Sad Recast Realization :(

I think it was about the time my husband's box mods ended up on Alibaba. It happens...any time there is a demand for something someone will try to make it cheaper. Keeping in mind, my husband's box mods are no where near the price of a BJD. (completely different hobby, won't get into it). He was just a little 'shop', a guy making 10 or 20 boxes every couple of months and distributing in the US. I think maybe one or two boxes managed to make it overseas. Next thing we know people are telling us they saw his boxes up for sale on Alibaba, for less than it costs to buy the parts for him. Granted, I'm sure whoever was producing the 'recasts' bought the components in HUGE bulk orders because they used the items for different things, so they still turned a profit but it was just...I don't know.

We had a small chuckle about it, never thought a hobby would be big enough Alibaba would have clones. Some of the clones they were offering were personal boxes he had made with people's names on them so there was a little bit of humor there.

I get that recasts are the bane of the hobby, they're a cheap way of ripping off the artist and I personally would never buy them...but at the same time it means your product is in demand. You got to do something right in order to have your work copied. As heartbreaking as it is you just have to trust that true fans won't buy it.

 

This happens to me all the time. Most of the sculpts I've wishlisted or wanted to buy at some point have all been recasted.

 

i am always on the lookout for recasts when I'm out shopping, and it's sad that I have to double and triple check everything to make sure my purchases are legit! And if I can't confirm, I don't buy. Art theft is foul... it breaks my heart. Especially that it's usually easier to find them (ie 98% of stuff on ebay) for people who don't know or care.

 

I felt angry when I knew Dollpamm was recasted, because was by the time they opened to occidental public. But I really got mad when I saw Irrealdoll recasted, and I'm also so affraid of find Momoni or MDR recasted.
Plus I got a rant when I saw that Lucywen was recasted. Some ppl that purchased her legit doesn't got her yet and the damn recasters managed even to make a copy already... Agh. Sorry but I get really sensitive specially when I see artist doll recasted, because it means that som1 that purchased it from the artist sent it. Like "stabbing in the back", I give you one of my babes and you "betray me". A big no-no.

 

I was sad when I looked on Ebay (of course ) and saw one of the newer Switch dolls already recasted. I was pretty hurt as they are my favorite company. Though there are a couple reasons I shouldn't be surprised.
1. They are very popular and beautiful
2. When a person doesn't have to go through all the hard work of design, casting, perfecting, and selling (and many more steps in between ) plopping out a crummy copy would yes take little time.

It's sad, frustrating ,and infuriating all at the same time. D:

 

Any time you build a pretty sandcastle there will always be someone to kick it down. Early life lesson- for me anyway.

 

Sadly I'm fairly new to BJD's and I knew NOTHING about it. My friend introduced me to them and showed me some popular company's/artists. I fell in love with them and began googleing everything about them. I came across this blog about recasts and I read it. I'm glad I did because a week before that I almost bought one from ebay not knowing about recasters. Now I only buy from trusted sites. I HATE that people are copying others work. It's so sickening. I also talked to my friend and told her what I found out. she said "OMG I should have warned you from the beginning!"

 

I feel so bad for the people who didn't find out about the recasters until after they bought a doll, and learned that that site was untrustworthy. They might of thought they found a major deal/discount and fell for it. UGH! I would feel SOOO bad if that happened to me. I also feel bad for the artists that see their artwork copied and sold for less. It must be so heartbreaking.

 

For me it wasn't as much as the recasters themselves, but people I had been following on Flickr for years. I had just finished admiring a wonderful photoshoot and was thoroughly amazed... The collector in question, such an artist! I thought. I browsed through the tags and saw "recast" among the sculpt and company names... It crushed me instantly. How could I have been following a pro-theft collector, liking their pictures, calling them an "artist"? I almost felt like I was the thief, it made me so sad. What I don't understand is how somebody so artistic, who obviously loves and enjoys creating art, could also be totally fine with stealing other people's hard work like that. Disturbing.

Has there ever been a time when my favourite artist's art was stolen? Yes. And just like many people on the thread, I almost fell for it as a beginner collector. I remember seeing Fifth Motif's Venitu and GooHwa being sold on DollShe for over 800 dollars and being really shocked, and after googling it having an AliExpress link pop up which was only around 200 dollars... There were even review pictures and the recasted doll looked extremely legitimate. I was so confused. I ended up learning about recasts through Tumblr and was horrified when I realized how tempted I had been to buy the recast. In the end, I actually did fork out over 800 dollars for a GooHwa... and I don't regret it one bit! ^^ Supporting talented artists such as Mr. Cho is so rewarding, too. And I believe saving up for your grail is a big and important part of the hobby; it makes you appreciate the artwork even more and truly feel a part of a community of art-loving, creative collectors. I'm proud of all of us for supporting artists.

