Cheap G-scale figures from Ebay

Every layout benefits from models of people which make it more 'alive'. And that's also true in the garden railroading. What's different in the G-scale however, is the very high price of a single human figure.

Those high prices are somehow justified. The models you buy are usually high quality with a lot of details. They're also expected to last outdoors. The price becomes an issue, when you need a lot of them.

That's when you start looking for an alternative and the easiest place to find one is of course Ebay. Ebay is full of cheap large scale people models. Some are sold for as little as $0.50 per piece but those do look bad in my opinion. There are however $1.50 figures which offer much more details and look acceptable in the photos shown by the sellers. I've decided to buy a 12-pack of those.

The seller was of course from China so I expected to wait around 4 weeks for delivery. To my surprise, the package arrived just one week later and was posted in Austria. I did not expect it to come in a nice box and that's exactly what it looked like.

The figures themselves were packed in plastic bags.

They seemed to look more or less like the merchandise I ordered. First impression - they're indeed not that bad...

I won't go into discussing the figures very deeply. I'll let the photos tell the story...


So they're quite detailed - they have eyes, eyebrows and some clothing details. The quality of painting is rather low - all models have 'funny eyes' and there are clear lacks in the finishing. Poor packaging also takes its toll - there are clear marks coming from the figures rubbing against teach other in the plastic bags. But other than that - I'd say they're worth their price!

So those figures are cheap. And yet, they're pretty good. How's that possible? Seems they're simply copies of products from other manufacturers. Copies that are probably not really legal, too.

Here's one of the figures I bought on Ebay and next to it: my expensive Preiser figure. They look like twins, don't they?

The similarities are obvious, yet, the cheap copy somehow manages to be noticeably smaller. The copy has also less details (eg. the cigarette is missing) and incomparably worse painting.

The face expression on the original is much, much better, too. The Preiser figure looks like a real human being, while the copy seems like a caricature.

Painting is so basic on the copy, that the manufacturer even decided not to cover the bottom of the figure at all. This is a sitting person, so it does not matter but it shows how badly they wanted to save money while making the cheap model.

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What do I think about it? Ethical dilemma aside, I would not use the no-name figure in an exposed part of my layout. That might really destroy the realism of the scene. I could live with the poor painting and scratches from transport, but the 'funny eyes' are just too much for me.

On the other hand, those cheap models might be good fillers if you're low on money. They should look good enough in distant areas of the layout or inside the structures. I wonder whether they're weather resistant at all, though...

My plan was to use them inside my passenger cars. So here they're. And they end up looking pretty good in my opinion...