About a month ago, I posted a topic regarding dt luke afa85 in a afa case with damaged dented legs, now I have a hollow cheek tusken raider( someone is about to sell me) with horns at a wrong angle and shape, listed as a hollow tube variant, but definitely custom made due to the TOP horns being at an acute angle.

There have been fake 'cases' fake graded labels etc. but also genuine graded examples that are mistakes.

Thank goodness both AFA & UKG have a database you can search online. I've found a few fakes on eBay... the seller(s) always claim "I had no idea!"

The database could be reAl, but the sticker number is taken off a real sticker, copied.

Are you certain this is fake? There were a ton of flags on the dt Luke to indicate it didn't deserve the grade it got, but I am not familiar enough with the multiple versions of the hollow cheek tusken to know if it is fake or not.

Aussiejames has declared it a custom made tusken, as all hollow cheeks tusken have an obtuse angled TOP Sprongs. However, I found a similar looking acute angled tusken on Yodanews.com website, pictured below. Also I found an image of a test shot hollow cheek tusken with acute angle TOP sprongs, although sprongs are much thinner. It could be that the acute angled TOP sprong version could be the earlier ones





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Here are the pictures from the yodanews.com website,

Hi Mark - please could you share the url to the kid4life page please? I'd like to check out the pics up close of the carded tri-logo version.

I agree, it's a fake. It fails on all these accounts: the spikes are too vertical for the hollow-raider, the silver paint is too grey, and the chest/hand brown paint isn't dark enough.

Here's my list for identifying a genuine hollow raider
1) much darker brown chest paint
2) silvery paint rather than grey
3) the rim of of the hollow cheeks are even (a drilled out one would be very hard to achieve this)
4) the depth is not very deep and are rounded on the inside
5) the middle two spikes stick out sideways more than the regular figure
6) the spikes tend to be thicker (but some of the regular raiders had thicker spikes too)


Not sure if it's any help to you but I have two hollow-raiders, and most of the regular raider coo's, here some head shots of a few for you to compare with.

This is the link: http://www.kid4life.com/yoda2/vtotw12.htm the one featured here is excatly the same as the sample i destroyed. 1) rims of the holes don't look too even, and acute angle upper sprongs. Got the email from Yoda news saying that the reviewer had this since his childhood. Interesting in this article he says that the hollow cheek has a lighter brown compared to the solid cheek. Bryan attached a photo of the no coo tusken hollow cheeks and it looks similar. Uneven rims of tubes and acute angled sprongs. Anyone here has a no coo tusken hollow cheek? We would like to see a sample of the no coo hollow cheek tusken raider.

Although I'm 99 percent sure this is a fake, the only way to be 100 percent sure would be to find a no coo tusken hollow cheek, and show that it is for sure not like this sample.

Interestingly my copy of the solid cheek tusken raider has very dark almost black belts and strap so it doesn't mean that solid cheeks have lighter belts.p

Also interestingly, the website also show three carded examples of solid tubes with splayed out upper sprongs, on a 12 back, an esb card and a toltoys. Showing that not all solid tubes tusken have acute angled sprongs

Just incase some of our members don't know this, if you go to either AFA or UKG online site you ca run the code number and it will let you know what goes with that code.Its easy to make a fake case and decal but you wont be able to add it to either of the sites databases.

For example the one listed above the code number SW006309 comes up as listed below
http://ukgraders.co.uk/content/8-archive



STAR WARS

Ref Number: SW006309 
Toy Description: STAR WARS TUSKEN RAIDER HOLLOW TUBES 1977 G.M.F.G.I HONG KONG 
Graded Code: FIGURE 85% PAINT 85% CAPE 85% OVERALL 85%

Its a very usefull thingto know as I have run into a few that didn"t know about that. I have a few graded items already and plan on getting a few more of mine done.

Larry

You can copy off a real serial number of a real sticker and copy that exact same sticker and reuse that number.

True that you can, it's a gamble buying anything online. That's one of the reason it pisses me off when people selling ask you to do ff or pay the fee, if you use ff then your screwed if it's a fake PayPal will not help.

Even if you sent said fake to AFA or UKG they would most likely say it's OK if that's what comes up on the database. The only way they could really say its a fake is have some form of tamper proof item that is hard to make a ligit copy like with money or contact the original owner to see if they still have it. No matter how you look at it someone will always get burned. You either have to take risks sometimes or never collect anything to be safe.