ROTJ Palitoy Chewbacca confirmation.

[_Lee_]

Guys,

Firstly, im going to put an auction listing on this page. Although it is frowned upon by some i feel that the price is a tad OTT anyway so no ones going to get a cheap bargain.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STAR-WARS-ROTJ-VINTAGE-CHEWBACCA-MOC-GC-/252103411332?hash=item3ab288c684

I believe this auction gives some further pointers on the ROTJ Palitoy Chewbaccas that are often brought into question with regards to the TT affair. Few things to note here, the store applied stock sticker and also the feint bubble indentation on the back. Now ive said for a while that the bubble indentation is by no means conclusive proof of a Toni, and we all know that the dipstick made the mistake of leaving most of his cards perfectly flat which helps with positive identification in some ways.However, this auction shows that some figures were never pressed onto cards at the factory with the greatest of force-as long as they stuck that was good enough for Palitoy. This auction also shows the long bubble on this card which itself is another huge help.

However, i have also been looking at the possibility that Toni was using home made jigs/press plates to seal 'some' of his figures at a later date. By this i mean after he got sick of the iron and spray adhesives and decided to try to cover his tracks.

Anyways, sorry if the auction outing offends but every little helps.

Lee

 

[Mr-shifter]

Interesting auction Lee. Whats up with the £3 price sticker though? These would have been a bit cheaper when sold originally so I would assume the price tag would have been applied sometime later when they were just starting to become collectable. Looks like the sort of thing that a comic shop owner would have stuck on it.

The stock sticker on the back is interesting though. I wonder if that sticker has been seen before.

 

[indianawars]

Truly outstanding Lee. Your dedication regarding these hasn't gone amiss
Keep up the fantastic work my friend.

 

[ScruffyLookingNH]

Oh crap. I thought I had this TT thing pretty nailed on. It would appear not. I wouldn't have touched this at half the advertised price as I would have come down on the side of this being a TT. The card, despite minimal wear and stickers, still appears too crisp and flat, the tall funny shaped bubble and the lack of waffle and rear indentation would have had me and my wallet running for the hills.

 

[steve obi wan]

:shock:

 

[edd_jedi]

Sorry Lee I don't see how this adds any weight to the argument that these are not TTS - that's a generic price sticker. It has no store branding, and I also don't think these ever cost £3.00 back then. This was applied recently IMO, or at least many years after they were sold in shops if not recently. You can buy them on eBay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151566301321

For a price sticker to add any kind of weight to age it needs to be from a shop that sold them (eg Tesco or John Menzie) which are much harder to forge.

EDIT: sorry just looked again and assume you mean the sticker on the back do these stickers have any kind of provenance? I don't recall seeing them before. Even if it is a legit sticker, they are not difficult to remove and replace on other MOCs so stickers are never a good way of authenticating. I'm sure you all know there are reels of unused "Coin Offer" stickers out there.

I know you're keen to try and prove a point on these Chewbacca MOCs Lee, but my own personal opinion for believing they are TTs is that there is one for sale right now in Snoopers Paradise in Brighton, which as most now know is where Toni has a stall. I have held it in my hands - the bubble is badly applied, practically falling off, and it has the other characteristics too (no stem gaps in the seal, bubble applied centrally over race track, etc.) In my mind at least some of these are TTs, if not all of them, and it's based on my own judgement having seen one in the flesh, not what I've read on the internet.

 

[_Lee_]

No worries Edd thats why this place exists. Im not saying that all are genuine, maybe just some. I beleive the store room sticker adds more weight to the theory that this cardback/bubble combination can be genuine and that the bubble adhesion lines are not any way or proving yes or no. The cardback i showed ages ago had a tescos price tag and came from a childhood collection, but it had very feint bubble impression lines such as this.

The point of this thread was to say that some examples of this figure do exist and it is getting very hard to distinguish such pieces.

Lee

 

[Mr-shifter]

Edd, I don't think the one in snoopers is in Toni's stall, it's in the other one. Toni's stall used to be full of tt's but since this broke, all the c3pos and hoth troopers are gone, and he used to always have them in there.

Everything thought to be suspect has been pulled from his website as well. I'm certain if he had multiples of something and it was legit he would be still selling them, like his meccano jawas and tri logo r2s.

 

[edd_jedi]

Edd, I don't think the one in snoopers is in Toni's stall, it's in the other one. Toni's stall used to be full of tt's but since this broke, all the c3pos and hoth troopers are gone, and he used to always have them in there.

Everything thought to be suspect has been pulled from his website as well. I'm certain if he had multiples of something and it was legit he would be still selling them, like his meccano jawas and tri logo r2s.

Yeah I know it's in Tim's stall no Toni's, but I got it out to have a look and it certainly looked like a Toni to me. It's obvious people don't believe it's real because it's only up for £45 I think, a genuine one would have sold quickly at that price.

