Blood for the Baron!

Rich, what's the crack with Jason Joiner's reputation? I've read that he has a bad reputation but as with Toy Toni there doesn't appear to be any evidence to substantiate that reputation. You're right that the evidence is lacking but based on the "hearsay" Toy Toni's silence is deafening and people forming conclusions on this basis is inevitable.

Has anything been said about past customers contacting Toy Toni direct about recent MOC purchases?

Nothing has yet been irrefutably proven so values are on hold to be honest. The figures in doubt are a small segment that has been very popular lately with people paying good money to get on the Palitoy and European bandwagon, so overall even if they are fake it won't send prices down the pan.

One of the big panics is that if these ToyToni MOCs are fake some have been graded by AFA which would mean that the AFA service is essentially void and worthless. People who have spent large sums (which is rather stupid really) on getting AFA pieces could stand to make substantial losses as the price they paid to get them will never be recovered.

If these Palitoy examples are fake then the price on them will drop and the price of non Palitoy ones, eg Kenner will rise. Sadly there are too many fraudsters out there for it to stop and Star Wars is too popular for them to move onto other lines.

This isn't the first fraud case in Star Wars either. Billy Boy a collector in Brighton took a load of guys for a ride on preproduction pieces a few years back, Jason Joiner has had some very dodgy dealings on numerous pieces, a guy in the States whose name escapes me at the moment ripped people off by selling micro machine pieces under the guise of normal vintage pieces and Shaun Neinast who routinely tries to palm off fakes as originals and misrepresents items. There are plenty more too, so fraud is nothing new and despite what Rebelscum say its not solely a British problem either.

I think Transformers had been hit hard by fake G1 MIB items and of course the 40th Anniversary Action Man stuff made some waves as well.

I've got no sympathy for the AFA. I recognise the need for a grading standard but people must be stupid to pay for someone else's opinion on the condition of an item that they own, it's such a con!

There's a guy over at Hiss Tank talking about getting a MISB Mail Away Whale graded. He just doesn't seen to get that he'll be paying someone to asses the condition of a plain brown cardboard box!

buddusky wrote:Rich, what's the crack with Jason Joiner's reputation? I've read that he has a bad reputation but as with Toy Toni there doesn't appear to be any evidence to substantiate that reputation. You're right that the evidence is lacking but based on the "hearsay" Toy Toni's silence is deafening and people forming conclusions on this basis is inevitable.

Has anything been said about past customers contacting Toy Toni direct about recent MOC purchases?

JJ has murky past, but at least he does acknowledge it. He's been around for years and was very activ back in the 90s before the internet and Ebay (the dark times....) where he amassed a substantial collection of some very nice items.

However he got involved in props from films and several of them were sold for large enough sums but were later shown to be fakes. He has also had runins with several fakes/resealed MOC and preproduction items that he has had a hand in, these include the infamous grey limbed snowtroopers and some Yak Faces. He also upset and got on the wrong side of many of the older toy dealers back in the 90s. I had several stories recanted to me from different sources that all tally up (so it looks to be true) that he did try to screw over people and got caught, one instance physical violence was only just avoided. As far as I am aware him and ToyToni never saw eye to eye and since TT is quite old school I can kind of see why he might not take anything that JJ says with any real conviction.

Although these details are not on the forums, if you type Jason Joiner into google the fourth suggestion down is Star Wars Fake and it does show a number of threads from Rebelscum and the Star Wars Forum discussing his reputation and the deals gone south.

This is why I'm not taking it face value to be honest, is it a smear campaign from one rival to another? Is there actual substance to this and why wasn't it brought up earlier not 10 years later. A lot of questions all mired in mud slinging to be honest.

As for refunds, well a number of people have contacted him but again its gone quiet on that front too. But again a lack of communication and openness does him no favours, but then again if someone is smearing you, surely you would fight back?

Exactly, if Toni had put up a fight and put his side of the story across then people wouldn't be so quick to form opinions.

I wonder if the Cream Bubbled Action Force Overstock was bought up at the same time as the Star Wars Cardbacks?

As you say it's probably an old rival sh*t stirring, but the lack of any responce from ToyTony can't be inspiring confidence from his customers.

Jim Stevenson's name's been mentioned in those threads a few times... has he made any comments on the matter yet?

I've not seen anything from Jim...I'm getting such a Star Wars education during all this!

buddusky wrote:I wonder if the Cream Bubbled Action Force Overstock was bought up at the same time as the Star Wars Cardbacks?

I was wondering if there's any connections with , hence my original question about the bubbles.

Like, if some third party had bought up old Palitoy inventory & machinery to make a quick buck.. those Irish clearance multi packs must of been produced in a factory other than Palitoys.

Also, attempts have been made to tell if the resealed bubbles line up in exactly the same measurements as authentic factory sealed cards, how do the positions on single bubble Action Force figures compare with Star Wars figures.. are the bubbles Star Wars ones & is it possible they were sealed on the exact same machines?

Jim Stephenson is cited as having thought that ToyToni had been sealing bubbles but I've never heard it from him direct and he has been around long enough for it to get out more I would have thought. But Jim never reall goes online and is again quite old school in his approach to it all. Plus without wanting to sound rude about dealers, some of the things they say do have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

In the relative chaos that was the demise of Palitoy I'm sure there would have been a fire sale of anything and everything from the factory and warehouses. So some AF could well have found its way onto the clearance market. This bit of footage shows the heat sealing process (and why U grading is an utter sham):



***This and many other Palitoy goodies are available on Dave Tree's Palitoy DVD that is essential viewing for any discerning collector***

So its possible that AF cards used the same machines but the moulds/machinings would have to be changed to accommodate the side bubbles? Unless these newer sealed cards use an alternative method which no one has shown how it has been done. There is a witch hunt over iron marks on cards but this isn't definitive as an iron could have been used to straighten/flatten a card anyway.

Other with more knowledge than I have stated that it would be relatively easy to heat seal bubbles to cards but and there's the stumbling block who would have brought up old Palitoy stock of Action Force and the machinery to heat seal the bubbles when there was still a lot of legitimate stock floating about that wasn't selling. Even now some 30 years later the values have not rocketed hugely so would it make economical sense to buy, store, produce the fresh seals for relatively little money to what is a small market?

You could argue that in the Star Wars market it might make sense but again we are back to the problem of who had the foresight to do this?

Damn stupid double post, why I oughtta........