if other artist are painting and selling counterfeit kits? Do you report those you suspect of selling them on any websites like reborns dot com, eBay, FB , etc? And finally would you buy a reborn from an artist that paints them if you feel the work is good or has painted and sold them in the past? Thanks in advance for your answers. x
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I care. But I can only do so much i will never purchase a fake kit or support an artist who paints them. I will also call it out and report it.
That said its a bit like whack a mole.
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I care too. Iāve reported (nicely) a couple of them to Dave. I will never purchase knowingly or support artists that sell fakes no matter how well itās painted. I think it depends how itās reported though. I wouldnāt come after someone on reborns . com in an accusatory way because they themselves might not know they have a fake. If they genuinely didnāt know, they will remove it. I donāt have Facebook or any other social media, so I canāt report stuff there I donāt think.
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I will not support someone that is buying and painting fake kits. I have blocked numerous people on FaceBook that paint fakes and know it and they try to rationalize why it is OKā¦ I donāt go searching for fakesā¦
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I would never buy from them , they are the reason why the reborning is where it is now.
Going back 5-6 years ago everything was great .
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I report them all when I know they are knockoffs, illegal, stolen photos.
My scam list has over 1000 on it, and that isnt including individuals. I only list groups, sites or pages.
I report things daily on fb.
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I do not support, purchase from or knowingly maintain connections with anyone who I have identified as selling fake kits or fake kit babies. I do not go looking for them and canāt say I have ever reported anyoneās selling one. I just stay in my lane and try to stay informed as I can. It is hard enough to try to stay on top of all these things going on, blocking the constant comments being made on my FB page from those scammers trying to sell fake silicones, weed out the fake men trying to get me to befriend them so they can try to get any money I have, sell my babies and somehow manage to keep afloat in this art/business.
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Iāve been away from reborning for a number of years and was confused when I did a search and found Levi dolls for $179.00; is it possible these are some of the fake kits? I couldnāt imagine why a finished Levi was selling for so low.
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I will never support someone that is buying and painting fake kits. 
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I will never support the use or sale of fakes. I have too much respect for the Artists
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I think itās an uphill battle. The Pratts (BB) have made big steps fighting in court against the counterfeiters but do they care? Does the Chinese gov care? Iām confused whether it is still worth their while to sell knock offs if they might get sued for $1M.
My perspective is this: the dolls are getting better and better and people (regular customers) are not going to complain anymore. More people will buy ārebornsā from those sites (which now include Amazon, Walmart, SHEIN, etc). I think there is a limit to what can be done about that BUT if the community that cares about the artistry and authenticity (and maintaining this art form) advocates for that quality then hopefully the true fans of the art form are enough to support the artists and the continued production of the orginal kits. If the counterfeiters āwinā and the artists and kit producers canāt stay in business - the counterfeiters would eventually run out of new kits to copy, ironically. But does the mass public buying cheap baby dolls care about new kits? Probably not.
Should reborns be called something else now that every doll online has that title? Itās interesting to look back at the āHistory of Rebornsā post by Joyce Moreno where she says (in 2006!) that the art form stopped being āthe true art of reborningā basically as soon as the internet came along. My goodness what she would think today!
One last thought - I think a good way to report counterfeit dolls might be to complain to the government about how those dolls arenāt safe for kids. Iām thinking of the trouble BB had with their Kinby dolls (getting approvals for a child toy). Thereās no way the chinese kits are approved for kids use, right?! Iām going to contact the Canadian agency for product safety to ask about this. Maybe it is a way to get fewer illegal dolls sold.
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I think this is indeed the best idea to fight that.
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I have replied to a couple other threads you posted so I wonāt go into all of it but I do care. I drove Etsy crazy flagging sites, sent a million messages to the knock off people questioning them and letting them know that what they were doing was wrong and misleading etcā¦ I donāt buy reborns but I would NOT knowingly buy a knock off sculpt.
However, I donāt think it is possible to stop the people who copy, the people who buy the knock off sculpts and reborns. I think Dave at Reborns stand on not letting those companies infiltrate his selling platform is the best we can do.
Again, it is a slippery slope calling individual artists out, it needs to be done carefully, with thought and consideration.
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I definitely have an unpopular opinion on this
I definitely understand calling out companies and people using stolen photos, etcā¦ but here lately Iāve seen a lot of bullying going on that I feel is extremely counter productive. I see people getting called scammers because they donāt have coa, because they arenāt using original limbs, all sorts of reasons. I understand the love for our sculptors, but you canāt publically accuse every person you think may have a counterfeit without any proof. Itās a witch-hunt.