 

[itfciain]

Interesting auction (although ridiculous price) - the sticker on the front is a red herring as it would never have been that price. However, the sticker on the back - and the general wear around the tab and edges suggests that this one has been displayed at some point. But whether that was after being Toni'd or not can't be proven I guess

I own one of these and would like to think it was genuine (it came in a bulk purchase over here) but although this auction does help with credibility it doesn't seal ( :lol: ) the deal for me

 

[Robstyley]

After everything I've read about these on the various threads and elsewhere and being an owner of one I agree with Lee that there must be genuine factory sealed ones out there and there are almost certainly later sealed Tonis too. It just so happens that because he used the correct bubble and card combination and some of these Palitoys did have a smooth seal and not a waffle they are very hard to distinguish from one another. He basically got lucky and unintentionally made ones that look genuine as opposed to many other of his fakes which are easy to spot.

 

[Mr-shifter]

I would like to think there are genuine factory sealed versions of everything that tt made. After all, the card backs and bubbles are originals, just not sealed in the factory. It stands to reason some where done in the factory.

 

[_Lee_]

There was something else about this card that i noticed but didnt mention it as i thought one of you might notice....

The date for the bandolier offer has been left unmarked unlike Indianas and Iain MOC,s and my store purchased cardback which were all scrubbed out. This leads me to beleive this is an earlier issued moc which was sent to shops before the offer ended, which subsequently left remaining cards to be marked off in black-some which Toni may have got his mitts on.

 

[jedisearcher]

Lee, where did you get this one from? How long ago?

The codes on the back look like catalogue codes (rather than from a shop) so makes sense they're on the back, but a catalogue wouldn't have a price sticker. That seems a bit weird.

Edit: Sorry just realised it's not yours. Anyone asked the seller where it came from?

 

[benny100]

So...... is there confirmation or not :lol:

 

[_Lee_]

Lee, where did you get this one from? How long ago?

The codes on the back look like catalogue codes (rather than from a shop) so makes sense they're on the back, but a catalogue wouldn't have a price sticker. That seems a bit weird.

Edit: Sorry just realised it's not yours. Anyone asked the seller where it came from?

Ths sticker on the front has no interest to me, however the back one is important. The £3 sticker could have been placed in a corner shop after someone bought a rake of sale items from a high street store. The back one is a code sticker that i beleive was used in one of the larger department stores or even mail order catalogues. Its not from Argos because ive already checked all the back issues from 1983 onwards for this style of coding.

Maybe i worded the title of this thread wrong, all im trying to confirm is that there are legit examples with feint bubble impressions etc.

Lee

 

[jedisearcher]

Lee, where did you get this one from? How long ago?

The codes on the back look like catalogue codes (rather than from a shop) so makes sense they're on the back, but a catalogue wouldn't have a price sticker. That seems a bit weird.

Edit: Sorry just realised it's not yours. Anyone asked the seller where it came from?

Ths sticker on the front has no interest to me, however the back one is important. The £3 sticker could have been placed in a corner shop after someone bought a rake of sale items from a high street store. The back one is a code sticker that i beleive was used in one of the larger department stores or even mail order catalogues. Its not from Argos because ive already checked all the back issues from 1983 onwards for this style of coding.

Maybe i worded the title of this thread wrong, all im trying to confirm is that there are legit examples with feint bubble impressions etc.

Lee

Fair enough.

I asked them the provenance (others might have as well) and got this: "no don't know the history on this one however looks to be right as you can see on the back where the machine used to apply the bubble to the card has left its impression"

So the impression is there in some form. I guess it all depends on the legitimacy of the sticker on the back. As I said, I can't see why someone would have added it recently (pre-TT) because that would have reduced the value, and if it was post-TT then those stickers wouldn't have even been around to do so, but only if you know 100% that the sticker is a legit catalogue code/sticker back from the days when these would have retailed.

 

[mr_palitoy]

Looks genuine to me. Have seen that sticker on the back on other genuine MOCs. The one on the bubble is less conclusive.
The amount or lack of pressing on this card just reinforces what I've said before. Not all factory presses pressed as heavily as
others and indentation on the back of the card round the bubble area should not be used as the sole judging factor on whether
a card is a Toni or not.

cheers Jason

 

[talldroid77]

Well here's one I have - bought from a forum member as genuine and I've not had a great deal of reason to doubt it so far - this thread does throw a spanner in the works as I was thinking of selling it very soon due to recent spends.

The card is very clean and seems virtually the same as the eBay listing minus stickers.

There is an impression on the back but again only shallow compared to some other 65bks I have - it is difficult to photograph - best I could do is have light reflecting off the bubble impression. The impression is there with light wear where the bubble edge causes a bump on the rear of the card though it doesn't really show in the pic.

I wonder if the narrow bubble can explain some of the lighter indentation? From a physics point of view there would be less room for the card to flex as pressed I would have thought.

Incidentally there is a small dent on the bottom edge of the card that's on a few cards I have. I've imagined this may have been done by a machine moving the card - I wonder if this was post bubble or done during the printing process - either way v easy to reproduce lol.

I'm now unsure how to list it and how much for lol. Any comments would be gratefully received and I hope the pics help the current thread discussion...

 

[Andyclarke]

Interesting thread.

Here's some pictures of 4 genuine ones I used to have, none of them Toytoni's. Sadly I only have a picture of the back of one of them.