Blue Cavern

Hi,

there was an auction yesterday on ebay which had a couple of very nice unpainted smurfs among the 115 figurines.

Unfortunatly it went a bit too high and I missed it. But I would have loved the unpainted onemold Bully tennisplayer. They seems very genuine and I believe they are Bully ones which have not been good enough after they filled the molds. Like with the courting where the flower is not complete. And I think the net on the tennisplayer is not complete. So Bully didn´t paint these and maybe gave them away in some other way.

I just hope a collector here or elsewhere bought them and not someone who want to repaint them.

The picture is from Ebay.

Hi Andre

Well spotted, to bad it went to high for you

Tintin

The bully raws are a bit of a puzzle to me...I got a few as well and while I see why Bully employees would not paint them, some of them feel like they were treated with acetone afterwards to make them more special. I got them all from the same seller who sold a lot of them back then, and I never figured out if they are genuinely error smurfs or somebody helped a bit with it

http://hiddeninthewoods.com/SmurfswithErrors.html

Maureen,

I just watched a episode of BBC´s "Fake or Fortune". The episode about Van Meegeren, one very famous "Faker". He painted fakes of paintings from masters from mid 1600.

One very intresting thing was that Scotland yard tells that today between 40-50% of all paintings sold are most likely fakes.

They also interviewed a faker who had done time for these things and had painted alot of fakes. He said that still about 120 of his fakes were ones where the buyers did not know these were fakes. He could point them out and told them he painted them but he did not want to because the buyers had paid 30 000 pounds for them.
It started with that he painted one for a customer for 250 pounds and the customer took this to an auctionhouse and they took it in with a starting bid of 25 000 pounds.

So this makes me think that regarding many of the rare smurfs I would guess many many many are fakes. It is so much easier to fake a Fix Foxi smurf compared to a painting. Same with the painted variations. My guess is that a lot more than 50% are fakes.

Regarding these Bully raws it was from a seller who did not now much about smurfs and figurines. Also these matches very well and seems very genuine and I think the onemold Bully is pretty much harder to fake because of the net compared to many others??

And regarding the raws I think there off course are a lot of fakes also.

Frank, the price they went for was 242 euros. This included 115 smurfs so maybe if I had been on my watch it could have been worth it. Unfortunatly the rest of the smurfs were not in the best shape so it would have been like paying all the amount on the raws. ???

Hi Maureen

That's always difficult to see, you never know if a painter try to make up his / her mistake or someone is trying to sell a smurf he / she couldn't get rid of before .........

Tintin

Hi Andre

Thanks a lot, you really make me happy with your story that 40-50% are fakes

Ok, i had to replace some smurfs because i found out they were fakes.
But i hoped it stayed with these

Well, just kidding.
But some smurfs are so hard to see if they are fake or not.

Maybe that's one of the reasons i like to collect Spanish, Polish Mexican and other fakes............at least then i know they are fake

242 for 115 including the tennis.............. i think it's fair .............but still a lot of money .........

Tintin

I checked the auction again and the other smurfs were actually not that bad.

But I only saw this action one hour before it ended and got a reply from the seller 30 minutes before it ended that it was OK to send outside Germany. So I had not so much time to deside if I wanted them and for how much.

And I have no idea about how rare these ones are?? I don´t have that many raws.

Frank,

what about the fakes of the fakes???

Actually the ones you write about I don´t call fakes. Just unlicensed smurfs. And then off course from Peyos point of view fakes.

Hi Andre

Fakes of fakes.................doesn't really matter anymore ............it's a fake

Unpainted rare ?? Well sometimes you see a lot of them on ebay and sometimes .............no unpainted............guess it's with all smurfs.
You need a bit of luck.

Tintin