Best source of information?

[Gallaver]

Hi I am looking for information on collecting mask,tool/ weapon/ammo made for bionicle set.

I picked up some stuff from a collector. They used to work for a promotional events company and had some toa mask key chains, mask of life necklace and the 3 symbol key chain. I would like to research it somehow.

[Turaga onewa]

Try ebay sometimes they are there.

[Darknut]

Not sure really what you have without pictures, but based on the descriptions it sounds like mostly gear. Bricklink has a gear section in their catalogue, but just by searching Bionicle Key Chain I was able to find a decent amount of things matching your descriptions. If you check the price guide on items that have had recent sales you can see sale data of what stuff was sold for in the last 6 months, might give you an idea of what price people are willing to pay.

[Gallaver]

Notting worth home to right about. I found them under gears

 

Edited February 23 by Gallaver

[Gallaver]

The other stuff.... A lot of it...

 

 

Edited February 23 by Gallaver

[David Skyroller]

3 hours ago, Gallaver said:

The other stuff.... A lot of it...

 

 

The comic-con clear mask is probably the most valuable item to G2 fans since those were a limited release.

[Valendale]

The most notable thing I see there is the prototype shadow leech.

[Gallaver]

I dont think its a prototype it looks like its made of sand.

3 hours ago, Valendale said:

The most notable thing I see there is the prototype shadow leech.

 

[Gallaver]

There where other shadows leeches like that when i bought them in 2018.... I tossed out blue,orange,gray. I also tossed orange pots, I still have a half of a larger pod.

[Aiden]

The white leech and blue pod half might be good finds, assuming they’re authentic (which I wouldn’t). I’d love to take a look at them if you could send more detailed images, and what material they seem to be made of. Nothing personal, but I find it suspicious since you’re a new user- and new users have been popping up with “prototype shadow leeches” similar to yours (one notably on Reddit, who had six white ones still attached to a sprue). Also, by “tossed”, I’m assuming you mean that you threw the other leeches away? Why’d you do that? Also, is there anything in the velvet bag?

Edited February 23 by Aiden

[Gallaver]

No they are just bags the keychain where in them.

The user tourmalinex asked for the leeche and blue pod section and I gave them away for free.

I sold the keychains to a used lego store for $15.

The stuff looks like what you could make on a home 3d printer. As far as I could find lego prints in its own plastics and does paint parts.

Edited February 23 by Gallaver

[Gallaver]

Well I also bought this to resell, I didn't want to get lowballed by the store when I sell them. So I was pointed here by another shopper.

[confused piraka]

are you going to post prices?

[doodleloot]

17 hours ago, Gallaver said:

The stuff looks like what you could make on a home 3d printer. As far as I could find lego prints in its own plastics and does paint parts.

You described them as feeling like being made of sand, which fits the properties of a part made using an SLS printer, which is exactly the type of printer Lego would have used to make prototypes at the time and not a type of printer available for home use (even today). Considering where you got it from, it's likely that it is a legitimate prototype.

As for the blue pod half, do you know when they acquired that part? It was released in a black/blue marbled pattern with a Hero Factory set in 2010, which it looks like it might be in the image. If it's pure blue and they got it before the HF set release though, that could be a mold test, possibly acquired alongside the proto leech?

[Gallaver]

I am pretty sure they are not real,store would not buy the leechcs and building parts, white axles and such. doodleloot

I would have never thought to check on gear under bricklink.

Edited February 24 by Gallaver

[Gallaver]

These are higer resin images of the fake bionicle items...

 

[Turaga onewa]

They look painted except for the white leech.

[Max_Nui]

Can we get a conclusion on whether these are fake or not replied for historical purposes?

[Aiden]

On 3/14/2024 at 1:28 PM, Max_Nui said:

Can we get a conclusion on whether these are fake or not replied for historical purposes?

They are more than likely fake, I recommend checking out my post on potential shadow leech fakes here: 

 

There just really isn’t any evidence pointing towards them being real. Nothing substantial, anyways. Lots of suspicious coincidences surrounding them. (And since there has been some misunderstandings, anybody mentioned in my post is not being accused of anything, they are simply being used for example).

TLDR I wouldn’t recommend going after these. Stick to what you see in the Official Collectibles Topic, if you have little experience with these things.

Edited March 16 by Aiden

[doodleloot]

Idk, personally I find the thought of someone going out of their way to produce fake prototypes for... shadow leeches, of all pieces, a fair bit weirder than the possibility of them actually popping up from somebody who had ties to Lego in some official capacity. What's even weirder to me is the Tridax pod, it's not just a print of the file you can get from Stud.io or whatever, it's an actual different design with a different pattern. This sort of stuff lines up with how Lego develops their parts and prototypes them. I feel like if someone went out of their way to do that modeling work and make some money off tricking people into thinking these were prototypes, they would try a lot harder in their wording to convince people.

My point being, the way these were apparently produced lines up with how Lego develops and prototypes new parts (including the sloppy paint jobs, lol) and this would be far from the first time that stuff like this somehow made it into collectors hands. But you're right of course in that there isn't really a way to verify the legitimacy of these just going off these images. If these are fake, maybe that person went for shadow leeches because they thought those would be less scrutinized for their authenticity than something like a prototype Kanohi?

Who knows, I just think it'd be really weird if someone went out of their way to model a (seemingly pretty nicely modeled) Tridax pod variant that isn't based on any known concept art or protoype, badly paint it blue, for some reason? and then try to pass it off as real.

