Patrick was asking for info on the matte/shiny differences in the blue colour and how can we determine whether we have an original figurine?
Astro will try to answer those questions. The shiny colour seems to be used a lot on figurines painted in Hong Kong. Most West German figurines seem to be a lighter blue and not shiny. The shine is just because they use a different colour. The material that they are made of is the same. It is hard to tell how old a figurine is, at least in most cases. There is ususally a date stamp on the figurine somewhere. That tells you the year this particular figurine was first produced. But the figurine itself might be a reproduction from later years. Sometimes that can be verified through colour variations, but not all the time. I don’t know of a real good guideline to determine if it is a figurine from its first year of production or a later reproduction. If anyone out there in cyberspace can help with a good guideline on that, it would be of help to many of us.