 

In the case of online shopping for say, wedding gowns or prom dresses, you can contact the designer's company directly and ask if a site is an authorized dealer. The same strategy might work here for online purchases. At this time I do not know many legit companies beyond Iplehouse, CP/Fairyland, Volk, Lutz...and there are so many years of dolls, I joined DoA to educate myself just as I did for my adult kid's wedding. An organized contact info list of big companies , small independent companies and individual artists who certify their work as true bjd, possibly with the DoA stamp of approval must exist on this forum somewhere. I'm still in the site exploration stage. It's probably well placed on the site right in front of me and my brain isn't registering it.
My basic suggestion from life experience is to contact the designer directly and ask if the site or seller has their o.k.

 

(Here's a list of dollmakers here on the DoA Wiki! )

And to keep this comment on topic... Yeah, recasting. I really hate it. It worries me when I see newbies who don't want to order directly from companies for their first dolls; I know it's tempting to get a secondhand doll and not have to wait a long time and possibly get a better price, but there's just such a high chance of getting scammed or receiving a recast outside of DoA. I really just don't understand how people who make or buy recasts justify blatant theft.

So basically, I just order from companies, authorized dealers, and secondhands here on DoA, and try to educate people when I can.

It's also weird how this seemed to only recently become an issue? When I first got into the hobby in 08'-09', I never saw any talk of recasts. I guess it either wasn't a thing or people just weren't aware of them... BJDs are definitely more popular now, so that may have sparked it. Either way, it's still (to quote Midousuki Akira) gross.

 

It's disgusting to see how many dolls are being recast, especially when the original was made by a one-person art studio. Its really affected the pace of the secondhand marketplace, too. People are hesitant to buy a used doll over the fear of getting a recast, and on places like ebay the amount of recasts makes it hard to find legit dolls.

A corset-maker who I share a mutual friend with (human size corsets) was popular online for her unique creations. Now many of her original designs have been copied and mass produced in China as off-brand garments and further copied by other corset makers, also in doll size. She was the first one to make the skeleton/x-ray design on a corset, but because the design has been copied so much she gets less recognition and sales when she does make them.

 

I had a moment of sad this week when a recast of an old, discontinued doll popped up on Ebay. Two weeks before, a seller offered that exact sculpt at a killer price. I passed, thinking someone with a small budget would have a heyday. Turns out that someone was a con artist somewhere in Asia.

 

That exactly is the reason I'm here - this community is anti-recast which is absolutely great because you can be sure to gather information safely and buy things on the marketplace without any fear.

As an artist myself, I see copy cats and art thiefs on a daily basis and it really hurts my soul so much. All the effort, skill and a ton of time you've been struggling with yourself to improve are copied in a second sold for nothing.
It's barbaric and just thinking of it makes we want to throw up.

 

It's not really a new thing. In the beginning of the hobby Volks (and other companies of which i am not sure, but it must have been Luts and maybe that other old time japanese company Rasendou) got badly recasted by a chinese company called forever doll, they where cheap knockoffs that crumbled when you dared looking at them. (resin was build up out of different layers some even bright pink/ fuchsia and they where painted over with a skin color, had a much lighter weight) Prices were cheaper and so where the recasting materials, to me not worth it as i thought they didn't look as good as the Volks models. But i do remember the exitement from people when a 'cheaper alternative' showed up on the market (before it was found out these dolls where recasts)

In 2009 recasting wasn't commonly known not even to people who had been in the hobby for a longer time (i was on DoA for the first time in 2001 when it was still a yahoo page and bought my first doll in 2002) I wasn't aware of recasts in 2009 (or at least i thought of recasts in terms of the forever dolls, cheap and very bad quality)
So i bought a sd17 body of ebay from a dutch seller (i am dutch aswell) for a 'normal' price (750 euro's which wasn't expensive but not cheap either at the time) No box or paperwork as she wanted to keep it with the head. I thought okay no big deal that happens more often these days, but thought nothing of it.
The body came in and i was over the moon with it. It color matched my Alain exactly, had all the right marks a good weight etc, but somewhere in the back of my mind it didn't feel good, something was a little off and it had something to do with the knees.
Shortly after, Volks replaced the legs on sd17 which shushed me again 'since those knees where clearly a bad design and it had nothing to do with my boy.' But the feeling in the back of my mind never truly went away.
1,5 years ago i bought a second sd17, here of the marketplace, complete with paperwork and box etc. And when i put my newest addition next to the older sd17 body, i could see that my first one was actually smaller and thinner.
Yes it had all the markings nice and deep enough to stand out and a good weight, nicely colored resin and a lot more signs that i thought of as beeing a sign of a true Volks doll, but he was a copy.

