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A number of 2013 minifigures have appeared on ebay in recent weeks which is great for some as they can be the first to own them without having to buy the sets, but in fact it is very alarming, hence this blog post.
So far we have seen a number of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, The Hobbit, Galaxy Squad, Star Wars and Super Heroes minifigures being sold from these ebay shops Block Party Bricks and Lego Dudes 2.
They are listed as BRAND NEW minifigures, removed from a NEW UNRELEASED set. What concerns me is that LEGO have not released them, so are they genuine or fake custom minifigures? Also if they have the minifigures why are they not also selling the sets?
The Brick Show purchased some of The Hobbit minifigures to review and they found that although Legolas body and legs were correct it had the wrong head. The other minifigures that were sold all seemed to be correct with the quality of printing you would expect from LEGO.
So were did these ebay stores get the minifigures from? We do not know for certain but can only speculate. One theory is that someone who works for LEGO smuggled them out and they are infact stolen property, and the other theory is that LEGO produces test runs of new minifigures to evaluate them for printing quality, so perhaps instead of these being thrown away, again someone has smuggled them out.
Of course, there may be a legitimate reason that these are being sold earlier, however someone is making a great deal of money from it!
Here are Minifigures.co.uk we do not condone theft so we would not recommend you buying any of these 2013 minifigures. What is more surprising is that LEGO have not taken any action to have these ebay listings removed.
