Not sure if painting forum is best spot for this...
How can you tell if a figure you buy has been recast? I picked up a few from eBay and I wonder if they're authentic or copies. Overall they look fine and the detail depth and quality looks the same as my others, but there's some bad mould lines in places... same place on nearly all the figures, and the tabs on bottom were somewhat mangled. Also, it hadn't really occured to me at first, but as I was cleaning the mould lines off and wondering if they were recast I thought about how based weren't included and another little red flag went off.
Now, I in no way condone recasting figures, even overpriced GW ones. I've got badly cast figures straight out of sealed GW boxes before, so for all I know these could have just come from a bad batch. One time I'd even returned a box as defective to the store they were so badly cast. I just don't know if these are copies or not... but I really don't like the idea of having 'illegal' figures if they are... so does anyone know any telltail warning signs or other good ways to tell for sure?