I also want to share a little story to show how some of this is negatively impacting the sculptors/businesses. I know a new artist (weāll call her Anne). Anne got into reborning, bought all her supplies off eBay, and unknowingly purchased a counterfeit and painted it. Of course, this was reported and now the distributors have blacklisted Anne. Anne is a good person and would have bought all her sculpts legit, but now she canāt buy legit sculpts from distributors. Of course she can always buy secondhand, but you see how things like this can further push people into buying fakes. I believe our fight is against the companies. Educating individuals is the good thing to do, but these witch-hunts are just making people feel pushed out of the circle, and this is creating a secondary community of people who view the āauthenticā community as elitist bullies. I think itās better to prevent this by being kind. Pushing them out is only driving them to buy more fakes
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Youāre right, Iāve seen people get bulliedā¦I even saw a thread in this forum from some years back where a woman got bullied about it by one particular person, so much so that she left the forum and said it was a group of mean girls. But, thatās not what happened with this person that Reborned Huxley. If that applies then it would be inappropriate to inform Dave about her.
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I am going to assume this comment is speaking to the Huxley situation.I agree bullying anyone is not cool. I have been in the reborn community 13 years and have never attacked or bullied anyone or have been accused of it. In the year and a half I have been on reborns this is the only fake I have reported. Besides this Huxley situation, I have spoken out about only one other artist. That person was a really bad actor in the community and I think 90% of the reborn community from artists to sculptors to dealers where all speaking out about that one.
I believe in order for it to be a witch hunt, there needs to be no such thing as witches, or in this case fakes. And we know that there are fakes and plenty of them.
The fact of the matter is fakes are not allowed on Reborns dot com and there is going to be no 100% nice way to approach someone suspected of painting them. The best we can do is to turn our suspicion over to Dave, who is neutral in the situation and have him inquire about it. Hope the right outcome happens. No one is asking this artist to do anything anyone else in that situation would have to do and that I for one would be happy to do, which is prove where I bought the kit should anyone doubt one of my dolls.
I chose to bring this situation to the forum, and I hope I have done so in a respectful way, but I chose to do it because I wanted to make people aware, see what others thought about it because after all, her listings are public.
She has since pretty much admitted the Huxleyās are fake. She has also admitted that she does not care and that those that do are āanal.ā I think the community has a right to know that.
Your friend āAnnesā situation sounds awful. If true I think treating a novice artist who is stumbling right out of the gate with the fake issue in such a way is not beneficial, or even fair, especially as you say had she known different she would have made sure to buy legit. I will say there are many many many artists on FB and youtube that are openly advocating for fakes, painting and selling them, who have been in the community for awhile and some pretty popular, in love with reborns comes to mind, and they are still allowed and do business with Macs, dolls by Sandie, etc. So I am not sure why your friend was so egregiously targeted. I hope that it can get turned around for her.
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I have no idea about the situation with a huxley(Iāve seen the thread floating around but havenāt read it) so please donāt take my comment as targeting you or anyone involved in that situation seriously. Iām more talking about things I see happening on social media.
I do believe there can be a witch hunt, accusing people with no proof. There are tons of scammers and people using counterfeits, I wonāt deny that at all, but going after one person because you think a doll may be a counterfeit, but have no proof is absolutely a witch hunt and/or bullying.
In Anneās situation, her choice is to have people order legit for her(because she is a decent person); but she isnāt the first or the last Iāve seen targeted. If you look, there are quite a few that are (or claim) to be blacklisted.
Again, Iām not basing this on any huxley situation, so none of my information or opinion is based off of that. I didnāt see it mentioned in this thread, so I didnāt know it was in reference to that.
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I think you are right.
In real life these things happen for what ever reason. Dave can state the rules, he can put up a few road blocks to keep people accountable, if there is an obvious problem and it is reported a couple times he can look into it, remind the person that there are rules and that if the kit is a knock off please remove the listing. He can ask for long time artists to weigh in an make a decision if the seller is adamant that it is not a fake.
There will be times when it is obvious, we have all seen those sculpts, easy enough, delete the listing.
I donāt condone knock offs, I think it is unfair, and we need to support our sculptors. The mass manufactured dolls chap my arse but there isnāt much I can do about it.
My guess is, and I have said it before, if someoneās willing to risk their reputation as a reborn artist to save a couple bucks they donāt have much longevity. If they ādonāt careā they may have all kinds of reasons for that, and it isnāt really my business to school them other than to explain why she canāt list that baby on Reborns. Those people will find their Niche, like it or not. I am glad to not have that silliness on Reborns myself.
