhappy with the item when it arrives....

I would advise to stear clear... and look elswear...

minigeff · April 2009

i can't talk from any buying experience with this seller. i think i know who you mean, and on viewing an item, i was quite put disappointed.

i basically did a bit of research regarding a 1:43 QOS dbs, just to see if anyone else was making them.

i came across a diorama of a dbs on a cliff edge. the sad thing was it was the corgi CR dbs, minus a door and a few hole drilled in the back windscreen. it was in the CR paint, and even had the CR number plates on it, while the diorama was signed up as a QOS scene.

it was all rather off putting, and the sad thing is someone bought it for £85, which was quite frankly, shocking.

as there was very little work done model making wise.

of course, there are plenty of genuine decent people who trade through ebay, and there is even some in argentina that are respectable.

my advise is don't judge every book by one's cover, look before you buy and do a little research before parting with your hard earned.

scaramangasgoldengun · April 2009

sound advise my good man ... Well said ..

minigeff · April 2009

cheers mick.

just for the record, the 1:18 dbs i made went for £270. nice B-)

scaramangasgoldengun · April 2009

well its not surprising! after the work that clearly went into that model.. a deserving price tag .. if I say so myself.... and what a slick display ..

Nice one :007)

Mister White · April 2009

Thanks for the advice guys!

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The stuff looked a little dodgy to me, but I thought it best to ask around just in case I was wrong.

Sadly it appears I wasn't.

minigeff · April 2009

one thing that did come to mind about all this.

firstly, people have got to understand what is fiesable to someone when it comes to making a bit of coin.

now i'm not trying to support ripping people off or providing a sub-standard product, but look at it this way;

if it cost £100 in materials to make a product that you can only sell £200, and you add in carriage costs, your time, advertising etc,then its not really worth it. now to cut down costs and increase your profit, the first thing thats going to suffer is materials and quality, so you source cheaper alternatives, spend less time getting it made nicely, and hopefully there's somebody out there who will shell up the same money. the trouble with doing this, is that people get annoyed, you get bad reviews and then you can't sell anything cos no-one trusts you anymore, which looks like whats happened here.

ok, so i recently sold an item for quite a bit of coin, but tbh, i'm not making a massive profit, i do it to keep my skills in check and its a few quid in my sky rocket.

i know that some people raise an eyebrow at the high price of some models. a firm called amalgam for instance, make perfect 1:8 model cars, and they are fantastic in detail. they cost nearly £3000 though, which some people think is steep, but take into consideration the research, tooling, production time, materials etc, you're actually getting quite a fair deal.

i guess the bottom line is you get what you pay for, and while i'm doing it, i'll make sure my buyers get a high quality product for a fair price.

like i've said before, don't loose faith in ebay sellers and other people, as there are (thankfully) more honest people out there than con artists.

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Mister White · April 2009

Believe me, I love ebay. I spend too much time on it, according to my wife, but I love being able to get stuff that I wouldn't be able to get before.

However, there are some people out there...

Like this guy who is selling autographed Bond and Doctor Who cards, but has conveniantly mentioned in each of his auctions that it used to come with a COA, but he has apparently lost the one for that item... 8-)

Now personally I believe that most COA's aren't worth the paper they were printed on, but c'mon, does this guy really excpect us to believe that he had all these COA's and he just went and lost them?

How gullible does he think people are...

|)

minigeff · April 2009

there must be gullible people out there.

i've seen rip of models,

fake autographs,

hideous looking 'custom made' figures,

very basic rip off props

and items that are so loosely related, its difficult to point out which film they came from, like a pair of gloves from 'a bond film'.

be careful people, there is plenty of tat out there in ebay world.

and mr white, you're right about the COA's, the majority aren't worth anything.

Bond items from Argentina

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