[Nato G]

On 2/25/2024 at 2:35 AM, doodleloot said:

You described them as feeling like being made of sand, which fits the properties of a part made using an SLS printer, which is exactly the type of printer Lego would have used to make prototypes at the time and not a type of printer available for home use (even today).

Services like Shapeways do use SLS, though, and allow you to upload your own files for purchase. It wouldn't take more than ten minutes of effort to extract a Shadow Leech file from Stud.io or another program, scale it to the correct size, and upload it.

6 hours ago, doodleloot said:

Idk, personally I find the thought of someone going out of their way to produce fake prototypes for... shadow leeches, of all pieces, a fair bit weirder than the possibility of them actually popping up from somebody who had ties to Lego in some official capacity.

Counterpoint: because of their small size, Shadow Leeches would be one of the more cost-effective things for scammers to make fakes of. And I imagine Shadow Leech prototypes are less well-documented than the more sought-after collectibles like Kanohi and Kraata, making it easier to pass off a fake. 

[doodleloot]

On 3/17/2024 at 3:25 AM, Nato G said:

Services like Shapeways do use SLS, though, and allow you to upload your own files for purchase. It wouldn't take more than ten minutes of effort to extract a Shadow Leech file from Stud.io or another program, scale it to the correct size, and upload it.

Counterpoint: because of their small size, Shadow Leeches would be one of the more cost-effective things for scammers to make fakes of. And I imagine Shadow Leech prototypes are less well-documented than the more sought-after collectibles like Kanohi and Kraata, making it easier to pass off a fake. 

You're right about that, I mentioned your last point as a possibility in my post as well (doesn't explain the Tridax Pod though, since that's completely different from the production part). But then again, the original poster themselves weren't even trying to sell these off as protoypes. So it's just really weird situation overall.

I've sometimes seen people dismiss genuine (that we know to be legit) prototypes as "fake" because of them featuring printed parts and some people immediately take that as an indication of them being fan made or fraudulent. But you're right, these look like they could also be from Shapeways and admittedly, the print lines on these look less noticeable than for example the Lewa Axalara prototype parts from Toy Fair.

Comparing the print from the images with the shadow leech mesh from Stud.io though (at least the one I have installed, from the Biopack/Stud.io pack), I'm not sure it's the same model, and I'm a little inclined to say that it is not. The Stud.io mesh is really lowpoly (it just looks smooth in stud.io because it's smooth shaded, which makes no difference to the actual geometry of the mesh when you print it), especially in the back, and even though the print is small, the back hull is still super round in the print and you don't see any of the faceting that is present in the Stud.io model. I'm pretty sure at least some of that jaggedness would show through.

There's also a few other details that don't seem to match up exactly, like the fins having rounded off edges in the print, but being sharp on the stud.io model. I know Shapeways offers a polished SLS method where the print gets some of the surface finish removed, so that might explain the edges being more rounded, but from my experience printing with them, I doubt it would be able to clean the lowpoly jaggedness up to this extent. But who knows, it could also just be a custom or modified version of the model.

That being said, the Tridax pod is still really weird as it seems to be a completely unique mesh, and doesn't match up with the Stud.io one at all. Both the outside decoration as well as the inside structure are completely different (plus the same issue with lowpoly geometry as the stud.io shadow leech). The pod is honestly the most notable part about this whole thing to me that makes me think there could be something to this. I also wasn't able to find a Tridax pod model that looks like this online anywhere 🤷‍♂️

But hey, I could also be completely wrong, it's just some things that stood out to me. Still think it would be interesting to get more images from the new owner if they're willing to share some and be able to take a better look.

[Aiden]

On 3/18/2024 at 5:10 PM, doodleloot said:

I've sometimes seen people dismiss genuine (that we know to be legit) prototypes as "fake" because of them featuring printed parts and some people immediately take that as an indication of them being fan made or fraudulent. But you're right, these look like they could also be from Shapeways and admittedly, the print lines on these look less noticeable than for example the Lewa Axalara prototype parts from Toy Fair.

The big reason for that being that it’s just that much easier to have a fake just be a low-ish effort 3D print. Particularly with shadow leeches, since the actually pieces are rubber- it’s so much easier to just 3D print. I’ve only seen one person making custom shadow leeches. I think the big thing with 3D printed prototypes is that they NEED to have a story- they need to have something that checks out and leaves you with no doubts. I think that applies to all prototypes, but especially with the 3D printed ones. I would also like to note that all (as far as I’m aware) of Lego’s printed protos that have been found and verified (to the best of our ability) have had some sort of a spray paint on them, and not left blank (The Axalara’s 3D prints, my print leeches and tridax pod, for example).

 

On 3/18/2024 at 5:10 PM, doodleloot said:

That being said, the Tridax pod is still really weird as it seems to be a completely unique mesh, and doesn't match up with the Stud.io one at all. Both the outside decoration as well as the inside structure are completely different (plus the same issue with lowpoly geometry as the stud.io shadow leech). The pod is honestly the most notable part about this whole thing to me that makes me think there could be something to this. I also wasn't able to find a Tridax pod model that looks like this online anywhere 🤷‍♂️

The tridax pod is definitely weird. I think the possibility that it’s a knockoff should also be considered- as knockoff sets often false advertised what was included and had very, very low quality parts. I think the main thing that makes me lean towards it being fake (besides its quality) is that it’s never been seen or mentioned anywhere prior. That’s where most of the validity of prototypes come from, knowing the source and the story behind them.

[tourmalinex]

I got them in the the mail a few weeks ago the tridax is made from a transparent plastic not abs and is painted.

So I thought I found a source for the leeches awhile ago however I was unable to verify that the person was a lego designer or someone passing themselves as one.

[tourmalinex]