What I would like to avoid is people on the look out, people calling people out if they are suspicious. People getting cancelled who didnāt know they had a bad kit, it happens, those copy cats are getting better, smarter.
This shouldnāt incite anger or even strong emotions, it shouldnāt be a back and forth, name calling, character bashing. It should be a reminder about the rules and if they are not being followed the listing comes down. At the end of the day it is up to Dave, but that is my two cents.
I will now go and edit my first reply to the other thread, I was tired and trying to be helpful without giving it enough thought.
NOTE: I am not saying anyone here did any name calling, bullying, or bashing, but we have all seen it happen in this community for various āinfractionsā Some serious, some not so serious. In these times we really need to be grown up about how we handle conflict. I will be the first to admit I am a hot-head and I can be a mean girl myself sometimes, when we know better we do better.
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I hear what you are saying.
I understand that there are troublemakers around that will call out an artist willy nilly.
I really donāt know what the answer is Gina. Believe me when I say I do not take my rep in the community for granted, I work hard to be a trusted artist. To put out the best doll I can and support the community and its members. Calling her out was a risk to me too and I think people forget that. No one in their right mind thinks any of this is fun or reputation building. And I think anyone that does would be mired down in the mud all the time with this kind of stuff.
I know people care, and thatās great but I am not sure it does much good in any situation without alittle action behind it. I am only asking she abide by the rules and show proof of purchase or remove the listing. I am not calling for her to be ousted in any other way. I should say I thought showing proof of purchase was a requirement to keep a questionable listing up, but she has refused that and Dave has allowed it to remain. Had I known that maybe I wouldnāt have even bothered reporting this mess.
In thinking about this whole ordeal, I think it is teaching me that maybe we, or rather me, are the ones that need to change. Except that fakes are going to be right beside us on rebornsdotcom and any other platform we use. That they will be more and more normalized and those that complain will be shamed into silence for the impossible task of failing to provide proof itās a fake that only the artist selling the doll can provide. For me this means that unfortunately I donāt think I will be alerting Dave to any more fakes on the site or bringing it to the communityās attention. I will work a bit harder to not have to use the site if I can help it. I currently pay to keep my nursery visible whether I have a doll to sell or not but going forward I may just pay as I go. OnlyReborns is an option too. I am going to have to rethink my reborning purchases as well. I am not going to be able to sustain if I must pay up to three times as much for a kit as a bad actor does and am limited to how many of one particular sculpt that is legit I can reborn while they are free to reborn as many as they wish without abandon to woo customers. Whether that translates into forgoing most sculpted kits and focusing more on realborns or what have you I am not sure yet. Still churning all this out in my head.
I personally donāt get how this artist can and say yeah " I reborn what I like, youāre just anal. I am not a collector so I donāt care if my customers are short changed. If I see a kit and like it I buy it regardless of where it came from, simple as that. Iām not made of money, I could give a ratās but about a COA" and still get cover from the community and have a fake doll be allowed to remain up and sell next to originals. Heck even most of the sculptors are like whatever, we canāt tell by looking at it and we donāt want to alienate a potential customer. Ping, Samantha, Natali and Doris are all great but itās no where near enough and I donāt think in reality it wonāt be very helpful after all. Even they canāt tell their work from a fake and donāt seem like they will be very bulldogish in insisting for any kind of proof of purchase when working w/ Dave. And after all it is his site, his call. 
If the only consequence to all of this is that an artist selling fakes will be out of the running for any kind of prototype work with sculptors tho we are sunk. Prototype work for one is highly overrated. Yes itās nice to be asked but it is reborning under pressure, time sensitive and you may not like the sculpt. All reasons why I started turning down offers back when I was doing prototypes. It just sucked the fun and creativity out of it.
So this is where I am currently at. I am sad, confused, frustrated and aliitle angry. It is hard to see the fake listing stay up without feeling a sense of unfairness and the real time erosion of the craft. I do appreciate all of you and I know we are all trying our best out here. x
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Donāt feel bad for doing the right thing. You know how you approached the situation, and so does Dave and anyone else thatās been following this thread. You didnāt blast this woman, you did exactly what Dave instructed and went to him to report what you came across. You care about the longevity of the art and instead of just saying you are tired of the reason for there being fakes, you took some proactive measure the decent way. I commend you for it. I think one reason people donāt want to say too much is because nowadays someone could claim defamation. I think Dave has said in the past he is careful about it because he was almost sued?
I also remember a lot of people on reborns . com asking for a list of names. How you went about it was right.
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