Can You Tell the Difference Between Cheap and Expensive Anime Figures?

I've noticed most fakes have worse small details, as well as being a lot more shiny / glossy. Higher quality figuers seem to be more matte.

My very first figure was a knock-off. I got her when I knew nothing about figure collecting, I just saw her on amazon, I liked anime and thought she looked cute. So I bought her. And I'm not going to lie, I think I got pretty lucky with this find because she barely looks like a knock-off. And I'm saying this even now with much more experience with authentic figures and collecting. I still have her on display with my expenisve, authentic figures :) It's really mind-blowing how good a bootleg can look. Sure, in comparison you can tell the difference, but really only after taking a very close look

Knock offs that barely look like knock offs are gems. Found one or two of those

I like how your little daughter can tell which one has worse quality from just her feeling w.o ever watching those anime. She has good eyes.

Thank you for this. I have been trying to explain this to so many people. We (my kids and I) used to own an anime shop. Sadly two to three years ago, another anime shop opened selling these knockoffs. Many in my area seemed to not notice the difference, knocking us to retreat. We even all found jobs to help support the shop and home hoping this word would get out more but we were not able to hold out.

Note here for any new collectors - Corefuls are prize figures, while Pop up Parades are not. Pop up Parades are sort of their own category, similarly to Nendoroids, although there are comparable figures to Pop up Parades from Bandai, Furyu, etc. Prize figures typically have more ambitious designs for a low price, but typically don't have great quality control and are often made of noticeably cheap materials (they can look great, but it's important to keep in mind.) It's very common for prizes to have poorly done hair, but some people like the look of the transition from color to clear. Pop up Parades have good quality control and are almost always higher quality, but have very simplistic designs (as others have mentioned, sometimes the faces get messed up as well, but this is usually noticeable from photos before you buy.) Also... that Nezuko is rather bland, so I understand why people would prefer the Coreful, but I bet if they could feel the figure and see it up close, their choice would be different. You will get increased quality for your money (most of the time) even if it's not apparent at first glance. A lot of the price also has to do with size... it may not seem like it, but when you see a 1/7 scale compared to a prize or a 1/4 compared to a 1/7 in person, you'll understand just how much more enjoyable the larger figures can be. If you really love a character, go for a scale. If you like a character, but aren't crazy about them, go for cheaper options. Luckily, with more and more cheap options becoming available, you can avoid getting knock-offs and still get characters you like!

Bandai's banpresto figures are also usually pretty damn good quality as well even though they are considered prize figures. Although they do tend to only do figures of what is most popular at the time.

Great video, I always wanted to see a direct comparison between high quality figures and knockoffs. Bringing in people who aren't as familiar with figurines at all is a great idea as well!

bootlegs are the worst. Save your pennies and go for the true scales or Prizes if scales are out of your budget.

Loved this video! It was great to have side by side comparisons to see how obvious the mistakes are on the knock-off figures. Good stuff👍

What a fun video! It was nice seeing the reactions and also close-ups of the figs. Also the editing is on point! Nice job

You have such a great way of talking and I found your voice so calming that I didn't even realize how much of the video I watched haha I loved this, though. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to these types of things and it shows. Especially, if a seven year old can see how low quality something is, it's truly telling.

the reason the roxy is so accurate to the original is that in china they make the original run, for example 500 pieces with top quality plastic and paint, then they use the same mold/cast to do the fake ones but with cheaper plastic and paint overall is the same figure just cheaper materials

the bakugo one actually doesnt look to bad though

Man, POP UP PARADE figures could easily cost 40 to 60 euros (~42 USD - 65 USD) from where I come from. Your typical prize figure is already 30 euros! Collecting anime figures, especially in my country really is an expensive hobby 😓

Amazing video! Would really like to see more of these for sure! Great job 😃

Side to side comparison makes it a lot easier, because you will generally find some detail that's not to par. The real chanllenge is attempting to guess the price of a figure when given a mix of real and knock-off. Is it a "scam" if everyone guess a higher value than the cost? To establish an idea of what figures cost in general, a knockoff, a prize, a PUP, a lower end 1/7 scale, a higher end 1/7 scale should first be provided w/ their prices to establish a base line. Preferrably in the same era in terms of release price, as a figure today and a figure 5 years of the same qualtiy tier can have drastic different price. Then the series of chanllenge can begin. A lot of knockoff hurts the industry, which is why it should be avoided if possible/feasible. But as far as the consumer goes, if they aren't actually fooled (i.e. it is sold for the price of real but you get a knock off), the consumer isn't really the one being scammed, the license holder is. Unless it's really bad quality, in which case it's just garbage, there are some of those ofc. I can't be sure without seeing the figures in question, but I would guess from people's reaction that the roxy, for example, looks better overall than a PUP while costing about the same. What is it really worth then? Is the buyer the one being scammed? The real problem with knockoff, from a consumer point of view, is that it is almost impossible to tell before hand how good or bad the job is. Because, like you said, they do tend to post the real figure's promo photos on the listings. Getting the knockoff nezuko vs getting the knockoff roxy would be very different experiences. That said, some seller would be willing to provide actual photos if you make it clear you know they are knock off, are fine buying it but just want to check quality. Although depending on platform, you might need to exchange out of platform contacts so that the exchange can be kept off the record. As for the quality poll... that's kind of misrepresentative. Things seens through camera lens, especially video camera lens, lack a significant amount of detail. I would have a hard time telling prize/PUP from scale when seen through cameras, but pretty much always could in person. The degree of detail and the color gridiant is just not the same. But both of those are lost on camera. In fact, just like the knockoffs, you can try to do a price guessing game with your family&friends with a mix of PUP, prize and scale. P.S. When I say prize here, I am excluding ichiban kuji last one prize as that specific line is not very well representative of what prize figure are. There might also be ones similar to that, but this is the only one I know and have. That said, even that isn't quite up to scale quality(well, what I consider the quality of scale should be anyway, there are some bad scales out there...) P.S2 To be clear, I'm not against PUP etc cheaper lines. Those are very good value for beginning/poorer collectors. The thing with figures is that there is serious diminishing return in terms of price vs quality as you go up the line. In many ways, PUP can be 80% of the quality for 20-30% of the price. But it needs to be made clear that it is just 80% of the qualtiy, it never really measures up when seen in person.

Counter point, if you don't have a high quality one next to a fake one, the point is mute, nobody would notice the difference and you would have saved yourself thousands of dollars to be used on something more useful.

This was great, Thanks alot!!

This video essentially turning into a Popup Parade advertisement at 10:37 made me chuckle a bit as I recently got into anime figures, and I started my collection by ordering 21 figures in one go (yes, my wallet deeply hates me right now) and out of those 21 figures, 17 are PUPs... I'm overall happy with them; my main issues (which are rather minor) are their bases (empty and boring, with some being round, some being hexagonal and all in different colors) and that quite a few of the characters have rather unimaginitive poses - still, considering the good quality and that they cost about 1/5th the price of a decent scale, I'm not complaining and I intend to buy more.