(In hind sight there was one thing that i should have known is a tell tale sign of a recast according to the recast detecting 'manuals. The elastic tunnels aren't smooth on the inside. But since i own several dolls from 1999 to 2001 from Volks in which the tunnels aren't actually smooth aswell, i discarded that.)

So recast where known in 2009 but thought of as badly manufactured copies that no one wanted because the quality just wasnt up to scratch. wIn the meantime scammers had evolved without us really knowing/ realizing.
And when people found out the quality on recasts was better than before, they did what people do, they wanted to have a bargain (why pay big bucks for something that isn't an absolute neccessity when you can pay a lot less) so recasting boomed. And that's why you hear more about it now, but it certainly isn't new.

(btw i still have the recast body and am thinking of a fitting way to dispose of it, i am thinking of bringing it to the next big dollmeet together with some hammers and have a big bash............i am angry and sad about it. partly about beeing scammed out of a lot of money, but also or maybe mostly because i was fooled and i feel so stupid about it. I even tried to sell the Alain head, but couldn't in the end, it wasn't his fault.)

 

i remember finding a doll on flickr and absolutely falling in love with it. it was a tan version of one of the fairyland bonnies. since this was before fairyland did tans i thought it was a hometan and posted a question asking if anyone knew how to tan a doll like that. sadly someone translated the page for me and found out it was an illegal recast. i put aside my dream until several years later when fairyland did do tan and i was able to get my boy legally!

i sell doll clothes not dolls, and it's hard enough to compete with people who vastly under price their work and sell it for the cost of the materials. being inspired by someone and using their work as a jumping off point to create your own is one thing. there is no such thing as a truly, 100% original idea anyway, but having someone copy your idea exactly and then undersell you? i just don't get it. and i don't get the mindset of people who think it is ok to knowingly buy illegal copies either.

most of my dolls are non le factory produced, but i do have a few "artist" dolls that i treasure. sure they are more expensive, but i understand why and am willing to pay it. sure their have been ones i can't/couldn't afford but i still wouldn't buy an illegal copy just because i could afford it.

in a lot of cases the problem is not just the recasters themselves. yes there have been people who buy recasts unknowingly, and i feel sorry for them. but if you read the internet, i think the majority of people who buy the recasts are ones who do it with full knowledge and a sense of entitlement. read the defense of recasts and they mostly sum up into "i want it, so i get to do it" if no one would buy recast/forged art, there would be no market and recasters wouldn't exist.

 

I'm always sad to see a doll I love or like being recasted, most of my dolls don't have recasts of them but some of them do and it made buying on the secondhand market a little harder. Usually when I like a doll that has a known recast of it I tend to just buy directly from the company (like with my newest BJD, Supiadoll Lina), that way I don't have to worry about getting scammed, but it's always disheartening to see so many recast when I try to look-up owner pic's of a doll I'm wanting

I wish in a perfect world Recasters would pay some kind of royalties to the original companies, that way the artists would still get paid at least a percentage for their work and people who were tight on money could still get a doll they liked, but sadly thieves don't care about that kind of stuff and are always going to be ok with stealing

When I first stated in the hobby recasts weren't as big a problem, I knew about them but they were only talked about at meetups in hushed tones. I always wondered how Recasters were able to price them so low and still make a profit, until I got hired as the assistant manager for a small self-owned clothing store and was in-charge of ordering the products and saw what we (the store) had to pay for the items, then the owner explained how she had to add a percentage to the price to cover the cost of the item and have money to pay for the rent, bills, insurance, employee pay AND make a profit. When we charged for a single $9.95 shirt we actually didn't make much of a profit off it, I sometimes still wonder if Recasters even pay their employees decent wages or if it's more like a sweatshop kind of thing, I'll never understand how their able to price their recast dolls so low...?

 

yes, whenevery I see "pro artist" copy items from some my favorite animes and sell it in their shops, and I know there is no way they got permission to use sailor moon, card captura, or hello kitty licenses.....